Censored by Confucius

by Mei Yüan

  "Zhang says he wants sixty pieces of gold for the land but I know he'll settle for thirty-six. If you go and offer him that, I'm sure he'll sell."

  Mr. Ge then went to see the patch of land, and just as she had described, it was owned by a Mr. Zhang. Seeing that his wife had been right, he immediately drew up a contract to purchase the land.

  The ghost grew impatient for the funeral to be completed, but Mr. Ge had difficulties arranging it.

  "Although we've got the land, the funeral invitation seems rather meager without a son's name to grace it," he explained.

  "You are right, but don't worry because your new wife is now pregnant," the ghost replied. "It is not clear yet whether it is a boy or a girl, but if you give me three thousand dollars worth of ghost money, I'll buy you a son."

  She then left Li's body.

  When she gave birth, Mistress Li did indeed have a son, the young Wenlin. Three days after the birth, the ghost of Madam Zhou reentered Li's body and began making demands.

  Mistress Li's mother-in-law, Madam Chen, scolded the ghost, saying, "Mistress Li has just given birth to her son and she's very weak. And still you harass her! How can you be so heartless?"

  The reply came: "You're wrong to scold me. I bought this son for her with my ghost money and in the future he will reciprocate and make offerings to my spirit. Our bond will last forever.

  "This new mother is young and needs her sleep. She could easily squash the baby if she happened to fall asleep while feeding him. Madam Chen, you should take the baby away after she has breast-fed him. He can sleep with you in between feedings. Only then will I be free of worries."

  Madam Chen promptly agreed to this routine. Mistress Li then gave a big yawn and the ghost left her body.

  The arrival of a son meant that the funeral preparations could begin in earnest. Mr. Ge, busy arranging the coarse hempen mourning clothes for the immediate family to wear, decided the baby should have a finer hemp since it was only a month old.

  The ghost of Madam Zhou then spoke out: "All direct descendants of the deceased should wear the coarser cloth. He is my son, so he must wear the appropriate weight of cloth to his mother's funeral."

  Ge dutifully put the baby into the rough hempen cloth.

  Just before the coffin was lowered into the ground, Mistress Li was again possessed by Zhou's spirit.

  "My spirit has found peace at last. I will go now and never return!" she cried.

  As expected, the ghost of Madam Zhou never again appeared in the Ge household.

  It is said that when Madam Zhou was a young girl in her native village, she was an extremely close friend to two other girls. The three of them swore to live together and die together. The other two sisters had just died when Madam Zhou grew sick.

  During her illness she said to her husband, "My sisters have come for me! There they are, beckoning to me from the foot of the bed!"

  Mr. Ge was livid. He ran for his sword and started slashing and stabbing wildly at the ghosts.

  Madam Zhou then became angry and stamped her feet. "You could have tried a bit of gentle persuasion!" she shouted. "But no, you just rush ahead and now you've cut off their arms! I'm certain to die now!"

  Surely enough, she collapsed and died as soon as she had finished speaking. She was only twenty-three years old.

  Poor Ghosts Haunt, Rich Ghosts Don't Bother

  In the West Lake region is the Desheng nunnery. Stacked high outside the back door of the nunnery are hundreds of coffins. I stayed there for a while on my travels and when I asked a nun if they had ever been troubled by ghosts, she said, "No, it's peaceful here because all the ghosts in this area are quite wealthy."

  I was rather puzzled by this reply and asked, "There can't possibly be so many rich people in this region. How can you have such rich ghosts when there aren't so many rich people? Besides, these coffins are just stacked here, still unburied, so they can't possibly be from rich families."

  The nun replied, "When I said they were rich I didn't mean that they were rich when they were alive. They are rich ghosts because they have plenty of offerings and ghost money burned for them now that they are dead.

  "It is true that we have over a thousand coffins stored here unburied, but we nuns are vigilant about observing the correct rituals and making generous offerings all year round.

  "We have a huge ceremony on the fifteenth of July for Ghost Festival day. Thousands and thousands in ghost money are burned on that one day. We also make sure there is plenty of food and drink available, because if the ghosts are well fed they have no reason to harbor resentment against anyone.

  "You must have noticed, sir, that whenever there is crime—cheating or robbery, for instance—there is hunger. Have you also not observed that sick people often see ghosts and describe them as being well dressed and well fed? The ghosts that haunt people are the poverty stricken ones with disheveled hair, rotten, jutting teeth, and torn clothes."

  The nun's explanation seemed plausible to me, and sure enough, although I stayed there with quite a number of my servants for over a month, none of us heard any ghostly, ghoulish noises during the night.

  Revenge of the Wronged Wife

  In Hangzhou a coppersmith by the name of Xu Songnian opened a store in the wealthy suburb of Xianlin Bridge. When he was only thirty-two years old he suddenly became extremely ill. His sickness grew worse and worse and everyone fully expected him to die.

  His wife cried and cried, saying, "We have two young sons. How will I manage if you die? I'm going to pray to the gods to exchange my life for yours.

  "You would then be able to raise our sons to be good husbands and fathers themselves. The family line will thus continue without your having to remarry."

