(1) The Tale of Ji Kang
Ji Kang was a renowned scholar of the third century A.D.; he was also an inveterate traveler, often on the road, visiting all the places he fancied seeing.
One time he walked in a southwesterly direction out of Loyang for more than ten li and found himself in a town called Huayangting. There, he decided to spend the night. He found lodging for one in an inn.
In those days Huayangting had a bad reputation as a dangerous place, many murders having been committed there. Ji Kang was aware of this but not concerned. In the middle of the night, he took out his lute and started strumming some tunes.
Suddenly a sound, much like a mumbling of pleasure, drifted through the room like a breeze of air.
"Who is there?" asked Ji Kang, continuing to play and not missing a chord.
"Just someone who died in this room long ago," said the voice. "When I heard you play, I had to come back. Your music is so beautiful. You'll have to excuse me. I didn't die a pretty death. I want so much to come face to face with you but wish you won't be revolted by what you see."
"It's very late and dark outside. Come on and appear," replied Ji Kang. "You might indeed not look very pretty, but, anyway, what do I care about how you look!"
The ghost instantly appeared and grabbed Ji Kang by the head.
"Your music has made me very, very happy, more than you can ever know. It makes me feel alive again."
Ji Kang did not act afraid. Instead, he and the ghost carried on a lively conversation about music for the rest of the night.
"Say, may I borrow your lute and play something?" asked the ghost at some point very early in the morning.
Ji Kang handed him the lute. The ghost began to play.
He's not very good at all, thought Ji Kang.
Suddenly, though, the ghost started playing a melody that undoubtedly no mortal had ever heard before, and he handled it exquisitely. Ji Kang was enraptured throughout the rest of this performance. He asked the ghost to teach him this tune. It took much of the early morning, but Ji Kang finally learned how to play it.
Of all I have ever learned to play, thought Ji Kang, nothing comes close to being as beautiful as this unearthly song.
The ghost knew how much Ji Kang valued this melody but told him he must never pass the song or its technique on to any other person. He also refused to tell Ji Kang his name.
When the darkness began to give way to light, the ghost said, "Although you and I can never meet again, I will never forget you. I now have to leave you, and it makes me very sad to do so."
With that, he disappeared.
Notes
from Hanwei liuchao guiguai xiaoshuo, Yeh Qingbing, ed. pp. 84-85. Originally from Liu Yiqing.
Liu Yiqing (403-444 A.D.) was more famous for another work, Shishuo xinyu (New Chats on What's Happening in the World).
Motifs: E378, "Ghost continues to remain in usual surroundings after death; E402.1.1.; "Ghost speaks"; E402.1.3; E554, "Ghost plays musical instrument."
(2) An Old Man and His Daughter
During the time of the Eastern Jin, in Guzhang County (now Northwest Anji County, Zhejiang Province) there lived an old man and his beautiful and unmarried daughter. They lived together up on Shen Mountain, and there they were utterly devoted to each other.
Now, a certain young man named Guang of nearby Yukang County approached the old man and asked for his daughter's hand in marriage. No. The old man refused.
And so, for a while, that was that.
One day the old man died, so his daughter had to go into town to purchase a coffin. On the road into town, she encountered Guang, who had not lost one whit of his passion for her.
"Look, " she said to him, "I'm all worn out to the bone with what I have to do to prepare for Father's funeral. If you would so kindly watch Father's remains until I can come back with a coffin, I promise to marry you." Guang quickly agreed. "Feel free," added the daughter, "to slaughter any of the pigs in the pen outside our house."
Well, that was also fine with Guang, so he hurried up to the young lady's house.
Guang had no sooner reached the front door of the Shen Mountain home when he heard from within the house the sounds of applause and laughter.
He took a peek inside.
The room was full of ghosts surrounding the old man's body, poking, pulling, disturbing and, worse, mocking it!
Guang found a long piece of wood that could be used as a club, rushed in the house with a loud roar like that of a madman, and scattered the ghosts. The ghosts scattered, running in all directions.
He then took his place by the corpse and began his vigil, breaking it once to go outside to slaughter a pig.
Near midnight, as Guang was feasting on some pork ribs, a long hand--the hand of an old ghost--reached out to Guang to beg for something to eat. Guang turned around and grabbed the old ghost by the shoulder. The more the ghost resisted, the tighter Guang held.
Outside, the rest of the ghosts had gathered.
"You greedy devil," they chanted, mocking Guang, "unable to part with one bite! You'll have your comeuppance, your heavenly payback! Just wait and see!"
Guang turned to the old ghost and said, "It must have been you who had killed this nice old man!
I bet you stole his life essence. Well, if you stole it, you can also return it! Give it back, or else I won't let go of you."
"I am not the one!" cried the old ghost. "My children are the ones who killed him." The old ghost then tilted his head towards the direction of his ghostly children. "Give 'im back his life!"
Then, moments later, the old man who had been lying virtually dead started to breathe and then to stir. Guang let go of the old ghost.
Then not long after, the daughter arrived back home, with porters in tow in carrying a coffin. Imagine her surprise to see her dear old father sitting up, alive and well!
And so a tragedy was turned into a joyous occasion.
And yes--the daughter still kept her promise. Guang and she were promptly wed!
Notes
from Hanwei liuchao guiguai xiaoshuo, p. 168. Originally by Liu Yiqing.
The old ghost in the story and his mob are reminiscent of the so-called "hungry ghosts," though he and the other specters are not specifically described as such. Suppose they are indeed hungry ghosts, otherwise known as "wandering ghosts" or the euphemism used by rural Taiwanese, "the good brothers." They are the ghosts for whom there is no one left to offer sacrifices; hence, they wander the earth vainly in search of food and drink. Hungry ghosts, the preta of Indian Buddhism and the Hinduism that preceded it, have been popularly depicted as having ultra thin necks, pinhole mouths and huge extended abdomens, all indicative of those who are starving, craving food but physically unable to ingest it (see Gods, Ghosts & Ancestors by David K. Jordan [Berkeley: University of California Press], pp. 34-35). Author Lin Liming writes that there are thirty-six varieties of hungry ghosts. Among them are the following: ghosts that "eat water," "drink blood," "eat the wind"; and ghosts of "the wide open spaces"; "the social world," and "filthy alleys" (Guiyu shijie [The world of the ghostly domain]; Xiamen: Xiamen Daxue Chubanshe, 1993, p. 60).
Motifs: E337.1.3.1., "Sounds of ghostly party"; E402.1.1.3.,"Ghosts cries & screams"; E499, "Meetings of the dead."
(3) A Filial Son
In the time of the Jin, there was an impoverished young man whose mother had just died. Because he had no money to pay for a proper funeral, he had the coffin taken up Mount Liang. There, he located a plot of land, dug a hole, and began to construct a tomb for his mother. In the evening, he slept by the fire in his makeshift camp.
He worked day and night on the tomb. He was still working on the tomb early in the evenng when a young mother carrying a baby stumbled into his camp. Could she and her baby spend the night next to the warmth of his fire? He of course said yes and continued to work on the tomb well into the darkness.
It was now late at night, and the filial son decided to turn in for the night, to go to sleep in his little camp by his mother's grave.
He turned to look at the woman and child sleeping by the fire; he didn't, however, see a woman and child.
No, what he saw was a fox cradling in its paws a black crow!
He crept up to them and beat them both to death. He then threw their remains down a pit.
The next day a man came by the camp and tomb.
"Excuse me," he asked. "Last night my wife and child were here. Do you know where they are?"
"There was no woman or child here last night. There were just a fox and a crow, and I killed them both."
"You killed my wife and baby! How can you now turn around and say that you killed a fox and a crow? Very well, then. Can you show me where you put the two bodies?"
"Follow me."
The filial son led the man to the pit. The son looked down, expecting to see the carcasses of two animals. The fox and crow were gone! Lying in the pit were a dead woman and a baby!
The husband of the dead woman grabbed the son, subdued him and tied him up. He then dragged the young man to the local government house and demanded the filial son pay with his life for the murder of the woman and her baby.
"Please, Your Honor," he told the magistrate, "don't believe this man! This is obviously a case of shapeshifting! Please bring out your best bloodhound! It will get to the bottom of this problem!"
The magistrate thought about what the filial son had said, snapped his fingers and had a bloodhound and a tracker brought in. The husband took one look at the bloodhound and promptly turned into a fox right on the spot. Before the fox could get away, though, the tracker shot it dead with an arrow.
The magistrate ordered the son released.
The son returned to the mountain and to the pit. Lying in the pit were the small carcass of a fox and the even smaller one of a crow.
Notes
from Hanwei liuchao guiguai xiaoshuo, pp. 169-170. Originally by Liu Yiqing.
This is a very early example of what would become a staple of East Asian supernatural lore, the shapeshifter. Here the primary beast is the fox, a creature that can combine the characteristics of cunning, dangerousness, voluptuousness, and charm. For two folktales about shapeshifters--respectively a tiger and a wolf--see the postings for 6/8/07 and 3/26/08. For still other stories, especially those about were-foxes, see the famous Ming dynasty anthology, Strange Stories From a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling, available in many English translations.
Crows and ravens have traditionally been considered ominous throughout the Western world but not necessarily in the Far East, where in ancient times the crow or raven was considered to be a sun symbol and a model of filial piety for the belief that it feeds its parents (Chevalier & Gheerbrant, p. 789; see 2/26/2008 for full citation.) However, folklore expert Professor Ren Cheng writes that while Manchus might revere the crow or raven and set out a sacrifice for it, the majority Han Chinese of Nanjing, Jiangsu region, would in former times upon hearing a raven or crow cry early in the morning recite a special seven-character formula to avert ill luck (Zhongguo minjian jinji [Chinese Folk Taboos], Taipei: Hanxin, 1996, p. 564).
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Mynah Bird (Han)
There was once a mason, plasterer and artisan named Liu Shan, and he had raised a mynah bird from the time he was just a boy. Now this was no ordinary bird, nor no ordinary mynah bird, for that matter. This mynah bird had a very lively, cheery disposition and an incredible vocabulary for a talking bird.
Every morning the mynah bird would perch on the window sill and call out to Liu Shan: "Good morning, Big Brother, good morning! The sun is up! Let's go, go, go!" Liu Shan would then rise and take the mynah bird to that day's work site.
Liu Shan and his mynah bird were an inseparable pair!
Liu Shan was hired to remodel the county magistrate's home. While up on a wall, Liu Shan discovered he had forgotten to bring a special horsehair brush. He told the mynah bird to fly back home and fetch, which the bird soon did. Then, when Liu Shan moved a bit too close to the edge of the wall, the mynah bird said, "Big Brother, take care! Big Brother, take care!"
The mynah bird was also popular with all the workers and craftsmen at the county magistrate's house, and how the bird loved the attention! The workers each took turns teaching the bird new words and songs.
All together Liu Shan, his fellow workers, and the mynah bird made up a happy, boisterous crew.
Now one day the county magistrate himself made a visit to the work site to see how his house was coming along. Liu Shan had just started the preliminary drawings for a fresco of the god of longevity upon one of the walls.
The county magistrate came over to see what Liu Shan was drawing.
"What's that supposed to be?" he asked, pointing with his nose.
"That's the god of longevity," replied Liu Shan.
Immediately the mynah bird flew down from some unseen perch.
"The god of longevity! The god of longevity!" the mynah bird chirped.
The county magistrate was delighted and stroked his long beard. "Whose bird is this?"
"It is mine," said Liu Shan.
The county magistrate stretched out his arm. "Come to me, my little friend! I shall give you something to eat." The bird landed on his arm, and off they went, the magistrate chuckling with joy, to give the mynah bird a snack.
The next day the county magistrate's attendant came up to Liu Shan. "I have been instructed by my master the county magistrate to take delivery of the mynah bird. In exchange my master is to pay you ten ounces of silver."
"Well, kindly instruct your master that my mynah bird is not for sale."
"Not for sale! Not for sale!" the mynah bird chimed in.
The attendant curled his lip, tittered a bit, and left.
That seemed to take care of that, and Liu Shan went back to work.
Then, around the time of the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, Liu Shan came down with a sickness that prevented him from working. All he could do was borrow some money from the county magistrate, his salary, promising to repay him as soon as he was able.
Then, one straight month of illness became two, and two became three. Liu Shan would never be able to repay three months' wages . . .
By this time the house had been remodeled without Liu Shan's artistic touches. Upon completion of the work, the county magistrate arrived to tour his remodeled house. He came to the wall where the fresco of the god of longevity was supposed to be. The wall was blank. Liu Shan had been unable to finish the fresco, so the wall was just painted.
The county magistrate was livid.
He had Liu Shan arrested and dragged before him.
"Why, you filthy swindler!" the county magistrate said. "How dare you take my money and not do what you were hired to do!"
"I . . . I have been ill, Your Excellency . . ."
"'Ill' indeed! Give me back my five ounces of silver! Not only that, give me that mynah bird of yours!"
"Excellency, if it takes me all my life to repay my debt to you, I shall, but I am not giving my mynah bird away!"
The county magistrate had Liu Shan beaten and tossed into a jail cell.
Now the mynah bird had been away from home when Liu Shan was arrested. It flew back to an empty home, not knowing that Liu Shan couldn't, wouldn't be coming back. Soon, the bird tired of waiting for Liu Shan to return, so it just took off, hoping to find its master. It flew and flew all over the town, over all the roofs of homes, shops, inns, taverns.
Then, while resting on a branch, it turned its head towards a hole in the brick wall of a building, the town jail, and there, it spotted Liu Shan inside, sitting with his head in his bloodied hands in a cell. Closing its wings right against its body, it forced itself through the hole and into the jail cell.
"Mynah bird, my mynah bird!" cried Liu Shan. "You don't know what I have gone through because of you! Look what the magistrate has done to me. He has broken my fingers, one by one, beaten me and left me here--all because I would not give you up to him. You have been mine since you first hatched; I have raised and taken care of you. How could I ever let someone take you from me?"
"Wu, wu . . ." was all the mynah bird could say.
From that day on, the mynah bird would visit Liu Shan daily in his cell, chatting with him and trying to cheer him up. It was almost like old times again--the two of them together. However, there was a problem: the jailer happened to peek in on Liu Shan and saw the mynah bird there with him. The jailer then notified the county magistrate, who then came to the cell.
Seeing the magistrate, the bird immediately flew to a rafter.
"County magistrate!" cried the mynah bird. "You oppress the people! You'll never get me!"
The county magistrate gnashed his teeth in anger as he helplessly watched the bird go out the hole from which it had entered and fly off up into the sky.
The county magistrate sent out an order to all his men--"Bring me that mynah bird alive!" Soldiers and yamen guards then scoured the countryside and town searching for the mynah bird.
The mynah bird seemed to have disappeared.
Then, that same night, the mynah bird flew back to the cell to see its master. It once again made squeezed its way into the hole in the wall.
"Got you!" a voice cried.
A net dropped over the cell window and hole, and hidden guards rushed into the cell to trap the mynah bird now caught inside the jail wall.
Caged, the mynah bird was brought before the county magistrate.
"I have you now, mynah bird," he said. "I plan to roast and to eat you. What do you think of that?"
