by Pu Songling
An enormous lotus flower . . . fell from the sky: Signifying that Zuo Luoshi became a Buddhist deity.
243. The Giant
As Li Xiaolian of Changshan, whose courtesy name was Zhijun, was taking a trip to Qingzhou, he met six or seven people along the way, whose speech was like that of the citizens of Yan. When he looked closely at their cheeks, he noticed that they all had scars on them as large as copper coins. This seemed strange, so he asked them what illness they’d all suffered.
One of the travelers explained that years ago, they were journeying through Yunnan, and one night they got lost and found themselves on a huge mountain that was cut off from the valley below by a precipitous cliff, so they couldn’t determine a way out. Hence they tethered their horses together so they could take a rest, and set up a place nearby where they could stay till morning.
Late that night, tigers and leopards, owls and sparrow hawks, one after another, kept making sounds and moving around, so all the travelers sat hugging their knees, facing each other, unable to sleep. Suddenly they saw a giant appear, who was about a zhang tall. The travelers hid as a group, and scarcely dared to breathe.
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Li Xiaolian: A Shandong citizen (Changshan is part of modern Zouping county in Shandong), Li passed the highest level of the imperial civil service examination at the age of 27, in 1688 (see Zhu 2:828n1).
Qingzhou: City in Shandong province.
Yan: A state during the Zhou period (1045-221 B.C.E.), part of modern Hebei province.
Zhang: A measure equal to 3.33 meters—so the big man is almost eleven feet tall.
The giant approached, snatched up their horses as food, and in moments had devoured all six or seven of them. Afterwards, he splintered some trees into long, thin strips, then seized the travelers’ heads and pierced them through their cheeks, like he was assembling strings of fish. When he’d finished stringing them together, he carried them several steps, the wooden strips making sounds like they might snap.
The giant seemed to be afraid of falling with them in the dark, so he bent the wooden strips, pinned their two ends beneath an enormous boulder, and then left. When the travelers believed him to be far away, they took out their knives to cut through the wooden strips, suffering painfully as they did so, and prepared to flee swiftly. Then they saw the giant leading a man in their direction.
Terrified, the travelers crowded together to hide in the tall grass. They found the latecomer to be even bigger than the giant as the two came to where the wooden strips lay, traversing the area, wandering back and forth, as though the man had asked for something that couldn’t be attained.
In response, the man started making a twittering sound, like the call of a giant bird, reflecting how angry he was for having been cheated by the giant. Hence he slapped the giant’s cheek, while the behemoth bent down obediently to receive the blow, not daring in the least to contest it. Presently, then, they both left. The travelers consequently emerged from hiding and fled in panic.
They ran through the wilderness for a good long time, till in the distance they saw some lights at the top of a ridge, so the group hurried there. Upon arriving, they found a man who lived in a stone house. The travelers entered and surrounded the man to pay their respects to him, then simultaneously began telling him about what they’d suffered.
The man had them all sit down, and said, “This thing is detestable, but like you, I can’t think of anything to stop it. If you’ll wait here till my younger sister gets home, perhaps she can help us work out a plan.”
Before long, a young woman carrying two tigers on her back by herself came in from outside, and asked the travelers where they’d come from. They all prostrated themselves and began kowtowing, explaining what had happened. “I’ve known for a long time that those two were evildoers,” the young woman replied, “but I never expected they’d be as fierce and out of control as this! We must get rid of them at once.”
She brought out a copper hammer that must have weighed three or four hundred hu, then left to put an end to the villains. The brother then began cooking the tigers to treat the travelers.
Before the meat was even finished roasting, she returned and reported, “When they saw me, they tried to run away, so I had to chase them for several dozen li, but finally I cut off the one’s finger in revenge.” Then she took the finger and tossed it to the ground, where they could see that it was as big as a shin bone. The group was amazed, and asked the young woman her name, but she didn’t reply.
