10

“REST, REST, PERTURBED SPIRIT!”

GHOSTS IN TRADITIONAL CHINESE PROSE FICTION

The other world will be admirable for congruities.

—BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE

For Joseph S. M. Lau

 

THE SHEER complexity of the subject no less than its utter unwieldiness will be the first impression of anyone undertaking a study of the topic of ghosts in traditional Chinese literature. The length of the Chinese literary tradition and the persistence of interest in the subject have helped to spawn a staggering amount of materials and create enormous difficulty in the isolation of sources. As in the case of many topics in Chinese culture, the development of this particular one ranges in many directions; it is not a subject enshrined in only a single genre of writing.

Ghosts, of course, are part of the mythologies of the dead and dying. They belong, as Mircea Eliade has observed, to that experience “that renders intelligible the notion of spirit and of spiritual beings.”¹ Because the concern for the dead and its treatment, for the possibility and nature of an afterlife, represents one of the most basic concerns of any human society, the Chinese expression and exploration of this concern are understandably multifarious, verbal documents being but one of many cultural artifacts embodying such concern. In this category of written materials, there is a vast amount of historical, philosophical, religious, ritual, and literary texts that make specific reference to gui , the word most commonly translated as “ghost,” and to scores of some 200 words still in use that are constructed on this particular radical.² What complicates matters, moreover, is the knowledge common to all students of Chinese sources that gui and its various cognates represent only one concept within a bountiful vocabulary of the spirit world. While the present study will indeed focus on gui in fiction, it also recognizes the unavoidable necessity to make occasional contact with such other related terms as shen (spirit, god), ling (spirit, soul, efficacy, the numinous), yao (monster, fiend, weird, abnormal), guai (strange, portentous, anomalous, fantastic), xie (demonic, perverse, deviant), mo (demons, goblin, ogre; also standard term for translating the Sanskrit māra, the deva who hinders or destroys, the Evil One), and the venerable but still controversial binome hunpo .

Leaving aside the problems of etymology, philology, and worldviews,³ I shall concentrate on the analysis of literary materials, namely, those in the provenance of prose fiction in both classical and vernacular styles. Even this pragmatic delimitation of labor and territory does not greatly facilitate my task. The problem, in the first place, is again a familiar one: the boundary between fiction and nonfiction is not a rigorously observed propriety in ancient writings. Not only are ghosts and their appearances recorded in such historical documents as the Zuozhuan and the Shiji , but chapters also in the Mozi (juan 24), Lunheng (juan 20–22), and the Baopuzi (juan 2, 17), for example, make frequent use of antecedent historical or anecdotal materials in their discussions of gui. As we shall see, a good deal of the ancient rumination on the soul, the spirit world, and such related categories as qi , jing , shen , and yin-yang , seems to pervade, at least in popularized form, the later fictive presentation of the subject.

When one moves on to what are by common consent the specific literary corpuses, the voluminous nature of the sources is equally daunting. The tale is found in virtually all periods of Chinese fiction. In a very real sense, therefore, to study this topic is to engage in a survey of the history of traditional Chinese fiction, running the gamut of Six Dynasties zhiguai (records of the strange) and Tang chuanqi (transmissions of the marvelous) stories, the Dunhuang popular narratives (bianwen ), the Buddhist avadāna tales, and the vernacular fiction of the late medieval period.

Some notable collections and anthologies adorning this history include the following:

Lieyi zhuan (Records of Marvels), attributed to Cao Pi (187–226); Soushen ji (In Search of Spirits), compiled by Gan Bao (fl. ca. 317); Yuanhun ji (Accounts of Ghosts with Grievances), compiled by Yan Zhitui (531–591); Shishuo xinyu (A New Account of Tales of the World), by Liu Yiqing (403–444); attributed to Liu are also the anthologies Youming lu (Records of the Dark and Light) and Xuanyan lu (Records of Manifest Retributions); Mingxiang ji (Dark Omens Recorded), by Wang Yan (late fifth century); Xuanguai lu (Accounts of the Mysterious and Strange), by Niu Sengru (778–847); Xuanshi zhi (Records of a Palace Chamber), by Zhang Du (?-ca. 853); Zuanyi zhi (Bizarre Events Recorded), by Li Mei (fl. 827); Xu Xuanguai lu (A Sequel to Accounts of the Mysterious and Strange), by Li Fuyan (fl. 830); Yiwen ji (A Collection of Strange Events), compiled by Chen Han (fl. 814); Qingsuo gaoyi (Lofty Opinions Under the Green-Latticed Window), compiled by Liu Fu (ca. 1040–1113); Yijian zhi (Records of Yijian), compiled by Hong Mai (1123–1202); Jiandeng xinhua (New Tales Written While Trimming the Wick), by Qu You (1341–1427); Liushi jia xiaoshuo (Sixty Stories), published by Hong Pian during the period 1541–1551; Gujin xiaoshuo (Fiction Old and New), published 1620/1621, first collection of Sanyan series, by Feng Menglong (1574–1646); Jingshi tongyan (Comprehensive Words to Admonish the World), published in 1642 by Feng and associates; Xingshi hengyan (Lasting Words to Awaken the World), published in 1627, compiled by Feng; Qingshi leilue (A Classified History of Love), compiled by Feng; Poan jingqi (Striking the Table in Amazement at the Wonders), published in 1628, compiled by Ling Mengchu (1580–1644); Erke poan jingqi (The Second Collection [of the same]), published in 1632; Liaozhai zhiyi (Tales of the Unusual from the Leisure Studio), by Pu Songling (1640–1715); Zibuyu (What the Master Disdains to Speak Of), compiled by Yuan Mei (1716–1798).

To give some notion of the quantity of materials at hand, one can cite the Liaozhai zhiyi, possibly the most famous collection of supernatural tales in the entire canon, which alone contains some 494 stories. To be sure, not all of them are about ghosts or spirits, but a substantial number are certainly devoted to that theme. When all twenty-four collections are taken together, the number of stories easily exceeds 1,000. Admittedly, several of these anthologies, such as the Soushen ji, Zhuanyi zhi, Yiwen ji, and Xuanguai lu, no longer exist as independent works. Large portions of these texts, however, survive preserved in the Taiping guangji , that invaluable encyclopedia compiled in the tenth century, in which the entry on gui alone commands forty-four juan (from 316 to 350) and numbers 319 pages in a modern edition. If one also consults other entries under such related headings as dingshu (predetermined lot), baoying (karmic retribution), meng (dreams), huanshu (manifestations), yaoguai (monsters and fiends), and zaisheng (resurrection, revivification, and rebirth), the amount of materials expands dramatically. When one arrives at another and even longer reference work, the Gujin tushu jicheng , compiled by Chen Menglei and published in 1706, the entries under the most pertinent sections on hunpo, za guishen (miscellaneous ghosts and spirits), and mingsi (bureaus of darkness) number in the thousands culled from both known and untraceable sources.

All of the items mentioned above, it should be noted, are collections of only short fiction or anecdotes, for the present study has deliberately avoided other genres like drama and poetry. Although no single one of the monumental classics of vernacular fiction, mercifully, has ghosts as its principal theme, there are nonetheless memorable scenes in such titles as the Xiyouji (The Journey to the West) and the Hongloumeng (The Dream of the Red Chamber) that demand some attention. In view of such a massive quantity of materials and the equally astonishing lack of systematic scholarly treatment,⁴ the first step toward a critical study must deal with the problem of organization. This essay thus does not concern the identification of sources and the authentication of texts, responsibilities that belong properly to historical criticism. Instead, it will analyze some representative samples of the stories to ascertain whether there are particular emphases, persistent themes, or recurrent patterns underlying these tales on ghosts and spirits, on existence and phenomena in the life beyond. The classifications listed hereafter are not meant to be hard and fast; they are, rather, working hypotheses, heuristic typologies subject to further revision.

THE GHOSTLY APOLOGUE

Although belief in the existence of ghosts and spirits apparently goes back to the dawn of Chinese history, it is a belief neither well defined nor assured of universal assent. Numerous accounts of the avenging ghost that stud the standard works of Chinese dynastic histories may betoken a well-accepted and stubborn conviction,⁵ but there is also evidence of resistance and skepticism among some of the literate elite. Confucius is often quoted on his refusal to talk of prodigies, feats of violence, disorders, and spirits (shen) (Analects 7.20), but he is also credited with the injunction: “Respect the ghosts and spirits, but keep them at a distance” (Analects 6.20). Whether this last statement implies a sincere presupposition of their existence or an oblique denial is tantalizingly ambiguous. Other ancient sources seem to view ghosts and spirits as integral phenomena of the natural order, and thus, in principle, they should neither disturb nor terrify unduly. The “Great Commentary” (Da zhuan ) of the Classic of Change , for example, declares that “the union of the quintessential qi produces things, while the wandering soul brings about change. This is how [humans] come to know the conditions of ghosts and spirits, which resemble heaven and earth; hence there is no basis for conflict” (4.2, 3). In the chapter on “The Meaning of Sacrifice ” in the Liji (Record of Rites), we have the following dialogue:

Zai Wo said, “I have heard of the names of gui and shen, but I don’t know what they refer to.” The Master said, “Now qi is the fullest expression of the spirit [shen], and the po [soul] is the fullest expression of the gui. The union of gui and shen constitutes the ultimate of doctrine. All living creatures must die, and all the dead must return to earth. This is what is called gui [i.e., “return”; was the Master resorting to definition by punning, a device he used frequently in the Analects?]. Flesh and bones deteriorate below and, sheltered there, become the earth of the wilds; but their qi rises up to become resplendent luminosity, odoriferous fumes, and sad feelings. This is the emanation of all things, the concrete manifestation of spirit.”