"You are a cannibal, a vampire!" chirped the mynah bird. "One day a homeless dog shall eat from your skull!"
"Take this thing away!" bellowed the county magistrate. "Take it away to the kitchen and let the cook prepare it!"
In the kitchen, the cook carefully plucked each of the mynah bird's feathers and put the naked little creature upon the chopping board. When the cook was distracted by the oil beginning to boil in the frying pan, the mynah bird quickly flapped its wings to fly away. It couldn't fly, of course, so it hopped off the chopping board and onto the floor.
The cook was just in time to see the mynah bird scurry away down into the drain.
Down, down into the drain went the mynah bird until it was able to find itself a little niche so that it wouldn't be washed away by the water surely to come. There it stayed until the beginning of spring, surviving on the bits of food washed down the drain with the garbage and dirty water. By this time its feathers had grown back.
And then came the day when no one was around in the kitchen. The mynah bird emerged from its hiding place, unfurled its wings, and flew out the window, to search again for Liu Shan.
Unknown, of course, to the mynah bird, Liu Shan had escaped from his jail cell and was now hiding deep in the mountains.
Meanwhile, the mynah bird flew around and around, looking for its master. In town some kind of celebration was taking place. Men were beating drums and cymbols, and crowds of people were milling about. The mynah bird flew to the roof of a building to watch all the bustling activity.
And there, below, was the county magistrate! What was he doing? He was entering the city god's temple to offer incense and prayers. There, before the statue of the city god, he lit his incense and knelt upon the floor to kowtow.
"If all those you have harmed come forward to testify about your corruption and abuse, woe unto you!"
Who said that? In the courtyard, there was just the county magistrate and the statue of the city god. The county magistrate looked around, sweated, and continued his prayers.
"Hear me speak! Admit your crimes, and I shall go easier on you. If you try to cover up all the evil you have done, you will have been better off being born as a dog!"
The county magistrate increased his kowtowing with a feverish pitch, banging his head upon the floor with the energy you'd use to grind up dried garlic with a mortar and pestle. The pain was awful, and he cried like a baby; however, the head-banging continued. Maybe, just maybe, if he prayed earnestly enough, the god would be satisfied . . .
"Come forward to admit your crimes and receive your punishment so that your burden can be lightened!"
Faster and faster did the county magistrate hit his head upon the floor!
"Do this now. First, in front of me, pluck out every hair on your face so that you can pass among the common people without distinction . . . "
Still on his knees, the county magistrate began pulling out all his whiskers until his aching face was a smooth as a baby's bottom.
"Second, kowtow 365 times before me now to learn about humility and to remind yourself never again to abuse the people!"
The county magistrate kowtowed another 365 times with such vigor he nearly upset the altar. He stood up, reeling, his head battered and bleeding.
He slowly staggered his way out the temple. Just as he reached the exit to the courtyard, a voice called out to him.
"Hee, hee! Magistrate, it is I!"
He swung around, nearly toppling over, grabbing onto a pillar for support. There, on a rafter, sat the mynah bird.
"Last year, you had my feathers plucked; this year, I have your beard plucked. Last year, you broke my master's body; this year, I break your piggish head! So long!"
The county magistrate watched the mynah bird fly away from the rafter, out of the temple and into the sky.
It finally dawned on him that the voice he had heard earlier was not the city god's but the mynah bird's; however, there was not a thing he could do about it.
Notes
from Jia & Sun, Zhongguo minjian gushixuan, Vol. 2, pp. 160-163. (For full citation, see 7/22/07.)
This is a very famous Han (the Chinese ethnic majority) folktale which is anthologized in Pu Songling's Strange Stories From a Chinese Studio. (A number of translations exist, including John Minford's English translation published by Penguin.) This story, collected during the Cultural Revolution, bears traces of proletarian revising in the increasingly sophisticated and politically conscious utterings of the mynah bird when it dupes the venal magistrate in the temple. I suspect the politicized language was added to make the story conform to the party line of that era.
In a land where beard growth is generally sparse, the possession of a beard, itself a symbol of masculinity, power, sagacity, etc., would be something of which to be proud. Hence, the loss of the beard, especially in which one painfully plucks one's own beard, would have to be extremely galling and demeaning.
Motifs: B211, "Animal uses human speech"; B211.3, "Talking bird"; J1117, "Animal as trickster"; J1118, "Clever bird"; J2465, "Disastrous following of instructions." In addition, the story has a variation of K1971, "Man hides behind statue and pretends to be god."
Every morning the mynah bird would perch on the window sill and call out to Liu Shan: "Good morning, Big Brother, good morning! The sun is up! Let's go, go, go!" Liu Shan would then rise and take the mynah bird to that day's work site.
Liu Shan and his mynah bird were an inseparable pair!
Liu Shan was hired to remodel the county magistrate's home. While up on a wall, Liu Shan discovered he had forgotten to bring a special horsehair brush. He told the mynah bird to fly back home and fetch, which the bird soon did. Then, when Liu Shan moved a bit too close to the edge of the wall, the mynah bird said, "Big Brother, take care! Big Brother, take care!"
The mynah bird was also popular with all the workers and craftsmen at the county magistrate's house, and how the bird loved the attention! The workers each took turns teaching the bird new words and songs.
All together Liu Shan, his fellow workers, and the mynah bird made up a happy, boisterous crew.
Now one day the county magistrate himself made a visit to the work site to see how his house was coming along. Liu Shan had just started the preliminary drawings for a fresco of the god of longevity upon one of the walls.
The county magistrate came over to see what Liu Shan was drawing.
"What's that supposed to be?" he asked, pointing with his nose.
"That's the god of longevity," replied Liu Shan.
Immediately the mynah bird flew down from some unseen perch.
"The god of longevity! The god of longevity!" the mynah bird chirped.
The county magistrate was delighted and stroked his long beard. "Whose bird is this?"
"It is mine," said Liu Shan.
The county magistrate stretched out his arm. "Come to me, my little friend! I shall give you something to eat." The bird landed on his arm, and off they went, the magistrate chuckling with joy, to give the mynah bird a snack.
The next day the county magistrate's attendant came up to Liu Shan. "I have been instructed by my master the county magistrate to take delivery of the mynah bird. In exchange my master is to pay you ten ounces of silver."
"Well, kindly instruct your master that my mynah bird is not for sale."
"Not for sale! Not for sale!" the mynah bird chimed in.
The attendant curled his lip, tittered a bit, and left.
That seemed to take care of that, and Liu Shan went back to work.
Then, around the time of the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, Liu Shan came down with a sickness that prevented him from working. All he could do was borrow some money from the county magistrate, his salary, promising to repay him as soon as he was able.
Then, one straight month of illness became two, and two became three. Liu Shan would never be able to repay three months' wages . . .
By this time the house had been remodeled without Liu Shan's artistic touches. Upon completion of the work, the county magistrate arrived to tour his remodeled house. He came to the wall where the fresco of the god of longevity was supposed to be. The wall was blank. Liu Shan had been unable to finish the fresco, so the wall was just painted.
The county magistrate was livid.
He had Liu Shan arrested and dragged before him.
"Why, you filthy swindler!" the county magistrate said. "How dare you take my money and not do what you were hired to do!"
"I . . . I have been ill, Your Excellency . . ."
"'Ill' indeed! Give me back my five ounces of silver! Not only that, give me that mynah bird of yours!"
"Excellency, if it takes me all my life to repay my debt to you, I shall, but I am not giving my mynah bird away!"
The county magistrate had Liu Shan beaten and tossed into a jail cell.
Now the mynah bird had been away from home when Liu Shan was arrested. It flew back to an empty home, not knowing that Liu Shan couldn't, wouldn't be coming back. Soon, the bird tired of waiting for Liu Shan to return, so it just took off, hoping to find its master. It flew and flew all over the town, over all the roofs of homes, shops, inns, taverns.
Then, while resting on a branch, it turned its head towards a hole in the brick wall of a building, the town jail, and there, it spotted Liu Shan inside, sitting with his head in his bloodied hands in a cell. Closing its wings right against its body, it forced itself through the hole and into the jail cell.
"Mynah bird, my mynah bird!" cried Liu Shan. "You don't know what I have gone through because of you! Look what the magistrate has done to me. He has broken my fingers, one by one, beaten me and left me here--all because I would not give you up to him. You have been mine since you first hatched; I have raised and taken care of you. How could I ever let someone take you from me?"
"Wu, wu . . ." was all the mynah bird could say.
From that day on, the mynah bird would visit Liu Shan daily in his cell, chatting with him and trying to cheer him up. It was almost like old times again--the two of them together. However, there was a problem: the jailer happened to peek in on Liu Shan and saw the mynah bird there with him. The jailer then notified the county magistrate, who then came to the cell.
Seeing the magistrate, the bird immediately flew to a rafter.
"County magistrate!" cried the mynah bird. "You oppress the people! You'll never get me!"
The county magistrate gnashed his teeth in anger as he helplessly watched the bird go out the hole from which it had entered and fly off up into the sky.
The county magistrate sent out an order to all his men--"Bring me that mynah bird alive!" Soldiers and yamen guards then scoured the countryside and town searching for the mynah bird.
The mynah bird seemed to have disappeared.
Then, that same night, the mynah bird flew back to the cell to see its master. It once again made squeezed its way into the hole in the wall.
"Got you!" a voice cried.
A net dropped over the cell window and hole, and hidden guards rushed into the cell to trap the mynah bird now caught inside the jail wall.
Caged, the mynah bird was brought before the county magistrate.
"I have you now, mynah bird," he said. "I plan to roast and to eat you. What do you think of that?"
"You are a cannibal, a vampire!" chirped the mynah bird. "One day a homeless dog shall eat from your skull!"
"Take this thing away!" bellowed the county magistrate. "Take it away to the kitchen and let the cook prepare it!"
In the kitchen, the cook carefully plucked each of the mynah bird's feathers and put the naked little creature upon the chopping board. When the cook was distracted by the oil beginning to boil in the frying pan, the mynah bird quickly flapped its wings to fly away. It couldn't fly, of course, so it hopped off the chopping board and onto the floor.
The cook was just in time to see the mynah bird scurry away down into the drain.
Down, down into the drain went the mynah bird until it was able to find itself a little niche so that it wouldn't be washed away by the water surely to come. There it stayed until the beginning of spring, surviving on the bits of food washed down the drain with the garbage and dirty water. By this time its feathers had grown back.
And then came the day when no one was around in the kitchen. The mynah bird emerged from its hiding place, unfurled its wings, and flew out the window, to search again for Liu Shan.
Unknown, of course, to the mynah bird, Liu Shan had escaped from his jail cell and was now hiding deep in the mountains.
Meanwhile, the mynah bird flew around and around, looking for its master. In town some kind of celebration was taking place. Men were beating drums and cymbols, and crowds of people were milling about. The mynah bird flew to the roof of a building to watch all the bustling activity.
And there, below, was the county magistrate! What was he doing? He was entering the city god's temple to offer incense and prayers. There, before the statue of the city god, he lit his incense and knelt upon the floor to kowtow.
"If all those you have harmed come forward to testify about your corruption and abuse, woe unto you!"
Who said that? In the courtyard, there was just the county magistrate and the statue of the city god. The county magistrate looked around, sweated, and continued his prayers.
"Hear me speak! Admit your crimes, and I shall go easier on you. If you try to cover up all the evil you have done, you will have been better off being born as a dog!"
The county magistrate increased his kowtowing with a feverish pitch, banging his head upon the floor with the energy you'd use to grind up dried garlic with a mortar and pestle. The pain was awful, and he cried like a baby; however, the head-banging continued. Maybe, just maybe, if he prayed earnestly enough, the god would be satisfied . . .
"Come forward to admit your crimes and receive your punishment so that your burden can be lightened!"
Faster and faster did the county magistrate hit his head upon the floor!
"Do this now. First, in front of me, pluck out every hair on your face so that you can pass among the common people without distinction . . . "
Still on his knees, the county magistrate began pulling out all his whiskers until his aching face was a smooth as a baby's bottom.
"Second, kowtow 365 times before me now to learn about humility and to remind yourself never again to abuse the people!"
The county magistrate kowtowed another 365 times with such vigor he nearly upset the altar. He stood up, reeling, his head battered and bleeding.
He slowly staggered his way out the temple. Just as he reached the exit to the courtyard, a voice called out to him.
"Hee, hee! Magistrate, it is I!"
He swung around, nearly toppling over, grabbing onto a pillar for support. There, on a rafter, sat the mynah bird.
"Last year, you had my feathers plucked; this year, I have your beard plucked. Last year, you broke my master's body; this year, I break your piggish head! So long!"
The county magistrate watched the mynah bird fly away from the rafter, out of the temple and into the sky.
It finally dawned on him that the voice he had heard earlier was not the city god's but the mynah bird's; however, there was not a thing he could do about it.
Notes
from Jia & Sun, Zhongguo minjian gushixuan, Vol. 2, pp. 160-163. (For full citation, see 7/22/07.)
This is a very famous Han (the Chinese ethnic majority) folktale which is anthologized in Pu Songling's Strange Stories From a Chinese Studio. (A number of translations exist, including John Minford's English translation published by Penguin.) This story, collected during the Cultural Revolution, bears traces of proletarian revising in the increasingly sophisticated and politically conscious utterings of the mynah bird when it dupes the venal magistrate in the temple. I suspect the politicized language was added to make the story conform to the party line of that era.
In a land where beard growth is generally sparse, the possession of a beard, itself a symbol of masculinity, power, sagacity, etc., would be something of which to be proud. Hence, the loss of the beard, especially in which one painfully plucks one's own beard, would have to be extremely galling and demeaning.
Motifs: B211, "Animal uses human speech"; B211.3, "Talking bird"; J1117, "Animal as trickster"; J1118, "Clever bird"; J2465, "Disastrous following of instructions." In addition, the story has a variation of K1971, "Man hides behind statue and pretends to be god."
Thursday, August 13, 2009
The Fabulous Porcelain Bed -- a Legend From Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province
Long, long ago, some emperor sent an imperial edict to the famed porcelain potters of Jingde Town: "Make me a bed of your porcelain ware that will keep me cool in the summer and warm in the winter. You have one year's time upon receiving my command."
There was also an additional comment: "Failure to meet the deadline will result in death."
Minister Qin, a venal court high official, personally delivered the imperial message.
It was clearly an impossible task, but what could the good porcelain makers of Jingde Town do? They got started--that's what they did! If the project failed, would one be singled out for execution? a pair? a whole clan of potters? They didn't know, so the whole town of potters got together as one team to produce this porcelain bed demanded by the emperor back in Yanjing.
They constructed a bed of fine unburnt clay and loaded it into a big kiln. They then watched and waited . . .
When the time was up, they took the bed out. It was a total failure: the bed had failed to be baked evenly!
They started over and created a new unbaked porcelain bed. The result was the same--again, again, and again.
To make matters worse, Minister Qin and his retinue continued to stay in town, making the rounds, demanding to be treated to wine and food by each family of porcelain makers. The overtaxed townspeople put up with him, for one word of complaint, just one sneeze the wrong way, would be enough for him to send a note back to the emperor about the "rebellious peasants."