After a little while, the meat was ready, but the travelers’ wounds hurt so much, they couldn’t eat. When the young woman then applied a medicinal concoction to their wounds, the pain suddenly stopped.
The next morning, the woman accompanied the travelers to the place where they’d encountered the giant, and found their belongings all accounted for. Each of them loaded their possessions on their backs, then walked over ten li till they passed the place where the young woman had fought with the giant, and she pointed to show them a depression in the boulder where an amount of blood remained, about enough to fill a basin.
The young woman didn’t depart from them to return home until the travelers had left the mountain.
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Three or four hundred hu: Ordinarily a measure of volume, the hu could variously signify either five or ten pecks. Since a peck equals .25 bushels, this hammer is imagined to be equivalent to the weight of somewhere between 375-1000 bushels.
Li: A distance equal to 1/3 mile.
244. Xiang Gao
Xiang Gao, whose courtesy name was Chudan, was from Taiyuan. By his father’s concubine he had an elder brother named Sheng, who was his absolutely devoted friend. Sheng had been having intimate relations with a prostitute named Bosi, and had even cut his arm in token of his vow to marry her; yet her mother asked for too much money for the dowry, so he was unsuccessful in getting her to agree to a marriage. Since her mother wanted to leave the brothel business behind, she felt she needed to settle Bosi’s future first.
There was a certain rich man named Zhuang, who’d always liked Bosi, and he inquired what it would cost to make her his concubine. Bosi told her mother, “Since you want to leave this business along with me, you already know that it’s like climbing out of hell and ascending to heaven. How far away from our original wish it would be, if I became his concubine! If you’ll agree to let me have my way, I’d like to marry Xiang.”
Her mother concurred, and informed Xiang Sheng of Bosi’s intentions. At the time, Sheng had lost his wife and hadn’t remarried yet, so he was overjoyed at this, and used up all of his money to marry Bosi and take her home with him.
When Zhuang heard this, he was outraged that someone had taken Bosi from him, and when he came across them on their way home, he severely reviled Sheng; Sheng, for his part, refused to give in to him. Zhuang then summoned some of his servants to ambush Sheng, who viciously beat him to death.
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Taiyuan: The capital of Shanxi province.
As soon as Xiang Gao learned about it, he rushed to see for himself, only to discover that his elder brother had already died, and he was overwhelmed by grief and anger. He wrote a complaint to the prefectural capital accusing Zhuang of the crime. Zhuang countered this by widely distributing bribes, so there was nothing that Gao could do about it.
Gao hid his anger when the matter was concluded and he was unsuccessful in denouncing his enemy, but his thoughts fixed on finding an opportunity to stab Zhuang to death. Every day he carried a sharp dagger in his bosom, and lay in wait for him among the underbrush along the mountain path. A long time passed, and gradually his intention became clear to others.
Zhuang knew what he was planning, so whenever he went out he took very strict precautions; he’d heard that in Fenzhou there were many young heroes for hire, brave and excellent bowmen, so he distributed many taels to secure them as bodyguards. Gao couldn’t figure a way
to carry out his plans, so he decided he would just bide his time.
One day, while he was hiding, a rainstorm struck, drenching everything, while Gao shivered wretchedly. Subsequently, a brisk gale began blowing in every direction, and hail started falling, so Gao’s body suddenly became painfully numb. Up on the mountain ridge, in the olden days there had been a temple to the mountain god, so he forced himself to head there quickly.
As soon as he entered the temple, he recognized the Daoist priest who was staying there. The Daoist had regularly come to beg at their village, and Gao often fixed meals for him, so the Daoist also recognized him. When he saw that Gao’s clothing was completely soaked, he took out a robe and gave it to Gao, saying, “For now, you can change into this.”
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Fenzhou: Located in Fenyang county, Shandong province.
Once Gao exchanged his clothing for it, he experienced a freezing sensation and then crouched down like a dog while he was checking himself, for his hair and skin suddenly felt unfamiliar to him and he was transformed into a tiger. The Daoist had already vanished.
