《坐花志果》Vol. 5

This passage tells how Xu Shangshe redeemed his abducted niece and unexpectedly reunited with kin.

Someone had seized the girl and sold her again. Xu Shangshe offered double the price to buy her back. The seller (the “old man” in the text) refused, saying: “This girl does not acknowledge you as her uncle—how can you claim kin so boldly?” Xu could not win the argument. He thought of going home to tell his sister, yet feared things might change; for a moment he had no plan. Suddenly a young man came out of the house—he was an old friend from Suzhou. The friend saw Xu and asked: “When did you return to the prefecture? Where have you come from this time?” Xu told him the whole story. The youth pointed at the old man and said: “This is my father.” Then he said to his father: “This is the Xu Shangshe I told you about—the one who loves doing good.” The old man was both startled and delighted; he dropped his staff and bowed, invited Xu inside, and entertained him with great warmth. Xu again asked to redeem his niece; father and son both agreed. The youth went in at once, brought the girl out with the contract, and handed them to Xu. The contract bore his uncle’s name—the same as on the paper the monk had held at first. Xu took gold from his sleeve and said: “Half is to redeem my niece; half is a birthday gift for you, sir.” Father and son declined again and again. Xu insisted: “Your agreeing to let me redeem her is already a great favor. If I pay nothing at all, I cannot bear it.” He set the gold on the table and at once took the girl back to his sister; she was overjoyed. Xu also hired a teacher for his nephew; the boy was very bright and could read dozens of lines in a day.

At that time, Shangshe’s mother unexpectedly gained a female companion who stayed with her day and night. Shangshe also saw that his own children were bright and handsome, much to the old people’s delight. His wife, Lady Zhang, was virtuous and gentle and never wore the “look of one who has done a kindness” (the air of someone who has done good and expects gratitude in return—a phrase from the Book of Han, biography of Jia Yi). Shangshe felt greatly reassured. He chose a day and set out again, heading for Suzhou as before. After crossing the river he reached Hangzhou and took the route through Jiaxing. When the boat moored at Xishui Post, he suddenly dreamed that an old and a young scholar came aboard to thank him, saying: “Thanks to you, my wife’s chastity was preserved and our children were given a future. We father and son have already reported this to the Emperor of Heaven, who will grant you high rank in the examinations and noble sons. You should return to Hangzhou as soon as possible to sit the provincial exam. The heavenly list is already fixed: you are to place first as jieyuan (provincial graduate with highest honors). There is no need to go on to Suzhou.”

Shangshe smiled and said, “To pass the provincial exam one must be able to write eight-legged examination essays. I have never in my life known what such essays are—how could I pass?”

The old man said, “That is not difficult. Tomorrow at noon, moor your boat here. A man selling old books will come; buy all his stock. Among them will be two volumes of chuangke drafts—collected compositions someone wrote over a lifetime—with every topic for this year’s poetry and prose papers already complete. You need not fear handing in a blank scroll” (“yebai” originally meant submitting an empty examination sheet; it appears in sources such as the New Book of Tang, biography of Zhang Shuang, and later often meant being unable to write at all in the exam hall).

When he woke, he found the dream strange.

At dawn, just as he was about to cast off the moorings and set sail, a sudden gale blew up and the boat could not move. Restless and bored, he stood at the bow and idly looked about. Around Shen hour (mid-afternoon), someone did come with a dozen or so old books to sell. Remembering last night’s dream, he bought them for a hundred cash and found, as promised, two copied volumes. As he leafed through them, they looked like one of those anthologies of fashionable examination essays. At the end there was one fascicle made up entirely of five-character regulated poems. He thought: “If the dream is coming true, I ought to copy out the topics from the supplementary (luyi) examination first—maybe I should turn the boat back toward Hangzhou.” Then he laughed at himself: “When has a scholar ever really passed the exams? People will only mock me.” Besides, the provincial examination runs several sessions; you need classical exegesis (jingyi) and policy treatises (celun) as well. These two books might not hold enough to carry him through the final session. So he decided to wait until the wind dropped before leaving.

Hardly had he settled on that when he felt suddenly weary and dozed off in his seat without removing hat or coat. In the dream the two scholars appeared again and said: “Why doubt so much? If you fear you cannot write the jingyi and celun, at the old junk shop west of the relay station there are two bundles of books. The first bundle on the east side is jingyi; the third and fourth bundles on the west side are celun. This year’s topics are all there—the celun topics from the luyi list too. Go buy them quickly; do not hold yourself back!” The younger one clapped him on the shoulder and said: “Do not cheat yourself. Next year’s metropolitan examination topics are all in these books!” When he woke, the matter seemed stranger still. He went west of the relay station as they had said and indeed bought the jingyi and celun volumes they had named.

After he brought the books home, he grew even more suspicious and could not make up his mind. It was the seventh month, the heat was fierce, and he could not sleep. He leafed through what he had just bought and came to a volume called Jiyu Guobao Lu (Records of Karmic Retribution in the Examination Enclosure—jiyu refers to the imperial examination hall; see the note on “Zhou Yunxiu” earlier in this book). It told of someone who handed in a blank paper and still passed. His heart stirred: “If things really go as in the dream, could I end up like that?” But he still did not dare believe it. Only when he was utterly exhausted did he fall asleep—and once asleep, the two scholars appeared again and threatened him: “If you still won’t believe, we’ll summon your father.” Before they finished speaking, his father was there. He stepped forward to pay respects, but his father glared and said: “The netherworld holds the examination degree above all else. I resent that in life I never taught you to read; now, by our father-and-son working together (qiao names the father, zi the son—the pair stands for father and son), Heaven has granted you a degree. A ready-made juren or jinshi lies before you—what does this unfilial son think he is doing?” Terrified, he answered: “Your son will go back to Hangzhou at once and drop every other thought.” His father said: “That is right.” He pointed at the old man and said: “This is your younger sister’s father-in-law; the younger man is her husband.” Only then did he understand. He wanted to say more, but his father said again: “Sit the examination properly, so your father-in-law may receive an official patent of honor and shine even in the ninefold depths (quanrang—the underworld, the yellow springs).” With a push of the hand, he woke.

At dawn he ordered the boatman to change course for Hangzhou and took lodging by West Lake.

At daybreak he had the boatman change course back to Hangzhou, found lodging by West Lake, and again relied on Mendou (a spirit-like helper said in the text to assist in drafting essays) to finish his compositions.

Within a few days he had filled in all the topics he had missed before. He entered the examination hall with his prepared pieces and found the questions matched one for one. After fair copying and submission he ranked very high. Through all three sessions he had every topic ready in advance. When the exams ended he still stayed at his lodgings waiting for the results. As expected he passed; he attended the celebratory banquet, then went home.

When he arrived home, his wife was in a heated quarrel with the baozi (the messenger who delivers news of success in the exams). His wife said: “My husband is serving as a local clerk in Suzhou—how could he have taken the prefectural exam in Hangzhou? What kind of swindler are you, trying to cheat people out of money?” The messenger retorted loudly: “I saw your household’s new graduate with my own eyes pinning the flower and attending the banquet in the Hall of Impartiality. Now you talk like this—are you trying to welsh on the messenger’s fee?” Just as they were arguing, Scholar Xu suddenly walked in. The messenger exclaimed at once: “Isn’t this the new jinshi himself?” Zhang saw him and asked: “Why have you come back so suddenly?” Xu smiled and said: “Pay the messenger properly first; then I’ll tell you everything.” He took out gold and generously rewarded the messenger. Inside he bowed to his mother, and the family was reunited.

The scholar told the whole story of how he sat for the exams and passed, from beginning to end. He also described to his sister in detail the appearance of the older and younger scholars; his sister wept and said: “It really was Weng Ruofu.” Zhang also said: “Do you see how close the Way of Heaven can be?” Xu asked what she meant, and his sister said… (the text breaks off here)

This passage from Zuohua Zhiguo (Records of Sitting Among Flowers and Bearing Fruit) continues the story of a scholar surnamed Xu, who had met his deceased sister and brother-in-law in the underworld. In plain language:

The scholar gave a full account of why he had gone to the examinations in those years and how he passed and became a juren (provincial graduate). He also described to his sister in detail the appearance of an old man and a young man he had seen in the underworld. His sister wept and said, “Those are indeed Father and my husband (the two people you described).” Zhang (his sister) also said to him, “Do you know how swiftly retribution from the Way of Heaven can come?” Xu asked what had happened. His sister said: Their beast of an uncle (the wicked uncle), after Xu left home, used the excuse of continuing the ancestral line to come to the door and try to seize the children, causing repeated quarrels and trouble. One day the wicked uncle and his wife came together; before they had even entered, thunder and lightning suddenly struck. The two were dragged to the center of the street, forced to kneel face to face, their bodies charred black like coal, and they died on the spot. Xu also marveled at how strange this was and asked what had become of the house. Everyone said they did not know.

The next day Xu went to see the county magistrate, told him in detail of his sister’s chastity and widowhood, and of how the wicked uncle had encroached on and sold off family property, and asked for help in sorting out the estate. The magistrate agreed. At that time several dozen mu of fields and the dwelling still remained, but were occupied by clansmen; after official review, all were adjudicated back to the Xu family. The following year Xu went again to the capital for the metropolitan examination and passed in succession, and was appointed magistrate of a county. Zhang (his sister) later bore five sons in a row, all of whom passed the examinations and gained official rank. Her nephew, when he reached the age of weak guan (twenty), also passed in succession and became a jinshi (presented scholar). (The allusion is to Kongzi Jiayu [Sayings of the Master’s House]: Shang Qu had no son at forty; Confucius told him not to worry, and he later had five sons.) The two families intermarried for generations without break, and to this day remain a leading clan of Shanyin.

Note: In the text, “Weng and Ruo Fu” refer to the old and young scholars Xu described to his sister; she recognized them as her deceased husband and related kin. “Beast uncle” is the uncle who coveted the estate and bullied the widowed sister-in-law. “Lian jie” at the end means passing the provincial and metropolitan examinations in succession. “Shanyin” is the area of present-day Shaoxing in Zhejiang. A stretch in the original was mixed with footnotes and repetition; the translation above follows the main narrative thread and merges those parts.

Comment by the Master of Sitting Among Flowers

The Master of Sitting Among Flowers said: To expect someone who cannot read or write to go into the examination hall and compete in the civil service exams, hoping to see his name on the golden list—by ordinary reasoning that is impossible. Yet in the world such things do happen. Is it not only those who “do good beyond what custom demands” who receive reward where they never thought to look? Again: a good wife who does not give way to jealousy may in the end bear a son; a chaste and steadfast mother may also receive imperial commendation (a Phoenix Edict). Yet a husband and wife whose hearts are like beasts may in the end be struck dead by lightning together, their corpses lying side by side on the public road, to display virtue and punish evil—which is itself in accord with Heaven’s principle. As for that old monk who “preserved a line of descendants yet refused to accept gold,” his attainment stands even higher.