What is signified by the terms gui and shen in this view is apparently some essential part of the human that can not only survive physical decay but also become visible to the naked eye.

How attractive and popular this notion of disembodied existence of the human was may be gathered from the rigorous assaults it receives from the polemics of a philosopher like Wang Chong (27–91). In his Lun heng (Carefully Weighed Arguments), Wang devotes lengthy chapters to such subjects as “Death,” “The Falseness of Being After Death,” “The Records of the Monstrous,” “Ghosts” (SBCK ed., juan 20–22) and seeks to discredit various recorded prodigies by offering rational explanations. One line of refutation developed by Wang is that the dead are far too numerous to become ghosts visible only in single numbers as is claimed.⁶ Another is to question the possibility of conscious life after death. “A man before birth resides in the primal breath [yuanqi ] and returns also to it after death,” according to Wang. “Before birth a man has no consciousness; upon death a man returns to the origin of no consciousness [wuzhi zhi ben ]. How could he still possess consciousness?” (juan 20).

Whether Wang’s arguments are compelling or not is not as germane to our interest here as how widespread and persistent his kind of unbelief was among the elite. For example, Ruan Xiu and Ruan Zhan , both nephews of the celebrated poet Ruan Ji (210–263), were also both famous for their disbelief in ghosts (wugui lun ). Such stubborn skepticism may in turn have something to do with the literary response I discuss here, for a good many examples in our first category appear to have, in the words of Derk Bodde on the Soushen ji, “the very serious mission of proving to a skeptical world the actual existence of spirits.”⁷ However brief the tale may be, each work nonetheless is thus a form of the apologue, for “each is organized as a fictional example of the truth of a formulable statement or closely related set of such statements.”⁸ The statement, moreover, often bears the emphasis of the visual reality of the world beyond.

We begin with two stories collected in the Soushen ji.⁹ One man, we are told, long held to his belief that there were no ghosts (wugui lun), and he was fond of boasting that his incontrovertible arguments could properly explain life and death. Receiving a guest one day, he chatted with him for a long time and bitterly debated the matter of ghosts and spirits. Quite defeated, the guest turned angry and said, “The existence of ghosts and spirits has been affirmed by worthy sages past and present. How could you alone maintain that they are not? I myself happen to be a ghost.” Thereafter the speaker changed into a strange shape and soon disappeared. The unbeliever fell silent; in slightly more than a year illness led to his death.

Quite possibly a variation of the first, the second story presents an interesting twist in the plot. A certain student of a chief commander, both habitual skeptics, overwhelmed in like manner a chance visitor in a white and black robe. When the guest ran out of words, he said, “Your rhetoric may be clever, but your reasoning is deficient. I myself happen to be a ghost. How could you claim that ghosts do not exist?” “For what reason has our ghost come here?” the man asked. “I was authorized to summon you,” was the reply. In great fear and distress the student asked to be spared, and eventually he was asked, “Is there someone who resembles you?” The student at once replied with the commander’s name, whereupon the latter on the following day was struck in the head by an iron awl produced by the visitor. The commander complained of a mild headache at first, but it soon turned severe and he perished forthwith.

There are a few noteworthy features common to both stories. The doubters are characteristically unwary of their visitors’ true identity until it is disclosed. The revelation does not occur until the ghost is defeated in disputation; when it comes, however, it has all the bluntness of a Johnsonian injunction to confirm the reality of a tree by kicking it. Found in both stories, the utterance “I myself happen to be a ghost” is meant, of course, to illustrate how vision is superior to a thousand words. But such sighting brings about more than a change of mind; for the doubters the final result is a swift and painful demise, which certainly appears to be a veiled form of chastisement for their unbelief. Though the narrator does not resort to overt moralization or exhortation, the tone of the tales is plainly cautionary.

Happily, not all encounters with spectral beings end in such dire consequence for the human characters. Much of this kind of fiction may be didactic, but the intended messages differ just as the plot arrangements serviceable to them differ. The demands of the departed can be quite reasonable, and even ghosts can be outwitted. In a tale collected in the Liuyi zhuan ,¹⁰ we have a charming incident involving a man named Zong Dingbo outwitting a spectral companion.

In his youth, Dingbo once journeyed at night and met a ghost. When asked who he was, the ghost said, “I’m a ghost.” Then the ghost asked who he was, and to deceive him, Dingbo said, “I, too, am a ghost.” “Where are you going to?” the ghost asked. “To the city Wan,”¹¹ was the reply. The ghost said, “I also would like to go to the city Wan.” They therefore traveled together. After a few li, the ghost said, “Walking is too tiring. Let’s tote each other by turn, how about that?” “Very good,” replied Dingbo. The ghost toted Dingbo first for several li before saying, “You’re too heavy. I suspect you’re not a ghost.” “I’m a new ghost,” said Dingbo, “and that’s why my body is heavy.” Dingbo then toted the ghost, who seemed to have no weight at all. This went on for several times, and Dingbo said again, “I’m a new ghost, and I don’t know what I should avoid.” The ghost said, “I only dislike being spat at by people.”

They thus traveled together till they came to a body of water. When Dingbo ordered the ghost to wade through the water first, he found that the crossing was completely noiseless. When he himself then waded into the water, however, there were sounds of splashing. “Why are you making all these noises?” asked the ghost again. Dingbo said, “Because I’m a newly dead ghost and not used to crossing waters. Don’t blame me.”

When they almost reached the city, Dingbo quickly seized the ghost after tossing it over his shoulders. The ghost cried out in a loud, rasping voice, and demanded to be put down. Dingbo did not comply. When the ghost touched the ground upon their arrival in the midst of the city, it changed into a sheep. Dingbo wanted to sell it, but fearing that it might change into something else, he spat on it. Eventually he got a thousand and five hundred cash for it. Thus a proverb of the time said, “Dingbo sold a ghost, and acquired a thousand and five hundred cash.”

The few remarkable details in this story include the ghost’s weightlessness and its disdain for human spit. The first feature, common to many such stories, is simply an affirmation of the disembodied nature of the apparition, of its insubstantial, shadowy or shadelike character. The latter, however, may point to some specific form of taboo that requires further research for its clarification, or it may betoken a sardonic reference to the notion that gui, as both spirit and alien being, deserves to be spat at. This is one of the few stories in the Chinese canon that I know of that contain a specific description of how a ghost speaks. “A loud, rasping voice” is my rendition of “he sounded zeze-like” , the Chinese term being patently a form of onomatopoetic binome so common in the language. As a ghostly oddity, it is worthy of comparison with the “squeak” (Gk. tetriguīa) uttered by Patroclus’s ghost when it resisted Achilles’ embrace (Iliad 23.101) and the Shakespearean echo in Julius Caesar: “And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets” (2.2.24). Ghosts who make noises in Chinese stories often appear as weeping ghosts (guiku ), usually protesting wrongs suffered in life or death and trying to communicate with the living.

Apart from establishing the reality of ghosts and spirits, many of these tales are concerned with informing the reader about the character of life beyond the grave, the values that obtain therein, and the essential relation between the world of the living and that of the dead. We should remember here that the earlier debate on the existence of ghosts was further fueled by the larger debate on the merit of Buddhism, a central preoccupation of this religion’s history from the Wei-Jin period down through the Six Dynasties (220–581). As Buddhism made its rapid spread across the nation, many of its beliefs (immortality, transmigration, karmic retribution) and practices (the life and rules of the saṅgha) were attacked and defended by native polemicists. In the fourth century, for example, Huiyuan’s treatise Shenbumie lun (On the Indestructibility of the Soul) was later assaulted by Fan Zhen’s Shenmielun (On the Destructibility of the Soul), only to be further criticized by a host of Buddhist apologists, both clerical and lay. Huilin’s Baihei lun (On Black and White), a fierce castigation of Buddhism by a former priest, was met in kind by the great defender of the faith Zongbing and others.¹² Since the period coincided with the rise of the zhiguai stories, it was no surprise that the themes of karmic retribution and Buddhist soteriology, popularly conceived, pervaded such “religious anthologies”¹³ as the Xuanyan lu, the Mingxiang ji, and the Yuanhun ji.

For the person anxious to learn of the hereafter, death regrettably is the great divide precisely because it is, as Hamlet succinctly puts the matter, “the undiscover’d country from whose bourn / No traveller returns.” To overcome such an enormous obstacle, literatures of this genre, East and West, are obliged to find some effective means to enable that country’s discovery. One familiar device frequently used is the journey to the underworld, after which the traveler is allowed to return to the land of the living to bear witness. The knowledge acquired is thus beneficial not merely to the traveler alone (as in the case of an Odysseus or an Aeneas), but also to all those who may come into contact with him. In this particular variation of the story, ghosts, in fact, are not the main focus; their impact on the beholder is the more important element. Seen in this light, the hundreds of tales gathered in the Chinese canon on the subject are one in purpose, though certainly not in magnitude or artistry, with Dante’s poem. They share in the same basic design of turning the traveler’s vision and experience into the principal medium and message of instruction for himself and for his audience.