Startled and angry, Gao’s thoughts turned to pursuing his enemy and feeding on his flesh, feeling that this was actually a very good plan. He returned to his original hiding place at the base of the mountain, but when he saw his own corpse laying there in a brush thicket as he drew near, it finally dawned upon him that he was really dead; still, he was afraid that raptors might pick at it before his corpse could be buried, so he constantly patrolled the area to guard it.
A day went by, and when Zhuang happened to pass that way, the tiger leapt out viciously at his horse, causing Zhuang to fall down, so the tiger bit off his head and swallowed it. The bodyguards returned on horseback and shot at the beast, hitting the tiger in the belly, causing it to stumble in pain and surprise, till the tiger subsequently died.
From the midst of all this confusion, Gao seemed to regain consciousness as if he was awakening from a dream; once the night passed, he could finally begin to move a bit, though he felt listless in spirit, and returned home. His family members, worried when he didn’t return night after night, had become pessimistic, but when they saw him, they were overjoyed, and everyone greeted him. Gao, however, had to lie down, remaining so weak from his experience that he couldn’t even speak.
After a little while, people heard about what had happened to Zhuang, and rushed to Gao’s bedside to tell him of it. Gao then told himself, “The tiger was me.” Afterwards, he described to the others all of the strange things he’d experienced. From that time forward, the story was disseminated everywhere.
Zhuang’s son was so grieved by his father’s miserable death, that when he heard reports of Gao’s story, he became angry and filed a suit with the local official. The official, however, considered Gao’s tale fantastic, refused to believe it, and ultimately paid no attention to it.
The collector of these strange tales remarks, “A hero’s purpose may be fulfilled, but he certainly doesn’t always return to life—this is the eternal pattern of revenge. The bodyguards killed Gao as a tiger, yet he returned to life, because the Daoist immortal’s magic was godlike! Indeed, the world’s injustices are more than enough to make one boil with anger. Since the one who is justly resentful is most often mortal like us, what a pity it is that he can’t temporarily turn himself into a tiger!”
245. Minister Dong
Minister Dong Kewei, from Qingzhou, kept a very solemn household, so the servants—the women working inside the house and the men working outside it—never dared to communicate with each other. One day, there was a female servant and a male servant flirting at the middle gate of the house, and when Minister Dong saw this, he angrily rebuked them, so they hurried away. As night fell, Dong went to sleep in his study, accompanied by a boy servant. It happened to be midsummer and quite hot, so the door to the room had been left wide open.
Late that night, the boy heard a very sharp, tearing sound come from the bed, startling him awake. In the moonlight, he saw a male servant carrying something out the door of the study. Since he figured he must be one of Minister Dong’s servants, he didn’t find it terribly strange, and went back to sleep.
All of a sudden, the boy heard the loud sound of boots, and a powerful-looking, red-faced man with a long beard appeared, the very image of Guangong, clutching a man’s head as he entered. The boy, horror-struck, scrambled under the bed. He heard a scraping sound through the bed above him, like someone shaking out some clothes, or patting a belly, that ceased moments later. The clomping sound of boots resumed, and then diminished.
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Qingzhou: A county located in Shandong province.
Powerful-looking, red-faced man with a long beard . . . Guangong: These are the distinguishing features associated with paintings and effigies of the god of war, the deified Guan Yu (160-219 C.E.), a heroic warrior of the Three Kingdoms period. See Sondergard and Collins (50-73).
The boy gradually stuck his neck out, till he could see the light of dawn through the window frame. He took his hand and reached it up on the bed overhead, feeling something sticky and wet, and smelling the reek of blood. He cried out to Minister Dong, who then awakened. The boy servant informed Dong of what had happened, and then they looked closer with the lamp, discovering the pillow soaked with blood. Astonished, Dong didn’t know what to make of it.
