THE MALE CONCUBINE.

A wealthy gentleman of Yangzhou wanted to buy himself a concubine. He had inspected several women but found that none of them was really what he was looking for. Then an old bawd who was visiting Yangzhou showed him a pretty young girl of fourteen or fifteen, a gifted musician and singer. He found her very attractive, and agreed to buy her for a high price.

The very first night they slept together, he admired the silken softness of her skin and proceeded in a transport of delight to explore her private parts, when to his shock and horror he discovered that 'she' was in fact a boy. He asked 'her' to tell him the whole story. It transpired that the old bawd had bought a pretty young boy, decked him out in all sorts of finery and sold him as a girl in short she had tricked him.

The next day at dawn, he sent a servant to look for the bawd, but she had disappeared without trace. He was left in a state of great distress, quite at a loss what to do next. Luck had it that an old friend of his from Zhejiang Province came to visit, heard the story and insisted on seeing the boy himself. He was greatly taken with him, bought him for the original price and took him home with him.

Caption

He was greatly taken with him.

101.

CORAL.

Yue Zhong was a man of Xi'an, whose father died before he was even born. His mother was a pious Buddhist and abstained completely from meat and wine. With the passing years young Zhong, by contrast, grew more and more fond of drinking and eating, and this was often a source of friction between himself and his mother. He regularly tempted her with good things, which she always spat out. On one occasion, when she fell gravely ill and in her delirium craved some meat, Zhong, having no other source of supply handy, cut some flesh from his own left leg and gave it to her to eat. No sooner had she recovered than she was overwhelmed by a sense of remorse at having broken her vow, and resolved to fast until death. In this she was as thoroughgoing as she had been in her lifelong devotions, and finally she breathed her last. Zhong, who was devastated by her death, took a sharp knife and hacked his right leg down to the bone. Members of the household came to his aid, applying an ointment and wrapping the wound in silken bandages, and in due time it healed.

He was unable to drive the thought of his mother's fanatical piety from his mind, and, still grieving at the blind obstinacy that had driven her to her death, he set fire to the Buddhist icons she had been in the habit of worshipping, and in their place set up her own spirit tablet, to which he paid reverence. Whenever he had had too much to drink, he would weep bitterly before this shrine.

When he reached the age of twenty and took a wife, he was still a virgin. Three days after the wedding he said to one of his acquaintances, 'The act of love performed by a man and a woman is surely the vilest thing in the world! I find no pleasure in it!'

Consequently he rid himself of his wife. Three or four times her father, a man by the name of Gu Wenyuan, sent relations of his to plead with him to take her back, but Zhong's mind was made up. Several months later, the father succeeded in arranging a second marriage for his daughter.

Zhong remained single for many years and led a more and more carefree life, seeking his drinking companions from the motley ranks of household servants, yamen-runners, actors and musicians. His generosity became a byword. If a neighbour begged from him, he gave him whatever it was he wanted without the least hesitation. Once, when someone needed a cooking pot for his daughter's wedding feast, Zhong made him a gift from his own kitchen and was later obliged to borrow a pot for his own needs from one of his neighbours.

The local layabouts and ne'er-do-wells constantly took advantage of him. If one of them needed cash to gamble with, he would arrive with some tale of woe, claiming that the bailiffs were after him and that he would soon be forced to sell his children, whereupon Zhong would hand over every penny of the sum he had himself put by for payment of his taxes. And when subsequently the tax-collectors knocked at Zhong's door, he himself had to pawn his own belongings to settle his account. Needless to say, generosity such as this caused his fortunes to go steadily downhill. While he was a wealthy man, his cousins had been only too glad to wait upon him, and he had watched them walk off with countless possessions of his, and never breathed a word of complaint. But now that he was down and out, hardly a single one of them showed the slightest concern for him. Zhong adopted a philosophical view of this, and refused to take offence.

Once, on the anniversary of his mother's death, Zhong was ill and unable to visit her grave as he usually did, so he asked his cousins to take his place. But one cousin after another found some pretext for not going, and he ended up having to pour a libation for her in his own room, weeping before her spirit tablet. The fact of his own childlessness was now beginning to weigh on his mind, and this preoccupation further aggravated his illness. He found himself drifting into a confused and delirious state, in which it seemed to him that someone was in the room stroking him. He half opened his eyes, and beheld his mother.

