8.

BITING A GHOST.

Shen Linsheng once told me this story.

A friend of his, an elderly man, was taking a nap one summer's day, and had drifted into a dreamlike state, when he perceived a woman raising his door-blind and entering his room, her head swathed in a length of white cotton and her body clothed in the hempen dress of mourning. She walked on into the inner apartments of the house, and he thought she must be his neighbour's wife come to pay his own wife a visit. On reflection he found it strange that she should be making a social call dressed in full mourning, and was still puzzling over this when the woman came out again. He looked at her more closely this time, and saw that she was a woman of some thirty years, with a sallow complexion, bloated features, a pronounced frown, and a strange expression on her face that struck fear into his heart. Instead of walking on and out of the room, she hesitated a while, and then slowly approached his bed. He feigned sleep, but secretly watched her every movement. The next second, she hoisted up her skirts, clambered on to his bed and pressed herself down on top of him with the force of a ton weight. His mind was still clear, but his hands when he tried to lift them seemed tied fast, and his feet when he tried to move them were paralysed. He would have cried out for help, but try as he might he found he could make no sound. The woman now began to sniff her way all over the old man's face, rubbing her nose in turn on his cheeks, his nose, his eyebrows, his forehead. Her nose was cold as ice, and her chill breath penetrated his very bones. He conceived a sort of desperate plan: he would let her work her way down to his jaw and then he would Caption

He perceived a woman raising his door-blind.

bite into her. Soon enough she reached his jaw, and he sunk his teeth deep into her face, summoning up every remaining ounce of strength. She tried to pull away, struggling and yelping in pain, but the old man bit into her harder than ever. He felt the blood dribbling down his jaw and dripping down on to the pillow. He was still struggling to hold on, when he heard his wife's voice out in the courtyard, and cried out, 'Help! There's a ghost in here!' He relaxed his jaw in order to speak and thereby released the woman, who flitted from the room.

His wife came hurrying in and, seeing nothing whatsoever, made fun of her husband for having been deluded by a nightmare. The old man told her in detail about the apparition and protested that the blood shed by the strange woman would be proof that it had been no mere nightmare. There was indeed a great wet stain on both pillow and bed, as if a large quantity of water had leaked through the roof, and when he bent down and smelled it, it gave off such an extraordinarily foul stench that the old man began to vomit violently.

Several days later, he could still taste the lingering stench in his mouth.

9.

CATCHING A FOX.

There was an elderly gentleman named Sun, who was the paternal uncle of a relation of mine by marriage, Sun Qingfu. This old man was an individual of great natural courage.

One day, he was taking a nap when he thought he saw something climb up on to his bed, and he began to experience a floating sensation in his body as if he were being carried aloft upon the clouds. Wondering secretly to himself if this was a case of fox-possession, he opened his eyes a slit and saw a creature the size of a cat, with yellow fur and a green mouth, working its way up from the end of the bed, wriggling along as if it was trying not to awaken him. Slowly it began clambering on to his body. It reached his feet, and they became numb; it reached his limbs, and they became limp. It was about to crawl on to his stomach when the old man managed to heave himself up and seize it tightly by the neck. The creature yelped frantically but was unable to free itself from his grip. Sun called out urgently to his wife to tie a sash around its middle. Then he pulled both ends of the sash.

'I have heard how clever you foxes are at changing shape!' he cried. 'Now show me what you can do!'

No sooner had he spoken than the creature retracted its stomach, shrinking to the size of a bamboo tube and almost succeeding in getting free. In terror the old man tightened the sash with all his might, whereupon the creature puffed out its stomach again until it was bloated and rigid and the size of a large bowl. Sun loosened his grip slightly, and it shrank again. The old man feared that it would escape, and he told his wife to kill it at once. She looked around her in great consternation Caption

The old man tightened the sash with all his might.

for a knife, and the old man turned to the left to indicate where one was to be found. By the time he turned back, all that remained in his hand was the sash, hanging in an empty loop. The creature had vanished without trace.

10.

THE MONSTER IN THE BUCKWHEAT.

An old gentleman of Changshan County, by the name of An, enjoyed working on his land. One autumn, when his buckwheat was ripe, he went to supervise the harvest, cutting it and laying it out in stacks along the sides of the fields. At that time, someone was stealing the crops in the neighbouring village, so the old gentleman asked his men to load the cut buckwheat on to a cart that very night and push it to the threshing ground by the light of the moon. He himself stayed behind to keep watch over his remaining crops, lying in the open field with spear at hand as he waited for them to return. He had just begun to doze off, when he heard the sound of feet trampling on the buckwheat stalks, making a terrific crunching noise, and suspected that it might be the thief. But when he looked up, he saw a huge monster bearing down upon him, more than ten feet tall, with red hair and a big bushy beard. Leaping up in terror, he struck out at it with all his might, and the monster gave a great howl of pain and fled into the night.

Afraid that it might reappear at any moment, An shouldered his spear and headed home, telling his labourers, when he met them on the road, what he had seen, and warning them not to proceed any further. They were reluctant to believe him.

The next day, they were spreading out the buckwheat in the sun when suddenly they heard a strange sound in the air.

'It's the monster again!' cried old An in terror, and fled, as did all the others.

A little later that day, they gathered together again and An told them to arm themselves with bows and lie in wait. The following morning, sure enough, the monster returned a third Caption

The creature knocked him back on to the rick.

time. They each shot several arrows at it, and it fled in fear. Then for two or three days it did not return. By now all the threshed buckwheat was safely stored in the granary, but the stalks of straw still lay higgledy-piggledy on the threshing floor. Old An gave orders for the straw to be bound together and piled into a rick, then he himself climbed up on to the rick, which was several feet high. He was treading it down firmly when suddenly he saw something in the distance.