Now just outside of town was an old experienced but retired potter. It was said that if he created a porcelain bird, it would fly and chirp! That was his reputation. A delegation of people from town made the trek to his home.
"Master!" the spokesman for the group said to the old potter on his front porch. "Surely you've heard that the emperor has commanded us to create a porcelain bed for him that will keep him cool in the summer and warm in the winter. If we fail to do so within the year, we die. We've tried and tried and can't get it right! Please help us!"
For the longest time, the old man said nothing. Then he sighed and motioned for the twenty or so people to follow him into his modest house.
The group entered the house and looked on in shock: there in the house were a number of porcelain beds unable to be baked and tempered. The old master had also been trying to create a porcelain bed but to no avail.
They thanked the old man for trying to do his part. Then, spiritless, the group turned around and trudged out the house in silence.
The old potter then decided he would commit himself to finding a way to make a successfully baked porcelain bed. He went back to work, not stopping for rest or food.
"Father!"
He turned around. His only daughter, a beautiful young girl, was standing behind him.
"Please get some rest and food to eat! I am worried about you."
"No, Daughter. Papa has to work and find a way to bake the porcelain bed!"
Now one day, the daughter fell asleep while sitting by the kiln. She then had a dream. In the dream, a very old white-bearded man came up to her from behind and tapped her shoulder.
"Yes?"
"Do you want your daddy to find a way to make a porcelain bed?"
"Yes, I do!" she replied in the dream.
"Well, I know of a way! Shall I tell it to you?"
"Please tell me!"
"Very well. The next time you load the kiln with a bed of unburnt clay, you must enter the kiln as well and be fired along with the bed. Are you afraid to die?"
"No!"
"Can you then enter the flames of the kiln along with the bed?" asked the mysterious old stranger.
"Yes, I can!"
The old potter saw his daughter talk in her sleep by the kiln. When she awoke, he asked her about it.
"What were you shouting about, Daughter?"
"Father, do you have another bed ready for the kiln?"
"Yes. Why?"
"The bed can be fired today, successfully."
"Are you still talking in your sleep?"
"Father! Is there a bed ready or not?"
"Yes, yes, there is, for what good it will do! Feel the heat. There's one in the kiln right now."
The girl leaped to her feet and ran into her room. She emerged not long after, clad in a new flowery dress, her hair combed and brushed, with sweet oil applied. She approached the front of the kiln.
"Daddy!" she cried and then plunged right into the mouth and flames of the kiln.
The fire inside than surged upwards and outwards, burning bolder and redder than before.
The old man couldn't believe his eyes and sprang forward to the kiln, too late.
"My daughter . . . my daughter . . . "
When the bed was brought out to cool, it was discovered the firing had been absolutely successful. The curled dragon motif on the bed was said to be able to move its tail, while the inlaid phoenix motif could supposedly flap its wings.
Minister Qin thus took possession of the bed and had it loaded aboard a ship bound for the North. He daydreamed about the emperor ennobling him, granting him vast tracts of land. In his eagerness to return to the imperial palace, he ordered the captain to go full speed ahead, ignoring cautions.
The ship entered the waters of Poyang Lake, Jiangxi. Right in the middle of the lake, a sudden electrical storm arose, flinging its lightning bolts down to earth. One bolt hit the bed, secured on top of the ship, shattering it into hundreds of shards, piercing Minister Qin, causing him to bleed from "the seven orifices." He fell down dead amongst the remnants of the porcelain bed.
It is said that to this day the grateful pottery families of Jingde Town all have beautiful images of the master potter's daughter placed on their own kilns.
Notes
from Jia & Sun, Zhongguo minjian gushixuan, Vol. 1, pp. 114-117. (For full citation , see 7/22/07.)
This story is a variation of another that long ago appeared in English: "The Voice of the Bell" from The Sunken City and Other Tales From Round the World by James McNeill (New York: Scholastic Book Services, 1975; pp. 132-137), originally a reprint of a British book published in 1959. In this version, Kuan-yu, minister to the historical Ming Emperor Yung-lo (Yongle) (1360-1424 A.D.) is ordered to cast a huge bell the peals of which should be heard for many miles around. After two attempts at casting the bell, Emperor Yung-lo sends word he will not tolerate any more failure upon pain of death. In the end, Kuan-yu's daughter Ko-ngai, inspired by the words of a fortuneteller, jumps into the cauldron to enable the bell to be cast successfully and to save her father's head.
Mr. McNeill's version is beautifully told, as are all the other tales in his anthology. I heartily recommend his book if you can be lucky enough to find a copy.
"Jingde Town" is Jingdezhen, a world-famous location for fine porcelain china.
Porcelain pillows first appeared during the Sui dynasty (581-618 A.D.), but I haven't been able to find any citations about entire porcelain beds as either actual or legendary objects.
Foundation myths and legends suggest that a landmark (i.e., bridge, building) for some reason required a human sacrifice embedded within or otherwise melded or contained within the landmark in order for it, the landmark, to exist or to be sustained. In McNeill's version as well as this one, a beautiful girl (i.e., a virgin) willingly immolates herself to allow, respectively, a bell to peal more sweetly or a porcelain bed to contain the needed essence of goodness and chastity that would befit such a marvelous creation from which much is to be expected.
The Chinese title refers to the "longfeng porcelain bed," longfeng, "dragon and phoenix," being a metaphor for "conjugal."
For another story in which a girl sacrifices herself so that others may live, see the Hezhen story "The Stone Girl," 2/13/08.
The grisly bleeding "from the seven orifices" is heavenly retribution, according to Chinese folklore, supposedly reserved for those --typically, high officials--who had committed evil in their lifetimes and may have covered it up.
Motifs: D1810.8.2, "Information received through dream"; S261, "Foundation sacrifice"; W28, "Self-sacrifice."
There was also an additional comment: "Failure to meet the deadline will result in death."
Minister Qin, a venal court high official, personally delivered the imperial message.
It was clearly an impossible task, but what could the good porcelain makers of Jingde Town do? They got started--that's what they did! If the project failed, would one be singled out for execution? a pair? a whole clan of potters? They didn't know, so the whole town of potters got together as one team to produce this porcelain bed demanded by the emperor back in Yanjing.
They constructed a bed of fine unburnt clay and loaded it into a big kiln. They then watched and waited . . .
When the time was up, they took the bed out. It was a total failure: the bed had failed to be baked evenly!
They started over and created a new unbaked porcelain bed. The result was the same--again, again, and again.
To make matters worse, Minister Qin and his retinue continued to stay in town, making the rounds, demanding to be treated to wine and food by each family of porcelain makers. The overtaxed townspeople put up with him, for one word of complaint, just one sneeze the wrong way, would be enough for him to send a note back to the emperor about the "rebellious peasants."
Now just outside of town was an old experienced but retired potter. It was said that if he created a porcelain bird, it would fly and chirp! That was his reputation. A delegation of people from town made the trek to his home.
"Master!" the spokesman for the group said to the old potter on his front porch. "Surely you've heard that the emperor has commanded us to create a porcelain bed for him that will keep him cool in the summer and warm in the winter. If we fail to do so within the year, we die. We've tried and tried and can't get it right! Please help us!"
For the longest time, the old man said nothing. Then he sighed and motioned for the twenty or so people to follow him into his modest house.
The group entered the house and looked on in shock: there in the house were a number of porcelain beds unable to be baked and tempered. The old master had also been trying to create a porcelain bed but to no avail.
They thanked the old man for trying to do his part. Then, spiritless, the group turned around and trudged out the house in silence.
The old potter then decided he would commit himself to finding a way to make a successfully baked porcelain bed. He went back to work, not stopping for rest or food.
"Father!"
He turned around. His only daughter, a beautiful young girl, was standing behind him.
"Please get some rest and food to eat! I am worried about you."
"No, Daughter. Papa has to work and find a way to bake the porcelain bed!"
Now one day, the daughter fell asleep while sitting by the kiln. She then had a dream. In the dream, a very old white-bearded man came up to her from behind and tapped her shoulder.
"Yes?"
"Do you want your daddy to find a way to make a porcelain bed?"
"Yes, I do!" she replied in the dream.
"Well, I know of a way! Shall I tell it to you?"
"Please tell me!"
"Very well. The next time you load the kiln with a bed of unburnt clay, you must enter the kiln as well and be fired along with the bed. Are you afraid to die?"
"No!"
"Can you then enter the flames of the kiln along with the bed?" asked the mysterious old stranger.
"Yes, I can!"
The old potter saw his daughter talk in her sleep by the kiln. When she awoke, he asked her about it.
"What were you shouting about, Daughter?"
"Father, do you have another bed ready for the kiln?"
"Yes. Why?"
"The bed can be fired today, successfully."
"Are you still talking in your sleep?"
"Father! Is there a bed ready or not?"
"Yes, yes, there is, for what good it will do! Feel the heat. There's one in the kiln right now."
The girl leaped to her feet and ran into her room. She emerged not long after, clad in a new flowery dress, her hair combed and brushed, with sweet oil applied. She approached the front of the kiln.
"Daddy!" she cried and then plunged right into the mouth and flames of the kiln.
The fire inside than surged upwards and outwards, burning bolder and redder than before.
The old man couldn't believe his eyes and sprang forward to the kiln, too late.
"My daughter . . . my daughter . . . "
When the bed was brought out to cool, it was discovered the firing had been absolutely successful. The curled dragon motif on the bed was said to be able to move its tail, while the inlaid phoenix motif could supposedly flap its wings.
Minister Qin thus took possession of the bed and had it loaded aboard a ship bound for the North. He daydreamed about the emperor ennobling him, granting him vast tracts of land. In his eagerness to return to the imperial palace, he ordered the captain to go full speed ahead, ignoring cautions.
The ship entered the waters of Poyang Lake, Jiangxi. Right in the middle of the lake, a sudden electrical storm arose, flinging its lightning bolts down to earth. One bolt hit the bed, secured on top of the ship, shattering it into hundreds of shards, piercing Minister Qin, causing him to bleed from "the seven orifices." He fell down dead amongst the remnants of the porcelain bed.
It is said that to this day the grateful pottery families of Jingde Town all have beautiful images of the master potter's daughter placed on their own kilns.
Notes
from Jia & Sun, Zhongguo minjian gushixuan, Vol. 1, pp. 114-117. (For full citation , see 7/22/07.)
This story is a variation of another that long ago appeared in English: "The Voice of the Bell" from The Sunken City and Other Tales From Round the World by James McNeill (New York: Scholastic Book Services, 1975; pp. 132-137), originally a reprint of a British book published in 1959. In this version, Kuan-yu, minister to the historical Ming Emperor Yung-lo (Yongle) (1360-1424 A.D.) is ordered to cast a huge bell the peals of which should be heard for many miles around. After two attempts at casting the bell, Emperor Yung-lo sends word he will not tolerate any more failure upon pain of death. In the end, Kuan-yu's daughter Ko-ngai, inspired by the words of a fortuneteller, jumps into the cauldron to enable the bell to be cast successfully and to save her father's head.
Mr. McNeill's version is beautifully told, as are all the other tales in his anthology. I heartily recommend his book if you can be lucky enough to find a copy.
"Jingde Town" is Jingdezhen, a world-famous location for fine porcelain china.
Porcelain pillows first appeared during the Sui dynasty (581-618 A.D.), but I haven't been able to find any citations about entire porcelain beds as either actual or legendary objects.
Foundation myths and legends suggest that a landmark (i.e., bridge, building) for some reason required a human sacrifice embedded within or otherwise melded or contained within the landmark in order for it, the landmark, to exist or to be sustained. In McNeill's version as well as this one, a beautiful girl (i.e., a virgin) willingly immolates herself to allow, respectively, a bell to peal more sweetly or a porcelain bed to contain the needed essence of goodness and chastity that would befit such a marvelous creation from which much is to be expected.
The Chinese title refers to the "longfeng porcelain bed," longfeng, "dragon and phoenix," being a metaphor for "conjugal."
For another story in which a girl sacrifices herself so that others may live, see the Hezhen story "The Stone Girl," 2/13/08.
The grisly bleeding "from the seven orifices" is heavenly retribution, according to Chinese folklore, supposedly reserved for those --typically, high officials--who had committed evil in their lifetimes and may have covered it up.
Motifs: D1810.8.2, "Information received through dream"; S261, "Foundation sacrifice"; W28, "Self-sacrifice."
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Ghost Stories From Ancient China -- Series Three
(1) Father Comes Home
In Wuxing (Wuxing Town, Xinye County, Henan Province or Wuxing County, Zhejiang Province), there lived a farmer, his wife and their two sons.
Now one day this farmer went up to his two sons who were plowing in the fields and started berating them. Not only that but he proceeded to beat them mercilessly. The sons, hurt and bewildered, left the field and went straight home. There, they told their mother what had happened.
Later, when the father had returned home, the mother asked him about it.
Simply put, he was devastated; he would never treat his two sons that way. No, he insisted, he had not been the one scolding and beating his two sons in the field. It must have been some devilish ghost playing a prank in the manner they were known to do so, by impersonation.
He took his two sons aside.
"Listen," he said, "if someone who is my spitting image should ever again come up to you while you two are at work and try to harm you, take an ax and kill him. It will be a ghost overstepping his bounds, and you will teach him a lesson."
That seemed to take care of that.
Some time later, though, the farmer had time to think over his words. The more he thought about what he had advised his sons, the more alarmed he became.
Why, he thought, my sons might mistake me for a ghost anytime I go out to help them with the plowing! No, I'd better caution them about acting too rashly.
He then went out to where they were plowing. Before he had gotten too close to them, his sons, assuming the ghost had once again impersonated their father, immediately cut him down with an ax. They then buried the body under the tall grasses.
Now the real ghost had witnessed all this. He just simply transformed himself into the likeness of the farmer and returned home at the end of the work day.
"Congratulate our sons when they return home," he told the unsuspecting wife. "They took care of that annoying ghost once and for all!"
The sons soon came home and, like their mother, never suspected the older man in the house was not the farmer whose body lay decaying under the soil but rather the cunning ghost impersonating him. As if all this weren't bad enough, the ghost stayed with the family for many years without raising anyone's suspicions.
One day years later, a traveling Taoist priest happened to pass by the ghost masquerading as the farmer. The priest went directly to the farmer's wife.
"Madam, I need to tell you something," said the priest. "Your husband has an evil qi about him."
The two sons overheard this conversation and instantly ran out to tell the "farmer," who was absolutely enraged. He returned to the farmhouse as the priest had just stepped outside.
"That liar!" he screamed to the wife. "That priest is spreading filthy lies!"
The priest heard this and stormed inside the house.
The "farmer" immediately changed back into his original form, that of an old fox. The fox then scurried under the bed. Everyone in the house cornered the fox in its hiding place and succeeded in pulling it out and killing it.
The two sons then made sure their real father was exhumed and buried properly.
That's not the end of the story, however. Not long after, one of the sons took his own life, while the other son sank into deep despondency, became ill and eventually died.
Notes
from Guiguai xiaopin, pp. 51-52.
Originally from Bowu zhi (The Annals of Strange Things) by Zhang Hua (232-300 A.D.) of the Jin dynasty (265-420 A.D.)
Motifs: A13370.2, "Disease caused by ghost"; D42.2, "Spirit takes man's shape."