Poetic Praise

Tao Shun

As a servant you ought to have cared for your master’s house—how could you steal into illicit love and ruin both your reputations?

You did wrong and still would not repent, and instead framed a beggar as a thief; how could the netherworld tribunal tolerate such cunning?

Tao Shun

Tao Shun was a servant of the author’s maternal grand-uncle, Lord Yao Wenxi. When Lord Wenxi held office in the capital, the author’s maternal great-grandfather remained at home and put Tao Shun in charge of the gate (as gatekeeper). Tao Shun had an affair with a maidservant and often stole his master’s belongings to exchange for money to give her. A quilt went missing from the fourth uncle’s study—it was Tao Shun who had taken it. That study was near the side gate used for everyday coming and going. By chance a beggar came to the outer gate to ask for food, and Tao Shun at once accused him of the theft. The beggar denied it; Tao Shun immediately called a crowd of servants to surround him and beat him, and only let him go after he was seriously injured. The beggar died within a few days of leaving.

(Note: The supplied original text appears to repeat or omit characters at “Tao Shun and a…”; the account above follows the usual version of the story: Tao Shun’s affair with the maid, framing the beggar, and the beggar’s death from the beating.)

One: Madness Demanding Underworld Funds

Before long, Wen Xigong took up the post of provincial education commissioner in Guangdong, brought his elderly father to live with him, and Shun went along. After a few months, Shun suddenly broke out in measles and fell into violent madness. It was the depth of winter, yet he danced naked in the courtyard. Strong men carried him to bed; the moment they let go, he jumped up again, knelt, and spoke as if possessed: “I am the Chenghuang of Cheng and An counties. Because I stole from my master and then falsely accused a beggar and beat him to death, they are now summoning me for joint trial.” Then he cried “Strike the mouth!” and slapped his own face left and right dozens of times; he cried “Strike the legs!” and lay face down on the bed, pounding himself—no one could count the blows. His hips and buttocks turned blue and purple, as if he had been beaten with clubs. After several days of this he died screaming. As death approached, he asked his attendants for silver. They offered the silver pouch from his pillow; he shook his head and said that was not it. They then showed him paper money meant for the underworld, and only then did he look pleased. It was burned at the foot of the bed; Shun waved toward the air and said, “You may take it—do not think it too little.” From this one can indeed see that the custom of burning paper money for the dead is not entirely groundless talk.

Two-Five: Lightning Strikes the Thieving Boatman

On the river he gave free rein to robbery in his heart, with the result that the great rudder crushed the boat and it sank—a thing that pierces the heart with grief. The next night, his accomplices were all struck dead by heavenly thunder. Do not say there are no spirits; spirits there are.

On the boat there was a sailor surnamed so-and-so, given name Jia. He had long been devoted to the Three Officials Great Emperors (Sanguan Dadi) in popular Daoism; whenever they were not in battle or going into action, day and night he knelt in the hold at the bow of the ship, ceaselessly reciting the Three Officials Scripture (Sanguan jing).

When someone heard of this, they felt very uneasy and said: “Practicing like this will sooner or later bring obvious retribution—but we share the same boat with him; what can we do?”

The group surnamed Li on the same vessel, by contrast, all mocked and ridiculed him.

On the second day, Li went aboard another boat to visit a friend. He was suddenly struck by a fierce headache and urgently called for the ferry to take him back. When the boat reached mid-river, the oars abruptly stopped and would not drive the craft forward. Li asked why. The boatman pointed at Li’s own boat and said, “Don’t you see a thunder god standing at the bow, glaring in anger?” Li flew into a rage, cursed this as wicked talk, and even struck the boatman with the flat of his knife. The boatman had no choice but to row to shore. The moment Li stepped back onto his own boat, a thunderbolt crashed down and killed him on the spot.

Those who had been on the boat with him had earlier seen the lightning strike from the bow and had hidden in the stern. The thunder rolled again and split the vessel in two: the after half sank together with the people in it; the forward half still floated on the water. At the time there was a man surnamed a certain name, the eldest of his brothers, who had been reciting scriptures in the hold of the forward section. He heard thunder after thunder, came out to look, saw Li already dead, the boat reduced to half a hull, and not one of his fellow passengers in sight. His soul nearly left him; he grabbed his luggage and cried for help. Someone came in a small boat to ferry him off, but the oars had not moved ten feet when the thunder sounded again and the forward half sank at once.

The five men who had not joined in the plot were picked up by the thunder lords and set down on the sandy shore on the opposite bank. Only after a long while did they wake. When asked what had happened, they said: “When the thunder struck Li, we hid along with the others. In a daze we saw a golden-armored spirit carrying people away, as in a dream—we had no idea how we came to be on the far shore.”

(Note: The original text has repetition and miscopied characters in places; the gist is that wrongdoing invites thunder to wreck the boat, while the innocent who did not share in the evil scheme were instead protected and brought safely to land.)

Twenty-sixth tale · The soldier who dug up graves (a separate story from the passage above)

Soldiers ought to keep the law—how can they rob tombs and open graves! If you expose bones from an opened coffin and think no one sees, thunder strikes you on the road and the crime proves itself.

In the summer of the bingchen year, outside the north gate of Danyang County, five soldiers were walking together under the blazing sun. Suddenly thunder crashed; three of them were struck dead on the spot, while the other two came through completely unharmed. When people asked the survivors what the three had usually done day to day, the two answered uneasily: “Only now do we truly grasp how fearsome thunder can be. Wherever the army took them, those three made a living by digging up graves and robbing tombs, never imagining that such acts would provoke Heaven.”

The Master of Sitting Among Flowers sighs and says: Alas! Ever since the southern rebels rose in arms—such as the Taiping Rebellion and other turmoil in the south—armies in red scarves filled the land, and naked blades seemed to pierce the sky itself. Plunder was as casual as reaching into someone else’s pocket and helping oneself (“rang” means to seize; “tan nang,” to probe the purse, is to thrust a hand into a bag and take what is inside—as Li Gu said in the History of the Five Dynasties: if China made me its prime minister, taking the Central Plains would be as easy as pulling something from a pouch). Human lives were held as cheap as grass mowed down (“yi” means to cut). Were company captains (bazong) and platoon leaders (qianzong) and the like ever in short supply? (“Bian” denotes lower camp officers such as qianzong and bazong.)

They leaned on their commanders’ prestige (“Fubo” and “Henghai” are the Han-era titles of Generals Ma Yuan and Han Yue, here standing for officers who lead troops). In the deep of night (“dou zhuan shen heng”—the Dipper has turned and Shen stands athwart the sky—comes from an old poem and marks the hour after midnight), the weak became meat for the strong (as in Han Yu’s Preface to Sending Off the Buddhist Monk Wenchang). Who could bring them to justice? And aboard a single boat, who was good and who was evil—who could sort them out and reward the worthy while censuring the vile (“zhangshan diane”)? When thunder struck, Jing and Wei parted at once (the Jing runs clear and the Wei turbid—here a figure for good and evil suddenly divided). Those who shared in the same wickedness perished together, and the innocent were caught up as well (“wang ji” means harm that ought not to spread, yet did). People still say Heaven is blind and confused (“mengmeng” comes from the Book of Odes and means obscure and unclear). When has Heaven ever truly been confused?

27. Thunder’s Warning Against Unfilial Conduct

A man in Jiangxi made his living herding ducks. His father was very old and a widower (mao: extremely aged; guan: an old man with no wife). Because the father ate at home without contributing labor, the son often abused and humiliated him. One day, while he was cursing freely, a clap of thunder suddenly lifted him and set him kneeling in the courtyard. Neighbors rushed over and saw that his beard, eyebrows, and clothing had all been scorched by lightning; he was dazed—unable to speak or move. Someone in the village could read “thunder writing” and said they should turn a wok over and inspect the bottom of the pot—there would surely be something unusual. They did so and indeed found vermilion seal script, which read the four characters “Thunder warns against unfilial conduct.” The crowd pooled money to set up an altar and hold a Zhaijiao (purification ritual) (ju: pooling funds; jiao: a Daoist altar rite for blessing), and made him kneel before his father. Three days after the rite was completed, he finally spoke again. From then on he changed his ways; the whole neighborhood called him a filial son.

28. Burying the Dead and Receiving Reward

Someone wrapped a corpse in a qushu (a rug or blanket-like covering) and buried it by the roadside. Later, the “marshal in the clear sky” (an official title—here, arrangements in the hidden realm or underworld) seemed to have planned it in advance: people came to understand that success in the civil examinations depends on yin virtue (hidden, unseen merit), and the essays at the top of the palace examination list are not necessarily the best.

Marshal Xiao Chunzao’s honored ancestor, Elder Feng, who held the third rank, once served as jail warden of Yichang Prefecture in Hubei. At the time the White Lotus teaching (a popular religious movement in the Ming–Qing era, often involved in uprisings) was ravaging the province, he once did something connected with burying the dead—seeing a corpse by the road, he wrapped it in a qushu and buried it. Later, men of his family rose in the examinations and achieved distinction; everyone attributed it to that act of yin virtue. Thus one learns that official success does not rest on literary skill alone, but also on such hidden deeds.

In this passage from Zuohua Zhiguo, Xiao Chun, honored as a third-rank Fengweng (literally “Sealed Elder”) and commonly called Sima, had served as prison warden (siyu) in Yichang Prefecture, Hubei. When the White Lotus uprising ravaged the Chu region—“rulin” here means trampled and laid waste—the alarm reached Yichang as well. The elder vowed to die at his post. He kept only one old servant and sent Sima north to the capital to stay with his elder brother, a clerk (yuan) in a ministry office. War and banditry filled the roads; corpses lay everywhere. Once they came upon a naked body stretched across the path. Sima was moved to pity and had the servant bury the dead man by the roadside, tearing off the red wool rug (hong quyu, a heavy carpet; quyu is glossed elsewhere in this book, in the “Forged Books” chapter) from his own seat to wrap the corpse.

At the metropolitan examination (hui shi) in the xinyou year, an examiner in the same grading session (tong fang) took Sima’s paper and at first meant to fail it. Then he was suddenly struck by pain and pity (the original reads hu shang mao, which may mean the grader was overcome with compassion when recalling the past; in such karmic tales the earlier act of burying the body and covering it with the rug is often tied to what happens in the examination hall). Sima was admitted after all—the good deed on the road and his fate in the civil service examination are linked, as they often are in stories of this kind.

Plain-Language Reading of Notes on Sitting Among Flowers and Observing Karma

During the xinyou year metropolitan examination, an examiner in one examination hall received a paper from a candidate surnamed Sima. He found it unsatisfactory and meant to reject it.

Suddenly he saw something standing upright before his desk, crimson all over, yet he could not make out face, hands, or feet. Greatly alarmed, he suspected a connection with the paper he was about to discard; he took the paper up again, still judged it poor, and decided to reject it once more. The figure appeared before the desk again. Three times he rejected the paper; three times it appeared. The examiner had no choice but to submit the paper to the chief examiner, who sharply rebuked him. The examiner kept silent and offered no defense.

