Censored by Confucius

by Mei Yüan

  The two young men had been well liked by all the townsfolk who knew them. They had been admired for their intelligence, breadth of knowledge, polite manners, and general good behavior. The locals, saddened by their deaths, decided to build a temple in their honor. Worshipers often brought apricot blossoms to place on the altar and so the temple assumed the name Double Blossom Temple.

  The townsfolk's kindness did not go unrewarded, for the prayers of the worshipers were always answered. As the reputation of the temple spread, it became more and more popular and the offerings and incense increased accordingly.

  This happy state of affairs continued for some years until one day the county magistrate, Liu, happened to pass by and inquire about the origins of Double Blossom Temple. When he found out the history of the temple he became extremely angry and declared, "This is a temple of depravity! Why should we worship two such obscene young men?!" He immediately instructed the local constable to raze the temple.

  That night Magistrate Liu dreamed that two young men came to his room. The first grabbed his beard and the second spat in his face and cursed him. "How would you know whether we were obscene or not! You never met us and you certainly were no friend of ours. You're just a civil servant from a distant office, so you certainly wouldn't have any idea of what we did between the sheets.

  "During the Three Kingdoms Period the handsome young pair Zhou Yu and Sun Ce lived together, ate together, and slept together and yet everyone today recognizes them as heroes! Are you going to say that they too are obscene?

  "In your position as magistrate you have taken bribes in every case under your control, and one year you even had Scholar Zhou executed on very flimsy grounds.

  "It is you who are truly wicked! How dare you judge us to be obscene?! We were planning on taking your life tonight but we've since found that the police are onto you and your death is imminent, so we'll let you off this time."

  One of the young men then drew a stick about three feet long from his sleeves. He twisted the magistrate's hair tightly around the stick, then proclaimed, "When your time comes you'll understand the significance of this gesture."

  Liu woke with a fright and told his family about his dream. He ordered the temple rebuilt but was too ashamed to publicize the reason for his change in policy.

  However, not long after this he was charged with accepting bribes and sentenced to death by strangulation. Only then did he understand the stick's significance.

  The Female Impersonator

  In Guiyang County there lived an extremely beautiful man by the name of Hong. He made a living teaching embroidery to young women by posing as a traveling female embroidery tutor in Hunan and Guizhou provinces.

  One year he was employed in Changsha by a scholar named Li. Now Li, who believed Hong to be a young woman, planned to seduce his new employee. But when he approached Hong, the latter confessed to being a man.

  Scholar Li laughed and said, "It's even better if you're a man! I have always thought that the tale of the female impersonators of the Northern Wei was a great tragedy.

  "The ruler of Wei visited his mother, the empress dowager, in the palace and saw two beautiful nuns in attendance. He summoned them to his rooms with the intention of having his way with them only to discover they were men. The extremely foolish ruler of Wei then ordered that they be summarily executed.

  "Why didn't he take these two on as his personal bum-boys in his own Longyang palace? If he'd done this he would have won the loyalty of these servants and avoided offending the empress dowager."

  Hong understood what was being asked and agreed. Scholar Li was very kind and cherished Hong as a lover should.

  A few years later Hong traveled to Jiangxia, where a man by the name of Du, also assuming Hong to be a woman, tried to seduce him. Hong hoped that Du would be as kind as Scholar Li, so he flirted charmingly, anticipating a generous reaction. Unfortunately, Du was not as accommodating and instead dragged Hong off to the police to have him prosecuted.

  After the arrest Hong was deported to Guiyang, where he was given a physical examination by the police inspector. The inspector found that Hong lacked an Adam's apple and as a consequence had a soft, delicate voice.

  Moreover, Hong's hair was so long that when it was untied it reached the ground. His skin was as smooth as silk and his waist measured a tiny twenty inches.

  His penis, however, was thick and firm and shaped like a large mushroom.

  Hong explained in his confession that he was orphaned as a young child and had been raised by a widowed neighbor. The widow and he had an affair that lasted many years. To avoid scandal he had grown his hair long, bound his feet, and lived as a woman. The widow died when he was seventeen, whereupon he began his life as a wandering seamstress teaching embroidery.

  Hong was now twenty-seven and had lost count of the number of women with whom he had had liaisons in his ten-odd years of living as a female.

  The inspector demanded a list of the names of the women but Hong replied, "Isn't it enough to punish me? Why punish the daughters of respected families as well?"

  This response was deemed quite unsatisfactory, so the inspector tormented Hong with the crudest of tortures in an attempt to force him to release their names.

  The provincial governor heard of the case and recommended that the imposter be exiled, but the police inspector insisted that because Hong was such a bewitching transvestite he deserved an extreme punishment. Indeed the inspector recommended execution.

  The day before the sentence was due to be carried out Hong said to his jailers, "I have enjoyed pleasures that most men only dream of, so I have no regrets as I go to my death. But, you know, this inspector won't come away clean from this case.

  "At worst my crimes are those of illicit sexual relations and of seduction by pretending to be a woman. Mine is simply a case of seduction, and there are no laws that advocate the death sentence for such a crime.