'The monster is coming again!' he cried aghast.

Before his men could get to their bows, the creature had already jumped at him, and knocked him back on to the rick. It took a bite out of his forehead and went away again. The men climbed up and saw that a whole chunk of the old man's forehead, a piece the size of a man's palm, had been bitten off, bone and all. He had already lost consciousness, and they carried him home, where he died.

The monster was never seen again. Nobody could even agree on what sort of creature it was.

11.

THE HAUNTED HOUSE.

Mr Li of Changshan, the nephew of Li Huaxi, President of the Board of Justice, was the owner of a haunted house.

One day, he saw a long bench on his verandah, flesh-pink in colour, very smooth-looking and well finished. He did not recall possessing such a bench and went up to it and touched it, letting his hand run along its curves. The thing actually felt soft, like flesh, and he walked away from it in shock and revulsion. He had walked a few steps when he looked back and saw the bench move on its four feet and gradually vanish as it merged with the wall. Next he saw a long, shiny whitewood staff leaning against the wall. He took hold of it, and it too was so smooth that it slipped through his fingers, falling to the ground and wriggling away like a snake, until it too had vanished into the wall.

In the seventeenth year of the reign of the Emperor Kangxi, a scholar named Wang Junsheng took up residence in Mr Li's house the very same house as a family tutor. One evening, just when the lamps were lit, Wang was lying down on his couch with his shoes still on when suddenly he caught sight of a tiny man, some three inches tall, who entered the room, wandered around and then left again. A little while later, he returned carrying two small stools, which he placed in the room. They were tiny, like the miniature toys children make out of millet stalks. After another short interval two more little men came in, bearing a coffin about four inches long, which they placed on top of the two stools. As they were doing this, a lady entered the room with a bevy of maidservants. She was of the same minuscule proportions as the others, and was dressed in mourning, with a hempen cord tied around her waist Caption

A minuscule lady entered the room with a bevy of maidservants.

and a length of white cotton wrapped round her head. She held her sleeve to her mouth and sobbed most piteously, making a sound a little like that of a giant fly.

Tutor Wang lay there quite some time watching all of this through narrowed eyes. As he watched, his hair stood on end and he felt himself enveloped in a layer of cold, like a coverlet of frost. Finally he gave out a great cry and leaped from his bed in an attempt to flee from the room, but as he went he tripped and landed with a crash on the floor, where he lay a gibbering wreck, quite incapable of rising to his feet.

The household heard the noise and came running, but saw no sign of anyone or anything out of the ordinary.

12.

STEALING A PEACH.

When I was a boy, I went up to the prefectural city of Ji'nan to take an examination. It was the time of the Spring Festival, and, according to custom, on the day before the festival all the merchants of the place processed with decorated banners and drums to the provincial yamen. This procession was called Bringing in the Spring. I went with a friend to watch the fun. There was a huge crowd milling about, and ahead of us, facing each other to the right and left of the raised hall, sat four mandarins in their crimson robes. I was too young at the time to know who they were. All I was aware of was the hum of voices and the crashing noise of the drums and other instruments.

In the middle of it all, a man led a boy with long unplaited hair into the space in front of the dais and knelt on the ground. The man had two baskets suspended from a carrying pole on his shoulders and seemed to be saying something, which I could not distinguish for the din of the crowd. I only saw the mandarins smile, and immediately afterwards an attendant came down and in a loud voice ordered the man to give his performance.

'What shall I perform?' said the man, rising to his feet.

The mandarins on the dais consulted among themselves, and then the attendant inquired of the man what he could do best.

'I can make the seasons go backwards, and turn the order of nature upside down.'

The attendant reported back to the mandarins, and after a moment returned and ordered the man to produce a peach. The man assented, taking off his coat and laying it on one of his baskets, at the same time complaining loudly that they had set him a very hard task.

'The winter frost has not melted how can I possibly produce a peach? But if I fail, their worships will surely be angry with me. Alas! Woe is me!'

The boy, who was evidently his son, reminded him that he had already agreed to perform and was under an obligation to continue. After fretting and grumbling a while, the father cried out, 'I know what we must do! Here it is still early spring and there is snow on the ground we shall never get a peach here. But up in heaven, in the garden of the Queen Mother of the West, they have peaches all the year round. There it is eternal summer! It is there we must try!'

'But how are we to get up there?' asked the boy.

'I have the means,' replied his father, and immediately proceeded to take from one of his baskets a cord some dozens of feet in length. He coiled it carefully and then threw one end of it high up into the air, where it remained suspended, as if somehow caught. He continued to pay out the rope, which kept rising higher and higher until the top end of it disappeared altogether into the clouds, while the other end remained in his hands.

'Come here, boy!' he called to his son. 'I am getting too old for this sort of thing, and anyway I am too heavy, I wouldn't be able to do it. It will have to be you.'

He handed the rope to the boy.

'Climb up on this.'

The boy took the rope, but as he did so he pulled a face. 'Father, have you gone mad?' he protested. 'You want me to climb all the way up into the sky on this flimsy thing? Suppose it breaks and I fall I'll be killed!'

'I have given these gentlemen my word,' his father pleaded, 'and there's no backing out now. Please do this, I beg of you. Bring me a peach, and I am sure we will be rewarded with a hundred taels of silver. Then I promise to get you a pretty wife.'

So his son took hold of the rope and went scrambling up it, hand over foot, like a spider running up a thread, finally disappearing out of sight and into the clouds.

There was a long interval, and then down fell a large peach, the size of a soup bowl. The delighted father presented it to the Caption