Censored by Confucius (19 page)

Chen, still in love with Quan, bribed a local man to arrange for her purchase. Quan and the young Chen then married, but before the month was out the police and a few petty officials from the magistry were threatening to expose the subterfuge to the magistrate, so Chen had to pay another bribe.

Eventually the gossip surrounding the newlyweds reached the magistrate's ears anyway. His fury was unbounded and he ordered the immediate arrest of Quan and Chen.

This time Quan realized she would probably not get off as lightly as before, so she slipped some grass matting into her underpants to protect her buttocks from the cane. But the magistrate's keen eyes spied the bulge and he demanded, "What is that bulge on your bottom?"

He had the attendants rip off her pants and inspected both the padding and her buttocks. The Magistrate then ordered that her bare buttocks be caned under his personal supervision.

When Chen tried to stop the beating the magistrate turned on him and tattooed his face, slapping him back and forth about a hundred times. Chen's original punishment of forty strokes was then administered. He struggled home and in less than a month had died of his injuries. Quan was once again put on the market and sold as a concubine.

The day after the beatings, the magistrate was approached by a provincial-level scholar by the name of Liu. Now Liu was an upright sort of man and he found the events of the previous day intolerable. He decided to make his opinion known to the magistrate in person:

"Yesterday, when I came into town, I heard that you were going to be beating some criminals. I assumed that you would be punishing some great robbers or notorious thieves so I came over to have a look. I certainly did not expect to find a young woman with her undergarments removed being beaten.

"Such a delicate body as that, with those soft, small, curved, snow white buttocks would not even stand the heat of the sun, let alone forty strokes of the cane. Even after the first stroke her buttocks were reduced to a pulp—like a rotten peach. All these youngsters did was to have an affair! Why did you treat them so harshly?"

The magistrate replied, "Quan Gu is a beautiful young woman. If I hadn't carried out the beating then people all around would say I was a
sex maniac. The young man Chen is from a wealthy family. If I hadn't beaten him, then people would say I had been bribed."

Liu's response to this explanation was, "An official should deal with his subjects as a parent deals with a child. You have mutilated and murdered just to win a good reputation. What is it all for? In the end you will receive your just desserts."

Scholar Liu then flicked his scarf and marched out of the magistry. From that day on he cut all ties with the magistrate.

Before a decade had passed, the magistrate was transferred to Songjiang. One day, as he sat in his office having lunch, his servant saw a young man leap in through the window. Before anyone knew what was happening, the intruder slapped the magistrate's back three times and escaped.

The magistrate instantly complained of sharp pain in his back and couldn't even finish his lunch. When his manservant examined the magistrate he saw that his back had swollen out about a foot. The swelling rose in two mounds, which were divided by a small crevice— it looked exactly like a pair of human buttocks. His family immediately called for the local doctor, but the prognosis was not good. "There's not a lot I can do for him. His back already looks like the pulp of a rotten peach."

When the magistrate heard these words bile rose in his throat. Within ten days he had died.

A Ghost Is Chased Off by a Ghost

In Dongcheng there lived a married couple by the names of Zuo and Zhang. They were blissfully happy and deeply in love, but one day disaster struck. The young wife, Zhang, suddenly became extremely sick and died. Zuo sorely grieved the loss of his wife and maintained a constant vigil both day and night alongside the coffin.

The Ghost Festival, July fifteenth, arrived, and while the rest of the family were in the main hall performing the usual ritual offerings to the ghosts of their ancestors, young Zuo stayed alongside his wife's coffin, reading. Suddenly he felt an eerie, chill wind blow past. Looking up, he saw a gruesome ghostly vision rushing towards him.

He could see in an instant that it was the ghost of a woman who had hanged herself, because a rope dangled to the ground from her throat. Her hair was matted and all her orifices oozed blood.

Confronted with such a sight, young Zuo panicked and banged on the coffin, screaming to his wife's corpse: "Help me, help me, my darling, please save me!"

The young wife then sat up in her coffin and said to the ghost in a rather impatient tone, "Miserable demon, how dare you attack my husband! Have you no manners at all?!"

She then raised her arm and beat the unsuspecting ghost several times. Only then did it stagger off in retreat.