Given this intent, it is only logical that the literary treatment dwells at length on the suffering of the departed encountered on the way by the traveler. This emphasis does not imply that in either Christian or Buddhist eschatology there is little room for the joy of the enlightened or the redeemed. But the “myth of sanctity” has always been for the literary imagination something much more difficult to render,¹⁴ whereas the judgment of the wicked readily provides sensational ingredients dramatizing both the ingenuity and the exactitude of retributive justice. The places and tools of punishment, the so-called loca and lora poenalia in Christian theology, are often graphically depicted. The sojourner in hell would likely catch sight of “faces twisted toward their haunches / and found it necessary to walk backward” (Dante, Inferno 20.13–14); or “boiling iron, … bronze arrows … and wheels of swords” that inflict continuous punishment (Maudgalyāyana 512–515); or “skins peeled and bones exposed, / The limbs cut and the tendons severed” (The Journey to the West, chap. 11).¹⁵ The features discernibly common to these three otherwise vastly different texts are their narrative technique and the physical realism in the description. Not only do the damned spirits or ghosts suffer as if they had bodies, but the instruments of their affliction are of material substance, as if in deliberate defiance of verisimilitude. Moreover, the insistent, didactic voice of the verse narrative addresses the traveler (and by extension, the reader) directly or indirectly. Confronted by such appalling and grim visions, it is small wonder that one Chinese protagonist of a short tale, Zhao Tai ,¹⁶ is quick to ask: “What can a man do to gain a happy retribution after death?” The answer of the official who released Zhao from the netherworld provided an unambiguous injunction: “Now that you have seen in hell the retribution for sins, you should report this to the people of the world. Tell them all to do good, for they are free to choose vice or virtue. How could anyone be careless of its consequence?”

In order for the traveler to act as a messenger to the living, some excuses must be found to allow for his return, and this usually takes the form of extending for the protagonist the allotment of years, or—if some offense or crime happens to be the presumed cause for his visit to the underworld—establishing his innocence, or finding some bureaucratic error in the halls of darkness. In the story just cited, Zhao Tai was represented as someone “determined to cherish virtue and remain untarnished by various vices.” His uprightness and the fact that he was not yet fated to die would thus ensure his release from hell, though he was brought there for the specific purpose of bearing witness and instituting, after his return to life, masses for his grandparents and two younger brothers. He also redoubled his diligence in instructing his sons and offspring to observe the Law, and “the prodigy of his revivification and his many sightings of the damned and blessed” attracted flocks of visitors.

These features of fearsome encounters leading to repentance and meritorious deeds are typical of stories colored by forms of popular Buddhism. In The Journey to the West, for example, the emperor Taizong ostensibly perished after he had been terrified in his dream by a dragon he could not save from execution. When his soul went to the underworld, however, he was greeted by the ghosts of his two brothers, Jiancheng and Yuanji, as well as by that of his father, Li Yuan. Shouting “Here comes Shimin! Here comes Shimin!” the brothers “clutched at Taizong and began beating him and threatening vengeance” (JW 1:239). This is, of course, a thinly veiled allusion to the Xuanwu Gate Incident of 626, when Li Shimin ambushed his two brothers and slaughtered them before proceeding to usurp the throne.¹⁷

One of the emperor’s trusted generals sought to comfort him shortly before his death with the remark, “When you established your empire, you had to kill countless people. Why should you fear ghosts?” (JW 1:233). In the Buddhist perspective, however, the emperor’s past constitutes precisely his guilt. Not only had he repeatedly committed the sin of killing, but in his effort to gain final power, he even resorted to fratricide, the shedding of kindred blood. Had there not been the bureaucratic bond between Wei Zheng, the chief minister, and an underworld judge, whose presence of mind in altering the Book of the Dead added years to Taizong’s allotment, the emperor’s long and dramatic journey would have terminated down below. The emperor’s unexpected and disconcerting meeting with the spirits of his deceased brothers thus reinforces the weight of the judge’s parting counsel: “When Your Majesty returns to the World of Light, be very certain you celebrate the Grand Mass of Land and Water so that those wretched, homeless souls may be delivered. Please do not forget! Only if there is no murmuring for vengeance in the Region of Darkness will there be the prosperity of peace in your World of Light. If there are any wicked ways in your life, you must change them one by one, and you must teach your subjects far and wide to do good. You may be assured then that your empire will be firmly established, and that your fame will go down to posterity” (JW 1:248).

Not all persons visiting the world of darkness are as socially exalted as a Tang emperor or as guilty as he in blood crimes. One minor official by the name of Zheng Yue , who by his own acknowledgment “guarded his office with integrity and made his official decisions with reverence and caution,” was brought down below apparently on a false charge.¹⁸ As the king of the underworld said to him, “When you were presiding over the Zhibang District, you slaughtered fifty head of cattle. Now, a cow is a creature which uses its strength to support humans. When you kill such innocent creatures, you will have to pay for the act with your life and be sent on to an other-than-human path of incarnation.” Only when Zheng convinced the king by documentary proof that his act had been ordered by the prince of Zhizhou for feeding an expeditionary army was he returned to life.

In another story, even the integument of keeping dietary law becomes an issue of fateful consequence.¹⁹ Zheng Shibian died suddenly in his teens but returned to life after three days, claiming that he was herded among six rows of prisoners. When in fear and distress he concentrated on chanting the name of Buddha, he saw a monk whom he had known before in life approach and say to him, “You did not devote yourself in life to the cultivation of blessedness. What will you do now with this sudden change?” Zheng begged for deliverance, and he was promised revivification after he had vowed to keep the five prohibitions. After his revival, Zheng maintained his vows for several years before he broke one of them by eating pork at a friend’s insistent behest. That very night he dreamt that he himself had been transformed into a rākṣa, with fangs and claws several feet long, seizing live pigs and devouring them. When he asked people to look inside his mouth, they found it filled with clotted blood. Horrified, Zheng dared not eat meat at all for another few years, when he was forced to do so again by his newly wedded wife. Though the previous symptoms did not return, Zheng was afflicted for the next five or six years with the foulest body odor and huge sores and boils that would not heal. As if the events had not conveyed the message with sufficient clarity, the narrator at the end adds: “Some suspected that his transgression of the prohibitions was the cause of all this.”

If the violation of Buddhist commandments can beget suffering in hell, it is only reasonable that the observance of the Law or the use of certain means or talismans will produce the opposite result. In Chinese fiction, at least, perdition is frequently a reversible state. In yet another story that has to do with the tour of hell,²⁰ one Huangfu Xun died suddenly and, having met the wife of his uncle in the underworld, was given a tour of inspection by a white-robed monk. When Huangfu heard someone calling his name from the infernal flames, he discovered that it was his former student, with the all-too-significant name of Huseng bian (Controverting the Barbarian Monk, or, alternatively, the Disputatious Barbarian Monk)! When questioned by a startled Huangfu, the student tellingly answered, “It was because I drank wine and ate meat with you and others during my life that I am in this condition today. I regret it, but it’s too late. Now that you are following a monk, you will undoubtedly acquire many blessings. I hope that you will rescue me.” Huangfu asked how he might help him, and the student replied, “You must write on my behalf a scroll of the Diamond Sūtra and erect in the marketplace a stone banner. Then I will be released to take the next incarnation as a beast.”

What is noteworthy in this story is the reference to a specific classic text of the Buddhist canon. I have yet to ascertain why this particular sutra is so popular in this genre of literature, but in story after story, the writing or the chanting of the Diamond Sūtra (Jin’gang Jing , the Vajracchedik āprajñāpāramitā sūtra) apparently is held to be of special merit or efficacy.²¹ Not all objects possessive of such extraordinary potency, however, are related to a religious tradition. In the history of Chinese literature and folklore, there are virtually countless artifacts—a sword, a fan, a mirror, a musical instrument, a flower basket or fish basket, a seal, a hairpin, a lock, to name only a few of the most commonly deployed ones—that may acquire magical or numinous power by dint of age, process of production, or usage. Similarly, a person’s triumph over the forces of darkness and eventual deliverance may be brought about by secular means. Thus in this subgenre of ghostly apologue, the exaltation of a particularly favored virtue like filial piety often goes hand in hand with vehement satire of the perceived social and ethical milieu of the world below. Bribery, illicit gifts, and payoffs are, in these tales, as common as bumbling lictors and venal judges, and in this way, the tales serve as much as any other kind of Chinese fiction to reflect the basic realities of their context. We have, for example, a story about a cruel young man fond of catching and eating stray dogs and cats.²² While modern historians assure us that this happens to be one of China’s most ancient culinary preferences,²³ the hapless animals in the story filed charges down below and summoners duly went after the gourmand. The young man managed to persuade the two infernal agents to delay execution of their charge and drink with him. This “favor of one moment’s inebriation” obliged the two summoners at last to say to him: “If you prepare four hundred thousand cash, we will grant you three more years of life.” The man of course complied with the burning of the ritual paper cash, but he died nonetheless three days later, not realizing that what the ghosts referred to as three years were merely three days in the human world.

This disparity of the temporal scheme of two realms apparently is intended to emphasize the sentiment, frequently expressed in countless of these tales by means of formulaic parallelism (yuming yilu , rengui shutu , youxian luge ), that the ways of the living and the dead are vastly different. The slight detail here is quite remarkable since it reverses the customary equation set up in Chinese fiction that considers a day in the supernatural realm may be a lengthy period in the mundane world. Hence the adage: Barely seven days in the mountains / Will be a thousand years in the world. Another story, long and magnificently crafted, that reveals even more sharply the paradox of difference and congruity of this world and the next is found in the Liaozhai.²⁴ The father of a filial son by the name of Xi Fangping was brought to the underworld because of a disgruntled neighbor’s bribery of the nether officials. Overwrought with grief, Xi himself also died and his soul went to the capital of hell to protest his father’s detention and mistreatment. Much of the rest of the story is then devoted to describing Xi’s suffering in the courts of hell at the hands of corrupt officials. The tortures are appalling enough—including the red-hot iron rack and the saw—but the extreme agony of a soul that is not perishable is further intensified by the judges’ complete disregard for justice. Such wretched misery drove Xi to “reflect on how darkness in the netherworld is even more intense than that in the world of light.” This single line of enormous irony and poignance must have moved readers past and present, even as it amply discloses what the author, Pu Songling, has in mind when he declares in his own preface that among other things, Liaozhai happens to be “a book of solitary outrage.” Students of China’s social history may well surmise what could have been the targets of such authorial anger.