(2) The Wedding Must Go On
Zhang Yacheng, a licensed scholar of Xinjian County, Fujian Province, had a peculiar hobby when he was younger: he enjoyed making miniature suits of armor, hair clasps and the what-not out of gold foil paper and using them as playthings, keeping them in his room, never letting anyone see them. Apparently he possessed some skill, though no one else was supposed to know about it.
Imagine his surprise when one day a thirty-something year old woman knocked on his door.
"Yes?" he asked. "How may I help you?"
"I want to commission you to make some gold foil ornaments for me."
"Oh? What kind of ornaments?"
"Hairpins, bracelets, pearl ornaments for the hair . . . "
"I see," said Zhang. "May I ask what for?"
"Wedding ornaments . . . for my daughter to wear."
Zhang thought the woman had to be joking, but she appeared very earnest and assured Zhang he would be paid for his work. He accepted the job and said no more about it as she left.
The young woman returned the next day.
"My surname is Tang," she said, "perhaps related to the family of the mandarin surnamed Tang who lives in the nearby village. I need to ask a favor of you."
"Surely."
"On this strip of paper, please have someone write in a nice calligraphic hand the name of that official, my kinsman, so I can place it on one of the wedding lanterns, as is the custom."
Again Zhang thought the woman was joking with him. Why would she need him to do this? Why not approach her distant relative, the local official, herself and have him or someone else do this? But he played along.
"Allow me, please, Miss Tang. I shall write the name for you."
Supressing his mirth, he went ahead and wrote the name of the official on the strip of paper. The woman, satisfied, then left.
Several days passed. The designated day for the woman to pick up her daughter's wedding accouterments had arrived. Zhang handed them over to her; she in turn paid Zhang very handsomely with hundreds of certificates redeemable in silver and many lucky wedding biscuits. They thanked each other and the woman left.
That was that, or so Zhang had thought.
Early the next morning, after arising Zhang went to look at the payment he had received from the woman. What had been many fancy gourmet biscuits were actually individual little clods of dirt. What had been silver certificates were actually partially silver-foil embossed "hell bank notes," the money reserved and then burned for the dead.
Now Zhang Yacheng realized the truth; the woman had been a ghost.
Several days after that, everyone in town was woken from his or her dreams at an unholy time early in the morning by musicians blaring trumpets and beating drums. The racket went on and on, and it all seemed to emanate from one place: the top of the hill where there no houses but only a cemetery with its forlorn graves.
A lonely hilltop cemetery with loud music in the wee hours of the morning . . . nobody in his right mind would be up there . . . nobody but ghosts . . .
Some local foolhardy teenage boys decided to creep up the hill to look at the ghost musicians performing for what--a ghostly funeral? They did so and saw that the spectral musicians were wearing the red sashes worn by those attending a wedding, and on the dragon lantern illuminating the show was the strip of paper written in the nice cursive writing of Zhang Yacheng, displaying the name of an official, a local mandarin, a man surnamed Tang . . .
Notes
from Guiguai xiaopin, pp. 75-77; Yuan Mei, Gao shenme gui. (What the devil are you doing?). Wang Huan, ed. Taipei: Guanshe chubanshe, 2004; pp. 58-60.
This not terribly ancient story is from Qing dynasty (1644-1911) writer Yuan Mei (1716-1797), a collector and compiler of ghost lore. We first get the impression that Zhang Yacheng is inviting trouble with his habit of playing with foil paper, a medium used in preparation for "Bank of Hell" ghost bills burned as offerings to the dead. His misuse of such an item ensures a visit from a ghost.
Yuan Mei himself, commenting on this story, suggests it shows that the world of the dead is not far removed from that of the living in that the desire "to keep up with the Joneses," to maintain a front or to keep face, is an undying human need for both the living and the dead. Here, the ghost mother, originally from a less wealthy background, desperately wishes to have the aura of respectability and affluence attached to her daughter's name through the imprimatur of a living or (more probably) now dead mandarin.
Apparently Zhang Yacheng comes out none the worse after his repeated encounters with a dead woman. Yuan Mei notes that later in life Zhang Yacheng entered the ranks of the licentiates after passing his literary examinations and went on to become a renowned local scholar.
Motifs: D476.2.1, "Food changed to dirt"; E334.2, "Ghost haunts burial spot"; E402.4, "Sound of ethereal music"; E554, "Ghosts play musical instruments."
(3) The Disciple of Shixu
In Wuxing (now, Wuxing County, Zhejiang Province) there lived a very influential man named Shixu who had a student whose name is lost to us.
This student was a very stubborn fellow, always blathering about his opinions and never diverging from them. One of his favorite topics with which to argue was ghosts. "There are no ghosts!" he would say.
One day, probably by the road, this student encountered a traveler wearing a white upper garment. They exchanged greetings, and the traveler stopped to chat. Before long, the student of Shixu brought up his favorite topic--the non-existence of ghosts--and a debate soon commenced. They argued and argued, well after the sun had already set behind the trees.
In this debate, the student got the better of the visitor.
During a lull in the argument, the visitor turned to the student and said, "You're a real tongue wagger, aren't you? I suppose you think you know just about everything. You've got me where I can't reply to your position. Very well.
"In any case, allow me to tell you something. I happen to be a ghost myself. What do you have to say about that?"
The student chuckled and dismissively asked, "So you're a ghost. Very good. Answer me this: what do ghosts want out of us?"
"What do ghosts want? It's very simple. We collect lives, lives from those about to die. In fact I'm here to collect your life. Tomorrow noon your time shall be up."
Now the student was scared, where before he had been smug, cocky.
"Please spare me! Don't let me die!" he pleaded.
"Hmm . . .," said the ghost. "Is there anyone around here who resembles you?"
"Yes! Yes! At Shixu's estate there's a military officer who looks a great deal like me!"
"All right. Tomorrow we shall go there together, and I'll have a look . . . "
The next day the student led the now invisible ghost to Shixu's estate. There, the student announced his intention to visit this military officer he was supposed to resemble. The student was admitted inside with, of course, the invisible ghost following him all the way. The student sat down on a chair across from his friend, the officer, and the two began to chat.
While they were chatting, the ghost took out a metallic needle and, stepping behind the officer, jabbed the needle right into the man's skull.
Immediately the officer cried out, "I have a headache!"
The headache grew worse, and by noontime, the poor man had already died.
Notes
from Hanwei liuchao guiguai xiaoshuo, p. 46; originally from Soushenji by Gan Bao.
Motifs: *D1855.2, "Death postponed if substitute can be found"; E247, "Ghost kills man"; E421, "Invisible ghost"; P316, "Man killed in friend's place."
(4) An Unnamed Husband and Wife
Long ago there once were a couple whose names have been lost through the years.
Early one morning the wife got out of bed earlier than her husband and went outside to wash her face. Unknown to her, her husband got up shortly afterward to bathe.
Neither one encountered the other outside.
The wife returned inside and peeked in the bedroom. Sure enough, she saw what looked like her husband still sleeping. Not wishing to disturb him, she quietly got ready to leave to do some chores.
As she was ready to go out the door, however, the servant boy came inside the house and took a mirror.
"What are you doing with the mirror?" the woman of the house asked.
"The master said I could use it," replied the boy.
"Now how could that be? He's inside the bedroom sleeping. How could he give you permission to borrow the mirror while he is asleep?"
The boy looked befuddled.
"I was outside just now and asked him! He's still out there. Let me go get him!"
Before she could say anything, the servant boy shot outside and immediately came back in with the husband, who looked very concerned.
Together the husband and wife entered the bedroom.
There, on the bed, was the split image of the husband, still sleeping away. In complete disbelief, the husband approached his twin lying motionless upon the bed. The husband bent down to touch his counterpart; as he did so, his hands, arms and the rest of him gradually merged with those of his lookalike until both were once again one person.
Needless to say, both the wife and husband were totally shaken and left speechless by this event.
Shortly after, the husband suddenly came down with an illness from which he was never to recover.
Notes
from Hanwei liuchao guiguai xiaoshuo, p. 48; originally from Soushenji by Gan Bao.
By now we can see it is just about axiomatic that to encounter a ghost or, here, a doppelganger, is usually a fatal occurrence. The doppelganger phenomenon is also highly unlucky, frequently fatal, in German folklore as well. A similar story of bilocation, but one with a much happier outcome--"Chunmei's Journey"--can be found at the posting for 7/15/07.
Motifs: A13370.2, "Disease caused by ghost"; E723, "Wraiths separate from body."
(5) Chen Jia
Chen Jia had lived in Beixiangting, Wu Prefecture, Haiyan County, Jiangsu Province, and then, sometime during the reign of the Jinyuan emperor (276-323 A.D.), he moved to nearby Huating.
Just outside Huating, by the eastern marshes, he spotted a huge snake while hunting. It was enormous, being six, seven or even eight zhang long, lying just below a ridge. It looked like a long boat turned on its side, and it was black, yellow and other colors.
He shot an arrow at the creature, killing it, but then turned and left the area in a great hurry.
Back at home, he thought about his encounter with the huge serpent and was overcome with an inexplicable uneasiness over the matter. He decided not to tell anyone about what he had seen or done.
Three years passed . . .
Chen Jia, along with a local Huating man, was again out hunting in the marshes near the same area where he had killed the huge snake three years before.
Remembering the event that had so shaken him up several years before and without really thinking, he turned to the Huating man and said, "You know it was right over here that I had once killed a gigantic serpent a good number of zhang long!"
His companion was astounded that such a thing had happened; he had known Chen Jia for some time and had never heard him say a word about the serpent.
That night, Chen Jia had a dream. In that dream, a man in black with a black scarf wrapped around his head approached him.
"I was once resting on the path along the ridge," said the man in black, "minding my own business and not harming a soul, when you came along and killed me. Why? What had I ever done to you?
"I had just been sleeping off after being drunk. I never saw the face of the man who had killed me. I pledged to myself to wait for this enemy of mine who had done this to me. Now, three years later, you returned to the spot to brag openly of your deed! Today, you brought all this upon yourself . . . "
Chen Jia woke up, trembling and soaked with sweat, his heart madly palpitating, his intestines in knots. Before the day was over, he was dead.
Notes
from Hanwei liuchao guiguai xiaoshuo, p. 56; originally from Soushenji by Gan Bao.
Snakes are generally looked upon with suspicion and dread but also acknowledged to be wise, due to their proximity to the ground and knowledge of what lies beneath the earth. Snake or serpent spirits supposedly can foretell the future and may take human form, as so many Chinese folktales and legends attest. The most famous is, of course, the legend and opera, Madame White Snake.
One zhang is 3 1/3 meters.
Motifs: B731.10, "Multicolored serpent"; D391, "Serpent transformed to person"; E265.3, "Death caused by ghost"; E526, "Ghost of snake."
In Wuxing (Wuxing Town, Xinye County, Henan Province or Wuxing County, Zhejiang Province), there lived a farmer, his wife and their two sons.
Now one day this farmer went up to his two sons who were plowing in the fields and started berating them. Not only that but he proceeded to beat them mercilessly. The sons, hurt and bewildered, left the field and went straight home. There, they told their mother what had happened.
Later, when the father had returned home, the mother asked him about it.
Simply put, he was devastated; he would never treat his two sons that way. No, he insisted, he had not been the one scolding and beating his two sons in the field. It must have been some devilish ghost playing a prank in the manner they were known to do so, by impersonation.
He took his two sons aside.
"Listen," he said, "if someone who is my spitting image should ever again come up to you while you two are at work and try to harm you, take an ax and kill him. It will be a ghost overstepping his bounds, and you will teach him a lesson."
That seemed to take care of that.
Some time later, though, the farmer had time to think over his words. The more he thought about what he had advised his sons, the more alarmed he became.
Why, he thought, my sons might mistake me for a ghost anytime I go out to help them with the plowing! No, I'd better caution them about acting too rashly.
He then went out to where they were plowing. Before he had gotten too close to them, his sons, assuming the ghost had once again impersonated their father, immediately cut him down with an ax. They then buried the body under the tall grasses.
Now the real ghost had witnessed all this. He just simply transformed himself into the likeness of the farmer and returned home at the end of the work day.
"Congratulate our sons when they return home," he told the unsuspecting wife. "They took care of that annoying ghost once and for all!"
The sons soon came home and, like their mother, never suspected the older man in the house was not the farmer whose body lay decaying under the soil but rather the cunning ghost impersonating him. As if all this weren't bad enough, the ghost stayed with the family for many years without raising anyone's suspicions.
One day years later, a traveling Taoist priest happened to pass by the ghost masquerading as the farmer. The priest went directly to the farmer's wife.
"Madam, I need to tell you something," said the priest. "Your husband has an evil qi about him."
The two sons overheard this conversation and instantly ran out to tell the "farmer," who was absolutely enraged. He returned to the farmhouse as the priest had just stepped outside.
"That liar!" he screamed to the wife. "That priest is spreading filthy lies!"
The priest heard this and stormed inside the house.
The "farmer" immediately changed back into his original form, that of an old fox. The fox then scurried under the bed. Everyone in the house cornered the fox in its hiding place and succeeded in pulling it out and killing it.
The two sons then made sure their real father was exhumed and buried properly.
That's not the end of the story, however. Not long after, one of the sons took his own life, while the other son sank into deep despondency, became ill and eventually died.
Notes
from Guiguai xiaopin, pp. 51-52.
Originally from Bowu zhi (The Annals of Strange Things) by Zhang Hua (232-300 A.D.) of the Jin dynasty (265-420 A.D.)
This story is reminiscent of "Qin Jubo" (see "The Tale of Uncle Ju," in "Ghost Stories From Ancient China--Series One," 3/26/09), and like other ghost stories, it shows the inevitably fatal consequences of interacting with ghosts. Here, however, as with the Qin Jubo story, the term "ghost" must be used flexibly. The "ghost" in this story is not yet in the codified form recognizable to most people around the world--the misty and/or partially transparent image or form of a recently or long ago deceased person. It can also be "killed," an ultimate fate that escapes the already dead ghosts. Here, the "ghost" is the malevolent shapeshifting fox goblin known throughout Chinese, Japanese and Korean folklore. There is no intimation of this "ghost's" connection to a dead human. However, one thing remains true: this entity is a thoroughly evil and implacable foe of the living, qualities traditionally ascribed to many, if not most, East Asian ghosts.
The compilers of Guiguai xiaopin write that ghosts (presumably those that are shapeshifters or
revenants) are "bored" and thus mercilessly torment and kill for fun (53). To this we can add that ghosts, as the dead, are the polar opposite of the living and, therefore, if they manifest themselves after death, are very much unresigned to their status and harbor ill will to the living.
Motifs: A13370.2, "Disease caused by ghost"; D42.2, "Spirit takes man's shape."
(2) The Wedding Must Go On
Zhang Yacheng, a licensed scholar of Xinjian County, Fujian Province, had a peculiar hobby when he was younger: he enjoyed making miniature suits of armor, hair clasps and the what-not out of gold foil paper and using them as playthings, keeping them in his room, never letting anyone see them. Apparently he possessed some skill, though no one else was supposed to know about it.
Imagine his surprise when one day a thirty-something year old woman knocked on his door.