'What are you doing here?' he asked in astonishment.

'No one from the family came to my tomb, so I thought I would visit you and partake of your offering, and see how you are getting on.'

'Where have you been dwelling all this time, Mother?'

'On the Holy Island of Nanhai.'

With these words, she stopped stroking him. A pleasantly cool feeling permeated his body. He looked around him and saw that there was no one there. And his illness was cured.

When he rose from his bed, his one thought was to go on a pilgrimage to Nanhai. In the neighbouring village, there was a Buddhist community formed for such purposes. Zhong sold several acres of land to raise the necessary funds for the journey, and begged them to let him join them on one of their pilgrimages. They rejected him on account of his reputation as a drinker and eater of meat, but he insisted on following them. Soon, however, they were so repelled by the stench of meat, wine and garlic emanating from him that they seized the first occasion when he was drunk and asleep to abandon him, leaving him to continue the journey on his own. He came to the border of Fujian Province, and there he was entertained by a friend, who had staying with him a famous courtesan by the name of Coral. When she heard that Zhong was travelling on to Nanhai, she proposed accompanying him, an offer he accepted with delight, and when she had packed her things, they set off. They ate together and shared the same bed, but chastely, with no physical intimacy of any kind.

When they finally reached the sea at Nanhai, the members of the Buddhist community, seeing that he had arrived in the company of a courtesan, mocked him heartily and absolutely refused to perform their devotions in his company. Zhong and Coral understood, and let them complete their prayers first. The Bodhisattva Guan Yin was reputed to appear in response to the prayers of the faithful. To the dismay of the monks, their efforts bore no fruit they were not rewarded with anything in the way of a supernatural apparition. But no sooner had Zhong and Coral knelt on the shore than lotus-flowers with shimmering strings of pearls hanging from them sprang up over the entire surface of the sea. In the lotus-flowers Coral saw the image of the Bodhisattva, while Zhong saw his own mother's face on every lotus-petal. He ran crying towards her, leaping into the water. The assembled company watched as the countless flowers metamorphosed into a bank of spangled multi-coloured cloud, a glistening veil of brocade draped across the sea. In a little while, the cloud dispersed, the sea returned to its normal state and the entire vision vanished. Zhong found himself standing on the shore, perplexed as to how he could have emerged from the water without there being a single drop of moisture on his clothes or his shoes. He gazed far out to sea and uttered a great cry that set the very islands trembling. Coral drew him away and comforted him, and in a mood of great sorrow they left the temple and took a boat back to the North.

During the return journey, a wealthy client took Coral away with him, and Zhong continued on his way alone. He stopped for the night at an inn, where he saw a young boy of eight or nine begging for food. Somehow he did not look at all like an ordinary street-urchin. Speaking to him and learning that he had been turned out of home by his stepmother, Zhong felt sorry for him and, when the boy clung to him and beseeched him to save him, Zhong resolved to take him home. He asked his name.

'Ah Xin,' was the reply. 'My family name is Yong. My mother was born into the Gu family. She often told me that I was born six months after she married Mr Yong, and that my real family name is Yue.'

This gave Zhong quite a turn. Could this poor boy be his own son? But that hardly seemed possible, he reflected, since he and his wife had only once consummated their union. He went on to ask him where the Yue family originally hailed from.

'I do not know,' replied the boy. 'But I have a letter my mother gave me before she died. She told me on no account to lose it.'

Caption

Lotus-flowers sprang up over the entire surface of the sea.

Zhong immediately asked to see the letter, and the boy took it from his bag and handed it to him. Zhong recognized it at once as the letter of divorce with which he had dismissed his wife all those years before.

'You are truly my son!' he cried.

The year and the month of the boy's birth tallied exactly. He felt a genuine sense of comfort at having a child of his own at last, to live with him and carry on his family line. But meanwhile his circumstances were more straitened than ever, and two years later he was obliged to sell off his last plots of land and dismiss his remaining servants. One day, father and son were preparing their simple meal together when suddenly a beautiful woman appeared before them. It was Coral.

'Where have you sprung from?' asked Zhong in great surprise. 'What are you doing here?'