That night the chief examiner also repeatedly saw a crimson human shape moving back and forth beside the desk. The next day he told others. Someone who knew about the rejected paper informed the chief examiner; the chief examiner nodded, understanding. At night he again saw the crimson figure standing straight before the desk. The chief examiner tentatively took that paper out again to read it—the figure vanished. When he put it back among the rejected papers, the figure stood there as before. With no alternative, he placed that candidate at the bottom of the pass list (reluctantly allowing Sima to pass, with a very low rank). After the list was published, the examiner questioned Sima, who was bewildered and could not answer. Returning home, Sima asked a servant, who said: “Could it be the corpse your master once buried by the roadside?” Sima asked: “Why was it all red?” The servant replied: “Your master tore off the red wool carpet he had been sitting on to wrap the body—have you forgotten?” Sima then suddenly understood.

Later Sima was selected in the great “tiao” (appointment of failed metropolitan candidates as county magistrates), served in Jiangsu, and was known as “Clear Sky Xiao” (as upright as Judge Bao). He rose to vice prefect of Suzhou Prefecture.

The Host Who Sits Among Flowers notes: In spring a certain Magistrate Sima had been county magistrate of Nanhui, governing to benefit the people. After his death his family remained in the area. In the jiayin year autumn the locality suffered bandit turmoil; the city fell. Many bandits were locals; they had agreed among themselves not to harm Clear Sky Xiao’s household. The next day they prepared boats and oars, escorted the whole family and their property out of the region, and bowed in respect as they left. Though one says “even thieves have their code” (in the Zhuangzi, Robber Zhi asks: do robbers too have rules?), it is enough to show how a incorruptible official can be moving, awe-inspiring, and worth passing down in memory.

Brief background notes:

• Within the examination enclosure: inside the examination compound.
• Grand secretary: here, the hall examiner.
• Chief examiner: the presiding examiner.
• Great “tiao”: Qing selection of failed metropolitan candidates as county magistrates and the like.
• The whole account links rejecting a paper—the red apparition—burying a corpse—the red carpet in a chain of cause and effect, and shows how Clear Sky Xiao was still revered by locals (even bandits) after death.

On the Grass-Cutter of Western Shaanxi

First, four lines to set the scene: they took the gate grass-cutter for a real ghost—hard to tell sham from substance—yet he felt guilty inside while still bragging he would wrestle a ghost to show his nerve; in the end it was only a prank, good for nothing, and it left room for the retribution of “wronged souls demanding life for life.”

In the Shaanxi region there was a scholar who studied the legal arts of Shen Buhai and Han Fei—the craft of citing precedents, running prisons, and passing sentence. In his youth he had once wrongly condemned a man to death by misapplying a precedent. From then on he lived in constant fear; whenever he spoke of the matter with others, he worried he could not escape retribution in the underworld.

Later he took a post in a certain county. Several colleagues were fond of ghost stories. This scholar often boasted of his courage, saying that even if a vicious ghost appeared, he would grapple with it himself. His colleagues wanted a way to test his nerve.

An official banquet was due. Before the feast, several colleagues went with him to a post station outside the city. They saw no one else there—only in the stable yard a gate grass-cutter (a hired hand at the post who cut fodder and did odd jobs): thin face, dark complexion, tall and gaunt, with a grim look like a ghost. They whispered among themselves: “This fellow is perfect to try Student So-and-so.” So they told the grass-cutter: “Tomorrow we will have someone bring you inside and hide you under the bed; when So-and-so is fast asleep, you crawl out quietly and lift the bed curtain to frighten him—can you do it?” He said, “I can.” They added, “If you can, we will reward you handsomely.” His face at once showed great delight.

Notes (terms already glossed in the text):

• Western Shaanxi (Shaan you): the Shaanxi region.
• Shen–Han arts (Shen Han shu): Legalist “names and punishments” and case law in the tradition of Shen Buhai and Han Fei.
• Gate grass-cutter (zha cao fu): a fodder-cutting hand at a post station; later the colleagues deliberately use him to play ghost and test courage.
• Official banquet (gong yan): a feast held by officials.
• Post station (yi): a relay stop for officials and post horses to rest and change mounts.

(There is a duplicated, miscopied stretch in your pasted text; the sense is the same as above: colleagues explain the plan to the grass-cutter, agree he will lie under the bed, scare the sleeper by lifting the curtain, and receive a rich reward if he succeeds.)

The next day, when the banquet ended, it was already the second watch of the night. Yan Beiyi went back to his room and lay down to sleep. The others hid beneath the window and watched in secret. Before long they saw someone crawl out from under the bed. He did not lift the bed curtain at once, but beat his chest and stamped his feet—both ways of striking the chest—with a ghostly chill about him. The watchers grew more suspicious. Suddenly the man squatted on a writing desk, drew a corner of a document from his robe, its vermilion endorsements and black ink glaringly bright, and leered sidelong at the sleeper and laughed—“ni” means to look askance. Their doubts deepened. The man leaped up, rushed straight at the bed, threw aside the curtain, and shouted. In the distance they saw Yan Beiyi also throw back the curtain and step out; the two faced each other for a long time. The man swung his arm and closed in; Yan Beiyi screamed wildly and fell. The others cried out in alarm, broke in the door to save him, but Yan Beiyi was already dead. They searched everywhere for that man and found no trace. When they asked at the post station, no such person had ever been there. Only then did they realize that a wronged ghost had seized the moment to take his life.

Master Zuohua recorded this affair and said with feeling: “Those in the world who wield the name-and-law techniques of Shen Buhai and Han Fei to serve others—can they afford not to be cautious? Even so, in a case like Student So-and-so’s, it was only because he was young and his learning not yet mature that he happened to err when applying the law by analogy; yet as the years stretched on, a grim retribution still fell upon his head. Those who hold the power of life and death in their hands and see nothing but bribes—as soon as the money is in hand, right and wrong are instantly reversed: men who ought to be punished are set free, and the wronged dead find no peace; those who should go free are framed into crimes, and the innocent are slaughtered. If magistrates and legal secretaries are such men, what sort of retribution will they meet in the end?”

30. A Certain Man of Keqiao

In Keqiao Town, Kuaiji, a certain Mr. Jia was gravely ill and near death. He entrusted his young son and his daughter-in-law, who was keeping widowhood, to his younger brother, Mr. Yi, saying: “After I die, you, my brother, are still unmarried; the continuation of our line will depend on this child. I beg you to raise him well, see him grow to adulthood, and carry on the family—then though I die, my name will not be lost in vain.” With that he took his brother’s hand and passed away.

Mr. Yi treated his nephew as if he were his own son; at first he was very kind to him, and the neighborhood praised him. The boy was still small; his sister-in-law had already reached jiji (the age when a girl may pin up her hair and is considered grown).

A man surnamed Yi took his nephew in and raised him as his own son. At first he looked after the boy carefully, and neighbors praised him. The “son” was still young, but the daughter-in-law was already grown (in ancient custom a woman came of age at twenty with the hair-pinning rite). The household was poor and the house small; several people lived crowded together morning and night. Before long, Yi forgot the old warning to “hold to the right path until the end,” and in one stroke he did something as shameful as Duke Xuan of Wei’s “New Terrace” affair—the father-in-law seized his daughter-in-law, and the evil name spread everywhere. Those who had praised him now turned to mockery and curses.

A few years later the son was grown, yet Yi still had his daughter-in-law attend him in bed every night while making the son sleep on the floor. The son often wept secretly all night but did not dare make a sound.

At the winter solstice, Yi remembered that his elder brother’s coffin was temporarily resting in the fields, the thatch on top rotted and no longer keeping off wind and rain, so he wove a mat of straw to replace it. He had just reached the bier when a black dog suddenly darted out from behind the coffin and bit his leg. Yi screamed and collapsed; those with him carried him home. As soon as he entered the house, he spoke in his brother’s (Jia’s) voice, denouncing Yi for failing his elder brother and violating his daughter-in-law. Then he slapped his own face left and right until both cheeks swelled, and tore at his own lower body with his hands until bits of flesh fell away, saying as he did so, “I am ridding our ancestors of this shameless creature.” He cried “Serves him right!” again and again, and died that way.

31. Dongyue Temple at An’gang (three accounts)

The Eastern Peak, Mount Tai, belongs to the old land of Qi, yet village shrines to the Dongyue deity can be just as responsive. Stories heard from An’gang in Dantu, Jiangsu, are such that several people seem to wake suddenly from a spring dream and only then see clearly what is good and what is evil.

In Angang Town, Dantu County, people once cried out “So happy!” one after another and died on the spot.

Angang Dongyue Temple (excerpt)

Folk belief holds that the Great Emperor of the Eastern Peak of Mount Tai presides over the underworld; Dongyue temples everywhere often enshrine him as a traveling deity. Angang Town also had a Dongyue traveling palace where incense was strong and prayers were said to be often answered. What follows is an old story still told in the Angang area.

In a neighboring village an unfilial son’s mother brought him before the xunsi (a Ming–Qing local office for arrest and petty cases) on a charge of disobedience. The son was held while the case dragged on. The daughter-in-law wept and pleaded daily before her mother-in-law; the old woman relented, scraped together twenty foreign silver dollars (modern silver yuan), and gave them to a man surnamed Zhao in Angang Town to grease palms at the xunsi and get her son released.

Zhao kept most of the money and only offered five dollars to the office. The magistrate was furious, returned the bribe, and threatened to send the man up to the county for severe punishment as unfilial. Zhao came out and deceived (“dài” means to cheat) the family, saying the magistrate was greedy and unless they quickly raised forty dollars the case would go to the county. The mother-in-law, afraid, prepared to sell off property (“yù chǎn” means to sell fields and assets) to raise the sum.

Then word spread that the daughter-in-law would hang herself. The xunsi, fearing a death on their hands, released the son from county custody. When the daughter-in-law heard he was free, she actually hanged herself.

Some days later Zhao was napping by day when he suddenly leapt up, ran straight into the Dongyue Temple, and shouted all the way: “I should not have kept fifteen silver dollars belonging to so-and-so’s family— it left the case unsettled and caused that woman to die horribly. Now she has complained before the Yue Di (the Great Emperor of the Eastern Peak), who is summoning me to answer; I’m afraid I won’t live!”

Inside the temple he wailed under the desk, as if being beaten with sticks; then he went quiet. People looked: overlapping cane marks on both thighs, barely a breath left. They carried him home; he died the next day.

The short poem at the opening means roughly: Mount Tai’s sacred peak was originally in Qi’s Qingzhou, yet the Eastern Peak god enshrined in market towns is equally efficacious; hearing these karmic tales from Angang is like waking someone from a spring dream in an instant.

In a certain household there lived a young man who contracted consumption. Someone said that a remedy made with a cat’s afterbirth could cure it, so the family bought one as instructed, compounded it with medicine, and gave it to the patient, who did indeed recover.