For the readers of Pu’s composition, however, the protagonist is happily a filial son who does not give up his quest for his father’s release even after a couple of reincarnations. At last the god Erlang, who is one of the most gallant and impartial deities in the pantheon of Chinese folk religions, came to his rescue by issuing an edict, which in superb classical prose roundly condemned the kings of darkness and their subordinates for gross negligence of duty and corruption. Both Xi and his father were finally returned to life, for in all such texts of didactic fiction, filial piety must have its reward.

THE AVENGING GHOST

As we have seen in the early chapters of The Journey to the West, persons like the brothers of the emperor Taizong are prone to become vengeance seekers because they have suffered “bad deaths.” As “perturbed spirits” out to rectify the wrongs done to them, they are probably the most familiar figure in this genre of literature. Even in literary texts not largely concerned with the fortunes of the dead, the figure of the avenging ghost often makes its appearance. In the so-called Hamlet episode of the novel (chaps. 37–39), for example, the ruler of one Black Rooster Kingdom was pushed into a well, his throne usurped, and his queen taken, all by a Daoist. Through the characteristic medium of a dream, the ghost of the deceased king sought and received help from Xuanzang and his disciples, and he was eventually restored to life.

It must be remembered that not all bad deaths recorded in the literary texts are thought to be the result of human violence. What the Chinese consider an undesirable demise may range from death by natural calamities (earthquake, flood, famine, plague), accidents (fire, collapse of house or bridge, boat capsize), and even sudden death (baozu , baowang ). All persons who suffer such fates are potentially capable of becoming souls with grievances or wronged souls (yuanhun ) who would demand attention or some form of recompense. Another large group of “perturbed spirits,” which I discuss presently, belong to those subject to improper burials of one kind or another. Nonetheless, the violent death induced by either communal conflict or personal enmity tends to be regarded by far as one most capable of provoking ghostly apparitions. Such an understanding is certainly as ancient as the Zuozhuan.

In 602 B.C., Zichan, in explaining the apparitions of Boyou, who had been killed in battle, maintains: “When an ordinary man or woman dies a violent death, the soul and spirit are still able to keep hanging about men in the shape of an evil apparition,” so that a nobleman like Boyou was all the more capable of making himself manifest as a ghost.²⁵

Again, as the famous lines of the “Prose Elegy for an Ancient Battlefield,”²⁶ by the Tang writer Li Hua (fl. eighth century) have described for us: “This is an ancient battlefield where the ghosts can be heard whenever the sky darkens.” In a story of the Liaozhai,²⁷ the cry, “What a horrible death I’ve suffered!” reverberated in a haunted house once raided by bandits, and the spirits were pacified only when a Mass of Land and Water had been recited by both Buddhists and Daoists and votive rice scattered in the courtyard.

The figure of the avenging ghost that makes its frequent appearance in such tales, however, is much more likely a victim of personal injustice than large-scale hostility. The grievance or grudge that the ghost has is often directed at people with whom it has had intimate relations (a blood kin, a friend, or an official who is a superior or subordinate) but who have dealt it a fatal injury. It is the wrong suffered at the hands of those expected to be trusted and beloved and the compelling need for the requital of justice that stir the wronged soul’s activities in Chinese fiction, much as the spirits of Hamlet’s father, Caesar, and Banquo rage for revenge in Shakespeare’s plays. In his fine study on “Revenge and the Law in Traditional China,” Michael Dalby has pointed out that “the moral imperative to revenge, the role of public authority, the presumption of its validity, and the rudimentary forms of mediation”²⁸ all serve to define the social context of vengeance. Such elements, it will be seen, are presupposed as well in the literary tradition.

Given human nature and the Chinese kinship structure, it is understandable that the evil stepmother assumes a place of prominence in this kind of fiction. A classic story collected in the early anthology the Yuanhun ji concerns a man who had a son whom he named Tiejiu (Iron Mortar).²⁹ When his first wife passed away, the man married another woman by the name of Chen who was most cruel and determined to get rid of Iron Mortar.

When a boy was born to Chen, she swore at him, saying, “If you do not do away with Iron Mortar, you’re not my son!” For this reason she gave her son the name of Tiezhu (Iron Pestle), thinking that the pestle would vanquish the mortar. She went on to inflict all sorts of pain and vicious beatings on Iron Mortar; he would not be fed when he was hungry, nor would he be given more clothing when he was cold. Since her husband was weak by nature and was absent from home most of the time, the second wife had complete freedom in perpetrating her cruelty. Iron Mortar finally died from the cold, the hunger, and all those beatings; he was only sixteen.

Some days after his death, a ghost suddenly returned to the house and ascended Chen’s bed, saying, “I’m Iron Mortar. In truth not guilty of the slightest misdeed, I was brutally harmed without cause. Because my mother complained to Heaven, I have now received a warrant from the Heavenly Tribunal to come to fetch Iron Pestle. I will cause him to be sick and suffer for as long as I have. There will be a specific date of his arrest, which I shall await by staying here.” The voice was just like that when he was alive; all the people in the family heard the words, though they could not see his form. Thereafter the ghost remained on the beam of the roof….

During another night Chen secretly spoke of the ghost to someone. The ghost at once said loudly, “How dare you speak of me? I must now sunder the beam of your house.” Immediately the sound of a saw was heard and wood shavings began to fall from above. There was a loud crack, as if the beam were actually toppling. The entire family ran out of the house. Shortly thereafter they lit candles to look inside and found that nothing had changed.

At another time the ghost also rebuked Iron Pestle, saying, “Since you killed me, you have sat in your house thinking you are secure in your pleasure. I ought to burn down your house.” Immediately a fire flared up. Smoke and flames grew so fierce that the whole household became desperate. In a short while, however, the fire went out by itself, and the thatched house from top to bottom appeared as it was, without the slightest damage. Daily the ghost abused the inhabitants, and often the ghost could be heard singing a song that went like this:

 

Flower of peaches and plums,
What will you do when heavy frost descends?
Fruit of peaches and plums,
Heavy frost-descent will bring your early end.

 

The voice was most melancholy, as if it lamented the fact that he could not reach adulthood.

At the time Iron Pestle was six years old; the moment the ghost arrived he fell ill. He had body ache and his belly became swollen; gas rising in his stomach, in fact, prevented him from eating. Repeatedly the ghost assaulted him, and he had bruises all over. In slightly over a month he died, after which the ghost was not heard of again.

We can note in this story that it is the victim that takes direct action against those who had harmed him, with the result that another life (and presumably innocent, too) was taken for his own. In other stories about the cruel stepmother, frequently it is the dead mother’s ghost who intervenes, threatening the living couple with death if they do not alter their ways and treat her son better.³⁰ In both stories, the public authority that sanctions the avenger’s acts belongs to that of the supernatural realms (Heavenly Tribunal, the Court of the Underworld). In another story,³¹ five children beaten daily by a vicious stepmother complained tearfully on their own mother’s grave. The mother’s ghost emerged to comfort them and then wrote on a piece of white cloth a twelve-line pentasyllabic regulated verse for her husband to read. Lines such as the final four,

I aim to cherish our boys and girls,³²
Though you’re free unkindly to behave.
Would you care to know the heart-break place?
The brightest moon shines on one lonely grave.

moved the father to weep bitterly and file suit before a human magistrate. Eventually the stepmother was exiled to Guangdong, but the father was removed from his office as well.

In yet another story,³³ a courtesan was mistakenly sentenced to death when she was captured along with several bandits caught raiding a house. She was actually an entertainer in the house, but the magistrate failed to conduct a thorough investigation when he interrogated the bandits. By the time the owner of the house attempted to vouch for her innocence, the official was too indifferent to alter the documents he had issued and signed.

When the day of her execution drew near, the courtesan said to the sympathetic multitude who had come to visit her: “Though I may be engaged in an ignoble profession, I have admired virtue since my youth and have never indulged in unlawful deeds. In truth I did not rob anyone. Magistrate Tao knows all about this, but unjustly he still wants to kill me. If I don’t become a ghost after I die, that’ll be the end of it. But if I do become a ghost, I shall certainly file charges.

She then sang a song to the accompaniment of the lute and went to her execution. Fully aware of her innocence, all the people mourned and wept for her. More than a month went by and Tao dreamt that the courtesan came before him, saying, “You killed me unjustly, and my outrage really could not be assuaged. Now my complaint has been accepted as proper and right, and I have come therefore to arrest you.” She at once went into Tao’s mouth and dropped below to his stomach. Greatly startled, Tao awoke and then collapsed once more as if he had been struck by epilepsy. Only after a long while did he regain consciousness, and all of a sudden, his head was twisted around completely to face his back. Four days later he died. After his death, his family became poor. One son died young, and a grandson became desolate by the wayside.