'You and I once lived as husband and wife,' replied Coral, with a smile, 'in our own fashion. What need have you to ask such questions? I could not stay with you before, because the old bawd I worked for was still alive and she would never have let me do so. Now she is dead, and I have thought things through. If I stay single, I shall be a defenceless woman. But if I marry any man other than you, I shall feel unclean. After much reflection I have decided that the best thing is to be with you. So I have travelled all this way to join you.'

She unpacked her things, and there and then she took the boy's place at the stove. Zhong was delighted. That night, father and son shared a bed as before, and another room was set aside for Coral. The boy called her mother, and she was devoted to him.

When Zhong's relatives and neighbours heard of his new menage, they wanted to celebrate, a proposition that the couple happily accepted. The guests duly arrived, and Coral produced all that was necessary for the occasion. Zhong did not even ask where it had come from. As the days went by, she sold her seemingly inexhaustible supply of silver and jewellery, and they were able to redeem Zhong's original property. Soon his was a prosperous household again, with maids and servants, horses and oxen.

'If ever I drink too much,' Zhong said to her more than once, 'be sure to keep well away from me. Don't let me near you then.'

She laughingly agreed. But then one day, when he had had more than usual to drink, he called for her urgently, and, far from keeping away, she came in to him dressed in her finest clothes. Zhong stared at her a long while, and then began dancing wildly for joy.

'I am enlightened!' he burst out.

Suddenly he felt completely clear in his mind, and in that instant the world around him was bathed in radiant light and their humble home was transformed into a palace of jade. In a little while the vision faded. From that day on, he never drank save when he was alone with Coral. She, for her part, abstained from meat and wine, and sipped a cup of tea to keep him company.

One day, again when he was already a little tipsy, he asked Coral to massage his legs for him. The old scars, where he had cut them so violently years before, both when his mother was delirious and after her death, had grown into the shape of two tiny crimson lotuses, budding from his flesh. They both marvelled at this strange sight.

'The day these buds open and flower,' said Zhong, with a strange smile, 'our "marriage" of twenty years will be at an end and we will part.'

She took him seriously and believed his words.

The time came for the son Ah Xin to marry, and Coral entrusted the running of the household to his young wife, while she and Zhong lived separately in their own compound. There they received the young couple every few days, offering them advice only if some difficult matter arose. They themselves kept on two maids, one to warm his wine, the other to brew her tea.

One day, Coral went to see Ah Xin and his wife, and stayed with them for some time, discussing household matters. She returned with Ah Xin to see his father, and they found him sitting on his couch barefoot. When he heard them enter, he opened his eyes and smiled at them both.

'I'm so glad that you and your mother have come!'

And with that he closed his eyes again.

'What are you talking about, my dear!' cried Coral.

She looked at his legs. The two lotus-buds were in full bloom. She felt him, and the life force had already gone out of him. Urgently she pressed the petals together again with both her hands, entreating him all the while. 'I came so far to be here with you! It was not easy. I have raised your son and instructed your daughter-in-law. I have done what little I could for us. There were only two or three years left. Could you not have waited a little longer?'

A moment later, Zhong suddenly opened his eyes again and smiled.

'You have your life to lead in this world,' he said. 'Why do I need to be part of it? But so be it, since it is your desire, I will stay with you a while longer.'

Coral took her hands away, and the lotus-flowers were little buds once more. The two of them laughed and chatted together as they had always done.

Three years went by, and Coral was now almost forty years old, though she looked hardly a day over twenty. One day, she said to Zhong out of the blue, 'We must all die sooner or later. And when we do, our bodies will be moved around this way and that at the hands of others it will be so unclean and undignified! We must make the necessary preparations.'

She gave instructions for two coffins to be made. Ah Xin was appalled and asked her what the meaning of this was.

'You would not understand,' she replied.

When the coffins were ready, she washed herself, put on her grave-clothes, and then she summoned Ah Xin and his wife.

'I am going to my death now,' she said.

'All these years we have depended on you, Mother,' protested Ah Xin tearfully. 'Thanks to your wise advice we have never gone hungry. You yourself have never been able to enjoy a life of leisure. You deserve it. Don't forsake us now!'

She replied, 'Your father by his devotion sowed the seeds of the good fortune that you now enjoy. Your family's servants, maids, cattle, horses, have all been restored. This was the due repayment of the loans your father was tricked into making. I had no part in it. I am one of the Heavenly Apsaras, a Flower Fairy. My mind became too attached to worldly thoughts, and I was banished into the world of men for thirty years. My time is now finished.'