  "Moreover, my illicit affairs with these various women should not be made public. If you force me to give you their names, then many women across dozens of counties will face corporal punishment.

  "Many girls from good families will be caned and their silky smooth white skin will be beaten to a red leathery bark."

  The next day he was led to the market square to face the executioner. As he knelt on the ground he said, "Three years from now the man who passed this sentence will end up here too." Surely enough, in three years the inspector was indeed executed. The accuracy of Hong's prediction caused quite a stir among the locals.

  A similar case of female impersonation was noted in the dynastic records during the Jiajing reign of the Ming dynasty. A transvestite by the name of San Chong lived a similar life and faced an identical death. It is a mystery that San Chong didn't seek revenge on his judge, as Hong had.

  Tools of the Sex Trade

  The third son of one of the junior secretaries at the Board of Revenue, surnamed Jiang, considered himself to be quite a sensual sort of fellow and an accomplished womanizer. One day as he was strolling near the Haidai Gate he saw a beautiful woman sitting in a carriage.

  She saw him looking at her and didn't appear to take offense until he started following the carriage. She then grew angry at his impertinence, but when he persisted her anger turned to mirth and she gave him a wave.

  Jiang was thrilled to have this positive reaction so he continued following the carriage. Every now and then the woman would turn back to look at Jiang as if she too was interested in a liaison.

  Jiang was soon beside himself with anticipation and before he knew it his legs had carried him a distance of seven or eight miles.

  Eventually the carriage stopped outside a large house and the woman went inside. Jiang, feeling rather foolish, stood dithering outside for a while. He didn't dare go in, but at the same time, he didn't want to leave when he'd come so close to realizing his fantasy.

  As he paced back and forth trying to come to a decision, a young maidservant waved to him and then p
ointed in the direction of a small door along the side of the house.

  Jiang took the hint and went in through the door only to find that it was just a toilet. The maid then whispered to Jiang that he should wait for a while. Jiang stood in the toilet and endured the suffocating stench.

  Precisely at dusk the maid opened the door and led him through the house. They passed by the kitchen and various other rooms and eventually arrived at the entrance to the main hall of the residence. The doorway was decorated in luxurious style and hung with vermilion drapes, beside which stood two houseboys.

  Jiang was feeling rather pleased with himself. It was as if he had entered a kingdom of angels. He straightened his clothes and patted down his hair and went into the hall. At the southern end of the hall a large man with a thick black beard sat crosslegged on a brick bed, leaning back against a pillow. The hairs on his legs were as thick as the spines of a hedgehog.

  The man shouted angrily at Jiang, "Who are you?! Why have you come here?!"

  Jiang was so terrified that his whole body shook and quite unconsciously he dropped to his knees. Before he had time to answer he heard the rattle of jade bracelets, and there entering the room was the woman from the carriage.

  The bearded man sat her on his knee and said to Jiang, "This is Zhutuan, my beautiful and treasured concubine. Your interest in her shows that at least you have good taste. But everything has an owner. You must be an idiot to think you could taste the meat of a dragon from heaven!"

  He then began to kiss the concubine and fondle her breasts, deliberately taunting the young Jiang.

  Jiang, helplessly embarrassed, kowtowed and requested permission to leave.

  The bearded man said, "You must have been very interested to have come all this way. How can you leave without first satisfying your curiosity?"

  He then asked Jiang about his parents, and Jiang answered quite honestly.

  The bearded man replied, "What a reckless fellow you are! Your father was a colleague of mine so you are practically a nephew to me. How dare a nephew lust after his uncle's concubine?! What sort of disgusting behavior is that?!"

  He then ordered his attendants to bring out a large stick and said, "I will teach my friend's son a lesson he will never forget."

  An attendant returned with a huge pole and another pushed Jiang's head to the floor, ripped off his pants, and exposed his buttocks. Jiang wept and pleaded for mercy and eventually the concubine climbed off the bed and knelt down in front of her master.

  "Please have mercy on him," she said to the bearded man. "His buttocks are even softer and whiter than mine! I don't think I could bear to see them beaten. Why don't you just treat him as a male concubine and sodomize him? He could probably cope with that."

  "Sodomize the son of a friend of mine! I couldn't do that!" the bearded man retorted.

  So the woman made another suggestion: "Everyone who comes to worship at a temple brings an offering. He has come to us with a specific deed in mind so he must have brought a tool of trade. Let's have a look at it."

  So the bearded man ordered his two attendants to examine Jiang's penis. After delving around in Jiang's clothing for a while they reported, "It is as small as a silkworm and the foreskin has not yet retracted."

  Stroking his bearded chin, the man bellowed, "Shame on you! Trying to knock off other people's women with such a pitiful tool! Huh!"

  He then tossed a small knife onto the floor and said to the attendants, "This young fellow loves sex, so why don't you two fix up his sex tool for him!"

  One of the attendants picked up the knife, grabbed Jiang's penis, and made as if to cut the foreskin. By this stage Jiang's face was awash in tears and mucus.