Several months later, the patient suddenly saw two men in blue robes arrive with summons to escort his soul, saying the cat had brought a complaint against him. One stayed to watch over the body while the other led him away. They came to an office of justice, its halls lofty and bright. The Lord of Mount Tai (Dongyue Dadi), who in popular belief oversees affairs of the netherworld, sat facing south in full regalia, with a stern guard of honor. A cat crouched beneath the desk and spoke in human language, accusing them: its afterbirth had been taken and used, and it had died wrongfully. The patient pleaded that his family had done it and that he had known nothing beforehand. The Lord ordered him beaten twenty times on the face as a light punishment, then said: “I release you for now. Go quickly and ask the Daoist priest at such-and-such a temple to perform deliverance for that cat, so it may be reborn in the human path and no karmic debt carry over into the next life.” The man kowtowed in thanks; the men in blue led him back again. When he woke, both cheeks were badly swollen. He at once had his family send for that priest to conduct a Zhaijiao (purification ritual) for the cat’s salvation. The priest asked a high fee; the family was too poor to pay, so they had to put it off, though unease stayed with them.

One day he was chatting and laughing with his family when he suddenly stared wide-eyed and cried out wildly: “The men in blue are here again!” Then he fell into a long faint, yet from his mouth came speech in the voice of the men in blue… (The rest is not recorded.)

One day, while this man was chatting and laughing with his family, he suddenly stared wide-eyed and cried out wildly: “The person in blue robes has come again!” Then he fell unconscious once more. After a long while, he spoke in that person’s voice: “By order of the Heavenly Emperor I have traveled a great distance; now I stay here to guard your house for you—can you not even spare me a cup of plain tea? If I leave, the building will collapse—how will you ever return to the human world?” He looked as if he were grinding his teeth in rage. The family hurried to serve tea; he drank more than ten cups in a row. Neighbors heard of it and came one after another to ask about relatives in the netherworld; he answered each question, and nothing failed to match what they knew. After about a day and a night, again in the blue-robed one’s voice he said: “Your people have come back!” The words had barely left his mouth when he collapsed; in a moment he woke, his mind clear as before. Asked what had happened, he said he had gone to the same place as before. The Yue Emperor rebuked him for breaking his promise. Though the scolding was fierce, he was not beaten; he was only ordered to return quickly to the human world and have deliverance rites performed for him. The family did their utmost to comply, and after that there was never another word.

On the Angang stretch of the river lived an old giant softshell turtle that led its kind to settle there; their numbers multiplied greatly. Fishermen along the river once caught a turtle as large as a washbasin and presented it to a Zhao household, rich in property. Zhao found the meat delicious and paid a high price. The fishermen were delighted and redoubled their efforts to catch turtles; whenever they caught one they gave it to the Zhao family and often went home with heavy profit—until in time it became a fixed custom.

More than a year later, Zhao suddenly dreamed that he had arrived at the Temple of the Eastern Peak (Dongyue miao), where he stood trial in court against another party (duibu—facing charges in court; see the tale “The Ox-Headed Man” for this motif). The other had a pointed head and a fat body and called himself “the Old Softshell of the River” (an old turtle from the river). The Old Softshell accused Zhao of slaughtering its descendants to satisfy his appetite. The Great Emperor of the Eastern Peak (Dongyue Dadi) questioned Zhao; Zhao confessed the whole story of how the fisherman had presented the turtle. The Emperor therefore rebuked him: “The Old Softshell has lived in its burrow here for many years (ku—a den or cave) and has never harmed travelers. What does a fisherman know? You come from a family long blessed with wealth (sufeng zhijia—a household of established prosperity); you did not know how to release life and cherish merit, but indulged the appetite of taotie (taotie—gluttony; in ancient books the son of Jinyun was called Taotie for greed in food and goods)—slaughtering many living beings. The laws of the underworld cannot treat you leniently.” Zhao begged to reform and vowed: “If I am released, I will abstain from killing and practice release of life; oxen, dogs, and anything uncommon I will never eat again, to atone for my past wrongs.” After repeated pleading he was entered in the registers, given a number of strokes of the rod to appease the Old Softshell’s anger. When the beating was done, he was instructed: “A single thought of goodness wins blessing from ghosts and spirits; if you truly abstain from killing, release life, and forever forbid ox and dog, you will receive good retribution. If you indulge yourself as before (zisi—acting without restraint), you will not be forgiven again.” Then ghost attendants led him out.

(Continuation of Zhao Weng’s account)

After Zhao Weng came to, both his legs were bruised purple and swollen; the pain lasted several days, and he could only rise with the help of crutches. He did not conceal what had happened and told the whole story from start to finish, urging others to abstain from killing. He also had his entire household stop eating turtles, alligators, tortoises, soft-shelled turtles, and animals such as cattle, horses, donkeys, and dogs; he even spent money freely to buy live creatures and set them free. Within a few years the family grew steadily richer and became the most prosperous in the whole township.

32. Prefect Cai

With one written reply filled in by his own hand, he made good three thousand on another’s account;

Now one can truly believe in rebirth—he came again in court robes, renewing a bond from a former life.

During Mr. Cai Xia’s tenure as provincial administrative commissioner in Shaanxi, one of his subordinate county magistrates, worn down by age and illness, applied to retire. It then came to light that while still in office this magistrate had misappropriated three thousand taels of silver from the public treasury—a fact exposed by his successor.

At that time the law was extremely strict: anyone who diverted more than a few hundred taels of public funds faced confiscation of the family’s property and imprisonment while being compelled to make restitution. If he could not pay within the deadline, the penalty was death.

This magistrate had been upright and clean-handed as an official; after returning home in retirement he had almost nothing to his name. He was also proud and reserved, with few friends, and among his colleagues there was no one who could help him in a crisis. Confronted with a harsh impeachment, he could only wait quietly for whatever judgment would come, as if already condemned.

When Cai Gong heard the story, he was moved to pity. The next day he had the county magistrate called into his private room. After sending everyone else out (“ping” means stepping aside and having others withdraw), he said: “As for the three thousand taels of silver you are short, I know you cannot pay it all. Write a discharge petition first; I will see the paperwork through and close the case for you.”

The magistrate was stunned. “I cannot accept that,” he said.

Cai Gong smiled. “I am not joking. I respect your clean, upright character, and because official business has landed you in this fix, I want to use the stipend I am due as ‘integrity-nourishing silver’ to make it up for you. The whole thing cannot be finished in a day, so I thought I would first complete the petition and give it back to you, so you are not stuck living away from home.”

The magistrate had not expected this; he was so grateful he could not find words, and left with a kowtow. The next day he wrote the discharge petition and submitted it. Cai Gong himself filled in the month and day of receipt, affixed the seal (“qian” means to stamp the document), and returned it to him. The magistrate came to the yamen in court dress to thank him, kowtowed, and said loudly: “You have given me a second life, sir. I am old now and cannot repay you in this life; when I die I only ask to be born into your family, to repay your great kindness.” He then took leave and went home.

More than ten years later, Cai Gong too resigned and returned home. One day, as he was writing in the main hall, he drifted into a daze and suddenly saw a certain magistrate enter in full official dress to pay his respects, exactly as in the yamen years before. Cai Gong was puzzled: this was no longer the Shaanxi provincial office, and that magistrate had long since retired—why would he appear in court robes to bow? Just as he was both alarmed and confused, the magistrate walked straight toward the inner rooms. Cai Gong cried out and woke; soon afterward word came from the inner chambers that a son had been born. Cai Gong said, “This is someone come again—he is sure to revive our house.” They named him Zhenwu, courtesy name Linzhou. Before Zhenwu came of age he ranked first in the county children’s examination; in the bing-shen year he passed the jinshi and entered the Hanlin Academy. As Guangdong surveillance commissioner he won a record of achievement, and later rose to provincial treasurer and to kaifu (governor-general or similar high frontier post)—as if all of this had been settled in the blink of an eye.

Maidservants Killed, Souls Come to Claim a Life

She tortured with clubs and branding irons—her heart was pitiless. Her mother-in-law pleaded again and again, but she would not listen. The two maidservants agreed together to come and claim her life: among the living, people can still make room for one another; among the dead, they would not spare her.

Records in Sitting Among Flowers, Witnessing Fruit relate several incidents of this kind:

The wife of a wealthy man in Hangzhou was by nature extremely arrogant and fierce, and treated her maidservants with great harshness. At the slightest displeasure she would beat them with clubs until their skin split and their bodies were covered in wounds. On one occasion she beat a maidservant to death under the rod. When her mother-in-law heard of it, she scolded her severely, but she still did not repent. Later she went further and even used “paoluo” torture— the kind of cruelty recorded in history books, in which King Zhou of Shang burned victims with red-hot iron implements.

One day a maidservant displeased her. In a rage she thrust the branding iron into a fierce fire until it glowed, stripped the girl naked, and burned her all over her body. The maidservant was scorched to ruin and died screaming.

Within a few days the woman went mad. The two maidservants she had killed in succession possessed her together and said they had come to claim her life. Sometimes she would tear her own hair, sometimes strike her own face; she would prick herself with needles and cut herself with knives, exactly in the ways she had once tormented her maidservants. When her mother-in-law came to see her, she would kneel and cry “Old Mistress,” and say: “I received Old Mistress’s kindness; dead, I dare not forget it.” The mother-in-law urged them not to demand her life and promised to invite eminent monks to perform deliverance rites. Neither maidservant would agree, saying: “If the young mistress had been willing to listen to Old Mistress then, how could we have died in vain? Before Old Mistress we would never be disrespectful. But to let her die slowly—we cannot do that.” From then on, whenever the mother-in-law came, the woman would grow somewhat clear-headed; when she left, the frenzy returned as before, and in the end her life was still claimed.

Thirty-four: The Headless Man

When a case may involve the death penalty (dàbì), it must be tried with thorough care and tight reasoning; even when one’s term is ending and departure is near (the “melon season”), one must not grow flustered or slip into carelessness.

In the autumn of the Bingchen year, troops gathered at Danyang in numbers like clouds. The supreme commander, Lord Xiang Zhongwu, died in camp. The commissioner from Yiyueting came from Changzhou to take charge of military affairs.

Six Guangxi banner guards, on orders from their wing commander, had gone to pay their respects to the commissioner and were on their way back. When they passed Lücheng, the boat they were on vied with a civilian boat for a berth. The six guards, relying on their status, drew their knives, boarded the civilian craft, knocked one person into the water with the flat of a blade, and looted silver and other goods from the boat. Those aboard the civilian boat cried out loudly for help.

At that time the local militia of Lücheng were drilling; crowds still lined both banks of the river—people who had come to welcome the commander had not yet dispersed. Hearing the cries on the water, they rushed to help. The six guards fought back desperately with their knives. The crowd took them for bandits, resisted together, and killed three in the scuffle; the other three were bound. By then the mass was packed and chaotic; clubs and blades fell all at once, and there was no chance to explain or reason. In the end all six were beaten to death. Only two boat hands slipped away and went back to pour out their grievances to the wing commander.

The wing commander was furious. He strictly ordered Danyang County to arrest the “murderers” and deal with them under the law that requires a life for a life—meaning the militiamen were to pay with their own lives for killing the guards.

