The next instant, they all tumbled down again and lay there in motionless silence. Li was about to rise to his feet (trembling with fear though he was), when he saw a creature coming towards him, with the head of an animal and the body of a man. As the 'wild dog' came nearer, it bent down, sank its teeth into one after another of the heads and sucked out their brains. In terror, Li buried his own head under the nearest corpse. The monster tugged at Li's shoulder to get at his head, but Li burrowed down still further and succeeded for a while in staying out of its reach, until finally the monster pushed the corpse aside, thus exposing Li's head.

The terrified Li, groping around desperately on the ground beneath him, grabbed hold of a big stone the size of a bowl and Caption

Li buried his own head under the nearest corpse.

clutched it tightly in his hand. As the creature bent down to bite into him, he heaved himself up and with a great cry smashed the stone into its mouth. The thing made an odd hooting noise like an owl and ran off clutching its face and spitting mouthfuls of blood on to the road. In the blood, Li discovered, when he looked more closely, two fangs, curved and tapering to a sharp point, each over four inches long. He took them home with him to show his friends, none of whom had any idea what sort of a strange beast it might have been.

25.

PAST LIVES.

A certain Mr Liu, a second-degree graduate of the same year as my father's cousin Pu Wengui, had the ability to remember his various past lives, and was able to relate them in some detail.

In one of these lives, he had been born into a family of scholar-gentlemen, and had died at the age of sixty-two, having led a somewhat dissolute life. When he came face to face with the King of Hell, he was at first received with the normal respect due to a provincial notable, shown to a seat and offered a cup of tea. He noticed, however, that the tea in the King's cup was clear, while his own cup contained a cloudy liquid, like unstrained liquor. Was this, he wondered, the fabled Soup of Oblivion, the potion given to the spirits of the dead to render them oblivious of their past? While the King was looking the other way, he emptied his cup on the floor, pretending afterwards that he had drunk it all up. The next moment, the King, who had been perusing the record of the various misdeeds committed during Liu's life on earth, flew into a great rage and ordered his assembled demons to take Liu away, sentencing him to reincarnation as a horse. Liu was immediately seized and bound, and the demons carried him off to a building, the door-sill of which was so high that he was unable to step over it. He hesitated at the sill, and the demons behind him lashed him with all their might, causing him such pain that he stumbled forward and collapsed unconscious on the ground. When he came to, he saw that he was lying in a stable and heard a voice crying, 'The black mare has foaled!' Everything was clear to him, but he could say nothing. The next he knew he was dreadfully hungry, and for lack of any other source ofra Caption

He emptied his cup on the floor.

began sucking at the mare's teats. Four or five years went by, and he grew into a fine strong horse but always remained at heart a fearful animal, terrified of the whip, the very sight of which sent him running away. His considerate master, when he rode him, always used a saddle-cloth, kept the reins loose and went at a leisurely pace, which he found more or less bearable. But the servants and grooms rode him bareback, squeezing his flanks and digging their heels into him, which caused him a searing pain in his insides. At length he could stand it no longer, refused all food, and three days later he was dead.

He duly reappeared before the King of Hell, who, upon discovering that he had deliberately tried to escape his fate before his time was due, had him flayed and condemned to reincarnation as a dog. He stood there looking most woebegone and refusing to move, whereupon the demons came behind him and lashed him until he was in such pain that he ran away from them and out into the open country. Thinking he would be better off dead, he jumped off a cliff and plunged to the ground, where he lay quite unable to move.

It was then he became aware that he was lying in a hole in the earth, one of a litter of puppies, and that an old bitch was licking and suckling him by turns. He was back in the world of the living. As he grew up, he knew in his mind that his own excrement was a foul thing, even though it somehow smelt fragrant to his senses. He made a firm resolve not to eat it. Several years he lived the life of a dog, always wishing he could find a way to die, but afraid that if he took his own life again he would be punished a second time for having cut his sentence short. Once again his master was kind to him, fed him well and was certainly not the type to think of ever putting him down. In the end he deliberately bit the man and tore off a piece of his leg, causing him to fly into a sudden rage and beat him to death.

This time, when the King of Hell checked the records and read of the dog's savage behaviour, he sentenced him angrily to several hundred strokes of the rattan and to reincarnation as a snake. At first he was confined in a dark room, from which it was impossible to see the sky. After a while he managed to climb his way up the wall, made a hole in the roof and escaped. He found himself lying in the long grass, and it was then he knew that he was a snake. He took an oath not to harm a living thing, and to assuage his pangs of hunger with a diet of nothing but plants and fruits. A year went by, and many a time he thought of taking his own life, but knew he could not. Nor could he deliberately harm someone else in order to get himself killed. He had already suffered the consequences of these two stratagems. He spent his days longing for a good way to die, but nothing presented itself. And then one day he was sleeping in the grass, when he heard the noise of an oncoming cart, darted out into its path and was chopped in two by the wheels.

The King of Hell was astonished to see him back again so soon. But this time when he told his story, grovelling humbly on the ground, the King pardoned him, as an innocent creature that had lost its life by mischance, and permitted him to be reincarnated as a human being. And so he was born into the Liu family, and graduated in the same year as my father's cousin.