Zuo's wife then turned her attention to him. "You really are crazy. I know we loved each other but this is taking it too far. I was simply not destined to live long, and your prospects don't look that good either. By taking this devotion nonsense to such an extreme you've invited harassment from that evil ghost.

"Why don't you join me here so that we can be reincarnated as a couple who are destined to live together right through old age?"

Young Zuo thought this sounded like a good idea and gave his assent. His wife then lay back in her coffin and closed the lid.

Zuo then yelled to his parents to tell them of the strange occurrence. Arriving on the scene, they saw that the nails of the coffin had snapped in half and that part of Zuo's wife's skirt was hanging out of the coffin caught between the lid and the base.

Within the year, young Zuo had also died.

The Folding Immortal

In Panshiguan there is a man by the name of Chen Yiyuan who abandoned his family to cultivate his mind in Daoist magic. He purchased a small house and spent his entire time locked up in complete isolation.

He started out refusing to eat rice or rice porridge, then he refused to eat fruit and vegetables as well, and finally his only sustenance was water from Lake Shihu. His son was responsible for bringing a jar of this water to the house each month, at which time he would find an empty teapot on the steps waiting to be filled.

One day a scholar by the name of Sun Jingzhai heard tell of this hermit. Filled with admiration at such remarkable resolve, he decided to see Chen in person. So he wrote a note requesting a meeting and left it on the lid of the teapot.

He waited anxiously for the reply, and the next day when he went to check the teapot he found a note added to the end of his own saying: "You have permission to see me on February the seventh."

Sun was ecstatic and on the appointed day he made his way to the house with Chen's son. When the door opened he was greeted by a man who didn't look a day over forty, though the son who had escorted him was already an old man.

Sun began to question the Daoist: "How should one begin to practice these Daoist arts?"

"First you must sit in a serene state and try to clear your mind of thoughts. You should keep tally of the number of thoughts that come into your mind," came the reply.

So Sun sat quietly for quite some time, until eventually Chen asked, "So how many thoughts came into your head?"

"I have had seventy-two different thoughts," Sun replied.

Chen laughed and said, "It is quite normal for one's mind to be active even though the body is still and one is trying to free the mind of thoughts.

"You have had only seventy-two thoughts during this hour—that's pretty good. I think you have the potential to learn the Dao."

Sun then asked about the importance of drinking water.

He was told, "When you are born, you come from nothing and you are quite empty. Only after eating and overindulging does one's body become heavy and puffed out. This sort of life causes one's stomach to fill with worms and other dirty parasites, and eventually one's saliva assumes the consistency of mucus.

"A person who wants to know the Dao must first clear his mouth and purify his intestines. Deprived of food, all the parasites inside the stomach will starve to death and one will become empty once more.

"At the beginning of time, when heaven and earth were created and before the appearance of the five elements, the essence of life was water. Water even preceded fire.

"Although drinking water is vital to the aspiring immortal, one must ensure it is clean mountain water, because the water from the towns and cities is dirty and polluted. Drinking such water will harm your soul and not clean it. When you drink pure mountain water you should swallow slowly and make a gurgling sound in your throat. This way the sweetness of the water is extracted.

"Eventually, you should be able to survive on only one spoonful of water a day. After practicing this for about one hundred and twenty years, your body will become light and clear and then you can even dispense with the water. You'll be able to fly through the air by breathing the wind."

"Who taught you all these secrets?" Sun then asked.

"Thirty years ago I was at Mount Tai making some offerings when I came across a young man," he was told.

"He was exceptionally handsome and had a certain spiritual aura about him. He also had a remarkable ability to predict changes in the weather.

"We traveled together for several days, and during that time I noticed that every night, just before sleeping, he would take out of his bag a small brocade casket and talk to it. This seemed extremely odd and my curiosity was aroused, so I poked a hole in the partition that separated us and watched the ritual.

"The young man placed the casket on the table, tidied his clothes and cap, then knelt and bowed to the casket. Suddenly, an old man sat up inside the casket and smiled. His white hair flowed down past his
shoulders and his eyes were bright and clear. The two men talked intimately for quite some time but the only words I could pick out were, 'Someone is trying to steal the secrets of the Dao.'