As one can see from these tales, there is not only a strenuous effort in upholding the strictest scale of retributive justice, but the offender, perhaps cast by the didactic intent of such fiction in the obligatory role of providing an example to all, often suffers more acutely than the victim he or she has harmed. The victims, as we have seen from the tale about stray dogs and cats, need not always be human. Even small creatures like cicadas, when offended, can bring savage vengeance, as one official found out when his three daughters one after another perished through violent deaths.³⁴

Victims who die with grievances, however, do not always become ghosts or avengers. The possible difference in the destinies of such ill-fated persons perhaps offers an explanation of the courtesan’s statement cited above: “If I don’t become a ghost, that’ll be the end of it.” Like many persons in fiction or folktales of other cultures, the Chinese victim of bad death may be rewarded with apotheosis and become a god (shen ). The well-known goddess of the privy, Lady Purple, or Zigu (alternatively, ), is one such figure, another being Lady Ding, or Dinggu ³⁵ Both of these women, it may be pointed out, are variations on the theme, because they suffer quite similar fates. Lady Purple, who lived as a concubine, was harshly treated by the legal wife until she died in the privy she was ordered to clean out regularly. Lady Ding was only sixteen when she was brutalized by her mother-in-law and driven to hanging herself. Shortly after her death, rumors of her miraculous power began to circulate among the people of her region, and she made revelations through a medium to ask people to remember the diligent toil of women and allow them to rest on the day of the Double Ninth, when she had committed suicide. During one of her manifestations, she specifically claimed to be a supernatural being (wushi gui-shen). The lady in this story did not return to exact vengeance from her adversary, but two youths who tried to flirt with her in that manifestation were later found to be drowned.

While the avenging ghost is always a wronged soul nursing a grievance or grudge, all ghostly grievances, we must remember, are not necessarily the fruit of violence, malice, or the miscarriage of justice. Although these tales, perhaps because of their brevity, do not stress detailed observation of ritual, nonetheless improper burials, unsatisfactory conditions of burial, the exposure of parts of the body or skeleton, and peculiar nagging concerns of the dead are all capable of causing restlessness among the spirits. In the story about Boyou’s ghost in the Zuozhuan, Zichan understood the deceased man’s concern and appointed Liangzhi, son of Boyou, to be the father’s successor. The action, which managed to terminate the ghostly activities terrorizing the people of Zheng, received from Zichan a succinct explanation on a ghost’s need for a place of refuge: “When a ghost has a place to belong to, it does not become an evil one; I have assisted it to return to where it belongs.”

When the Tang official Di Renjie was a prefect of Ninghou, as one story has it,³⁶ he was investigating a so-called haunted house when a man in official garb met him. Claiming that he was an official from a certain previous dynasty buried beneath some trees west of the courtyard steps, the man explained that his body had been pierced by the tree roots, thus causing unbearable pain. His request for reburial was promptly granted.

In another story,³⁷ a woman whose husband had gone off to a border expedition died of sudden illness. Since she had no other relatives, she was only placed in a coffin by her neighbors and not given a proper burial for over a year. Her explanation to her eventual benefactor of such a burial’s absolute necessity may give us insight into long-held beliefs about the condition of the dead.

Now, when the flesh and bones of the dead are not returned to earth, the soul and the spirit [hunshen ] will not be recorded in the Bureau of Darkness. They will therefore drift and scatter in an indeterminate way, as if intoxicated or in a dream. If you show concern for this dark soul, it will be reckoned as your merit accrued in the next world [yinde ]. I have no other wish than to have you send my corpse into the grave so that my spiritual essence may find its refuge.

Important as it may be, the burial is not the only thing that matters. A story that sheds some interesting light on certain aspects of mortuary practice concerns a woman who, pregnant because of an affair with a stableman, was beaten to near death by her husband.³⁸ She was then buried alive and in a prone position (daomai ), her corpse covered by a wooden bed. Her ghost, in the form of a woman with loose, untied hair, appeared before a military officer to request her bones be dug up. At first the officer only tried to appease the apparition by holding a Buddhist service for her. When he rested in a post house in another place the next day, the woman appeared again in his dream, though her hair now appeared to be tied up. Confronted by the angry officer as to why she was not satisfied with the religious service, the woman wept and said, “My skull (dinggu ) below is still buried upside down. Unless it is dug up and its position corrected, I cannot expect to live [i.e., proceed to the next incarnation]. I beg the general to give one word to the district commander to have me brought out. When I am on my way to life, would I dare forget the general?”

When the officer awoke, he did as the woman had requested, and the story eventually ends with the proper burial of the skull as well as the sudden death of the stableman. Although the story does not relate whether the official was rewarded for his compliance with the ghost’s wish, her final words of gratitude to him and promise of repayment point up one further strand of these stories. As students of the Chinese language recognize, the word bao may be used not only to form the terms for revenge (baochou , baofu ) and karmic retribution (baoying ), but also for the repayment or reciprocation of kindness (baochou , baoda ), a moral concept as important in Chinese history as it is in fiction. In this way the tales grouped together under the rubric of the avenging ghost may be seen as those displaying the double-edged understanding of bao of repaying kindness with kindness, and injury with injury (yi de bao de , yi yuan bao yuan ). Ghosts are aroused to action by the need for retaliation as much as by the obligation for the repayment of favor and beneficence.

A kind and compassionate Lord Assistant Chief Justice who had released many death-row prisoners in his criminal decisions once met on his way to morning court a white-haired old man leaning on a cane.³⁹ When he was asked why he was bowing to give thanks before the official’s horse, the old man said, “I’m not a living person, but the father of one of your condemned prisoners. A lowly being of darkness, I have nothing to repay your kindness. But if you ever have any extremely pressing need, I might be able to provide for it.” At first the justice declined this offer, saying that the man’s son owed his release to his own innocence and not to the official’s favor or twisting of the law. After the ghost had departed, however, the justice was moved eventually to call on the ghost for his services, which included the provision of a week’s dalliance with a beautiful girl whom the justice saw in the capital and fell in love with. Ten years thereafter the ghost also gave his benefactor an egg-sized pill that could transform ordinary bones to be the best bone chips for sword handles, and it was the use of this pill that gave the justice livelihood when his liberal legal policies provoked an envious superior to exile him.

THE AMOROUS GHOST

In his massive study of the Chinese religious system, J. J. M. de Groot noted how frequently and extensively the dead can traffic with the living.

Visits are paid by the dead to the living to bid them farewell and discourse with them about their domestic concerns; to enjoy the sexual pleasures of married life; to satiate the curiosity of their kinsfolk by telling them about their adventures, fate and prospects in the other world; to tell them what measures they ought to take to alleviate their misery and improve their conditions there. Not seldom they appear just when sacrifices are set out for them, attracting them by their favour to the ancestral home.⁴⁰

Of the countless tales of this genre, a large number has thus taken up the theme of the ghost lover. Indeed, this theme apparently enjoys such enormous popularity that storytellers seem eager to explore and exploit every possible nuance of its development: not only do the dead take living spouses, but they may even arrange marriages for friends. Humans and their ghost mates may enjoy all the delights of the living, including the bearing and rearing of children.

One common variation of this theme is the impeded path of love, where the lovers are not allowed to be united until one or both of them have passed through death. In a story about the famous king Fucha of the state of Wu , his eighteen-year-old daughter Purple Jade fell in love with Han Zhong , a young man one year older than she.⁴¹ In secret she promised herself to him, but his parents’ formal request for marriage later was angrily refused by the king, and the daughter died of pent-up anger. Three years later the young man went to offer sacrifices before her grave, and she emerged to meet him and sing about their unrequited love. When she finished her song, she begged him in tears to enter the grave with her.

“The dead and the living follow different paths,” said Han, “and I fear there may be punishment. I dare not obey.” “I, too, know that the dead and the living follow different paths,” replied Purple Jade, “but when we part this time, there will never be another time for us to meet. Do you really fear that I as a ghost will bring you harm? I earnestly want to give you something. How could you not believe me?” Moved by her words, Han returned to the grave mound with her and she drank and feted with him. He stayed for three days and nights, and they fulfilled the connubial rites. When he was about to go out, the girl gave him a string of pearls, saying, “My reputation has been ruined and my fondest hopes abolished. What more shall I say? Take good care of yourself in the years to come. If you happen to visit my house, give the great king my respects.”

When Han went to see the king and told him what had happened, the king became enraged and refused to believe him. He charged Han with fabricating the incident and blaspheming against the dead spirit. The pearls, he claimed, proved that Han was only a grave robber who should be arrested. Han fled back to the grave to tell the girl, and she decided to appear before the king to clear him. Indeed she spoke at length to her father; “when the queen heard her voice, she came out and tried to embrace her daughter, but Purple Jade seemed like a wisp of smoke.”

In another story on the power of undying love,⁴² a man who left home on a journey dreamt of his wife: first, separated from him by rows of flowers, she appeared to be weeping. Then she seemed to be looking into a well and smiling. When the man awoke, he sought the counsel of a diviner, who told him: “When someone weeps beyond rows of flowers, the person’s complexion will fade with the wind; when someone smiles looking into a well, the person shows delight in the path to Yellow Springs.” Several days after this, the news of his wife’s death arrived. Overcome by implacable grief, the man undertook—as poets through the ages had done—to write and chant through the night impassioned verse about the virtues and beauty of the deceased. There were imploring couplets like the following:

If still to have feelings her spirit seems,

Let her or her likeness enter my dreams.