"Yes?" he asked. "How may I help you?"
"I want to commission you to make some gold foil ornaments for me."
"Oh? What kind of ornaments?"
"Hairpins, bracelets, pearl ornaments for the hair . . . "
"I see," said Zhang. "May I ask what for?"
"Wedding ornaments . . . for my daughter to wear."
Zhang thought the woman had to be joking, but she appeared very earnest and assured Zhang he would be paid for his work. He accepted the job and said no more about it as she left.
The young woman returned the next day.
"My surname is Tang," she said, "perhaps related to the family of the mandarin surnamed Tang who lives in the nearby village. I need to ask a favor of you."
"Surely."
"On this strip of paper, please have someone write in a nice calligraphic hand the name of that official, my kinsman, so I can place it on one of the wedding lanterns, as is the custom."
Again Zhang thought the woman was joking with him. Why would she need him to do this? Why not approach her distant relative, the local official, herself and have him or someone else do this? But he played along.
"Allow me, please, Miss Tang. I shall write the name for you."
Supressing his mirth, he went ahead and wrote the name of the official on the strip of paper. The woman, satisfied, then left.
Several days passed. The designated day for the woman to pick up her daughter's wedding accouterments had arrived. Zhang handed them over to her; she in turn paid Zhang very handsomely with hundreds of certificates redeemable in silver and many lucky wedding biscuits. They thanked each other and the woman left.
That was that, or so Zhang had thought.
Early the next morning, after arising Zhang went to look at the payment he had received from the woman. What had been many fancy gourmet biscuits were actually individual little clods of dirt. What had been silver certificates were actually partially silver-foil embossed "hell bank notes," the money reserved and then burned for the dead.
Now Zhang Yacheng realized the truth; the woman had been a ghost.
Several days after that, everyone in town was woken from his or her dreams at an unholy time early in the morning by musicians blaring trumpets and beating drums. The racket went on and on, and it all seemed to emanate from one place: the top of the hill where there no houses but only a cemetery with its forlorn graves.
A lonely hilltop cemetery with loud music in the wee hours of the morning . . . nobody in his right mind would be up there . . . nobody but ghosts . . .
Some local foolhardy teenage boys decided to creep up the hill to look at the ghost musicians performing for what--a ghostly funeral? They did so and saw that the spectral musicians were wearing the red sashes worn by those attending a wedding, and on the dragon lantern illuminating the show was the strip of paper written in the nice cursive writing of Zhang Yacheng, displaying the name of an official, a local mandarin, a man surnamed Tang . . .
Notes
from Guiguai xiaopin, pp. 75-77; Yuan Mei, Gao shenme gui. (What the devil are you doing?). Wang Huan, ed. Taipei: Guanshe chubanshe, 2004; pp. 58-60.
Yuan Mei himself, commenting on this story, suggests it shows that the world of the dead is not far removed from that of the living in that the desire "to keep up with the Joneses," to maintain a front or to keep face, is an undying human need for both the living and the dead. Here, the ghost mother, originally from a less wealthy background, desperately wishes to have the aura of respectability and affluence attached to her daughter's name through the imprimatur of a living or (more probably) now dead mandarin.
Apparently Zhang Yacheng comes out none the worse after his repeated encounters with a dead woman. Yuan Mei notes that later in life Zhang Yacheng entered the ranks of the licentiates after passing his literary examinations and went on to become a renowned local scholar.
Motifs: D476.2.1, "Food changed to dirt"; E334.2, "Ghost haunts burial spot"; E402.4, "Sound of ethereal music"; E554, "Ghosts play musical instruments."
In Wuxing (now, Wuxing County, Zhejiang Province) there lived a very influential man named Shixu who had a student whose name is lost to us.
This student was a very stubborn fellow, always blathering about his opinions and never diverging from them. One of his favorite topics with which to argue was ghosts. "There are no ghosts!" he would say.
One day, probably by the road, this student encountered a traveler wearing a white upper garment. They exchanged greetings, and the traveler stopped to chat. Before long, the student of Shixu brought up his favorite topic--the non-existence of ghosts--and a debate soon commenced. They argued and argued, well after the sun had already set behind the trees.
In this debate, the student got the better of the visitor.
During a lull in the argument, the visitor turned to the student and said, "You're a real tongue wagger, aren't you? I suppose you think you know just about everything. You've got me where I can't reply to your position. Very well.
"In any case, allow me to tell you something. I happen to be a ghost myself. What do you have to say about that?"
The student chuckled and dismissively asked, "So you're a ghost. Very good. Answer me this: what do ghosts want out of us?"
"What do ghosts want? It's very simple. We collect lives, lives from those about to die. In fact I'm here to collect your life. Tomorrow noon your time shall be up."
Now the student was scared, where before he had been smug, cocky.
"Please spare me! Don't let me die!" he pleaded.
"Hmm . . .," said the ghost. "Is there anyone around here who resembles you?"
"Yes! Yes! At Shixu's estate there's a military officer who looks a great deal like me!"
"All right. Tomorrow we shall go there together, and I'll have a look . . . "
The next day the student led the now invisible ghost to Shixu's estate. There, the student announced his intention to visit this military officer he was supposed to resemble. The student was admitted inside with, of course, the invisible ghost following him all the way. The student sat down on a chair across from his friend, the officer, and the two began to chat.
While they were chatting, the ghost took out a metallic needle and, stepping behind the officer, jabbed the needle right into the man's skull.
Immediately the officer cried out, "I have a headache!"
The headache grew worse, and by noontime, the poor man had already died.
Notes
from Hanwei liuchao guiguai xiaoshuo, p. 46; originally from Soushenji by Gan Bao.
Motifs: *D1855.2, "Death postponed if substitute can be found"; E247, "Ghost kills man"; E421, "Invisible ghost"; P316, "Man killed in friend's place."
(4) An Unnamed Husband and Wife
Long ago there once were a couple whose names have been lost through the years.
Early one morning the wife got out of bed earlier than her husband and went outside to wash her face. Unknown to her, her husband got up shortly afterward to bathe.
Neither one encountered the other outside.
The wife returned inside and peeked in the bedroom. Sure enough, she saw what looked like her husband still sleeping. Not wishing to disturb him, she quietly got ready to leave to do some chores.
As she was ready to go out the door, however, the servant boy came inside the house and took a mirror.
"What are you doing with the mirror?" the woman of the house asked.
"The master said I could use it," replied the boy.
"Now how could that be? He's inside the bedroom sleeping. How could he give you permission to borrow the mirror while he is asleep?"
The boy looked befuddled.
"I was outside just now and asked him! He's still out there. Let me go get him!"
Before she could say anything, the servant boy shot outside and immediately came back in with the husband, who looked very concerned.
Together the husband and wife entered the bedroom.
There, on the bed, was the split image of the husband, still sleeping away. In complete disbelief, the husband approached his twin lying motionless upon the bed. The husband bent down to touch his counterpart; as he did so, his hands, arms and the rest of him gradually merged with those of his lookalike until both were once again one person.
Needless to say, both the wife and husband were totally shaken and left speechless by this event.
Shortly after, the husband suddenly came down with an illness from which he was never to recover.
Notes
from Hanwei liuchao guiguai xiaoshuo, p. 48; originally from Soushenji by Gan Bao.
By now we can see it is just about axiomatic that to encounter a ghost or, here, a doppelganger, is usually a fatal occurrence. The doppelganger phenomenon is also highly unlucky, frequently fatal, in German folklore as well. A similar story of bilocation, but one with a much happier outcome--"Chunmei's Journey"--can be found at the posting for 7/15/07.
Motifs: A13370.2, "Disease caused by ghost"; E723, "Wraiths separate from body."
(5) Chen Jia
Chen Jia had lived in Beixiangting, Wu Prefecture, Haiyan County, Jiangsu Province, and then, sometime during the reign of the Jinyuan emperor (276-323 A.D.), he moved to nearby Huating.
Just outside Huating, by the eastern marshes, he spotted a huge snake while hunting. It was enormous, being six, seven or even eight zhang long, lying just below a ridge. It looked like a long boat turned on its side, and it was black, yellow and other colors.
He shot an arrow at the creature, killing it, but then turned and left the area in a great hurry.
Back at home, he thought about his encounter with the huge serpent and was overcome with an inexplicable uneasiness over the matter. He decided not to tell anyone about what he had seen or done.
Three years passed . . .
Chen Jia, along with a local Huating man, was again out hunting in the marshes near the same area where he had killed the huge snake three years before.
Remembering the event that had so shaken him up several years before and without really thinking, he turned to the Huating man and said, "You know it was right over here that I had once killed a gigantic serpent a good number of zhang long!"
His companion was astounded that such a thing had happened; he had known Chen Jia for some time and had never heard him say a word about the serpent.
That night, Chen Jia had a dream. In that dream, a man in black with a black scarf wrapped around his head approached him.
"I was once resting on the path along the ridge," said the man in black, "minding my own business and not harming a soul, when you came along and killed me. Why? What had I ever done to you?
"I had just been sleeping off after being drunk. I never saw the face of the man who had killed me. I pledged to myself to wait for this enemy of mine who had done this to me. Now, three years later, you returned to the spot to brag openly of your deed! Today, you brought all this upon yourself . . . "
Chen Jia woke up, trembling and soaked with sweat, his heart madly palpitating, his intestines in knots. Before the day was over, he was dead.
Notes
from Hanwei liuchao guiguai xiaoshuo, p. 56; originally from Soushenji by Gan Bao.
Snakes are generally looked upon with suspicion and dread but also acknowledged to be wise, due to their proximity to the ground and knowledge of what lies beneath the earth. Snake or serpent spirits supposedly can foretell the future and may take human form, as so many Chinese folktales and legends attest. The most famous is, of course, the legend and opera, Madame White Snake.
One zhang is 3 1/3 meters.
Motifs: B731.10, "Multicolored serpent"; D391, "Serpent transformed to person"; E265.3, "Death caused by ghost"; E526, "Ghost of snake."
Friday, May 22, 2009
Stories of Filial Children -- Series Two
(1) Cai Shun (Later Han Dynasty)
Cai Shun of the Later Han dynasty (c. A.D. 23-220 A.D.) was from Ancheng (now Ru'an County, Henan Province).
When Cai Shun was very young, his father died. Cai Shun then served his mother as a very filial son.
Around the year 17, the nation was in turmoil. The brief rule of the Xin Dynasty (9-23 A.D.) had interrupted the Han; the Chimei rebels roamed the countryside; and there was famine everywhere.
Young Cai Shun had to go off into the backwoods to pick mulberries so that his mother and he wouldn't starve. Whenever he went off to get food, he always took two sacks--one for red mulberries and one for black mulberries.
One day on a road in the forest, Cai Shun came face-to-face with a pair of Chimei bandits. They had their swords out, barring his path.
"What's in those two bags of yours?" one of them asked.
"One bag contains red mulberries," he answered. "The other, black."
"And why do you need both kinds?" the other bandit asked.
"The black ones are sweet; they're for my mother. The sour red ones are for me."
The two fearsome bandits were moved by Cai's filial devotion to his mother. They let him pass but not before giving him three big cups of rice and a whole ox leg to take home.
Notes
from Sanshiliuxiao, p. 28 This is story #9 in the Wu edition.
The Chimei ("Red Eyebrows") were insurrectionists who opposed the Xin with their own Han candidate for emperor. They helped end the Xin dynasty of Wang Mang and went on to war with armies that supported other Han emperors. In the end, the Chimei lost out in the power struggle. Their name derived from their painting their eyebrows red as a way of recognizing each other in battles.
(2) Huang Xiang (Later Han Dynasty)
Huang Xiang of the Later Han Dynasty (c. 23-220 A.D.) came from Anlong, Jiangsha (now, Anlong County, Hubei Province). He lived during the reign of Emperor Yongping and died during the reign of Emperor Yanguang (58-124 A.D.).
At the age of nine, Huang Xiang lost his mother. From then on, he continually served his father as a devoted filial son, never missing an opportunity to work for or to help his father.
Of the many things he did for his father, we can note one special thing in particular.
In each evening of the summer, he would fan his father's mat and pillow to cool them off for his father, before the older man turned in for the evening. In each evening of the winter, he would lie down first on his father bed to warm up the mat and pillow for his father.
He also heeded his father's call to study diligently. As he grew older, he became famous for his erudition. In the era when Loyang was the national capital, a proverb circulated through the city: "Under heaven there is no one else like Huang Xiang."
During the reign of Emperor He, Huang Xiang became an official. In his later years, during the reign of Emperor An, Yanguang, he served as a prefect in Wei.
Notes
from Sanshiliuxiao, p. 36; Xiaodao, p. 58. The story is #13 in the Wu edition.
This and #4 below are particularly famous stories.
(3) Xun Guan (Jin Dynasty)
Xun Guan of the Jin Dynasty came from Yingchuan, Linyan (now, Linyan County, Henan Province).
In the year 315 A.D., while her father, Xun Song, served as prefect of the city-fortress Xiangyang, Hubei Province, the fortress was surrounded by the rebel troops of General Du Zeng.
The defending garrison was short of men and supplies.
The situation was very grim!
There were reinforcements under the command of Prefect Xun's old subordinate General Shi Lan, over in Pingnan; however, without anyone's being able to get word to General Shi of the garrison's plight, those reinforcements would never come to help. All those men under loyal General Shi might as well not exist!
Filial daughter Xun Guan saw the grave concern on her beloved father's face. Now Xun Guan was no ordinary, pampered thirteen year old daughter of a high official. She had learned martial arts from her father and was an accomplished rider. So she did something very bold. Without her father's knowledge, in the darkness of the night, she led a suicide team of eighteen veteran riders out from one of the fortress's passages. She and her riders streamed past a gauntlet of enemy troops, breaking through General Du's circle and onto the road for Pingnan!
As soon as she arrived in Pingnan, she immediately reported the situation to old family friend General Shi. As General Shi was concerned he didn't have enough men to attack General Du's force, he contacted nearby General Zhou Fang for support. With General Zhou's troops, General Shi now had over 3,ooo men. This force set out for Xiangyang. Once General Shi and his men arrived within site of the rebel camp, the besiegers instantly lost heart. The entire rebel force of General Du's army dissolved before the walls of Xiangyang, with the rebels fleeing in all directions.
The siege was finally over!
The enemy was defeated and peace came to Xiangyang--all thanks to a gallant thirteen year old girl named Xun Guan.
Notes
from Sanshiliuxiao, p. 44., #17 in Wu edition.
This is a very rare story of a daughter; the vast majority of the stories deal with boys.
(4) Fan Xuan (Jin Dynasty)
Fan Xuan of the Jin dynasty was originally from Chen Liu County (Henan Province). He was well known as a scholar during the reign of Emperor Cheng (circa 335 A.D.).
When he was small, he showed much filial devotion to his parents.
Once, when he was eight, he was in his family's garden, pulling up vegetables when suddenly he scraped his finger. He stood in the garden, crying.
"Are you in pain?" one of his parents asked him.
"No." He continued to cry. "I'm not crying because I am in pain. It is because the Classic of Filial Piety teaches us that our bodies, hair and skin all come from our parents and that we cannot harm them. I've hurt you, my parents. That's why I cry."