Note: The line in the title or theme—“A village head can hardly stand comparison with a Sima; pity the lowly life that must be paid for by the noble”—means that a petty local official is no match for someone in a powerful military role, and that those of humble station often bear the cost when the powerful demand satisfaction. That idea fits this episode: civilian boats were bullied by banner guards, yet the wing commander ordered the common militia seized and punished with death in return. It is a story of uneven power and grievances that are hard to redress.

The local official in charge of Danyang at the time was a deputy magistrate (Sima was the title used for deputy officials of the same rank as an assistant prefect or sub-commissioner). He had completed a full year of acting service; under the old custom of handing over office when the melons ripen—a fixed term with a successor already named—his replacement was already in place. Then this grave case erupted. His superiors ordered that he could not surrender his seal and leave until the culprits were caught and the case closed. The deputy magistrate was terrified and posted a large reward for the capture of the criminals. Within twenty days five were seized; only the man named Jin Ade remained at large. The regional military commander insisted on “one life for one life”—not one fewer would do. Ade had an elder brother who served as lizheng of Lücheng (the lizheng was the village head, comparable to the later dibao). Because he was in town escorting important prisoners, they arrested him too and executed him in the market along with the other five.

After the case was closed, the deputy magistrate traveled to the provincial capital to turn over his seal. As soon as he reached his lodging in the capital he fell ill. Everyone in the household saw a headless ghost and a long-haired figure pacing the hall. On the day he died, a maidservant who attended him in his bedchamber came out of the room and saw the bearded man leading the headless ghost straight into the inner chamber. The maid screamed and collapsed. Those keeping watch rushed in at the cry; when she came to, the deputy magistrate was already dead.

The Master Who Sits Among Flowers remarks: When affairs are rushed, common people’s lives hang in the balance. For a local official, the best course is to argue from principle—as the Zuo Commentary has Shu Kuang say: Heaven begat the multitude and set over them rulers and elders to govern and nurture them; the “shepherds” here mean officials at every level from circuit intendant down to county magistrate—and to plead for the people’s lives. If one cannot reach that height, one should still mediate between higher and lower authority, lighten severe punishments where possible, so that the living are not wronged and the dead can accept their fate; that is the next best. To treat the life and death of common people as nothing, currying favor with power while these poor souls have nowhere to appeal, until they are slaughtered side by side in the end—when men are dead yet their hearts do not submit, it is only natural that they become vengeful ghosts who come to collect what is owed.

35. Zhu Ci Ye (Commentary)

“Zhu ci” refers to cases of zhu shu—writing in red ink: when those in power care nothing for the people’s life and death and only fawn on the mighty, common folk have no channel for justice and may end up punished in groups under the law. Though the body dies, resentment does not die with it and may become a li gui (malevolent ghost)—that too follows a natural logic.

35. Red Ink in the Examination Hall

What one does in life is recorded in the unseen; once one enters the xiangshi (provincial civil service examination) enclosure, retribution shows itself plainly.

In the first session of the Zhejiang provincial examination in the Xianfeng xinhai year, a candidate from Yin County had finished copying all three sessions’ drafts in regular and cursive script. Before dawn he sat with eyes closed, resting. In a daze he suddenly cried out loudly: “I was wrong! I know my guilt!” On his examination paper he wrote in large red characters: “Cut off another’s line of heirs—penalty: barred from the provincial exams for ten cycles, and still entered in the register of the childless and alone.” Beside this he wrote four characters: “Fumo Dadi” (Demon-Subduing Great Emperor). At daylight he staggered out of his cubicle to hand in the paper. The receiving official saw red characters still wet on the sheet; they searched his basket and found no red brush. Looking at the man, he was dazed like a fool—they knew a ghost still possessed him. They helped him out of the enclosure and still listed his name on the lan bang (roll of examinees who violated rules). Yao Youqing saw this with his own eyes inside the examination compound.

36. Cranes Dancing in a Dream

The other night you dreamed of a xianhe (immortal crane)—what does it mean? In the broad marketplace it seemed there was affection after all.

Who would have thought the crane would fly away, leaving only empty longing; what you took for a place of “affection” turned into heartbreak instead.

In Hangzhou there lived an elder gentleman of note whose family was very poor, though his looks were strikingly handsome; people called him the “Jade Man” (in the Shishuo Xinyu, Duke Pei’s bearing was so fine that his contemporaries gave him the same nickname). After he passed the provincial examination and became a juren, he took a post as resident tutor with a very wealthy household in Suzhou and lived on their estate.

Later that great family planned a major festive celebration—the sort of joyous occasion that ritual codes such as the Song History’s treatise on rites classifies among jiali, or congratulatory rites: feasts, weddings, banquets, and the like. They spread a lavish table for the guests who came to offer congratulations, and brought out singing girls and musicians in full array.

Plain-Language Reading of Zuohua Zhiguo

There was a celebrated courtesan whose looks and gifts had no equal in her time. One night she dreamed she was in a broad hall, where a crane stood on one leg and danced toward her. Its plumes swayed, its movements light; the whole bird seemed tall, clean, and lovely. Someone beside her said to her, “This is the man you will give your life to.” In the dream she smoothed the crane’s feathers; it spread its wings and flew off, and she woke.

The next day she went to a great house to pour wine and enliven a feast. The bright hall, the lamps, the furnishings—all matched what she had seen in the dream. Most of the leading scholars and gentlemen of Wu were there, yet she could not pick out who the dream had meant. After several rounds, the guests rose and left the table to change. An elder of note had taken off his official robe and wore only a lined jacket; he rested one foot on a chair and stood facing her. He was imposing and striking, with features like a painted portrait—unusually handsome. Someone who had known the courtesan for years teased her: “This is Master So-and-so—do you two suit each other?” She only smiled lightly, but in her heart the dream and the scene aligned; and seeing his composed manner and steady bearing, she felt sure he would rise far. She found a chance to confide in him quietly.

She asked him to her home and offered herself to him. He admired her beauty and saw how earnest she was, and could not coldly refuse. He had just been widowed, and the two pledged to stay together until old age.

The courtesan had saved a considerable sum. Once she gave herself to that promising man—a figure already of standing with a bright official future—she felt she had found a true home and shut her door to other clients. Whatever he wanted, she did her utmost to obtain for him. The next year he went north to the capital for the civil examinations; she gave him a large sum so he could cultivate connections and smooth his path. He passed as jinshi and entered the Hanlin (the Academy of Letters).

When he took leave to return home, his route passed through Suzhou and their bond was deeper than before. They agreed that once he reached Hangzhou and informed his parents, he would formally send betrothal gifts and marry her.

But when he reached his native place, his father (Master Feng) had already betrothed him to another family. The household was strict; the son dared not speak up, and in the end he broke his promise to the courtesan. She waited long without his coming and sent someone to inquire at his home, only then learning he was already married. She wrote to reproach him and offered to become a concubine or even a maid in his wife’s dowry; he did not reply. When his leave ended and he returned to the capital, passing through Suzhou again, he did not dare call on her.

She had long since stopped taking clients. As the years passed and her money ran out, people urged her to return to entertaining and singing; she only sighed and would not agree. In the end she died of grief and illness. When the man heard of her death, whenever he spoke of her to others he would repeat “I failed her, I failed her” again and again—beyond words with shame—and sigh at length.

The story is this: a courtesan left the trade and funded her lover’s examination career; after he became a jinshi, his strict father arranged another marriage and he broke faith. She refused to go back to her old life, grew poor and ill, and died; the faithless man carried guilt for the rest of his life.

Commentary by Master Zuohua (continuing the previous case)

Master Zuohua said: The worthy elder of the previous tale, because he dared not go against his parents, was willing to incur the fault of fickleness and broken faith. Judged by ordinary human feeling, the offense might still be treated with some leniency. Even so—having been captivated by her beauty and having spent the family fortune—when they were intimate, did he not know that strict parents waited at home, yet lightly break his original pledge? She was already willing, in desperation, to accept the role of a secondary wife (xiao xing, “little star,” an allusion to Classic of Poetry, “Lesser Star,” meaning a concubine)—a genuine lowering of herself to follow him—yet he never gave her a single word of consent. Alas, how cruel!

37. Thunder Strikes the Stepmother’s Arm

Only on his deathbed did he see his second wife’s heart; his earnest, tear-soaked instructions still ring in the ear.

How could she poison him while he lay broken with grief? Heaven’s thunder severed her arm—a warning stern and clear.

A certain Mr. A lost his wife in midlife and was left with one son, still young. Unable to endure widowerhood, he heard that a daughter of the family surnamed so-and-so in the same lane was good-looking and took her as his second wife; she bore him two more sons. The woman was secretly vicious and hated the son from the first marriage. Fortunately Mr. A, as head of the household, still held firm authority—the “yang cord” of the family had not slackened—so she did not dare act openly at once. Though in her heart she favored her own children, when Mr. A was present she held and cared for the stepson with a show of devotion even more attentive than toward those she had borne herself.

Within a few years, the man also passed away. On his deathbed he took the hand of his son by his first wife and said to his second wife: “My little property, divided three ways, is still enough for plain living. This child lost his mother young; if you had not raised him, how could he have grown up? I am going now—I ask you to treat him well always and not leave him with no one to rely on.” With that he died, unwilling to let go.

After her husband’s death, the woman suddenly turned malicious. She treated the stepson like a servant and would not let his food and clothing equal her own son’s. Her cruelty—“reed-stuffed coat, black heart toward the stepson”—was as bad as the ancient story of Min Zi Qian’s stepmother. She dreamed that her husband rebuked her sternly, yet she did not repent. The stepson, for his part, was very filial and tried in everything to please his stepmother. When he was older he apprenticed at a money shop; whatever he earned he gave to her, and she hated him all the more.

Earlier passage (struck by lightning and reform)

One day, a woman surnamed Ti was at home steaming New Year rice cakes and called back the eldest son born to her husband’s first wife, intending to give him some. Suddenly a clap of thunder struck. Ti knelt in the courtyard, still holding the cake, and confessed that she had poisoned it to kill her stepson so her own son could take the whole estate alone. Her husband and the first wife had appealed to the gods, and for that she was struck by lightning. When the eldest son heard, he rushed home with his two younger brothers, weeping and praying to Heaven to spare their mother. About an hour later thunder rolled again and broke one of her arms before she could barely stand. From then on she turned over a new leaf and treated all three sons alike.

Case Thirty-Eight: Gu Yunqiao

Commendation:

When all three jade branches of the family tree are broken off, the grief is hard to bear. Turning against one’s own lineage and wronging kin—retribution can go that far. With no one to maintain the ancestral rites, one cannot expect long life or flourishing descendants. To carry on the Gu name, the line of the Cheng clan must not be cut off again.