Such incantations eventually proved efficacious in recalling her to his sight. The account of their reunion, in view of the general brevity of these tales, is quite elaborate and meticulous. At first, the man only heard someone weeping with him as he chanted his melancholy verse, and only gradually, after much entreaty, was he permitted to catch sight of the dead wife. In coming to meet him, she emphasized repeatedly how “the hidden and the manifest, the yin and the yang, belong to different paths,” but his sincere longing had succeeded in moving even the official of darkness to approve her momentary release.

They thus proceeded to enjoy a visit that had virtually all the trappings of familial bliss: eating and drinking, conversation, the attentive service of a large domestic staff (a dead maid and some servants who existed previously only as paper-cut figurines also appeared), and reunion with a daughter who had died a few years before. The persistent notes sounded throughout the encounter are the paradoxical similarity and difference of the world beyond. To the overjoyed husband, everything seemed strangely familiar and yet suggestive of subtle changes. According to the wife, all kinds of fine food were available in the netherworld except a certain type of rice gruel, which she promptly requested during their meal together. The daughter, who had died in infancy, continued to age to such an extent that she now appeared to be a child of five or six. The wife herself, who did not seem adept at poetry while alive, now wrote a competent regulated quatrain to answer her husband’s compositions. Their lovemaking, discreetly narrated, was as good as ever, but her hands, her feet, and her breath were cold. At last she had to leave, and when questioned, replied that they would most likely meet again after forty years.

If her parting words render explicit what seems to have been hinted at throughout the narrative, that there can be no lasting union of humans and ghosts till both are dead, there are nonetheless stories in the tradition that portray a different outcome. The dead in Chinese fiction, of course, can be revived through a variety of means. One device frequently used is the so-called jieshi huanhun (retrieving the soul by borrowing another body), by which the spirit of a deceased person “enters” someone’s body, whereupon the revived person acquires the characteristics of both beings. In a famous story titled “The Golden Hairpin,”⁴³ a girl betrothed to a man died before he could marry her. Later, her younger sister became his bride, and it was some time before both families made the startling discovery that “the body was indeed that of Qingniang [i.e., the living, younger sister], but the voice and mannerisms were those of Xingniang [i.e., the deceased].” What apparently had happened, according to the rather intricate plot, was that the dead sister’s soul had been allowed to occupy the living one’s body for a period of time. The latter had secretly married the man and eloped with him. After the revelation was made, the girl cried bitterly and fell to the ground. She appeared dead.

Quickly a broth was forced between her lips, and in a brief while Qingniang revived. All symptoms of her sickness were gone, and her actions seemed normal. When asked about what had happened, she apparently remembered nothing, as if she had just awakened from a dream.

The story ends with the formal marriage between the man and the younger sister, and further sanction come from the words of the departed to him in a dream: “Thanks to your prayers, I have gained my salvation. My love for you is undying, even though we are in separate worlds. I feel deeply grateful and have great admiration for you. My younger sister is gentle and meek; please treat her with kindness.”

In another story of the Liaozhai,⁴⁴ a female ghost, Nie Xiaoqian , who died when she was eighteen and was then conscripted into the service of a monstrous creature (yaowu ), was actually allowed to return to life and become the wife of a fine and upright man. The unusual aspect of the story is precisely this development, for as Ma and Lau have aptly observed, Nie after all had been “responsible for a number of murders committed while she was under the control of the demon.”⁴⁵ Prior to her revivification, it may be noted, Nie had already taken on traits of the succubus and the vampire. Her beauty and sex were used as bait, and in her own words of confession:

When a man becomes intimate with me, I secretly pierce his foot with an awl and he becomes unconscious. Then I suck out his blood and give it to that demon to drink. Sometimes I use the gold—actually it’s not gold at all, but the bones of the rakshas. The demon will cut out the heart and liver of anyone who keeps the gold. These two methods are used because women and gold are what men are after.

In such a role Nie is no different from a popular figure of the Liaozhai and other collections: the ghost (and sometimes interchangeably, the fox)⁴⁶ as evil temptress. A particularly frightening story on this theme has two students, Wang and Li, meeting a lovely woman in the middle of the night.⁴⁷ Li eventually succumbed to her beckoning and left with her. When Wang later went to spy on them, he saw “Li reclining in bed while the woman, using a piece of silk, was strangling him until his neck snapped with a crack. The woman had a white face over three feet long, but there were no features on it.”

In another story, a man again was approached at night by an exquisitely beautiful woman attended by two maids.⁴⁸ At first, he dared not accept her advances, but she overcame his resistance with rhetoric repeated many times in similar tales: “Orphaned in my youth, I have no other refuge. Now I’m willing to serve you, a gentleman, on the pillow and mat. Would you permit me?” A few months after the man and the girl began living together, with the latter arriving at night and departing in the morning, the man chanced to meet an old friend who was a Daoist priest.

When the cleric saw the strange complexion of his friend, he said, “You are under the spell of some ghost or demon. You must terminate this relationship, or you’ll die.” Horrified by what he had heard, the man gave an account of his experience. The priest said, “This is a ghost.” He gave the man two charms, one to be worn on the sash of his robe and one hung on the door. “When this ghost comes again,” said the priest, “she’ll become enraged. Take care that you don’t speak with her.” At night, when the girl arrived and saw the charm on the door, she broke out with a torrent of abuses. Before she left, she said, “Get rid of it quickly or there’ll be calamity!”

The next day the man went to tell the priest, who said, “When she returns this evening, you may sprinkle on her my exorcistic water. She’ll disappear.” By nightfall, the girl indeed returned and appeared grief-stricken. The man sprinkled on her the exorcistic water provided by the Daoist priest, and she disappeared.

It may be pointed out that three structural elements of the plot—the union with a temptress, the appearance of a cleric who provides the warning, the intervention of magic power leading to the removal of the temptress—have provided the model for many tales of this kind.⁴⁹ In all such stories, the goal is invariably the subjugation or destruction of the evil one.

Pu Songling’s treatment of Nie Xiaoqian, on the other hand, achieves a significance greater than a mere happy ending. It is, rather, his deft handling of her progressive reintegration into the human community that makes this story more moving than most of the other fantastic accounts of his anthology. Even when she was but a seductive spirit subservient to the demonic powers, Nie already showed remarkable perception when she acknowledged the fine qualities of the man she tried to tempt: “I’ve had much experience with men but I’ve never met anyone as resolute as you. You are truly a sage, so I wouldn’t dare deceive you.” After her escape from the demon’s clutch partly as a result of reburial and proper sacrifices he provided, her most impressive accomplishment detailed in the narrative was her developing relation with her benefactor and his mother, accepting their assistance in reintroducing her to the ways of the living but also winning gradually for herself their admiration, trust, gratitude, and finally, love.

The girl waited upon Ning’s mother every morning. She drew the water for the toilet, managed the affairs of the household, and performed everything according to Ning’s mother’s wishes. Every evening after she had informed his mother that she would retire, she went at once to the study, where she read the sutra by candlelight. When she felt that Ning wanted to sleep, she then sadly took her leave.

Some time before, Ning’s wife had been bedridden and Ning’s mother had had to work so hard she could scarcely bear it. Now, with the girl’s help, she was able to take her ease. Her heart was touched and as the days passed, she came to love the girl as if she had been her own daughter. She even forgot that Xiaoqian was a ghost. She could not bear to let the girl leave at night and wanted her to stay with her in her bedroom.

At first, Xiaoqian neither ate nor drank. But after six months, she gradually took some thin rice gruel. Mother and son both doted on her. They avoided mentioning that she was a ghost, and of course outsiders would not be able to tell.

Shortly after, Ning’s wife died. His mother secretly wished to take the girl as her daughter-in-law, but was afraid that it would do her son harm. The girl realized this and took an opportunity to say to the mother, “I’ve lived here for more than a year and you ought to know my feelings. I came away with your son because I did not want to harm travelers; I had no other purpose in mind. Your son’s honorable character has won everyone’s approval. I only hope that by staying with your son for a few years, I may be able to get an imperial recognition through him. This will be to my credit in the underworld.”

“Sons and daughters are bestowed by Heaven,” the girl said. “Your son is destined for good fortune and he is allotted three sons to bring honor to the family. Having a ghost wife will not deprive him of that.”

It is not only the rectitude of her action but also the probity of her thought and words that fully establish her as a legitimate member of the household and justify her final release, when a leather scabbard left as a talisman by a swordsman entraps and destroys her pursuing rākṣa.

Despite such unusual deviation from tradition, however, the author’s achievement is hardly revolutionary. After all, Nie Xiaoqian’s restoration to life coincides with her reintroduction into a society in which all values and hierarchies remain intact. She left the clutches of the demon only to become the model subservient wife and daughter-in-law. The pattern persistent in this subgenre of literature is all too patent: the male is the “normal” human protagonist, whereas the female is almost always depicted as the incredibly beautiful, talented, sensual, and sometimes virtuous figure of another realm. It is no accident that in such an anthology as Feng Menglong’s History of Love, not one of the thirty-eight stories listed under the heading of qinggui (amorous ghost) concerns a male spirit. This sharp division in the role of the sexes also locates the point where the literary tradition diverges most markedly from the ethnographic one. Accounts by modern anthropologists are filled with references to male ghosts taking wives or lovers.⁵⁰ In traditional Chinese fiction, where even the vernacular stories were written virtually all by males, the female more often than not appears only as a creature of fantasy—both affectionate and threatening, both desired and feared. The biases of culture and gender could not be more apparent.

One of the lasting impressions for anyone delving into this vast canon of literature on ghosts surely has to be the munificent and ingenious variety of the stories. The style and form of the materials range from gossipy anecdotes and ethnography-like fragments to polished compositions of exquisite language and superb control. The three groups of stories discussed above represent one convenient manner of organizing some of the material; they by no means exhaust the topoi and themes covered in the tradition.