So saying, she climbed into her own coffin. They cried out, but her eyes were already closed.

Ah Xin went in tears to inform his father, but found him lying formally clad in hat and gown, cold and dead. Weeping fierce tears, he placed his father in his coffin and had both coffins put out in the main hall, delaying the wake for several days in the hope that they might still come back to life. A bright aura emanated from Zhong's limbs and lit up the hall, while Coral's coffin gave off a richly perfumed mist that permeated the whole house. When they finally closed up the coffins, the brightness and the perfume gradually faded away.

After the funeral, various male relatives of the Yue family began eyeing Ah Xin's wealth, and conspired together to disown him of his inheritance, claiming that he was not Zhong's true son and heir. The case came before the Magistrate, who felt unable to reach a decision and proposed as a compromise to divide the property in two, giving half to Ah Xin and half to the relatives. But Ah Xin appealed to the district court, where the case remained a long while unresolved.

Now, many years earlier, as has already been told, after the summary divorce of his daughter, Gu Wenyuan had remarried her to a certain Mr Yong. A year later, this Yong had moved south from Xi'an to the province of Fujian, and Gu lost touch with them altogether. At the time of Coral's death, Gu was an old man, whose one desire left in life was to see his daughter, his only child, again. He set out for Fujian to find her, only to be told on arrival at the son-in-law's house that his daughter was dead and that his grandson (Ah Xin) had been driven out of the house by Yong and his new wife. Gu informed the local Magistrate of this injustice, and Yong, fearing the consequences, offered his father-in-law a bribe. Gu refused to accept the money, insisting that what he wanted was his grandson, and the two of them sought the boy out everywhere without success. Then, one day, Gu saw a gaily coloured carriage coming down the road, and was just standing aside to let it pass, when a beautiful lady called to him from within the curtains, 'Is that you, Grandpa Gu?'

'It is,' he replied.

'Your grandson is my son,' continued the woman's voice, 'and is now living in the Yue household. Leave your lawsuit here and hurry to your grandson's aid. He has need of you.'

The carriage was gone before Gu could ask any questions. Resolving to accept Yong's money after all, he used it to make his way back to Xi'an, and arrived as the court was in the throes of coming to a judgement on Ah Xin's appeal. Gu went straight to the judge and presented him with all the information he had at his disposal: the date of his daughter's divorce, the date of her remarriage and the date of her son's birth. The facts were conclusive. As a result, the Yue cousins were given a caning and sent packing, Ah Xin was reinstated in his inheritance, and the case was declared closed.

Grandfather Gu went home with his grandson, and told him about the beautiful lady he had seen in the carriage. The encounter had occurred, so Ah Xin informed him, on the very day Coral died.

Ah Xin invited his grandfather to come and live with him, and provided him with quarters of his own and a maid to wait on him. Gu was already sixty years old, and in his old age the maid bore him a son, to whom Ah Xin showed great kindness.

102.

MUTTON FAT AND PIG BLOOD.

Mi Buyun 'Cloud-Walker' of Zhangqiu was an adept of the occult art of spirit-writing known as Ji. Whenever his friends gathered together for a social occasion, they would ask him to communicate with some Immortal or other and produce lines of supernaturally inspired verse.

One day, one of his friends was moved by the sight of a subtle cloud formation in the sky to compose a line of verse, to which he asked Mi to 'receive' an 'answer', so that the two lines could form a couplet. The line the friend composed was: Mutton-fat-white jade-sky.

The planchette's cryptic response was: South of the town, seek out Old Man Dong.

At the time they all thought this was meaningless gibberish.

Some time later, for some reason or another Mi and his friends happened to take a stroll south of the town and came to a place where they noticed that the soil had a strange reddish tinge, like the mineral cinnabar. Nearby they saw an old man with his herd of pigs, and they asked him about the strange colour of the earth.

'Oh that!' he replied. 'That be pig-blood-red mud-earth...'

Whereupon they suddenly remembered the planchette reading, and marvelling greatly, asked the old man his name.

'People call me Old Man Dong,' he replied.

The five-word response Pig-blood-red mud-earth was Caption