Main text:

Gu Yunqiao’s father was originally a son of the Cheng family of Liuhe, adopted as heir by the Gu family. By Yunqiao’s generation, the Cheng line had no direct descendants left. Relatives on both sides agreed: Yunqiao had an elder brother, born to the principal wife, who ought to succeed the Gu household and carry on the Gu ancestral rites; Yunqiao, by right of ritual and law, should return to the Cheng lineage. Yunqiao, unwilling to lose his private advantage, refused. The Cheng sacrifices were therefore discontinued.

At the time Yunqiao had three sons, bright enough that one might hope they would marry and establish households. The eldest had passed twenty and was about to take a wife—

(The manuscript after “was about to take a wife” wrongly repeats lines from the previous case—rushing home, praying to Heaven, a broken arm, reforming one’s heart—clearly a copyist’s error. The thunder-and-reform story is translated separately above; the Gu Yunqiao case is translated here only as far as the text allows.)

At that time, Gu Yunqiao had three sons, all bright enough that he hoped they would establish families and careers. When the eldest had just passed his twentieth year and was about to marry, he suddenly fell ill. During the illness he saw several men and women demanding sacrificial offerings from him, and he then became deranged. He would often call out to Yunqiao and rebuke him for turning against his own lineage and forgetting his ancestors. Those who saw this knew that ghosts of the Cheng clan were at work; everyone urged Yunqiao to marry his eldest son to a Cheng woman and bring the Cheng bloodline back into the family, but he still refused, and the eldest son could not be saved in the end. Yunqiao then arranged marriages for his second and third sons. Within a year both sons died one after another. Yunqiao had each of the two widowed daughters-in-law remarry and each bore a grandson; before long one of those grandsons also died young. Yunqiao himself soon followed them. Now only one grandson remains, still young, yet already spitting blood from illness. Whether this thread of descendants can continue, and whether spirits will secretly lend aid, cannot be known. (“Xiang” here means to assist.)

The Master of Sitting Flowers says (on Gu Yunqiao’s case):

The Master of Sitting Flowers said: “I met Gu Yunqiao only once. I heard he was very simple and cautious in character, yet because of a single wrong thought he suffered calamity in the realm below (‘li’ is read li or luo and means to encounter; ‘dong’ is read tong and means pain; jiuchuan refers to the underworld—here it means the disaster of having no heirs)! How can descendants see profit and forget righteousness?”

39. Word-of-Mouth Retribution

Two rounds of feud must not grip each other forever; within a few years retribution can be strange indeed.

Heed the inner chamber’s words and the household must empty—can a hen truly announce the dawn?

A gentleman of a prominent clan traveled to the capital to await an official appointment. He set out from the Jiangxi region with his wife, children, and elderly mother and reached Yangzhou. A kinsman of the same clan was serving as Deputy Commissioner for Salt Supervision in the Southern Circuit, so he left his family at that relative’s yamen while he went on to the capital alone. Before any appointment was granted, he fell ill and died at his lodging in the capital.

By then his mother was very advanced in years, his wife was close to delivery and in frail health. When word of the death reached Yangzhou, the kinsman (a sima) planned to keep the news hidden for the time being and only tell them formally after the wife had given birth and completed her full month of postpartum seclusion.

The kinsman’s concubine, surnamed So-and-so, had become fanglao—the senior concubine who ran the inner household—after the principal wife’s death. When she learned that the family intended to conceal the death and let the mourners stay on indefinitely in the house to observe the rites, she alone refused, saying: “Every household stands on its own; how can we keep another family’s bereavement lodged in our residence for long?” She went at once and told the old lady and the wife the truth, and pressed them to rent elsewhere and move out so they could set up a spirit seat and put on mourning. The kinsman resented her interference, but what was said could not be unsaid, and he had no choice but to accept it.

Brief glossary

• Deputy Commissioner for Salt Supervision in the Southern Circuit (nan jian zhe tongzhi): a Qing deputy post overseeing southern salt administration.
• Nü (nu): wife and children.
• Linru / mianshen / miyue: approaching childbirth; delivery; the first full month after birth.
• Fanglao (fanglao): after the principal wife’s death, the senior concubine who managed the inner quarters and supervised junior concubines; the usage is illustrated in the account of Shi Chong’s household in the Shiyiji (Gathering of Forgotten Records).
• Shezuo chengfu: establishing a mourning altar and wearing funeral dress.

A few years later, this regional inspector was recommended for promotion and appointed prefect of a major commandery. He set out alone to take up the post, leaving his family in Jinchang until he could settle in and send for them. The prefect was then in his early forties; his performance reviews ranked best in Jiangsu, and the court clearly favored him—advancement to posts such as provincial treasurer or provincial judge seemed well within reach.

Meanwhile his wife ran the household as if she were his equal in standing. That year her thirtieth birthday fell due; when the day came, the house was hung with lanterns and bright with music and feasting. Relatives came in numbers to congratulate her and bring gifts, and she was very pleased with herself.

Who would have guessed that before he had even formally assumed office, on the road to his new post he reached Yuanpu and suddenly died of a sudden illness? When the terrible news arrived, only one day had passed since her birthday. Nephews and younger kin said: better wait until her birthday celebrations were over before announcing the death and going into mourning. Only the son of the examination official, who was then in Suzhou, firmly refused. “This is a matter of the gravest kind! Mourners will be coming to the door—how can we still keep lanterns lit, play music, and accept congratulatory gifts?” He went inside to tell the lady the bad news, then took the lead himself in stripping away the festive decorations and putting on mourning dress to lament the dead.

Commentary by the Master Who Sits Among Flowers: Stories of this kind pass from mouth to mouth for only a few years at most, yet they are still brought up as something to hold against people (the phrase koushi, “a handle for reproach,” comes from the Book of Documents, “Announcement of Zhonghui”). Alas! Women and petty people, not seeing the larger right and wrong, often dress up self-serving motives in lofty reasoning. Those who hear such words may have no good answer at the time, yet they harbor a grudge that cuts to the bone (xianxin cigu means long-nurtured, piercing resentment)—sometimes for a very long while. Resentment is like a seed dropped in the soil; when the season comes, it sprouts (“a seed cast on the ground waits for its time to sprout” is a proverb; source uncertain). As the saying goes: “Speak against reason, and what comes back will be against reason too” (bei, “to go against,” as in the Great Learning commentary: bei means to turn against or violate). That is exactly how it is!

Forty: Shi Dalang

(Epigraph) The cowherd goes to worship the Dragon King; everyone talks of Chongming’s Shi Dalang; when they say the Liuhe River knows no more sea disasters, both places ought to burn incense in sacrifice.

Shi Dalang was from Chongming. By nature he was upright and bold, strong in body, and above all devoted to releasing living creatures. In his youth he herded cattle at sea; whenever he found shrimp, snails, clams, or shellfish, he put them back in the water and would not kill a single thing casually. Once a large clam rode the tide in and rested on the beach. Each time it opened and closed, its light was dazzling—especially bright at night. Onlookers all said it held a luminous pearl inside and that opening it would bring wealth beyond counting (buzi—“incalculable riches”—see the entry in On Plum Trees). They scrambled to split it open for the pearl; Dalang would not allow it and said: “This is a numinous creature; it must not be harmed.” He then slipped away from the crowd, lifted the clam, and threw it into the sea, where the tide carried it off.

A few years later, rice fields along the coast were often trampled and ruined. Someone watched in secret and saw it was an ox. People rushed to drive it off, and the ox fled toward the beach. Everyone then decided it was the ox Da Lang had put out to graze, and they went to the owner to complain and hold him accountable. Da Lang said nothing and did not defend himself; inwardly he thought: the ox he pastured had never been allowed to run wild—how could it have trampled others’ fields?

Before long someone again reported that an ox was eating seedlings in the fields. Da Lang grew angrier and angrier. At night he went to the spot where the trouble occurred and hid to wait. At dawn the next day he truly saw a large ox, handsome in coat and horns, very much like his own. It came from the direction of the shore and sported on the field embankments, leaving the crops in a mess. Da Lang rushed out to seize it; the ox started awake in fright and turned to flee. He chased after it, and the ox gradually sank into the sea.

Da Lang, furious and desperate, jumped into the sea after it. The water parted to either side, and great waves rose like walls. Suddenly he saw a mansion with towering gates and walls, glittering with gold and jade. The ox leaped in through the gate. Unable to swallow his anger, Da Lang followed inside. The gatekeepers shouted at him to stop; Da Lang refused to yield and squared off to fight them.

When Dalang looked, he saw a richly dressed young man emerge from within and shout at the crowd, “Where did this gate-crashing thief come from? Seize him quickly—don’t let him escape!” Everyone rushed forward to grab him. Dalang was in a panic when the youth looked him over carefully, then asked in surprise, “Aren’t you Dalang, the boy who herded cattle by the sea?” Dalang answered, “Yes.” “Then you are my benefactor—how did you end up here?” He ordered the gatekeepers back, invited Dalang inside to sit, and explained: “This is the Dragon Palace. I am the Dragon King’s youngest son. Yesterday I happened to take the form of a clam and go out for amusement; if you had not saved me, I would almost have fallen into children’s hands. I have never had a chance to repay that great kindness. Meeting you today makes me especially glad. But we are already deep beneath the sea—how did you get here?” Dalang told him the truth. The prince said in astonishment, “So you can come but cannot go back! What is to be done?” Dalang asked him to explain. The prince said, “What you were chasing just now was the Dragon Palace’s rhinoceros; its horn can part the water, which is how you were able to follow inside. That won’t work now: once you leave this gate, you cannot take a single step—you can hardly hope to return to the human world.” Embarrassed, Dalang bowed deeply and begged for help. The prince said, “I will go ask my father to plead on your behalf, to repay your kindness.” He left at once. Before long he returned with a pearl and gave it to him, saying, “This is the Water-Repelling Pearl, a treasure of the water realm. Hold it when you go out to sea and you will walk as if on level ground. But guard it carefully—do not let anyone take it from you.” Then he saw him off warmly. As soon as they passed the palace gate, endless misty waves stretched before them with nowhere to stand. He tried raising the pearl in his hand and waving it at the water; suddenly, amid surging, vast billows, a level path appeared. He followed it and in an instant reached the shore; his clothes and shoes were not wet at all. Everyone found it utterly marvelous.

Dà Láng could not restrain himself; he often boasted to others of his skill at entering and leaving amid raging waves while holding a precious pearl in his hand. The people then plotted to seize the pearl from him. One day six or seven boys who tended cattle, seeing that Dà Láng was feigning sleep and had not yet woken, rushed at him together, searched his body, and tried to snatch it. Dà Láng, fearing the pearl would be lost and that he would have no way to answer to the dragon king and his sons, held it in his mouth, stood upright, and fought the crowd; they all fled in alarm, but the pearl slipped into his throat—he could neither spit it out nor swallow it down—and in the end he lost his life because of it. After his death someone buried him in a coffin by the seashore. One night wind and rain rose violently and heaven and earth shook; at dawn they saw that where the coffin had been placed a great mound had already risen. The next year the sea flooded, and before Dà Láng’s grave another ridge of sand piled up. Wherever the seawater passed, the bank soil was mostly washed away, yet Dà Láng’s tomb alone remained tall and standing, left there by itself.