Fan Xuan believed he had injured his own beloved parents when he had hurt his finger and was thus not filial. Contrast him with all the belligerent, morally confused, wine-swilling, gambling, hedonistic ruffians around today! Their conduct is anything but filial, and they need to get on the correct path.
Notes
from Sanshiliuxiao, p. 46. This is story #18 in the Wu edition.
True filial, thus, entails having one take care of one's body as one's flesh and blood come from parents. The very last two sentences have been translated and adapted from the very end of the story and represent no extraneous moralizing or editorializing on my part!
The Classic of Filial Piety dates back to 400 B.C. and contains a series of conversations between Confucius and his disciple Zeng Zi.
(5) Xie Dingzhu (Ming Dynasty)
Xie Dingzhu of Guangchang, Datong (now Laiyuan County, Hebei Province) was born in 1401 A.D., during the reign of the Yongle Emperor of the Ming (1360-1424).
One day when Dingzhu was twelve, his mother grabbed Dingzhu's infant brother and went after an oxen that had wandered away. Dingzhu followed along, carrying a club.
While the three were out on the road, a tiger suddenly appeared and attacked the mother. It clamped its jaws onto her ankle and began to drag her away. The woman tossed her infant son onto the road and cried for Dingzhu to help her.
Dingzhu rushed the tiger and hit it repeatedly with his club. Finally, the tiger let go of the mother and retreated back from where it had come. Dingzhu then went to the assistance of his mother. He picked his brother up and let his mother lean her weight against him as the three headed back home.
Halfway home, the tiger reappeared! Again it tried to bite the mother, and, again, Dingzhu fought it off with his club.
The tiger then ran off. The three continued home.
Yet again the tiger returned, this time very stealthily, and attacked the mother from behind, biting her ankle. Dingzhu picked up a large rock and flung it at the tiger. This time the tiger left for good.
With Dingzhu's help, everyone made it home safely.
News of Dingzhu's heroism traveled to the court of the Yongle Emperor. The emperor ordered the young man to Beijing, where Dingzhu was granted a personal audience with the imperial monarch, who commended him for his bravery. Xie Dingzhu was also given a reward of silver and rice. Finally a stela proclaiming Dingzhu's filial piety and courage was erected outside his home.
Notes
from Shanshiliuxiao, p. 70, #30 in the Wu edition.
Xiaodao also has a very similar story from the earlier Jin dynasty (265-420 A.D.). A fourteen year old boy named Yang Xiang was helping his father in the fields with the harvest when a tiger suddenly appeared and menaced his father, holding onto the older man with its jaws. Without any concern for his own safety, Yang Xiang threw himself upon the tiger and grabbed its hide with all his strength. The tiger let go of Xiang's father and fled. (Xiaodao, p. 53).
Cai Shun of the Later Han dynasty (c. A.D. 23-220 A.D.) was from Ancheng (now Ru'an County, Henan Province).
When Cai Shun was very young, his father died. Cai Shun then served his mother as a very filial son.
Around the year 17, the nation was in turmoil. The brief rule of the Xin Dynasty (9-23 A.D.) had interrupted the Han; the Chimei rebels roamed the countryside; and there was famine everywhere.
Young Cai Shun had to go off into the backwoods to pick mulberries so that his mother and he wouldn't starve. Whenever he went off to get food, he always took two sacks--one for red mulberries and one for black mulberries.
One day on a road in the forest, Cai Shun came face-to-face with a pair of Chimei bandits. They had their swords out, barring his path.
"What's in those two bags of yours?" one of them asked.
"One bag contains red mulberries," he answered. "The other, black."
"And why do you need both kinds?" the other bandit asked.
"The black ones are sweet; they're for my mother. The sour red ones are for me."
The two fearsome bandits were moved by Cai's filial devotion to his mother. They let him pass but not before giving him three big cups of rice and a whole ox leg to take home.
Notes
from Sanshiliuxiao, p. 28 This is story #9 in the Wu edition.
The Chimei ("Red Eyebrows") were insurrectionists who opposed the Xin with their own Han candidate for emperor. They helped end the Xin dynasty of Wang Mang and went on to war with armies that supported other Han emperors. In the end, the Chimei lost out in the power struggle. Their name derived from their painting their eyebrows red as a way of recognizing each other in battles.
(2) Huang Xiang (Later Han Dynasty)
Huang Xiang of the Later Han Dynasty (c. 23-220 A.D.) came from Anlong, Jiangsha (now, Anlong County, Hubei Province). He lived during the reign of Emperor Yongping and died during the reign of Emperor Yanguang (58-124 A.D.).
At the age of nine, Huang Xiang lost his mother. From then on, he continually served his father as a devoted filial son, never missing an opportunity to work for or to help his father.
Of the many things he did for his father, we can note one special thing in particular.
In each evening of the summer, he would fan his father's mat and pillow to cool them off for his father, before the older man turned in for the evening. In each evening of the winter, he would lie down first on his father bed to warm up the mat and pillow for his father.
He also heeded his father's call to study diligently. As he grew older, he became famous for his erudition. In the era when Loyang was the national capital, a proverb circulated through the city: "Under heaven there is no one else like Huang Xiang."
During the reign of Emperor He, Huang Xiang became an official. In his later years, during the reign of Emperor An, Yanguang, he served as a prefect in Wei.
Notes
from Sanshiliuxiao, p. 36; Xiaodao, p. 58. The story is #13 in the Wu edition.
This and #4 below are particularly famous stories.
(3) Xun Guan (Jin Dynasty)
Xun Guan of the Jin Dynasty came from Yingchuan, Linyan (now, Linyan County, Henan Province).
In the year 315 A.D., while her father, Xun Song, served as prefect of the city-fortress Xiangyang, Hubei Province, the fortress was surrounded by the rebel troops of General Du Zeng.
The defending garrison was short of men and supplies.
The situation was very grim!
There were reinforcements under the command of Prefect Xun's old subordinate General Shi Lan, over in Pingnan; however, without anyone's being able to get word to General Shi of the garrison's plight, those reinforcements would never come to help. All those men under loyal General Shi might as well not exist!
Filial daughter Xun Guan saw the grave concern on her beloved father's face. Now Xun Guan was no ordinary, pampered thirteen year old daughter of a high official. She had learned martial arts from her father and was an accomplished rider. So she did something very bold. Without her father's knowledge, in the darkness of the night, she led a suicide team of eighteen veteran riders out from one of the fortress's passages. She and her riders streamed past a gauntlet of enemy troops, breaking through General Du's circle and onto the road for Pingnan!
As soon as she arrived in Pingnan, she immediately reported the situation to old family friend General Shi. As General Shi was concerned he didn't have enough men to attack General Du's force, he contacted nearby General Zhou Fang for support. With General Zhou's troops, General Shi now had over 3,ooo men. This force set out for Xiangyang. Once General Shi and his men arrived within site of the rebel camp, the besiegers instantly lost heart. The entire rebel force of General Du's army dissolved before the walls of Xiangyang, with the rebels fleeing in all directions.
The siege was finally over!
The enemy was defeated and peace came to Xiangyang--all thanks to a gallant thirteen year old girl named Xun Guan.
Notes
from Sanshiliuxiao, p. 44., #17 in Wu edition.
This is a very rare story of a daughter; the vast majority of the stories deal with boys.
(4) Fan Xuan (Jin Dynasty)
Fan Xuan of the Jin dynasty was originally from Chen Liu County (Henan Province). He was well known as a scholar during the reign of Emperor Cheng (circa 335 A.D.).
When he was small, he showed much filial devotion to his parents.
Once, when he was eight, he was in his family's garden, pulling up vegetables when suddenly he scraped his finger. He stood in the garden, crying.
"Are you in pain?" one of his parents asked him.
"No." He continued to cry. "I'm not crying because I am in pain. It is because the Classic of Filial Piety teaches us that our bodies, hair and skin all come from our parents and that we cannot harm them. I've hurt you, my parents. That's why I cry."
Fan Xuan believed he had injured his own beloved parents when he had hurt his finger and was thus not filial. Contrast him with all the belligerent, morally confused, wine-swilling, gambling, hedonistic ruffians around today! Their conduct is anything but filial, and they need to get on the correct path.
Notes
from Sanshiliuxiao, p. 46. This is story #18 in the Wu edition.
True filial, thus, entails having one take care of one's body as one's flesh and blood come from parents. The very last two sentences have been translated and adapted from the very end of the story and represent no extraneous moralizing or editorializing on my part!
The Classic of Filial Piety dates back to 400 B.C. and contains a series of conversations between Confucius and his disciple Zeng Zi.
(5) Xie Dingzhu (Ming Dynasty)
Xie Dingzhu of Guangchang, Datong (now Laiyuan County, Hebei Province) was born in 1401 A.D., during the reign of the Yongle Emperor of the Ming (1360-1424).
One day when Dingzhu was twelve, his mother grabbed Dingzhu's infant brother and went after an oxen that had wandered away. Dingzhu followed along, carrying a club.
While the three were out on the road, a tiger suddenly appeared and attacked the mother. It clamped its jaws onto her ankle and began to drag her away. The woman tossed her infant son onto the road and cried for Dingzhu to help her.
Dingzhu rushed the tiger and hit it repeatedly with his club. Finally, the tiger let go of the mother and retreated back from where it had come. Dingzhu then went to the assistance of his mother. He picked his brother up and let his mother lean her weight against him as the three headed back home.
Halfway home, the tiger reappeared! Again it tried to bite the mother, and, again, Dingzhu fought it off with his club.
The tiger then ran off. The three continued home.
Yet again the tiger returned, this time very stealthily, and attacked the mother from behind, biting her ankle. Dingzhu picked up a large rock and flung it at the tiger. This time the tiger left for good.
With Dingzhu's help, everyone made it home safely.
News of Dingzhu's heroism traveled to the court of the Yongle Emperor. The emperor ordered the young man to Beijing, where Dingzhu was granted a personal audience with the imperial monarch, who commended him for his bravery. Xie Dingzhu was also given a reward of silver and rice. Finally a stela proclaiming Dingzhu's filial piety and courage was erected outside his home.
Notes
from Shanshiliuxiao, p. 70, #30 in the Wu edition.
Xiaodao also has a very similar story from the earlier Jin dynasty (265-420 A.D.). A fourteen year old boy named Yang Xiang was helping his father in the fields with the harvest when a tiger suddenly appeared and menaced his father, holding onto the older man with its jaws. Without any concern for his own safety, Yang Xiang threw himself upon the tiger and grabbed its hide with all his strength. The tiger let go of Xiang's father and fled. (Xiaodao, p. 53).
Monday, May 4, 2009
Ghost Stories From Ancient China -- Series Two
(1) The Abandoned House
During the era of Baoying (A.D. 762-763), at the end of the second month, a man named Yuan Wuyou took a trip by himself to Jiangsu Province. He arrived at the outskirts of Yangzhou just as it began to rain. It started as a drizzle and then increasingly came down in torrents.
Now, not long before, Yangzhou had been the scene of civil war, and so not many people were about. Many of the buildings were also abandoned. Yuan Wuyou dashed into one such building to wait out the rain, but the rain kept coming down. Soon it was evening, with a bright moon up in the sky, so Yuan Wuyou decided to stay the whole night.
He was quietly sitting by the window on the north side of the building when he heard the sounds of footsteps coming from the hallway which faced west. He got up and crept over to the door and peaked through a crack.
In the hallway there were four men, each dressed in strange, outlandish clothes.
One of the four said, "It's just like an autumn night with that beautiful moon, isn't it! Let's sing some songs."
"Fine," said another. "I'll begin." He then adjusted his hat and clothes and began to sing this song:
The states of Qi and Lu!
Is that frost? Or is it snow?
A brief view of beautiful scenery! And along with some melodious sounds too!
Oh, this is the land in which I was born!
The second man, short, and dressed from head to foot in black, then began to sing:
On this cold, crisp night,
The guests cheerfully come to the banquet.
The fire from the lamps dazzles their eyes.
This is the home in which I live!
Then it was the turn of the third man, who was dressed in shabby yellow clothes. He too was very short. He sang:
Oh, the chilly waters of the spring,
Every day I see you!
The country life--to carry over bucket after bucket of spring water!
Ha, ha! This is my small universe!
Finally the fourth man, dressed in slightly worn black clothes, started to sing:
That which burns is fire, while that which overflows is water.
Over there, that which is atop the burning flames . . .
It is none other than that which fills the empty stomach,
For me, who must labor tirelessly day and night!
Yuan Wuyou listened to the four singing through the night and wasn't very impressed. He found their impromptu songs to be rather shallow and conceited. Neither did he go out to introduce himself to the four "poets." Instead, he curled up in a corner, stopped paying attention to them, and soon fell asleep . . .
Yuan Wuyou awoke at daybreak. He was curious to see what the four looked like in the light of the day. He opened the door and entered the hallway where just shortly before they had been singing.
All he found were these obviously old items: a flattened stone block for laundry, a candlestick, a water bucket, and a frying pan. The four men he had heard in the night were not men but actually the spirits of these discarded objects.
Notes
from Zhongguo qitan, pp. 116-118 (See the post for 3/26/09).
Originally from Xuanguai lu (Records of the occult and goblins) by Niu Sengru (A.D. 780-848).
This story is apparently a spoof of supernatural tales. The name of the character "Yuan Wuyou" can be translated as "Originally nothing."
Despite this story's being a lampoon, belief that inanimate objects could be haunted existed in the Far East, perhaps more in Japan than in China. In Japan, any very old object, if allowed to exist long enough, could house a spirit. Hence, there are stories about haunted tea kettles. In one story that can be recounted briefly, a traveling Buddhist priest spends the night in an abandoned temple regarded to be haunted. In the middle of the night, a little onyudo, a type of one-legged goblin, appears to do him harm. However, he turns the tables and beats the onyudo to death with his bamboo walking stick. He then picks the entity up by its leg and flings it down the temple steps. In the morning, he tells the villagers that have come to check in on him that they should be able to find the body of an onyudo at the foot of the steps. The astonished villagers report that at the spot where the onyudo lay is just one old wooden sandal, once one of a pair of geta. Motif: E530ff, "Ghosts of objects."
(2) The Maiden in White
One summer, a young man came to Guanghua Temple, located atop Culai Mountain in Yizhou County, Shandong, to rent a room. It was his intention to pour all his energy into the study of Confucianism.
On one fairly cool day, he left his room to stroll about the veranda of the temple and to admire all the many paintings and ink scrolls hanging there. While he was doing so, he noticed a young lady in white approaching. As she got closer, he saw that she must have been around fifteen or sixteen, and she was absolutely exquisite, just gorgeous beyond description.
The scholar was totally smitten and, rather boldly for the circumstances, asked her from where she came.
"My home is just down the mountain," she replied.
The scholar was familiar with the area and wasn't aware of a girl such as this living nearby; however, he didn't suspect her of lying. Instead, he fell in love with her, love at first sight.
They started a conversation to know each other better.
Very shortly, they became husband and wife.
The day they were wed, the bride turned to her husband and said, "We belong to each other now, and we shall be together 'when our heads are white in our old age.' This evening, though, I must return to my family home, but just for tonight! Starting tomorrow, though, we shall never be separated again!"
