Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies (Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library) (23 page)

The descriptions the two men gave of the concubine agreed. Li went home to speak to his wife who, though she had once been cruel and jealous, was softened now from regret that they had no heir. The next day they invited the commander to their home and laid a sumptuous feast for him. They set a time to meet again and parted.

The commander went on ahead to his home in Nanyang. Li reported the situation to his superior, an important official attending the emperor, and asked permission to travel to the commander’s home. “This is a wonderful thing!” said Li’s superior. “I shall petition the emperor for you.” Li and his wife received the emperor’s permission to make the journey in the imperial stagecoach, with all expenses paid.

When Superintendent Li arrived in Nanyang, he found a crowd of officials to welcome him at the roadside. They all went to the home of the commander, where a great banquet awaited them. Li presented a variety of precious things to the commander and to that officer’s wife, concubines, and servants. Then the commander ordered his two sons to come forward.

Although the boys were quite different in manner, they were dressed alike and no one could tell which was Li’s son. Li questioned the commander about the boys, but he answered, “Recognize your son yourself.” Li examined both for a long while. Then, inspired by his natural feelings, he embraced one of them and said, “This is my son!”

“And so it is!” said the commander.

Father and son held one another and wept. All who witnessed the reunion were deeply moved. They raised their cups in congratulation, and when the banquet ended, everyone had drunk to the full.

The next day the commander met with Superintendent Li. “I have already given you your son,” said the commander. “How can I keep son and mother apart? I offer you the mother as well.” Li’s joy knew no bounds. He returned to the capital and took his
son to meet his superior, who said, “He is a fine lad,” and took the boy to an audience with the emperor himself.

Li’s son was enrolled in the emperor’s guard and later rose to be an official of the third rank, like his father.

Generally it is fortune that decides whether a man has a son; his own effort cannot make any difference. But this fortune teller was a genius in his work.

—
T’ao Tsung-i

A man of Wei named Tung Men-wu did not grieve when his son died. “You loved your son as no other father has in the world,” said his wife. “Now he has died, but you do not grieve. Why?”

“There was a time,” replied Tung Men-wu, “when I had never had a son. I did not grieve then. Now that he is dead, it is the same as when I had no son. What have I to grieve for?”

—
Lieh Tzu

Mubala the Turk, who had the Chinese name Hsi-ying, was a huge hulk of a man. One day he was dining with his wife. She had speared a tasty morsel of meat with a golden toothpick and was about to place it in her mouth when a visitor came to the door. Hsi-ying went to receive the guest, and his wife, not having time to finish the bite, set it aside in a dish before getting up to prepare tea. When she returned to her place, the golden toothpick was nowhere to be found.

A young serving maid was nearby attending to her duties, and the wife suspected her of taking the toothpick. The mistress questioned the maid long and brutally until the girl, having admitted nothing, finally died of her injuries.

More than a year later a carpenter was called in to repair the roof. As he swept some dirt from the tiles, something fell to the ground and clinked lightly on the stones. It turned out to be the missing golden toothpick, together with a piece of rotted bone. They reasoned that it must have been snatched and carried to the roof by their cat, unnoticed by the maid, who carried the injustice to her grave.

How often things like this happen! So I have written the story down as a reminder for the future.

—
T’ao Tsung-i

In ancient times the beautiful woman Mi Tzu-hsia was the favorite of the lord of Wei. Now, according to the law of Wei, anyone who rode in the king’s carriage without permission would be punished by amputation of the foot. When Mi Tzu-hsia’s mother fell ill, someone brought the news to her in the middle of the night. So she took the king’s carriage and went out, and the king only praised her for it. “Such filial devotion!” he said. “For her mother’s sake she risked the punishment of amputation!”

Another day she was dallying with the lord of Wei in the fruit garden. She took a peach, which she found so sweet that instead of finishing it she handed it to the lord to taste. “How she loves me,” said the lord of Wei, “forgetting the pleasure of her own taste to share with me!”

But when Mi Tzu-hsia’s beauty began to fade, the king’s affection cooled. And when she offended the king, he said, “Didn’t she once take my carriage without permission? And didn’t she once give me a peach that she had already chewed on?”

—
Han Fei Tzu

In
A.D
. 692, the third year of the reign of the Empress Wu, the scholar Chang Yi took up residence in Hengchou, Hunan, to serve as an official there. He was a simple, quiet man with few close friends. He had fathered two daughters (no son), of which the elder had died early. The younger, Ch’ien Niang, was a beauty beyond compare.

Now, Chang Yi had a nephew named Wang Chou, who was clever and handsome. Chang Yi always thought of the boy as having a promising future, and he would say, “When the time comes, Ch’ien Niang should be his wife.”

After Wang Chou and Ch’ien Niang reached maturity, they often pictured one another in their secret dreams. But neither of the families knew anything about it, and some time later when an eligible member of Chang Yi’s staff sought Ch’ien Niang’s hand, the father said yes.

The news made Ch’ien Niang terribly sad, and Wang Chou was bitterly disappointed. On the pretext that he was to be transferred, he requested permission to go away to the capital. Nothing could dissuade him, and so he was sent off with many gifts.

Wounded by sorrow, Wang Chou bid a final farewell and boarded the boat. By sunset he had gone several miles into the surrounding hills. That night he was lying awake when suddenly he heard the sound of footsteps along the shore. In moments the pattering reached the boat, and Wang Chou discovered that it was Ch’ien Niang, who had been running barefoot.

Wang Chou nearly went mad with delight and amazement. Gripping her hands, he asked where she had come from. She said tearfully, “Your depth of feeling moved us both in our dreams. Now they want to deprive me of my free will. I know your love will never change, and I would give up my life to repay you, so I ran away.”

This was more than Wang Chou had ever expected. He could not control his excitement. He hid Ch’ien Niang in the boat, and they fled at once, pressing the journey day and night. A few months later they reached Szechwan in the far west.

Five years passed. Ch’ien Niang bore two sons. She exchanged no letters with her parents, but she thought of them incessantly. One day she said in tears to Wang Chou, “Time was when I could not desert you, so I set aside a great duty to run away to you. Now it has been five years. I am cut off from my parents’ love and kindness. How am I to hold up my head in this wide world?”

Wang Chou took pity on her and said, “Let’s go home; no sense in grieving like this.” And so they returned together to Hengchou. When they arrived, Wang Chou went alone first to the house of Chang Yi to confess the whole affair. But Chang Yi said, “What kind of crazy talk is this? My daughter has been lying ill in her room for many years.”

“But she’s in my boat right now,” said Wang Chou.

Amazed, Chang Yi sent someone to see if it were true. Indeed Ch’ien Niang was there, with joy on her face and spirit in her expression. The astonished servant rushed back to tell Chang Yi.

When the sick girl in the chamber heard the news, she rose and joyfully put on her jewelry, powdered her face, and dressed in her finest clothes. Then, smiling but not speaking, she went out to welcome the woman from the boat. As they met their two bodies stepped into each other and became one, fitting together perfectly. Yet there was a double suit of clothes on the single body.

The family kept the entire affair secret in the belief that it was abnormal. Only a few relatives learned the facts. Husband and wife died forty years later, and their two sons both attained the second-highest official degree and rose to be deputy commandants.

I often heard this story when I was young. There are many
different versions, and some people say it is not true. But more than eighty years after the events, I chanced to meet a magistrate of Lai Wu. His father was cousin to Chang Yi, and since this magistrate’s account is the fullest I know, I have put it down on paper.

—
Ch’en Hsüan-yu