  Xu agreed to her plan and so the wife went to the city god's temple to say her prayer. Then she returned home to pray to her husband's ancestors, so that they would be aware of the exchange she hoped would occur.

  Surely enough, she grew sicker and sicker as her husband grew stronger and stronger. Within the year she had died. It wasn't long after her death that Songnian remarried, having forgotten his promise.

  On their wedding night Songnian and his new wife, Mistress Cao, found themselves unable to consummate their union—a cold body lay on the bed between them. The bride leaped up in terror and in the light of the candle they saw lying on the bed the maid of Xu's former wife. Clearly possessed, her mouth moving mechanically, she heaped a torrent of abuse upon them.

  The newlyweds slept like this for four or five months, having failed to placate the ghost with prayers and offerings. Xu Songnian died soon after this.

  A Ghost Makes an Offering of Dumplings

  Mr. Zhong of Hengtang, Hangzhou, employed a private tutor by the name of Wang Shengyu. Mr. Zhong's third son, Zhong Youtiao, was twenty years old, but he decided to trick his tutor and pretend to be only sixteen.

  He asked Scholar Wang if it was all right for him to study even though he was only sixteen, and was given the reply that age was of no consequence; it was the degree of determination that mattered.

  Youtiao thought this an astute answer and so he worked diligently at his studies from then on.

  Zhong's father was the sort of merchant who wasn't keen on having his son spend all his time studying, so he insisted that Youtiao make regular business trips to Wumen. Youtiao was very unhappy about this, but he complied with his father's wishes all the same.

  During the day he would work in the markets and in the evening he would rush home to catch up on his studies, working late into the night and often hiding in seclusion behind his bed curtains. The walls of his room were plastered with posters bearing words to the effect that "life has not been kind to me."

  After four months of this busy life he became very ill, and on returning home one night, just before the Double Ninth Festival, he collapsed and died. His bereaved family placed his coffin in the main hall.

  The next year, on the night of July seventh, Scholar Wang was awakened by the
sound of his study door opening. A figure made its way towards his bed, and when Wang raised his bed curtains he saw it was his old pupil Youtiao. Youtiao walked towards him with a candle in his left hand and a steaming bowl of food in his right.

  As he reached Wang's bed he said with a smile: "Teacher, you must be hungry, so I've prepared a small dish especially for you."

  Scholar Wang accepted the proffered bowl and saw that it held four dumplings and a copper spoon.

  He automatically began to eat, unmindful of the fact that he had been given the food by a ghost. He ate three of the dumplings and was quite full, so he handed the bowl with the remaining dumpling back to Youtiao.

  Youtiao promptly lowered the bed curtains and walked out of the room. It was only then that Scholar Wang realized the full significance of what had just taken place.

  "Youtiao has been dead for nearly a year, so how could he possibly have been here tonight?"

  When he realized it must have been Youtiao's ghost, a cold chill rose through his body. He spent the remainder of the night running back and forth to the toilet with diarrhea. By morning he was thoroughly exhausted, so he asked his employers if he could return to his family home while he recovered.

  Arriving home, he found his doorway blocked by a countless variety of ghosts. There were male and female ghosts, big and small ghosts, local ghosts and ghosts from distant lands. Some were in the shape of turtledoves, others wore the tattered clothing of the poverty-stricken. Fortunately, although they were all rather strange, none was really frightening or horrible.

  Scholar Wang's younger sister had married into the Zhai family, and when she came home to visit her sick brother a ghost said through Wang's mouth, "You are Madam Zhai of Zhengjia Bridge. Have you also come to visit me?"

  When Wang's younger brother later went to Zhengjia Bridge he heard that his sister's neighbor, the barber's wife, had just hung herself.

  A doctor was called for Wang, but when the prescription had been prepared, the ghosts crowded round, pinned Wang's arms, and blocked his mouth so that he couldn't take the medicine.

  This went on for quite a while until eventually Scholar Wang abandoned the struggle. He had no choice but to ignore his father's orders that he swallow the medicine.

  The next morning a second doctor was summoned and asked to check the previous prescription. The doctor examined the script and said to Wang's father in a startled voice, "Lucky he didn't take this medicine—it would certainly have been his last drink!"

  He wrote another prescription, and when the time came for Wang to drink the medicine he wasn't harassed by the ghosts.

  For ten days after this the house was filled with so many ghosts that they blocked the sunlight during the day and swamped the lamplight at night. They would stand around laughing and chatting. The terrified Wang family chanted sutras and said prayers in the hope that the ghost inhabiting the scholar's body would leave, but to no avail.

  One day a female ghost called out, "You should invite the old monk Hongdao here. Then we'll leave you in peace."

  The family arranged for Hongdao to visit, and as soon as he arrived on the doorstep the ghosts and the illness disappeared.

  Master Yuan Mai commented on this incident, saying one can never be certain which sutras will work with which ghost. People must deal with ghosts on an individual basis and not try to apply one hard-and-fast rule to all of them. He also said that everyone should know that some food is suitable only for ghostly consumption and that Youtiao's offering to his human teacher reflected a stupid and ignorant form of loyalty and filial piety.