"May I at least go with you?" he asked.
"No," she said. She insisted she must return home alone.
Well, the young scholar, now the young groom, was disappointed, of course, but his bride remained unyielding. The arrangements would just have to be this way. So, before his bride left to go back down the mountain, the groom gave her the white jade ring he normally wore.
"Let the ring be a reminder to you whenever you see it," he said. "Let it remind you to return to me as soon as possible!"
They walked to the gates of the temple.
"May I at least accompany you to the door of your family home?" he asked.
"No. My family members will probably be waiting for me outside. It would be a bit awkward with you there, with our marriage and such. Please stay here and wait for me to return to you."
He said goodbye to her and watched her walk down the hill. She never turned back. Before she had gone one hundred paces, though, she suddenly vanished into thin air!
The groom was beside himself with fear and shock. He ran to the spot where his bride had disappeared. It was a fairly flat field that was on the slope of this mountain. He started scouring amidst the tall grasses way into the darkness of night without stopping.
And then it became just too dark, so he headed back to his room at the temple. Just as he started to turn back, he spotted a clump of brilliant white lilies in the vicinity of where his wife had disappeared. For some reason, he bent down and plucked them up by the roots and took the flowers back to his room.
Would they somehow hold the key to her astonishing disappearance?
Once in his room, he took the lilies--there must have been a hundred of them--and started to separate them. Out from amongst several stems fell the white jade ring.
He then realized the awful truth--he had been married to and in the intimate presence of a ghost. How he regretted what he had allowed to happen, but there was nothing he could do about it now. It was too late.
Not long after, he came down with an illness. Within ten days, he was dead.
Notes
from Zhongguo qitan, pp. 200-201.
Originally from Jiyi ji (Records of the Collected Extraordinary) by Xue Yongruo (flourished in the ninth century A.D.)
The original Chinese seems to imply that the pair became husband and wife that same night, which would be a courtship and marriage the speed of which to rival Romeo and Juliet's, a detail that stretches credibility.
This tale is reminiscent of urban legends--such as the Ghostly Hitchhiker--in which an object from the living, the ring, is received by the dead and then finds itself located in a place associated with the dead. This story, like so many other old Chinese ghost stories, also attests to the Chinese attitude towards ghosts as ultimately malevolent and fatally toxic, possessing an enmity that overcomes all who cross over and that targets those still living.
In any case, despite there being a huge corpus of ghost and supernatural literature (mainly the Liaozhai of Ming dynasty writer Pu Songling, the Tang dynasty collections from which many of these postings come and modern anthologies of ancient works like Zhongguo qitan), many have an outright aversion to ghosts and even to the mere discussion of the supernatural. This attitude could be encapsulated this way: To discuss the unknown is to summon the unknown.
Motifs: A13370.2, "Disease caused by ghost"; E265.3, "Meeting ghost causes death"; E422.4.4(a), "Female revenant in white"; E470, "Intimate relations of dead & living"; E474, "Cohabitation of living person & a ghost"; E495.2, "Marriage of a living person to a ghost."
(3) Spotted Dog
In the southern part of Zhejiang Province, in a military garrison, there lived a soldier named Hu Zhizhong.
One day he was sent as a courier to the north of Zhejiang Province, to Huiji.
One night during his journey up north, he slept and had a dream. In this dream, somewhere up in Zhejiang, on the road at night, he spotted a bizarre creature--it had the body of a human but the head of a dog.
Now this creature approached him and said, "Look, I've already been a year without any food. You're on the road to Huiji, aren't you? Could you stop by my house and let me have some of your leftover rations?"
"No!" Hu Zhizhong roared in his dream.
The next day, he continued his trip with the dream already forgotten. He continued on the road to Huiji until nightfall, when he came across an inn. He decided to spend the night there.
"Well, traveler," said the innkeeper, "there is a problem with my building here. It is haunted by a strange creature so much though that not only people don't sleep inside but no one can sit down in the dining hall to eat. I do have an annex on the eastern side, untroubled by the spirit that haunts the main building. Would you like to stay there?"
"No, a room in the main building would be fine, " the soldier replied. "I'm an honest man and a man who doesn't fear evil. All who know me will tell you that. Let what evil spirit exists come, and I shall deal with it. I shall, in fact, kill it."
"Very well," sighed the innkeeper.
That night Hu Zhizhong had a boy from the inn bring him a meal. As the boy then left and Hu picked up his chopsticks to eat his dinner, an monstrous apparition suddenly appeared in the room. It was a man with an enormous head. This monster stood right before the table where the boy had placed Hu's food.
The boy wanted to flee but seemed riveted to the spot as the monster glowered at him. He just stood there, looking helpless at the giant creature before him.
Hu Zhizhong was not petrified, however. He leapt up and attacked the creature with his fists, pummeling him without a break.
If all this wasn't strange enough, what came next was even stranger. The monster started howling, like a dog. Then it cried like a man and spoke to Hu Zhizhong.
"Stop beating me! Stop beating me! If you hit me one more time, I'll be dead!"
Hu didn't let up, however. He kept striking the creature.
The creature then cried out a question: "Where's the spotted dog?"
From behind Hu Zhizhong, behind the standing screen, came something, a blur. It too attacked Hu Zhizhong, coming at him while he was still fighting the big-headed monster.
Hu Zhizhong, his hat knocked off his head and his belt askew, reached for the nearest weapon, a broom handle, and wielded it with effect. He soon battled his two attackers, pushing them outside all the way to the annex of guest rooms on the eastern side of the property.
All who heard the noise of fighting that night swore it sounded as if the whole building were collapsing.
And as odd as all this was, back in Hu's room in the inn's main building, Hu's hat, which had fallen during the battle in the room, climbed up and sat down right on the table where Hu had attempted to eat dinner. The hat looked to the east and seemed to sigh.
And then all was silent for the night . . .
The next day, Hu Zhizhong reemerged from the annex room and outside posted a sheet of paper.
"While I'm away, no one is to enter this structure. For one to do so before I return will be to invite a catastrophe upon one's head!"
He then left without looking back.
Ten days later he returned to the east annex. He had a servant bring him a scroll, brush and ink stone. Then, with tears in his eyes, he wrote out the following poem:
To engage in one rash act of bravery can bring about self-destruction.
To depend on my physical prowess can mean to encounter danger.
You are given this one thread of a precious life,
So why waste it combating goblins?
Your poor deluded soul!
Don't bother now reporting for duty at the yamen!
No, instead you shall remain here in this inn,
And walk on the dark road bound for Hades.
Upon finishing the poem, Hu Zhizhong simply threw the brush to the ground and there, in front of the astonished servant who had brought the calligraphy supplies, he disappeared into the air.
The servant later reported he had felt a rush of icy air that sent shivers up and down his spine as Hu Zhizhong vanished from the earth.
The prefect was notified. He sent men specially entrusted to look into the matter. They entered the now totally deserted eastern annex only to discover the bodies of Hu Zhizhong and two dogs lying in the northwest corner of the room.
Notes
from Zhongguo qitan, pp. 201-204.
Originally from Jiyi ji by Xue Yongruo.
There is definitely one very surrealistic motif in this story, namely the animated hat. This story, like the one above and most likely a number of stories yet to come, reflects the inevitable deadliness and futility of battling ghosts and other supernatural agents.
Motifs: E281.3, "Ghost haunts particular room in house"; E461, "Fight of revenant with living person"; *E542, "Ghost's nearness to person felt as a chill"; *E542.6, "Icy wind indication of ghost's presence."
(4) Xing Daodu
In Longxi County, Gansu Province, there lived a scholar named Xing Daodu who once traveled far and wide for his education. He once found himself in Yongzhou, in what used to be called Cao, or the country of Cao. Here he became short on funds and forced to beg for food on the road.
He was particularly hungry on this day when in the distance he spied a house. He walked towards the house. In the front was a girl in blue-green clothes.
"Miss," said Xing, "I'm Xing Daodu, a student from Longxi. I've traveled far and now find myself here without any money for food. I'm hungry and can't find anyone who will give me any money to buy food. Could I possibly trouble you for a bowl of something to eat?"
The girl excused herself to enter the house in order to ask her mistress, Madame Qin.
"Well," Madame Qin said, "since he's a student from far off and since he doesn't look like a bad man, just invite him in!"
Xing Daodu entered. Madame Qin bade him sit on the right-hand sofa and told the girl to feed him.
When Xing Daodu had finished eating, Madame Qin said to him: "I was the daughter of King Min of Qin. Betrothed, I came here to Cao, but before I could be married, I died. It's now been twenty-three years since then, and I've remained in this place all these years. Now you are here! I am willing to become your wife. Are you willing to become my husband?"
"H-How could I?" asked Xing. "You are of a royal house!"
But Madame Qin asked him, again and again. Finally he consented. They then became husband and wife.
Three days later, Madame Qin said to her groom, Xing Daodu: "You, my husband, are of the living, while I am a ghost. The longest we can live together is three days without grave harm befalling you. Think of our happiness we have shared these past few days! I shall give you something as a token of my love for you."
Madame Qin took a box from under her bed. She opened it and took out a golden pillow, which she then gave to Xing Daodu.
They both shed tears and said their farewells.
Xing Daodu left the house and walked down the road. He turned to look back, but the house was gone. In its place was was a tomb overgrown with weeds. He walked back and tended to the tomb, removing the weeds, tidying it up, and left.
He headed for the country of Qin. There, in the marketplace he offered the golden pillow for sale to the market-goers.
Passing by in her coach was none other than the royal concubine to the King of Qin. She saw the golden pillow through her window. She had the coach stop and asked Xing Daodu how he had come into possession of the pillow, her daughter's funerary pillow. He told her the truth--the whole story. The royal concubine became upset; she also suspected Xing was trying to carry out a fraud.
The royal concubine had Xing Daodu remain in Qin and ordered a squad of men to return to Cao to open the tomb of Madame Qin. They did so, finding everything except one item was intact. The missing item? Madame Qin's golden pillow.
As soon as she received the report, she summoned Xing Daodu before her.
"My daughter has been gone for twenty-three years, and now I learn that she was able to marry a living man. It is a miracle! To be sure, you are my son-in-law!" She wept.
That certainly meant one thing: Xing Daodu was the King's official son-in-law. The concubine presented Xing Daodu with horses, a coach and much gold and allowed him to return to Longxi.
Notes
from Hanwei liuchao guiguai xiaoshuo, pp. 43-44. (See the post for 3/26/09.)
Originally from Soushen ji by Gan Bao.
Now we are given a formula--a length of time--by which one may coexist with a ghost in close proximity, three days. A surprising detail: Xing Daodu decides to sell his ghost wife's golden pillow, probably a type of hard headrest. However, maybe he was suspicious about its origins . . .
The story may reflect a probably dying custom that once flourished on Taiwan and on the mainland (but under different guises there)--the so-called "infernal wedding" or "ghost wedding" in which the spirit, usually of a young woman who had died before being able to get married is placated by a symbolic marriage to a living man, already married or still single, who receives a payment for what is considered a totally unwanted honor. I think the best book on this subject is Professor David K. Jordan's Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors: The Folk Religion of a Taiwanese Village (University of California Press, 1972).
We are not given the identity of Madame Qin's girl attendant.
Motifs: E363.5, "Dead provides material aid to living"; E422.4.4(c), "Female revenant in green clothing"; E451, "Revenant finds rest when certain thing happens"; E470, "Intimate relations of dead and living"; E495.2, "Marriage of a living person to the dead."
(5) News of the Next World
The philosopher Zhuangzi (Chuang-tzu) once visited the country of Chu.
While on the road, he came across a pile of bones that had once formed someone's skeleton. He picked up a bone and started talking to it. Of course the bone and the skull said nothing in return.
Zhuangzi then picked up another bone, placed it under his head and took a nap. Soon he was deep into dreamland . . .
Around midnight, he had a dream in which the skull said to him: "Would you like to hear about what life is like after death?"
"Yes," replied Zhuangzi.
"Well, after death," said the skull, "it is very, very wonderful! There is much freedom. There is no monarch to attend to; neither is there any official to enslave you. There is no year of the four differing seasons that make raising crops such an ordeal for the farmer. The years and time that pass belong to the individual. Even though here below every sacrifice is made for a king, the life of an earthly king can never compare to the life in the next world!"
Notes
from Guiguai xiao pin (A short sketch on ghosts and goblins), Chang Yangfeng & Ding Changqing, eds. Zhuhai: Zhuhai Chubanshe, 1994. pp. 25-26.
Originally from Zhuangzi (The Book of Zhuangzi) compiled by Guo Xiang (d. A.D. 312).
Zhuangzi (Chuang-tzu, 369-298 B.C.) was the renowned exponent of Daoism (Taoism) perhaps most famous for his dream of being a butterfly. Upon wakening, he wondered if he had merely dreamed of being a butterfly or if he was actually a butterfly dreaming he was a man named Zhuangzi. Motif: E261.1.2, "Speaking skull."
During the era of Baoying (A.D. 762-763), at the end of the second month, a man named Yuan Wuyou took a trip by himself to Jiangsu Province. He arrived at the outskirts of Yangzhou just as it began to rain. It started as a drizzle and then increasingly came down in torrents.
Now, not long before, Yangzhou had been the scene of civil war, and so not many people were about. Many of the buildings were also abandoned. Yuan Wuyou dashed into one such building to wait out the rain, but the rain kept coming down. Soon it was evening, with a bright moon up in the sky, so Yuan Wuyou decided to stay the whole night.
He was quietly sitting by the window on the north side of the building when he heard the sounds of footsteps coming from the hallway which faced west. He got up and crept over to the door and peaked through a crack.
In the hallway there were four men, each dressed in strange, outlandish clothes.
One of the four said, "It's just like an autumn night with that beautiful moon, isn't it! Let's sing some songs."
"Fine," said another. "I'll begin." He then adjusted his hat and clothes and began to sing this song:
The states of Qi and Lu!
Is that frost? Or is it snow?
A brief view of beautiful scenery! And along with some melodious sounds too!
Oh, this is the land in which I was born!
The second man, short, and dressed from head to foot in black, then began to sing:
On this cold, crisp night,
The guests cheerfully come to the banquet.
The fire from the lamps dazzles their eyes.
This is the home in which I live!
Then it was the turn of the third man, who was dressed in shabby yellow clothes. He too was very short. He sang:
Oh, the chilly waters of the spring,
Every day I see you!
The country life--to carry over bucket after bucket of spring water!
Ha, ha! This is my small universe!
Finally the fourth man, dressed in slightly worn black clothes, started to sing:
That which burns is fire, while that which overflows is water.
Over there, that which is atop the burning flames . . .
It is none other than that which fills the empty stomach,
For me, who must labor tirelessly day and night!
Yuan Wuyou listened to the four singing through the night and wasn't very impressed. He found their impromptu songs to be rather shallow and conceited. Neither did he go out to introduce himself to the four "poets." Instead, he curled up in a corner, stopped paying attention to them, and soon fell asleep . . .
Yuan Wuyou awoke at daybreak. He was curious to see what the four looked like in the light of the day. He opened the door and entered the hallway where just shortly before they had been singing.