With the authors and audiences of such stories being in all likelihood highly literate persons, it is hardly surprising that many of the ghost tales revolve around a talented specter of some activity dear to the educated Chinese: music, chess, painting, calligraphy, and, most especially, poetry. One story relates how a ghost retrieves a long-lost painting, reputedly a treasure of Li Yu’s of the Southern Tang;⁵¹ a second tells of the love affair between a general and a female ghost who is also a fine flutist;⁵² and a third presents a talented scholar taking a female ghost as his student of a string instrument (qin ).⁵³ There are many more tales that delight in reporting how the dead and the living communicate through the cherished medium of verse or participate in poetic games and contests.⁵⁴ One of the most amusing accounts of the profound consequence of poetic allusions has to be that devoted to Yang Weizhen (1296–1370), the famous Yuan official and poet who wrote a regulated quatrain for a woman who died defending her chastity.⁵⁵ The poem expressed both criticism and skepticism of the woman’s action, and such disparagement aroused the dead woman to appear in Yang’s dream one night.

“Do you know why you have no children?” she asked.

“No!”

“Do you remember the poem you wrote on Wang, the virtuous woman?” she asked. “Though you cannot really harm her good reputation, your intentions are rather mean, bent on slandering and destroying the proper meaning of chastity. Your sins are great, and that is why Heaven has cut off your line.”

When Yang awoke, remorse led him to pen another poem with the same rhyme scheme, but this time it was lengthened to an eight-line regulated verse. The longer form is clearly purposive, for it allows the poet to pile on the proper allusions (dian ) in praise of the woman’s martyrdom. The second middle couplet, for example, reads:

Fatal chords of the Xiang zither I’d rather meet

Than live to the foreign flageolet beat.

Here the zither unmistakably refers to the two consorts of the ancient sage-king Shun, who threw themselves into the Xiang River after his death. Their commemorative service instituted later is characterized by the sounds of drum and zither. The flageolet beat, on the other hand, brings to mind the story of Cai Yan ,⁵⁶ a talented musician kidnapped by barbarians. She raised two children in foreign territory, and after twelve years, she was ransomed and returned to Han China. When barbarians thought of her, however, they would roll up rush leaves to make a kind of flageolet and produce mournful melodies.

The couplet makes it abundantly clear which act of these celebrated figures of history is considered more exemplary, and, as if to underscore his chastened sensibility, the poet writes throughout the poem in the first person, in the assumed voice of the woman. The pronounced alterations of the second eulogy were not lost on the dead either, for the woman again appeared in a dream to thank him. Shortly thereafter, the man was rewarded with a son.

In addition to these vignettes that appeal specifically to one’s literary interests, there are those that are intended to strain the limits of the reader’s credulity by accentuating to the utmost the element of the fantastic. One story that should rank high in this category has the official in charge of souls in the underworld declare: “When a living person dies, the three souls and seven spirits [sanhun qipo ] will scatter in death, for there is nothing more to which they may attach themselves. If now you want them gathered into one body, they will have to be smeared by a special glue for reconnecting strings [xuxian jiao ]!”⁵⁷ Another story in the Liaozhai even reports that a ghost can die and become something else.⁵⁸

Because its author has a declared intention in social polemics, the Liaozhai is an anthology in which the satiric jostles the fantastic in claiming the reader’s attention. Many venerable institutions and structures of traditional Chinese society become the ready targets of Pu Songling’s irony. Under his prolific brush, there are marvelously entertaining—and often riotously funny—tales of drunkard ghosts, jealous wives and concubines, corrupt officials, ghosts desperate to pass civil service examinations, and incorrigible gamblers whose legal problems endure even in hell.⁵⁹ In virtually all of these stories, the variegated experiences of the world of light are transplanted wholesale into the world of darkness.

This feature of the ghost tales is perhaps the most pronounced and persistent one of the genre, and its recognition may help us detect more accurately some of the underlying cultural assumptions. Since the “integrated structure” of Chinese mortuary rites is frequently “associated with settling the soul after death,”⁶⁰ a “perturbed spirit,” the subject of all the stories examined in this essay, may be regarded as one in relation to which there is, broadly speaking, a failure or a breach of rite. If there were no such failure, to put the matter bluntly, there would have been no “ghost” story. This may explain, at least in part, why the stories themselves do not concentrate on ritual practice as such—the formalized methods of mourning and treatment of the deceased—but rather on the varying causes of the dead’s disturbance. Within the fictional context the meaning of rite is consonant with the traditional understanding of li in Chinese culture, encompassing both the specifics of ritual (e.g., the corpse is buried upside down and the situation must be rectified) and the fulfillment of socio-ethical norms (e.g., the requital of injustice or kindness). The “discomfort” suffered by the dead that instigates its arousal thus ranges from physical pain induced by inverted burial or a tree root invading the corpse to worry over a son’s due inheritance and indignation at a poet’s careless encomium to feminine virtue. Seen in this light, the loud proclamations about the difference between the way of the living and the way of the dead that I noted earlier are both ironic and dialectical formulas, for the concerns and preoccupations of the living are seen clearly to extend beyond the grave. Even the rhythm of life—punctuated as it is by birth, growth, marriage, and death—and the provision for its material and spiritual well-being (food, raiment, lodging) obtain as stubbornly in the world beyond as they do in the present one.

Settlement of the dead, however, is not necessarily the most desirable denouement of these stories. Modern anthropological inquiries may detect little soteriological interests in contemporary funeral ideology, but many of the traditional tales display an unambiguous preference for life or reincarnation as a way of reentrance to the world of light. H. C. Chang, in the introduction to his volume on tales of the supernatural, has observed unerringly that “in later tales, ghosts, increasingly associated—under Buddhist influences—with infernal justice, grow in stature and might, and are much feared and respected. Nevertheless, there is a lingering suspicion that ghosts are inferior to living beings and, indeed, in most tales, ghosts long to return to life again.”⁶¹

This last point of view, on the part of the departed spirits, is not unique to Chinese culture, to be sure. As Mircea Eliade has made clear in his study, “the almost universal conviction that the dead are present both on earth and in a spiritual world … reveals the secret hope that, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, the dead are able to partake somehow in the world of living.”⁶² One of the most celebrated lines in world literature giving voice to this hope must be Achilles’ remark in the underworld to his one-time companion, Odysseus: “I would rather take up the plow as a slave to another man … than be king over all the perished dead” (Odyssey 11. 489–491). The Chinese expression of such sentiment, rhetorically more terse and pithy, is no less poignant in the phrase “a felicitous death is not as good as a bitter life” (le si buru ku sheng ).⁶³ In one story, there is the stark portrayal that not even a judge of hell is free from suffering; the condition of the damned thus needs no elaboration. It is in such a context of despair that a casual statement—“the highest happiness cannot surpass that of rebirth” (zhixi moruo chongsheng )⁶⁴—attains sudden, disclosive power. Similarly, the passing notice by the narrator of those lining the way, when an untimely visitor of the underworld was escorted back to life, speaks more eloquently than much lengthier descriptive passages: “Those moved to weeping out of envy for this man were numberless” (xian er qi zhe buke shengji ).⁶⁵ Herein perhaps is the pleasing paradox that has always constituted the reading experience of such literature: though its focus concentrates on the dead and dying, the values and concerns of the living predominate.

NOTES

       The author gratefully acknowledges the comments and criticisms of Professors Yu Chunfang, C. H. Wang, David Knechtges, William Nienhauser Jr., and Yuk Wong.

 

Abbreviations

GJTS: Gujin tushu jicheng (1934; repr., Taipei: Wenxing shudian, 1964). In citations of this work, the first number refers to the ce , the second to the arabic page number.

Lu: Lu Xun , Gu xiaoshuo gouchen , 2 vols. (Hong Kong: Xinyi chubanshe, 1970)

LZZY: Zhang Youhe , ed., Liaozhai zhiyi 4 vols. (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 1978)

Ma and Lau: Y. W. Ma and Joseph S. M. Lau, eds., Traditional Chinese Stories: Themes and Variations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978)

QSGY: Liu Fu , comp., Qingsuo gaoyi (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 1983)

SSJ: Xinjiao Soushen ji (Taipei: Shijie shuju, 1975)

TPGJ: Taiping guangji , 10 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961)

TPYL: Taiping yulan , 4 vols. (facs. SBCK ed.) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1960)

Xu: Xu Zhen’e , Han-Wei liuchao xiaoshuo xuan (Shanghai: Gudian wenxue chubanshe, 1956)

YYZZ: Youyang zazu (SBCK ed.)

 

1.   Mircea Eliade, Occultism, Witchcraft and Cultural Fashions: Essays in Comparative Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 34. The essay from which the quotation is taken, “Mythologies of Death: An Introduction,” is reprinted in Frank E. Reynolds and Earle H. Waugh, eds., Religious Encounters with Death: Insights from the History and Anthropology of Religions (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977), pp. 13–22.

2.   This figure is based on the gui radical section of the Zhongwen da cidian , but it does not include other cognates in which gui is not the determinative radical. For the latter category, see Shen Chien-shih, “An Essay on the Primitive Meaning of the Character ,” Monumenta Serica 2 (1936–1937): 1–20; Ikeda Suetoshi, , “Kodai Chūgoku ni okeru reiki kannen no tenkai ,” Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica 29 (spring 1970): 121–164.