  You Don't Have to Be Virtuous to Become a God

  One autumn a scholar by the name of Li Haizhong made his way to the capital to sit the national examinations. Upon reaching Suzhou, he hired a boat to travel up the River Huai.

  As he was standing at the stern, a man on the bank waved to him and asked if he could hitch a ride. Recognizing the man to be an old neighbor, a Mr. Wang, Li didn't see any reason to refuse, so he invited him on board.

  That evening as they were moored along the riverbank Wang asked Li with a little laugh, "Are you a courageous sort of person?"

  Scholar Li was a bit surprised by this question, but he calmly replied, "Yes, I consider myself a man of courage."

  Wang then explained, "I was a little worried you might be fainthearted, and I wanted to reassure myself that this wasn't the case before I told you that I am a ghost and not a man.

  "Since you are a brave sort, it's all right to tell you. We haven't seen each other for six years or so, you'll recall.

  "Last year a famine swept our region and I resorted to robbing graves to survive. I was apprehended by the police, tried in court, and sentenced to immediate execution. Even though I am now a ghost I'm still living a life of hunger, so I have decided to go to the capital to reclaim a debt. Luckily I ran into you. Would you help me get there?"

  "Who's in debt to you?" Li asked.

  "An official at the Board of Punishment by the name of Wang," came the reply. "When he was processing my execution documents I gave him five hundred pieces of gold in the hope that he could reduce my sentence. How was I to know that he would just pocket the money and leave me to die? I've decided to get my revenge by haunting him."

  Li was shocked at this revelation because the official in question was a relative of his, and so he said, "You committed a crime that is punishable by death, so the Board of Punishment passed a just sentence. However, this relative of mine should never have accepted the bribe from you.

  "Why don't you come with me to see him and we'll try to get your money back and resolve this case once and for all. But what possible use would you have for the money now that you're dead?"

  "Although I myself would have no use for it, my wife and children would be very grateful for such a sum. When it is repaid can I entrust you to take it to them for me?" the ghost replied.

  Li agreed to this request and they continued on their way.

  Several days later they arrived at the outskirts of the capital. Wang then told Li to go on to his relative's alone, saying, "This relative of yours is a miserly fellow, and I suspect that if we just go and talk it over with him, he'll refuse to hand over the money.

  "What I propose to do is haunt him and his family for a while, and when they've failed to exorcize me from their house you can come along and explain the situation to him. They might be more inclined to believe you then."

  Having explained his plan, Wang the ghost disappeared.

  Scholar Li then went into the city alone. He found some lodgings and waited three days before going to see his relative.

  When he reached the house he was told that his relative had been struck by a disease that rendered its victims quite insane. The ailing man's family had called in a fortuneteller and then a spirit medium, but neither had been able to do anything for the man.

  As soon as Li walked in the door of the sickroom, however, the ailing man yelled out, "My savior has arrived at last!"

  Li was greeted enthusiastically by Wang's family, who quizzed him about the meaning of the invalid's outburst. Li then told them the tale of bribery and explained how the debt could be paid.

  Wang's wife suggested that they repay the debt with ghost money and was quite prepared to burn millions of taels' worth.

  The sick man just laughed out loud, saying, "What sort of a deal is that? Repaying a debt of real money with fake money? No deal is that simple in the business world! Hurry up and give Mr. Li the five hundred gold pieces that you owe me. Then I'll leave you in peace."

  Seeing that there was no choice in the matter, Wang's wife handed over the money. As promised, the illness then disappeared.

  A few days passed and then Li was visited in his lodgings by the ghost, who wanted Li to begin the journey back to his widow and children immediately.

  Li refused, explaining, "I haven't sat my examinations yet."

  The ghost then said knowingly, "You're going to fail, so why bother?"
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  Li didn't believe him and carried on with his preparations. When he had completed all three sessions the ghost returned and began pestering him to leave. Li refused again. "I want to wait for the results."

  "What's the point in waiting for the results? You're going to fail anyway!" the ghost replied.

  When the results were eventually posted, Li had indeed failed.

  "Now are you ready to leave?" the ghost teased him.

  Li was depressed and also a little embarrassed, but he nevertheless made a start that very day.

  Together again, they departed on their boat journey. Li noticed that the ghost never ate anything but did enjoy smelling food. As soon as he had sniffed at it, the food turned cold.

  They stopped at a town along the river and took lodgings together. The ghost told Li there was an opera he was keen to see, so Li went with him and the two of them stood right up close to the stage.

  After a few acts the ghost suddenly disappeared. When Li turned to look for him a huge gust of wind blew up, throwing rocks and sand across the audience. It was nearly dark when Li returned alone to the boat.

  When the ghost finally appeared he was dressed in expensive clothes. He explained his transformation thus: "I won't be returning with you. I have been asked to stay here and be the god of war, Guandi."

  Li was absolutely scandalized. "How dare you pose as Guandi?"

  The ghost replied, "All the Guandis and goddesses of mercy that you see around you are ghostly imposters. The townsfolk were holding that opera to thank their particular Guandi, but that guy is nowhere near as worthy as me!