"Around the third watch, the young man respectfully asked the elder, 'Would you like to sleep now?'

"The old man nodded, and the young man reached up and began folding the older man as if he was folding a silk handkerchief. He then placed the man carefully back inside the casket.

"The next morning my traveling companion revealed to me that he knew I had spied on him. He then told me about his life and agreed to take me on as his disciple so I too could learn the secrets of the Dao."

Sun decided to test Chen's claims to lightness by lifting Chen's chair. Together, Chen and his chair weighed only about thirty catties.

Eventually Sun asked permission to return to his family. He said he would like to make sure his two daughters were married before he joined Chen in seclusion. He promised to return once he had dealt with these mundane matters.

I met Sun in the Zhang Ming registry at Zhenze, where he told me his plans. It was the tenth of February, 1788, during the reign of the Qianlong emperor.

Demons Are Terrified of Rationalism

In Suzhou there was a wealthy octogenarian by the name of Huang who lived alone in his huge house. One day, as he was going about his business, he glanced up and saw a young woman leaning against the doorframe staring at him.

Huang calmly assumed this to be the ghost of his young daughter who had died in the house many years earlier. Deciding that no reaction was the best reaction, Huang simply pretended he did not see her.

The next night she returned, but this time in the company of a man. On the third night, while Huang was sitting reading, he noticed the couple sitting on the roof beam above his head, staring down at him. Huang continued to pretend he could not see them and turned back to his book with an unconcerned expression.

This was too much for the male ghost. He jumped down and stood directly in front of Huang. The old man then smiled and inquired, "Are you a ghost?"

He then proceeded to lecture the ghost: "Coming here to see me now is really quite foolish. I'm already over eighty years old and it won't be long before I'm living in the same world as you. I could die at any time, so why visit me now!?

"On the other hand, if you are an immortal, then why don't you sit down here next to me and tell me about yourself."

Hearing such a rational speech from Huang, the demon burst out in a tremendous howl. The sound was so intense that the windows burst open.

The wind that rushed in from the darkness outside was chilly and damp and whipped through Huang's thin clothes. Huang called out to his servants, but by the time they had hurried upstairs to see about the commotion, the ghosts had gone.

Only a few months later two of Huang's daughters-in-law and one of his grandsons died.

Among the household servants who had survived their mistress was a young maid. Huang was concerned that she would have no protection if he also passed away, and so he presented her as a concubine to a Mr. Hua Qiucha. Eventually she gave birth to three sons.

Hua now has a position as a magistrate in Zhejiang's Linhai County. In fact, it was Hua himself who told me this strange tale.

Spiritual Man Luo Catches the Wrong Demon

In the second year of the Yongzheng emperor's reign, Mr. Zhang Zhongzhen passed the royal examinations with distinction and was duly assigned the position of censor in Songjiang.

He slept on a heated bed in his study but was pestered incessantly by mice scurrying to and fro between cracks in the base of the bed. Eventually the loss of sleep became intolerable, so Zhang threw some firecrackers into the holes intending to drive the mice out. But still the mice would not leave.

He then took up his gun and shot through the cracks, but the mice behaved as if nothing had happened.

Zhang then decided there must be something inside the bed that the mice wouldn't leave, so he dismantled the bed brick by brick but could find no reason for their dedication to his bed.

The study also doubled as the bedroom for his maid, and it turned out she was regularly harassed at night by someone who wore a black cloak. This person demanded sex from the maid, and if she refused, she instantly fell unconscious.

When Zhang found out about this harassment he gave the maid a jade charm he had obtained from a spiritual man, and instructed her to place it between herself and her quilt. That night the ghost in black didn't return.

However, the night after that, it did. This time, not only did it take off with the maid's underclothes, but it also desecrated the charm. Zhang was furious, so he asked a spiritual man by the name of Luo to exorcize the ghost.

Luo set up an altar and performed his various rituals for three days. The result was the capture of a raccoon-like animal. The creature was sealed in a jar and all rejoiced, wrongly assuming their troubles had ended.

That very night the ghost returned, jeering rudely at them.