Plain-Language Reading of This Passage from Zuohua Zhiguo

Shi Dalang Becomes a Deity and Liuhe Is Spared Disaster

People along the coast treated him as a god and built temples to worship him. Both in life and after death, Shi Dalang was associated with many uncanny events.

In earlier times Liuhe (the Liuhe Town area) often suffered from the sea; merchants dared not use that water route. After Dalang died, people of Liuhe dreamed of a dignified divine figure in full procession who told them: “I am Shi Dalang of Chongming. I have heard that Liuhe is about to be swallowed by the sea, and I pity you. Hurry and move my coffin out and bury it at the river mouth—you can escape this calamity.” On the same night hundreds of people had the same dream. Astonished, they inquired in Chongming and found that Shi Dalang’s grave indeed existed. They wanted to relocate the coffin, but Chongming people refused; so they prayed at Shi Dalang’s temple and brought back his xingxiang (cult image) for burial. The mound was built high and steep—in the folk style called majifeng, a tomb shape narrow at the top like an axe blade—and a temple was erected on the grave. As soon as the temple was finished, the sea surged but stopped when it reached the tomb. From then on Liuhe had no major sea disasters. In recent years population and trade revived, and the market town gradually recovered its former look. Shi Dalang’s temple at Liuhe is considered almost as efficacious as those in Chongming; each spring and autumn the processions for the god are very grand.

Commentary by the Master of Sitting Among Flowers

Shi Dalang was only a farmer’s son. With one thought—to cherish life and wish that the living might be spared the terror of the waves—he helped many while alive and after death received lavish sacrifice. Given that, what is there to hesitate about? One should hurry to do more good deeds.

Title of the Next Entry (Case Forty-One)

41. The Wind That Snatched a Hemp Skirt—To clear a false charge and step beyond one’s proper role to investigate, the truth was finally traced to a den of thieves. (This is the title and summary of the following story; the main text begins separately.)

(Continuing from above)

Everyone today ought to take a lesson from the county magistrate of Shanyang: in life one can escape the disasters of scandal and strife, and after death one can receive lavish sacrificial rites. Given that, what is there to doubt or suspect—why not hurry to accumulate more good deeds?

41. The Whirlwind That Lifted the Hemp Skirt

To wipe away a buried injustice, he overstepped his role and schemed from afar—and even traced the root cause back to a robbers’ lair.

Nowadays everyone copies the Shanyang magistrate; but who, like Inspector Liang, dares to step forward and not fear giving offense?

While Inspector Liang was magistrate of Funing, he once had business in the prefectural city. He set out at dawn and had already entered Shanyang territory. In the distance he saw beside his sedan a young woman in a plain white hemp skirt, holding paper ingots, walking slowly alone—like a new widow just bereaved. Suddenly a whirlwind lifted her skirt and exposed red trousers beneath; he was greatly startled. He signaled his attendants to slow the pace and followed her quietly. Whether near or far, whenever he looked into the hemp skirt the trousers still looked white; as soon as he fell back a little, another whirlwind would lift the skirt and the trousers would turn red, in shades that shifted. After about a li they came to a fresh grave. The woman swept the ground and burned paper ingots, weeping without real grief. Then the whirlwind scattered the paper money; some pieces blew in front of Inspector Liang’s sedan. From afar he saw the woman’s face fall; she knelt and kowtowed in prayer, again and again.

Inspector Liang knew there had to be a hidden cause. He sent a runner to follow the woman in secret and find out her name, her village, who the dead man was to her, when he died, and what illness had killed him. The runner reported back: the dead man was her husband; he had died suddenly without prior illness; after death he was hastily encoffined and buried, everything done in a slipshod way. The woman also had a poor reputation in local gossip, and the household was not especially poor.

Plain-language gist (plot of this passage)

On his way to the prefecture, Inspector Liang notices a “newly bereaved” woman whose appearance is suspicious: up close she is all in plain white, but from a distance, after each whirlwind, red trousers show inside her skirt—and paper money is blown toward his sedan—hinting at hidden wrong or sham mourning. The runner’s inquiry shows the husband died suddenly, the funeral was rushed, and the woman’s reputation is bad—setting up the later threads of “clearing the injustice” and the “robbers’ lair.”

This passage comes from Zuohua Zhiguo, a Qing-dynasty collection of stories meant to encourage virtue.

After Liang Gong (the protagonist) had learned the full facts, he went to the prefectural city to see the prefect and reported everything he had seen and heard to the magistrate of Shanyang County. The Shanyang magistrate laughed at him as pedantic and paid no attention. Liang Gong, indignant, appealed to the prefect; the prefect smiled and said, “Leave it alone! This is Shanyang’s business—why step in where you don’t belong?” (“Zǔ,” pronounced zǔ, is the sacrificial table in ritual. Zhuangzi says: when the cook does not prepare the meal, the officiant and the invoker should not step over the zǔ to do his work for him. Later “stepping over the zǔ” (yuè zǔ) came to mean meddling in what is not one’s affair.) Liang Gong grew all the more angry and went to Yuanpu to see Sun Jipu, the “Jie Xiang” (a grand secretary posted as governor is often called jie xiang). He told the story in detail and said, “We draw the court’s salary; if we see injustice and cannot set it right, we fail both the living and the dead—how can we still hold office?” The governor was impressed and asked, “If you take this case, where will you start?” Liang Gong answered, “Please authorize a written order to Shanyang County and have me join the local official in opening the coffin for examination. If no wound can be found, dismiss me from my post. Give me one month; I will find the cause of death. If I still fail when the month is up, I am willing to suffer the reverse penalty under law (who falsely accuses suffers the punishment meant for the accused).” The governor agreed.

When the coffin was opened, the corpse had not yet decayed, yet there was not a mark on the whole body. Everyone was in an uproar and assumed Liang Gong was making trouble and slandering the innocent. The Shanyang magistrate even stirred up the young widow to block his sedan chair and keep him from leaving. Liang Gong shouted sternly, “A law officer of the court, having seen what he has seen, must investigate. If the investigation is incomplete and the living are wronged while the dead lie exposed, national law applies—how can you insult me?” He kept a severe face, entered his chair, and left; no one dared stop him again.

After returning, he took his official seal in person to Yuanpu and surrendered it, awaiting disciplinary action. The governor-general, who had always valued him, now said to him: “I told you early on not to act rashly; as it turns out nothing major happened—but what good does that do?” He replied: “I am willing to accept whatever punishment is imposed. If Your Excellency will still show me favor, I ask that you grant me one month as before; within that time limit the provincial surveillance commissioner will surely get to the bottom of the matter. My only worry is that if we rush to arrest suspects and take their confessions, while civil and military officials each stay within their own jurisdiction, the chief criminals may flee far away—that is what truly frightens me.” The governor-general said: “If that is really the case, take my command arrow and handle it. If you cannot finish within a month, I will no longer shield you.” He kowtowed in thanks, took the arrow, and left. He changed clothes and disguise and searched everywhere. More than twenty days passed, and he still had found nothing.

One day this high official disguised himself as a cloth merchant and traveled through the border country between Shanyang and Funning. Night fell before he could find lodging, so he looked for a place to stay. He walked another mile or so along the mountain road and came to a hamlet of fewer than ten households, all with their doors shut. Only a few thatched huts a few paces from the village still had lamps burning; he hurried over. The wicker gate stood half open; he pushed it and went straight in. An old woman sat sewing by the lamp. Startled to see him, she asked, “What brings you here, guest?” He said he wanted lodging for the night, that the roads were broken and there was nowhere else to go, and that he only needed a few feet of shelter from wind and dew and would pay whatever she asked. The old woman said, “You may stay, but my son So-and-so has a violent temper; I am afraid he will come back and give you offense.” She showed him into a room and said, “Lie here awhile, guest. If you hear So-and-so return, do not make a sound, or you may provoke his sharp tongue.” He agreed, lay on the straw mat as if asleep, and waited for dawn.

At the fourth watch someone knocked; he knew So-and-so had come home. The old woman opened the door. So-and-so asked, “Mother, who is here so late?” She said, “No one.” He said, “I heard you talking to someone.” She said, “Old Lady Wang from the lane came to borrow needle and thread; she has already left.” He asked no more and went into the inner room. The official still feigned sleep and did not dare stir.

In the fourth watch of the night, someone knocked at the door—it was the son, whom we will call “So-and-so,” coming home. The old woman scolded him: “The harvest has been good; you could have lived in peace. Instead you keep at this sort of thing—you’ll drag your old mother down with you in the end!” He said nothing. Then they heard him fetch a light and rummage at the stove for something to eat. His mother told him, “There’s a traveler lodging in the woodshed—you must treat him well.” He came in carrying the lamp, looked Gong over carefully, gave a slight smile, and said, “Mother really doesn’t understand how the world works. Luckily he’s a decent man; otherwise it could have gone badly.” He then asked Gong to get up. Seeing no hostility, Gong rose and returned his greeting. They exchanged names and asked where Gong had come from. Learning that Gong had not yet eaten, he hurriedly seated him as a guest, brought fire, wine, and meat, and drank with him; his manner was quite bold and open.

Gong asked how he made his living; he smiled and did not answer. Gong asked again, “How is Official Liang doing in this district?” He said, “He is upright and cares for the people—but he may be in trouble now.” Gong pressed him on purpose: “Why?” He smiled and said, “Because of the Shanyang case where a certain woman plotted her husband’s death. Liang Gong truly sees clearly; he could tell the case was unjust. But if he had not come to ask me, he would never have gotten at the truth.” Gong caught the implication in his words and deliberately provoked him: “On the road everyone is talking—people say Liang Gong loves to stir trouble and frames honest folk. You speak as you do now—could there really be a wrongful conviction?” So-and-so smiled and did not answer; Gong did not press further and they only drank and talked freely, getting on very well. Gong asked to swear brotherhood with him in the “golden orchid” bond; he did not refuse. They burned incense, performed the rite, became sworn brothers, and bowed together to his mother.

The next day, the gentleman planned to leave, but his host repeatedly urged him to stay. That evening he asked again about the case, and the other still would not speak. Angry, he said, “We’ve sworn brotherhood—we ought to be completely open with each other. How can you still hide things? Do you take me for an outsider? Fine, then I won’t come back.” He rose in anger and started to go.

The other smiled and said, “I wasn’t hiding from you on purpose. The matter is too grave to speak of lightly. I can explain it to you now, brother, but you must never tell anyone else.” He got up, shut the door, invited the gentleman back in, and said with a smile, “Brother, what sort of person do you take me for?”

The gentleman smiled too. “Some chivalrous figure from the rivers and lakes, I’d say.”