  The concubine, her cheeks flushed, climbed down from the bed and spoke once more. "My lord, you've gone far enough. Any more and I would be embarrassed. Our donkey is sick and I would love to have some dumplings for dinner tonight. Although we have ample grain we still need someone to pull the grindstone. Why don't you make him replace the donkey and grind the wheat for us?"

  The bearded man asked if Jiang was prepared to perform this task and the young man, lacking an alternative, promptly assented.

  The concubine then embraced her master and the two of them lay back against the pillows while the attendants brought the grindstone and the wheat to a position just outside one of the nearby windows. Jiang was ordered to begin grinding and the attendants showered his back with lashes from their whips, just as if they were spurring on a donkey.

  Jiang pulled the grindstone all night long, and the next morning he heard the man say, "He's had enough! Give him a dumpling and let him leave through the dogs' door!"

  Jiang was bedridden for a month after this incident.

  Stealing Ginseng

  One of the larger ginseng stores in the capital is the Zhang Guang. One day a young man tethered his horse outside and wandered in to buy some ginseng.

  He placed a bag of silver on the counter and took out a hundred taels as deposit for some samples of ginseng. He explained himself thus: "My master is extremely fussy about the quality of his ginseng, and if I buy some that he's not happy with, he's sure to punish me. I loathe buying ginseng because I'm always worried about making a mistake.

  "Would it be possible for me to leave this money as a deposit on a range of samples and have one of your more experienced salesmen bring them along to my master's house so that the master can examine it personally?"

  The storekeeper thought this a reasonable proposition, so he accepted the deposit and instructed an experienced, middle-aged salesman to accompany the young man back to his master's with several pounds of ginseng. Just as the salesman was about to leave, the storekeeper advised him, "Be sure to keep an eye on this ginseng. Don't let anyone else get hold of it."

  The young man and the salesman traveled out of the city through the Donghua Gate and eventually arrived at the steps of a mansion. The master of the house, a well-groomed man in fur whose hat bore a sapphire, was upstairs and did indeed look extremely ill.

  Resting against his pillow, he addressed the salesman, "This ginseng you bear—is it of the best quality from the northeast?"

  The salesman said that it was, whereupon two houseboys standing in attendance came forward and took the ginseng to the master for his perusal. He opened the bundle, packet by packet, apparently quite an expert in judging the quality of ginseng.

  Before he had completed his inspection a horse-drawn carriage stopped outside. Someone obviously familiar with the household entered the hall downstairs, and the master, looking rather anxious, instructed his attendants to inform the new arrival that he was too sick to see visitors.

  He then lowered his voice and said to the salesman, "This man has come to ask me for a loan. I can't let him up here now. If he sees me buying ginseng, I'll never be able to refuse him."

  The shouts of the newcomer reverberated up the stairs. "Your master's just pretending to be sick! I'll bet the real reason he won't see me is that he's in bed with some luscious concubine or a young houseboy! Well, I'm going to go upstairs anyway to see for myself!"

  The two attendants tried to stop him and a noisy argument ensued.

  The master became even more anxious and said to the salesman in a worried whisper, "Quick, hide your ginseng! We must not let this rascal get even the slightest glimpse of it. There's a bamboo box at the foot of the bed. That should be a safe place for it."

  The salesman was handed a copper padlock and key with which to lock the ginseng in the box.

  "You stay here. Sit on the box and guard the ginseng. I'll go down and try to stop him."

  The master staggered off down the hall and greeted the newcomer. Their relationship seemed to be fairly amicable since there was a lot of good-humored bantering. The guest, though, persisted in his request to be allowed upstairs. The master, however, continued to refuse. This point of disagreement led to a huge argument.

  The guest said in anger, "You're worried that if I go upstairs I'll s
ee all your money! You don't want to lend me any, do you? Well, I'll not be treated so callously! I'll never bother you again! Goodbye!"

  The master pleaded for forgiveness and followed the guest out of the house to see him off. The attendants also appeared to have gone, since the house had fallen instantly silent.

  The silence continued for quite some time while the salesman sat on the box waiting patiently for someone to return.

  After a long while, the salesman's suspicions were aroused. He unlocked the box to take the ginseng back to the store but to his surprise it had disappeared. He then discovered that the box he had been sitting on had a false base. What he had assumed to be the bottom of the box was in fact the floor, whose boards opened like a trapdoor into the room below.

  The noise of the argument had obviously muffled the noise of the floorboards opening, so the salesman hadn't noticed the theft of the ginseng he had been guarding so carefully.

  Stealing a Painting

  One day a burglar sneaked into the house of a wealthy man in broad daylight, planning to steal a scroll. He had just rolled up the scroll and was about to escape when the master of the house walked in.

  Realizing he was trapped, the thief, clutching the scroll, fell to his knees and pleaded, "Kind sir, I am but a poverty-stricken man with no hope for the future. I have come to you today with a portrait of my ancestor in the hope that you will exchange it for a peck of rice."

  The master burst out in a sneering laugh and with an impatient flick of his hands sent the man on his way. He didn't even bother to look at the scroll.