All he found were these obviously old items: a flattened stone block for laundry, a candlestick, a water bucket, and a frying pan. The four men he had heard in the night were not men but actually the spirits of these discarded objects.
Notes
from Zhongguo qitan, pp. 116-118 (See the post for 3/26/09).
Originally from Xuanguai lu (Records of the occult and goblins) by Niu Sengru (A.D. 780-848).
This story is apparently a spoof of supernatural tales. The name of the character "Yuan Wuyou" can be translated as "Originally nothing."
Despite this story's being a lampoon, belief that inanimate objects could be haunted existed in the Far East, perhaps more in Japan than in China. In Japan, any very old object, if allowed to exist long enough, could house a spirit. Hence, there are stories about haunted tea kettles. In one story that can be recounted briefly, a traveling Buddhist priest spends the night in an abandoned temple regarded to be haunted. In the middle of the night, a little onyudo, a type of one-legged goblin, appears to do him harm. However, he turns the tables and beats the onyudo to death with his bamboo walking stick. He then picks the entity up by its leg and flings it down the temple steps. In the morning, he tells the villagers that have come to check in on him that they should be able to find the body of an onyudo at the foot of the steps. The astonished villagers report that at the spot where the onyudo lay is just one old wooden sandal, once one of a pair of geta. Motif: E530ff, "Ghosts of objects."
(2) The Maiden in White
One summer, a young man came to Guanghua Temple, located atop Culai Mountain in Yizhou County, Shandong, to rent a room. It was his intention to pour all his energy into the study of Confucianism.
On one fairly cool day, he left his room to stroll about the veranda of the temple and to admire all the many paintings and ink scrolls hanging there. While he was doing so, he noticed a young lady in white approaching. As she got closer, he saw that she must have been around fifteen or sixteen, and she was absolutely exquisite, just gorgeous beyond description.
The scholar was totally smitten and, rather boldly for the circumstances, asked her from where she came.
"My home is just down the mountain," she replied.
The scholar was familiar with the area and wasn't aware of a girl such as this living nearby; however, he didn't suspect her of lying. Instead, he fell in love with her, love at first sight.
They started a conversation to know each other better.
Very shortly, they became husband and wife.
The day they were wed, the bride turned to her husband and said, "We belong to each other now, and we shall be together 'when our heads are white in our old age.' This evening, though, I must return to my family home, but just for tonight! Starting tomorrow, though, we shall never be separated again!"
"May I at least go with you?" he asked.
"No," she said. She insisted she must return home alone.
Well, the young scholar, now the young groom, was disappointed, of course, but his bride remained unyielding. The arrangements would just have to be this way. So, before his bride left to go back down the mountain, the groom gave her the white jade ring he normally wore.
"Let the ring be a reminder to you whenever you see it," he said. "Let it remind you to return to me as soon as possible!"
They walked to the gates of the temple.
"May I at least accompany you to the door of your family home?" he asked.
"No. My family members will probably be waiting for me outside. It would be a bit awkward with you there, with our marriage and such. Please stay here and wait for me to return to you."
He said goodbye to her and watched her walk down the hill. She never turned back. Before she had gone one hundred paces, though, she suddenly vanished into thin air!
The groom was beside himself with fear and shock. He ran to the spot where his bride had disappeared. It was a fairly flat field that was on the slope of this mountain. He started scouring amidst the tall grasses way into the darkness of night without stopping.
And then it became just too dark, so he headed back to his room at the temple. Just as he started to turn back, he spotted a clump of brilliant white lilies in the vicinity of where his wife had disappeared. For some reason, he bent down and plucked them up by the roots and took the flowers back to his room.
Would they somehow hold the key to her astonishing disappearance?
Once in his room, he took the lilies--there must have been a hundred of them--and started to separate them. Out from amongst several stems fell the white jade ring.
He then realized the awful truth--he had been married to and in the intimate presence of a ghost. How he regretted what he had allowed to happen, but there was nothing he could do about it now. It was too late.
Not long after, he came down with an illness. Within ten days, he was dead.
Notes
from Zhongguo qitan, pp. 200-201.
Originally from Jiyi ji (Records of the Collected Extraordinary) by Xue Yongruo (flourished in the ninth century A.D.)
The original Chinese seems to imply that the pair became husband and wife that same night, which would be a courtship and marriage the speed of which to rival Romeo and Juliet's, a detail that stretches credibility.
This tale is reminiscent of urban legends--such as the Ghostly Hitchhiker--in which an object from the living, the ring, is received by the dead and then finds itself located in a place associated with the dead. This story, like so many other old Chinese ghost stories, also attests to the Chinese attitude towards ghosts as ultimately malevolent and fatally toxic, possessing an enmity that overcomes all who cross over and that targets those still living.
In any case, despite there being a huge corpus of ghost and supernatural literature (mainly the Liaozhai of Ming dynasty writer Pu Songling, the Tang dynasty collections from which many of these postings come and modern anthologies of ancient works like Zhongguo qitan), many have an outright aversion to ghosts and even to the mere discussion of the supernatural. This attitude could be encapsulated this way: To discuss the unknown is to summon the unknown.
Motifs: A13370.2, "Disease caused by ghost"; E265.3, "Meeting ghost causes death"; E422.4.4(a), "Female revenant in white"; E470, "Intimate relations of dead & living"; E474, "Cohabitation of living person & a ghost"; E495.2, "Marriage of a living person to a ghost."
(3) Spotted Dog
In the southern part of Zhejiang Province, in a military garrison, there lived a soldier named Hu Zhizhong.
One day he was sent as a courier to the north of Zhejiang Province, to Huiji.
One night during his journey up north, he slept and had a dream. In this dream, somewhere up in Zhejiang, on the road at night, he spotted a bizarre creature--it had the body of a human but the head of a dog.
Now this creature approached him and said, "Look, I've already been a year without any food. You're on the road to Huiji, aren't you? Could you stop by my house and let me have some of your leftover rations?"
"No!" Hu Zhizhong roared in his dream.
The next day, he continued his trip with the dream already forgotten. He continued on the road to Huiji until nightfall, when he came across an inn. He decided to spend the night there.
"Well, traveler," said the innkeeper, "there is a problem with my building here. It is haunted by a strange creature so much though that not only people don't sleep inside but no one can sit down in the dining hall to eat. I do have an annex on the eastern side, untroubled by the spirit that haunts the main building. Would you like to stay there?"
"No, a room in the main building would be fine, " the soldier replied. "I'm an honest man and a man who doesn't fear evil. All who know me will tell you that. Let what evil spirit exists come, and I shall deal with it. I shall, in fact, kill it."
"Very well," sighed the innkeeper.
That night Hu Zhizhong had a boy from the inn bring him a meal. As the boy then left and Hu picked up his chopsticks to eat his dinner, an monstrous apparition suddenly appeared in the room. It was a man with an enormous head. This monster stood right before the table where the boy had placed Hu's food.
The boy wanted to flee but seemed riveted to the spot as the monster glowered at him. He just stood there, looking helpless at the giant creature before him.
Hu Zhizhong was not petrified, however. He leapt up and attacked the creature with his fists, pummeling him without a break.
If all this wasn't strange enough, what came next was even stranger. The monster started howling, like a dog. Then it cried like a man and spoke to Hu Zhizhong.
"Stop beating me! Stop beating me! If you hit me one more time, I'll be dead!"
Hu didn't let up, however. He kept striking the creature.
The creature then cried out a question: "Where's the spotted dog?"
From behind Hu Zhizhong, behind the standing screen, came something, a blur. It too attacked Hu Zhizhong, coming at him while he was still fighting the big-headed monster.
Hu Zhizhong, his hat knocked off his head and his belt askew, reached for the nearest weapon, a broom handle, and wielded it with effect. He soon battled his two attackers, pushing them outside all the way to the annex of guest rooms on the eastern side of the property.
All who heard the noise of fighting that night swore it sounded as if the whole building were collapsing.
And as odd as all this was, back in Hu's room in the inn's main building, Hu's hat, which had fallen during the battle in the room, climbed up and sat down right on the table where Hu had attempted to eat dinner. The hat looked to the east and seemed to sigh.
And then all was silent for the night . . .
The next day, Hu Zhizhong reemerged from the annex room and outside posted a sheet of paper.
"While I'm away, no one is to enter this structure. For one to do so before I return will be to invite a catastrophe upon one's head!"
He then left without looking back.
Ten days later he returned to the east annex. He had a servant bring him a scroll, brush and ink stone. Then, with tears in his eyes, he wrote out the following poem:
To engage in one rash act of bravery can bring about self-destruction.
To depend on my physical prowess can mean to encounter danger.
You are given this one thread of a precious life,
So why waste it combating goblins?
Your poor deluded soul!
Don't bother now reporting for duty at the yamen!
No, instead you shall remain here in this inn,
And walk on the dark road bound for Hades.
Upon finishing the poem, Hu Zhizhong simply threw the brush to the ground and there, in front of the astonished servant who had brought the calligraphy supplies, he disappeared into the air.
The servant later reported he had felt a rush of icy air that sent shivers up and down his spine as Hu Zhizhong vanished from the earth.
The prefect was notified. He sent men specially entrusted to look into the matter. They entered the now totally deserted eastern annex only to discover the bodies of Hu Zhizhong and two dogs lying in the northwest corner of the room.
Notes
from Zhongguo qitan, pp. 201-204.
Originally from Jiyi ji by Xue Yongruo.
There is definitely one very surrealistic motif in this story, namely the animated hat. This story, like the one above and most likely a number of stories yet to come, reflects the inevitable deadliness and futility of battling ghosts and other supernatural agents.
Motifs: E281.3, "Ghost haunts particular room in house"; E461, "Fight of revenant with living person"; *E542, "Ghost's nearness to person felt as a chill"; *E542.6, "Icy wind indication of ghost's presence."
(4) Xing Daodu
In Longxi County, Gansu Province, there lived a scholar named Xing Daodu who once traveled far and wide for his education. He once found himself in Yongzhou, in what used to be called Cao, or the country of Cao. Here he became short on funds and forced to beg for food on the road.
He was particularly hungry on this day when in the distance he spied a house. He walked towards the house. In the front was a girl in blue-green clothes.
"Miss," said Xing, "I'm Xing Daodu, a student from Longxi. I've traveled far and now find myself here without any money for food. I'm hungry and can't find anyone who will give me any money to buy food. Could I possibly trouble you for a bowl of something to eat?"
The girl excused herself to enter the house in order to ask her mistress, Madame Qin.
"Well," Madame Qin said, "since he's a student from far off and since he doesn't look like a bad man, just invite him in!"
Xing Daodu entered. Madame Qin bade him sit on the right-hand sofa and told the girl to feed him.
When Xing Daodu had finished eating, Madame Qin said to him: "I was the daughter of King Min of Qin. Betrothed, I came here to Cao, but before I could be married, I died. It's now been twenty-three years since then, and I've remained in this place all these years. Now you are here! I am willing to become your wife. Are you willing to become my husband?"
"H-How could I?" asked Xing. "You are of a royal house!"
But Madame Qin asked him, again and again. Finally he consented. They then became husband and wife.
Three days later, Madame Qin said to her groom, Xing Daodu: "You, my husband, are of the living, while I am a ghost. The longest we can live together is three days without grave harm befalling you. Think of our happiness we have shared these past few days! I shall give you something as a token of my love for you."
Madame Qin took a box from under her bed. She opened it and took out a golden pillow, which she then gave to Xing Daodu.
They both shed tears and said their farewells.
Xing Daodu left the house and walked down the road. He turned to look back, but the house was gone. In its place was was a tomb overgrown with weeds. He walked back and tended to the tomb, removing the weeds, tidying it up, and left.
He headed for the country of Qin. There, in the marketplace he offered the golden pillow for sale to the market-goers.
Passing by in her coach was none other than the royal concubine to the King of Qin. She saw the golden pillow through her window. She had the coach stop and asked Xing Daodu how he had come into possession of the pillow, her daughter's funerary pillow. He told her the truth--the whole story. The royal concubine became upset; she also suspected Xing was trying to carry out a fraud.
The royal concubine had Xing Daodu remain in Qin and ordered a squad of men to return to Cao to open the tomb of Madame Qin. They did so, finding everything except one item was intact. The missing item? Madame Qin's golden pillow.
As soon as she received the report, she summoned Xing Daodu before her.
"My daughter has been gone for twenty-three years, and now I learn that she was able to marry a living man. It is a miracle! To be sure, you are my son-in-law!" She wept.
That certainly meant one thing: Xing Daodu was the King's official son-in-law. The concubine presented Xing Daodu with horses, a coach and much gold and allowed him to return to Longxi.
Notes
from Hanwei liuchao guiguai xiaoshuo, pp. 43-44. (See the post for 3/26/09.)
Originally from Soushen ji by Gan Bao.
Now we are given a formula--a length of time--by which one may coexist with a ghost in close proximity, three days. A surprising detail: Xing Daodu decides to sell his ghost wife's golden pillow, probably a type of hard headrest. However, maybe he was suspicious about its origins . . .
The story may reflect a probably dying custom that once flourished on Taiwan and on the mainland (but under different guises there)--the so-called "infernal wedding" or "ghost wedding" in which the spirit, usually of a young woman who had died before being able to get married is placated by a symbolic marriage to a living man, already married or still single, who receives a payment for what is considered a totally unwanted honor. I think the best book on this subject is Professor David K. Jordan's Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors: The Folk Religion of a Taiwanese Village (University of California Press, 1972).
We are not given the identity of Madame Qin's girl attendant.
Motifs: E363.5, "Dead provides material aid to living"; E422.4.4(c), "Female revenant in green clothing"; E451, "Revenant finds rest when certain thing happens"; E470, "Intimate relations of dead and living"; E495.2, "Marriage of a living person to the dead."
(5) News of the Next World
The philosopher Zhuangzi (Chuang-tzu) once visited the country of Chu.
While on the road, he came across a pile of bones that had once formed someone's skeleton. He picked up a bone and started talking to it. Of course the bone and the skull said nothing in return.
Zhuangzi then picked up another bone, placed it under his head and took a nap. Soon he was deep into dreamland . . .
Around midnight, he had a dream in which the skull said to him: "Would you like to hear about what life is like after death?"
"Yes," replied Zhuangzi.
"Well, after death," said the skull, "it is very, very wonderful! There is much freedom. There is no monarch to attend to; neither is there any official to enslave you. There is no year of the four differing seasons that make raising crops such an ordeal for the farmer. The years and time that pass belong to the individual. Even though here below every sacrifice is made for a king, the life of an earthly king can never compare to the life in the next world!"
Notes
from Guiguai xiao pin (A short sketch on ghosts and goblins), Chang Yangfeng & Ding Changqing, eds. Zhuhai: Zhuhai Chubanshe, 1994. pp. 25-26.
Originally from Zhuangzi (The Book of Zhuangzi) compiled by Guo Xiang (d. A.D. 312).
Zhuangzi (Chuang-tzu, 369-298 B.C.) was the renowned exponent of Daoism (Taoism) perhaps most famous for his dream of being a butterfly. Upon wakening, he wondered if he had merely dreamed of being a butterfly or if he was actually a butterfly dreaming he was a man named Zhuangzi. Motif: E261.1.2, "Speaking skull."
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