“Exactly,” the other said. “When there are unjust people in town or country, I take their wealth by night. Part I keep, part I give to the poor. I’ve done this for years and never been caught. Last month I heard that in a certain village in Shanyang a certain household was hoarding a guest’s large sum of money, and I meant to take it. By mistake I entered the dead man’s house, hid in a tree in the courtyard, and saw a man and a woman drinking together, behaving intimately. When the wine was finished they were slightly drunk. Suddenly someone knocked; the woman quickly cleared away the wine things and hid the man she had been drinking with in the narrow space between the outer walls—the crevice between two walls—before she opened the door. Another man came in, unsteady on his feet, went into the room, and collapsed on the bed. The woman called to him but got no answer; she shook him but he did not move; she helped him up and he fell again. She went out and called in the man who had been drinking with her. He took out an iron nail and drove it in through the hair into the skull; the man rolled on the ground for a while and then was still. That man got up, opened the door, and left. The woman called the neighbors to look; everyone thought it was sudden death from poisoning, and no one checked the hairline. Yesterday, when the coffin was opened for autopsy, I was there too. I saw them remove an iron nail from the hairline—exactly what I had seen.”

Yesterday, when the court opened for the post-mortem and the case was being investigated on site, I was there too. I saw the man who had been drinking with them that day hand a large bundle of silver to the coroner from Shanyang. The examination had already reached the hairline, yet the coroner still reported no sign of injury. I got home late that day and never let slip a single word before my mother; but I knew in my heart that sooner or later this would come to light—I had blundered into that household, as if Heaven meant me to serve as a witness.”

The “Lord” said: “Exactly so.” He smiled again and asked: “What kind of person do you take me for?”

The other answered: “Nothing more than a peddler who ‘trades cloth for silk.’” (“Bao bu mao si”—“holding cloth to trade for silk”—comes from the Classic of Poetry, Wei Airs; it originally meant a cloth seller, and here it suggests someone who makes a living in small trade.)

The Lord said: “No. I am so-and-so Liang of Funing.”

At those words the man’s face turned deathly pale; he knelt, kowtowed, and begged to be allowed to die.

The Lord smiled and stopped him: “Don’t do that, brother. The bond of gold and orchid is already sealed—how could we undo it? Besides, this case is not your crime. I am about to travel ten thousand li; you are my benefactor, and one day I shall repay you. Only when this case is questioned must I ask you to bear the inconvenience of coming forward as a witness.”

That night the Lord still stayed at his house, talking and laughing as usual.

Plain-Language Commentary

(Following the murder case above)

The next day the official went to Yuanpu to call on the Jie Xiang (regional governor) and told him the whole story from start to finish. The Jie Xiang then sent instructions to Shanyang County, ordering a joint investigation with Qinghe and Funing counties and directing the coroners of all three counties to open the coffin and examine the body. They indeed found a large nail driven into the hair at the crown of the dead man’s head. The adulteress was brought in for questioning, but she still refused to confess. Then a certain man was summoned to the bench and made to recount step by step how the murder was planned and carried out that night, as clearly as if it were drawn in a picture. Only then did the woman bow her head and confess, and she also gave the adulterer’s name. When the lover was bound and brought in, he no longer hid anything; his statement matched the woman’s, and both were punished according to law.

The Jie Xiang thought even more highly of the official and recommended him to the court. Within a few years he was appointed Huaiyang intendant. He brought that mother and son into his official residence to support them, bought them land, and helped them establish a household, treating the son like a real brother for the rest of his life.

42. Throwing Rice into the Latrine

A vile custom goes by the name of “rice-oath”; in the ninth month thunder still rolls. Others’ words can truly reflect hidden virtue—never treat the five grains lightly.

In Pudong (the area around Shanghai in Songjiang Prefecture) there was a vicious custom: if someone was slandered and could not clear himself, he would take a handful of rice, swear to Heaven, and say: “I truly did not do such-and-such; so-and-so has falsely accused me. I am about to throw this rice into the latrine pit. If I really did it, let Heaven’s thunder strike me; if I am falsely accused, let thunder strike him.” When the oath was finished, he would throw the rice into the latrine. In wickedness of custom, nothing surpassed this.

In the ninth month of the renzi year of the Xianfeng reign (1852), the thunder had already died away. An apprentice in a shop dealing in goods from the capital, suspected after something was lost in the shop, also performed this rice-oath and latrine ritual.

In the ninth month of the Renzi year of the Xianfeng reign (1852), past mid-month, thunder by the season ought already to have died away. An apprentice at a Beijing goods shop had been scolded by the shopkeeper over missing stock and nursed a grievance. In the afternoon dark clouds piled up on four sides, thunder rolled, and it circled over the roof without striking down for a long while. Goods were drying outside; fearing a sudden downpour, the shopkeeper ordered him to bring them in, and he went out unwillingly. As soon as he left the room the thunder seemed to follow him out too, wheeling above his head as if waiting for something. By then the apprentice’s look was vacant and his spirit dull. Someone who knew he had been blamed for the loss said, “This lad doesn’t know better—has he fallen again into that ‘zhu mi’ habit?” Asked, it was indeed so. That person said, “Go quickly, take the rice out yourself, rinse it clean with fresh water, cook and eat it—perhaps he can still be saved.” The thunder grew angrier still, and purple lightning coiled around his body. The crowd kowtowed on his behalf to beg mercy, and the thunder eased a little. The apprentice crawled with the others to the edge of the privy pit—fortunately the rice had just been dumped in and had not yet been stirred into the ordure; about a he’s worth still lay in one clump. They had the night-soil man get it up; the apprentice picked out each grain by hand, washed them, and ate them as told.

While the privy man was fetching the rice, the voice of Fenglong (the thunder lord) still did not leave their side. When he had finished eating, the thunder stopped, the clouds scattered, and the moon shone clear as if washed.

Forty-three: Careless Reburial of Bones

Gathering bones for encoffining and moving graves to reinter the dead were once earnest old rites of kindness; right and wrong in them are hard to judge in detail. What went before can serve as warning—as in Magistrate Zhou’s case; even dry bones without consciousness can still repay a debt of feeling.

In the Nanhui region there was an old custom: many people would keep coffins in storage rather than bury them in the ground. Some were covered only with thatch, others placed in simple brick sheds; the coffins sat at the foot of the city wall, inside or outside it, or out in the fields. As years passed, descendants grew poorer and poorer, the coffins rotted and broke apart, and bones lay exposed.

In the yimao year of the Xianfeng reign (1855), my father served as deputy magistrate there. Once, strolling in the countryside, he saw this and was deeply grieved. He discussed it with Bao Shanfu, the local education officer, and the two of them donated from their salaries to arrange burials. I happened to be home on leave from the main camp at the time; my father ordered me to join Li Yinxang, a mingjing (tribute student), and personally lead laborers to gather the scattered remains and bury them.

After Yinxiang heard what I said, he remarked: “Collecting and reinterring bones is difficult; the slightest carelessness can bring great misfortune.”

During the Qianlong reign, a prefect surnamed Zhou took up his post in this region. When he saw human remains lying exposed, he could not bear it and paid out of his own pocket to buy land, intending to gather the bones and bury them in separate graves. Unfortunately those in charge were incompetent: they let the laborers who dug the earth pick up and pack bones at random—men and women undistinguished, identities mixed up, everything turned upside down, fragments scattered. Sometimes a shin from one body and an arm bone from another ended up in the same jar; in some cases a woman’s trunk was paired with a man’s skull to form one “complete” set. Some coffins were still intact, or broken but repairable, yet those doing the burial always forced them open anyway and stripped out whatever valuables lay inside. What had begun as humane intent—to “bury dry bones and putrid flesh” (yan ge mai zi), in the phrase from the Liji (Yueling)—came close to the kind of abusive policy associated with “Fa Qiu” and “Mo Jin”: the tomb-breaking officers and gold-seeking commissioners that Chen Lin, in his Proclamation to Yuan Shao on Behalf of Yuan Shao, ascribed to Cao Cao—officials whose job was to open graves and seize treasure.

After the work was finished, the person in charge fell ill at once. In his illness he saw countless men and women: some missing an arm, some lame; some who were men but had a pair of bound feet; some with a woman’s face but a man’s burly build. There were also those with holes through their backs or chests, split lips, or a single eye (one eye blind or shrunken)—more than could be counted. They crowded around his sickbed and cursed him loudly. When the patient, annoyed by the noise, shut his eyes and refused to look, they twisted his ears and pulled his eyebrows until he suffered unbearably.

Prayers to gods and buddhas and every plea for relief from disaster availed nothing. Before long the local magistrate fell ill too; in his sickness he often heard voices crying injustice. The clamor was urgent and confused, so that no single sentence could be made out; the gist was that bones had been mixed up, bodies thrown about at random, coffins opened and moved without proper rites—they had already appealed to the divine powers and were asking this “parent-official” to go in person to the underworld court to set matters straight, and so on. In the end the magistrate died one after another like the man who had managed the project. Of all who had taken part in the work, not one was still alive within a few years.

The Master Who Sits Among Flowers said: If one does good without care, one may instead incur punishment from the unseen realm. (The character read as qian in the sense of “reproach” or “punishment” is glossed at the end of the Kan Zai Pian.) That can look as if sincere intent to do good were being wronged—but it is not so. When the mind forms the thought of doing good yet one does not act with genuine heart and concrete deeds, but is careless, perfunctory, and goes through the motions, the harm can be even greater than if one had never intended good at all. Moreover, one may take for oneself the reputation of doing good while others bear the real ruin of broken homes and lost lives. If spirits are truly responsive, how could they not feel anguish? (Dong, read like tong, means pain or grief.)

Forty-Four: The Magistrate of Chengde

In a year meant to celebrate the nation, famine followed year after year; the burden of opening the granaries for relief fell on one man alone.

The people still kept to the straight path, as if living in the age of the Three Dynasties; their affection for him was like that for Duke Shao’s sweet pear tree.

The father of Observer Shi Daosheng of the Hunan Heng–Yong Circuit—Master Shi—entered office as magistrate of Chengde County in Fengtian, having placed among the second through fifth ranks in the provincial examination. The county suffered drought and famine: no wheat in summer, no grain in autumn; hunger and displacement left nine households in ten in distress.

In that year the court was holding a major celebration (such as a grand wedding or an imperial birthday), and the prime minister who held the reins of government did not want a patch of local famine in one corner of the realm to trouble the Son of Heaven’s peace of mind (“rui lü” refers to the emperor’s deliberations). The senior officials at the secondary capital likewise went along with that line.

This “gong” (the official in question) submitted three petitions asking for famine relief and was turned down three times; the other side even used the old case from Gansu of fraudulently claiming relief grain as a threat to intimidate him (“chu” means to frighten someone).

The official was furious and emptied the changping granary (the reserve granary; see the chapter on Lady Yan the Elder) to feed the starving people. When someone tried to dissuade him, he smiled and said: “If I use the granary grain on my own authority, the worst that can happen is confiscation of my property and being ordered to make restitution (as explained in the chapter on Cai the Provincial Governor)—and if I cannot pay it back by the deadline, the guilt rests on me alone. I am master of a whole county; how could I spare my own person and not save tens of thousands of people?” After the grain was distributed, he was indeed impeached for unauthorized use of the granary stores.