Suddenly a local official’s servant knocked at his door. Minister Dong went out to see who it was, startling the servant when he appeared, but then the servant explained that some strange things had been happening. Dong asked for more details, and the servant replied, “Earlier, a man with a confused expression came to our office, loudly crying, ‘I’ve killed my master!’ Everyone there could see that his clothes were bloodstained, so he was taken to see the official and proved upon investigation to be one of your servants. He told us that he’d already killed you, and that he’d buried your head next to a Guangong temple. When we went to investigate, we found a freshly dug hole in the ground, but no sign of any head.”
The astonished Minister Dong hurried to the official’s public office, where he discovered that this servant had been the one he’d scolded for flirting with a female servant the previous day. Dong explained to the official the odd things that had happened. The official rebuked the servant severely, and then released him. Dong didn’t want to provoke enmity with anyone, so he gave the female servant to this male servant and saw to it that they were married.
Several days went by, and then the servants who lived next to the new couple heard an extremely loud sound from their quarters, like something being torn apart, so the other servants and Dong quickly got up and called out, but there was no response. When they pushed the door open and entered to take a look, they saw that the servant husband and wife, along with their bed, had been sliced in half. Their dead flesh and the wooden frame were all cut up like a sword had slashed them.
There have been many signs of Guangong’s divine intervention, but none so strange as this.
246. Zhou the Third
Zhang Taihua, from Tai’an, was a wealthy court historian. His family had been experiencing trouble with fox spirits, and attempts to drive them away had had no effect. He explained his situation to Yin, the prefecture’s senior official, but the official was also unable to do anything about it.
At the time, in the eastern portion of the prefecture, there was also a fox living in a villager’s home, and the people there could all see that it looked like a white-haired old man. The old man showed great concern for the people who lived in the village, acting like a civilized man with normal manners. He said of himself that he was the second oldest in his family, so everyone just called him “Second Uncle Hu.”
Since there were various scholars paying a visit to senior official Yin, they informed him about this other fox. The official then schemed with Zhang, and dispatched him to ask around about old Hu. At that time, there was a public servant work
ing for the government to whom Zhang paid a visit, and he verified the reports about the other fox. Then the two of them returned to the public servant’s home, where they arranged for a feast and invited Hu to come.
When Hu arrived at the residence, the public servant and Zhang exchanged courtesies with their guest, and he traded toasts with them, as though he were just an ordinary person. Once Zhang delivered his request for help, Hu replied, “Indeed, I know all about it—however, I can’t be of any service to you. But my friend, Zhou the Third, who’s living in a monastery on Mt. Tai, could probably vanquish the fox for you if you were to entreat him.” This made Zhang happy, and he expressed his thanks to Hu.
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Tai’an: The city nearest Mt. Tai in Shandong province.
Just before departing from Zhang, Hu had made an appointment with him, telling Zhang to arrange a banquet for the next day at the monastery on Mt. Tai. Zhang felt much obliged to Hu. When the time arrived, Hu personally conducted Zhou the Third in.
The curly-bearded Zhou projected an air of integrity, and was dressed in a lined robe with calf-length leggings. They drank several rounds of wine, and then Zhou turned to Zhang and said, “Second Brother Hu has described your situation, and I already know all about it. Yet foxes such as these surely have numerous minions, so if we’re unable to persuade them to leave, drawing them out by force could lead to disaster. I need to come stay in your home right away, where I can work a bit on this problem.”
Zhang considered the suggestion: If I get rid of one fox, and another takes its place, I’m just exchanging one kind of problem for another. So I can’t just agree to move.
Zhou already knew what he was thinking, and replied, “Don’t worry. I’m not like him—you and I will have a happy relationship for a long time, so please don’t doubt me.” Zhang agreed to trust him. The fox then advised him, “Tomorrow, gather all your family members together, shut the door to the room, and sit down there, making no noise.” Zhang went home, and did everything just as Zhou had instructed.