He was able to speak perfectly formed words the moment he came into the world, and as a child he was a prodigy, able to repeat anything by heart at a single reading an essay, or an extract from one of the histories. He took his degree in the year xinyou. He was forever urging people to put proper saddlecloths on their horses, and telling them how excruciatingly painful it was for a horse to have the rider dig in his knees, more painful by far than being whipped.

26.

FOX IN THE BOTTLE.

A woman of the Shi family in Wan Village was possessed by a fox-spirit. She suffered greatly, but was unable to get rid of it.

Behind the house was a bottle, and whenever the fox heard the woman's husband coming home, it would disappear and hide in this bottle. The woman made a note of this and formed a secret plan, which she mentioned to no one.

One day when the fox was hiding in the bottle, she plugged the mouth of the bottle with cotton wadding, then placed it in a big pot, poured in some water and brought it to the boil, fox and all.

'It's dreadfully hot in here!' cried the fox, as the temperature mounted. 'Stop this nonsense at once!'

The woman said nothing. The screams from within the bottle grew louder and louder, and then suddenly there was silence. She removed the stopper and looked inside the bottle. All she could see was a mess of fur and a few drops of blood.

Caption

She plugged the mouth of the bottle with cotton wadding.

27.

WAILING GHOSTS.

At the time of the Xie Qian troubles in Shandong, the great residences of the nobility were all commandeered by the rebels. The mansion of Education Commissioner Wang Qixiang accommodated a particularly large number of them. When the government troops eventually retook the town and massacred the rebels, every porch was strewn with corpses. Blood flowed from every doorway.

When Commissioner Wang returned, he gave orders that all the corpses were to be removed from his home and the blood washed away, so that he could once more take up residence. In the days that followed, he frequently saw ghosts in broad daylight, and during the night ghostly will-o'-the-wisp flickerings of light beneath his bed. He heard the voices of ghosts wailing in various corners of the house.

One day, a young gentleman by the name of Wang Gaodi who had come to stay with the Commissioner heard a little voice crying beneath his bed, 'Gaodi! Gaodi!'

Then the voice grew louder. 'I died a cruel death!'

The voice began sobbing, and was soon joined by ghosts throughout the house.

The Commissioner himself heard it and came with his sword.

'Do you not know who I am?' he declared loudly. 'I am Education Commissioner Wang.'

The ghostly voices merely sneered at this and laughed through their noses, whereupon the Commissioner gave orders for a lengthy ritual to be immediately performed for all departed souls on land and sea, in the course of which Buddhist bonzes and Taoist priests prayed for the liberation of his supernatural Caption

The Commissioner came with his sword.

tenants from their torments. That night they put out food for the ghosts, and will-o'-the-wisp lights could be seen flickering across the ground.

Now before any of these events, a gate-man, also named Wang, had fallen gravely ill, and had been lying unconscious for several days. The night of the ritual he suddenly seemed to regain consciousness, and stretched his limbs. When his wife brought him some food, he said to her, 'The Master put some food out in the courtyard I've no idea why! Anyway I was out there eating with the others, and I've only just finished, so I'm not that hungry.'

From that day, the hauntings ceased.

Does this mean that the banging of cymbals and gongs, the beating of bells and drums, and other esoteric practices for the release of wandering souls are necessarily efficacious?

28.

THUMB AND THIMBLE.

In the region of Zhending County, there lived an orphaned girl who at the age of six or seven was adopted into another family as a child-bride.

She had lived with them a year or two when her husband tricked her into having sexual relations with him and made her pregnant. Her stomach swelled up, and thinking she must be ill she went to see her foster-mother.

'Does it move?' the woman asked.

'It does,' was the girl's honest reply.

The foster-mother was greatly astonished, but considering how young the girl was, she was loth to jump to conclusions or pass judgement.

Not long afterwards the girl gave birth to a boy.

'Well I never!' sighed the foster-mother. 'A thumb-sized mother has brought a thimble-sized baby into the world!'

Caption

A thimble-sized baby!

29.

SCORCHED MOTH THE TAOIST.

The household of Hanlin Academician Dong was troubled by fox-spirits. Tiles, pebbles and brick shards were liable to fly around the house like hailstones at any moment, and his family and household were forever having to take shelter and wait for the disturbances to abate before they dared carry on with their daily duties. Dong himself was so affected by this state of affairs that he rented a residence belonging to Under-Secretary Sun, and moved there to avoid his troubles. But the fox-spirits merely followed him.

One day when he was on duty at court and described this strange phenomenon to his colleagues, a senior minister mentioned a certain Taoist master from the north-east by the name of Jiao Ming Scorched Moth who lived in the Inner Manchu City and issued exorcist spells and talismans reputed for their efficacy. Dong paid the man a personal call and requested his aid, whereupon the Master wrote out some charms in cinnabarred ink and told Dong to paste them on his wall. The foxes were unperturbed by these measures, however, and continued to hurl things around with greater vigour than ever. Dong reported back to the Taoist, who was angered by this apparent failure of his charms and came in person to Dong's house, where he set up an altar and performed a full rite of exorcism. Suddenly they beheld a huge fox crouching on the ground before the altar. Dong's household had suffered long from this creature's antics, and the servants felt a deep-seated sense of grievance towards it. One of the maids went up to it to deal it a blow, only to fall dead to the ground.