3.   For the present study, I have benefited from consulting Walter Liebenthal, “The Immortality of the Soul in Chinese Thought,” Monumenta Nipponica 8 (1952): 327–397; Qian Mu , “Zhongguo sixiang zhong zhi guishen guan” , HYHP 1 (1955): 1–43; Izuishi Yoshihiko , “Kishin kō” , in Shina shinwa densetsu no kenkyū , ed. Zōho Kaiteiban (Tokyo: Chūō kōron sha, 1973), pp. 393–444; Daniel L. Overmeyer, “China,” in Death and Eastern Thought: Understanding Death in Eastern Religions and Philosophies, ed. Frederick H. Holck (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1974), pp. 198–225; Michael Loewe, Chinese Ideas of Life and Death: Faith, Myth and Reason in the Han Period (202 B.C.–A.D. 220) (London: Allen and Unwin, 1982); and Yü Ying-shih , “Zhongguo gudai sihou shijieguan di yanbian” , Lianhe yuekan 26 (1983): 81–89.

4.   Available studies in English on related topics include Albert E. Dien, “The Yüan-hun Chih (Accounts of Ghosts with Grievances): A Sixth-Century Collection of Stories,” in Wenlin: Studies in the Chinese Humanities, ed. Chow Tse-tsung (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), pp. 211–228; Donald E. Gjertson, Ghosts, Gods, and Retribution: Nine Buddhist Miracle Tales from Six Dynasties and Early T’ang China, Asian Studies Committee Occasional Papers, no. 2 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1978); Alvin P. Cohen, “Avenging Ghosts and Moral Judgement in Ancient Chinese Historiography: Three Examples from Shi-chi,” in Legend, Love, and Religion in China: Essays in Honor of Wolfram Eberhard on His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Sarah Allan and Alvin P. Cohen, CAC Asian Library Series, no. 13 (San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center, 1979), pp. 97–108; Kenneth J. Dewoskin, “The Six Dynasties Chih-kuai and the Birth of Fiction,” in Chinese Narrative: Critical and Theoretical Essays, ed. Andrew H. Plaks (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 21–52; Dominic Cheung, “‘Chrysanthemum Tryst’ and ‘Fan Chu-ch’ing’s Eternal Friendship’: A Comparative Study of Two Ghost-Friendship Tales in Japan and China,” Tamkang Review 8, no. 2 (1977): 121–132; Dominic Cheung, “The ‘Ghost-Wife’ Theme in China, Japan, and Korea: New Tales of the Trimmed Lamp, Tales of Moonlight and Rain, and New Tales of the Golden Carp,” Tamkang Review 15, nos. 1–4 (1985): 151–174; Donald Harper, “A Chinese Demonography of the Third Century B.C.,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 45, no. 2 (1985): 459–498. See also Qian Zhongshu , Guanzhui bian (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979), 1:181–187, 230; 2:776–780, 784–785, 788–792. For the student of death and dying in Chinese history, fiction, and social custom, there is no substitute for J. J. M. de Groot’s The Religious System of China, 5 vols. (1892; repr. Taipei: Zhengwen Publishing Company, 1972), which contains a massive amount of information, and for Henry Doré’s Researches into Chinese Superstition, trans. M. Kennelly, S.J., 13 vols. (1914; repr. Taipei: Zhengwen Publishing Company, 1966). These two titles far surpass in wealth of materials and scholarly analysis the work of G. Willoughby-Meade in Chinese Ghouls and Goblins (London: Constable, 1928). H. C. Chang, Chinese Literature 3: Tales of the Supernatural (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984) is a welcome recent publication containing a historical introduction and fine translation of selected tales. Karl Kao’s Classical Chinese Tales of the Supernatural and the Fantastic (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986) has a fuller format, and the excellent introduction presents a synchronic, typological analysis of the structural elements in the zhiguai and chuanqi tales. Rob Campany’s “Cosmogony and Self-Cultivation: The Demonic and the Ethical in Two Chinese Novels,” Journal of Religious Ethics 14. no. 1 (1986): 81–112, treats more than ghosts, but the article touches on important aspects of the investiture process in the Fengshen yanyi . Understandably, there is no lack of study of individual texts like the Soushen ji or Liaozhai in Japanese scholarship, but full-scale analysis of ghosts in traditional Chinese literature is not abundant. See Nagasawa Yōji , Kishin no gengi to sono enshin (Tokyo: Iizuka shobō, 1977); Takeda Akira , Chūgoku no yūrei: Kai’i wo kataru dentō (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 1980). For a history of the concept of hell, see the authoritative account by Sawada Mizuho in Jigoku hen: Chūgoku no meikaisetsu (Kyoto: Hōzōkan, 1968). For Buddhist impact on Chinese ideas of soul and afterlife, see Michihata Ryōshū , Chūgoku bukkyō shisō shi no kenkyū (Kyoto: Heirakuji shoten, 1979), chap. 2, and the fine study by Stephen F. Teiser in “Ghosts and Ancestors in Medieval Chinese Religion: The Yü-lan P’en Festival as Mortuary Ritual,” History of Religions 86, no. 1 (August 1986): 47–67. For ghosts in Western literature, I have learned from W. B. Stanford, “Ghosts and Apparitions in Homer, Aeschylus, and Shakespeare,” Hermathena 56 (1940): 84–92; Hans Ankenbrand, Die Figur des Geistes im Drama der englischen Renaissance (Leipzig: Deichert, 1906); Gisela Dahinten, Die Geisterszene in der Tragödie vor Shakespeare (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1958). For an informative survey of the subject of ghosts in Western culture, see R. C. Finucane, Appearances of the Dead: A Cultural History of Ghosts (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1984), but it should be supplemented by Jacques Le Goff’s magisterial La naissance du Purgatoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1981). For classical antiquity, E. Rhode’s classic Psyche: Seelencult und Unsterblichkeits-glaube der Griechen, 2 vols. (1898), has now been brought up to date by the excellent study of Jan Bremmer in The Early Greek Concept of the Soul (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983).

5.   Cohen reports that he has found “sixty-four distinct accounts of avenging ghosts” from the Shih-chi to the Xin Tangshu , but “if duplicates are counted, there are ninety-seven cases” (“Avenging Ghosts,” p. 102).

6.   Loewe, Chinese Ideas of Life and Death, p. 36.

7.   Derk Bodde, “Some Chinese Tales of the Supernatural: Kan Pao and His Sou-shen chi” (1942), in Essays on Chinese Civilization (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 334. See also Zheng Zhenduo , Chatuben Zhongguo wenxueshi (1932; repr., Peking: Wenxue guji kanxingshe, 1959), 1:225–227.

8.   Sheldon Sacks, Fiction and the Shape of Belief (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964), p. 8.

9.   SSJ, pp. 116–117. All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are my own.

10. Xu, p. 28. Variations of the protagonist’s name include Song Dingbo and Zhang Dingbo .

11. Wan is now the Nanyang district of Henan province.

12. Kenneth Ch’en, Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 135–144; Tang Yongtong , Han Wei Liang-Jin Nanbeichao fojiaoshi (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1937), 2:3–10, 40–43; Li Jianguo , Tangqian zhiguai xiaoshuoshi (Tianjin: Nankai daxue, 1984), passim.

13. The term is Zheng Zhenduo’s, Chatuben Zhongguo wenxueshi, 1:226; see also Tang, who asserts that “the many compositions recorded by the people of the Six Dynasties on gui and shen were all influenced by Buddhism” (Han Wei, 2:118).

14. Of even Dante’s Paradiso, T. S. Eliot has said, “It is either incomprehensible or intensely exciting.” See his Selected Essays (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1964), p. 225.

15. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Inferno, trans. Allen Mendelbaum (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), p. 170; Victor H. Mair, Tun-huang Popular Narratives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 100; The Journey to the West, trans. and ed. Anthony C. Yu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 1:244–245. Volume and page numbers of the last title (hereafter cited as JW) will be given immediately after citation hereafter. The story of the emperor Taizong’s visit to hell is of ancient vintage and very popular, as is evident in the bian-wen literature.

16. Originally collected in the Mingxiang ji , the present version is included in Xu, p. 73.

17. Denis Twitchett, ed., The Cambridge History of China, Volume 3: Sui and T’ang China, 589–906, Part I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 182–187.

18. QSGY, pp. 136–138.

19. Originally collected in the Mingbao ji , the present version is included in GJTS, 393:1064.

20. Originally collected in the Tongyou ji , the present version is included in GJTS, 492:404–405.

21. For stories expouding the theme of this sutra’s efficacy, see TPGJ, juan 102–108.

22. YYZZ (xuji ), 1.5–6.

23. See, for example, K. C. Chang, ed., Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1977), esp. chaps. 1 and 2.

24. LZZY, 4:1341–1348.

25. H. C. Chang, Chinese Literature, p. 4, quoting James Legge, trans., The Chinese Classics (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960), 5:618a.

26. Li Hua , “Diao guzhanchang wen ,” in Quan Tang wen (facs. 1814 ed.), 20 vols. (Taipei: Jingwei shuju, 1965), 7:4119 (j uan 321.13).

27. See the story titled “Weeping Ghosts” (Gui-ku) in LZZY, 1:76–77. On the motif of ghosts haunting battlefields, see Finucane, Appearances of the Dead, pp. 13–18.

28. Michael Dalby, “Revenge and the Law in Traditional China,” American Journal of Legal History 25 (October 1981) : 275.

29. Xu, pp. 80–81.

30. Originally collected in the Jishen lu , this version is now included in GJTS, 493:511.

31. Originally collected in the Benshi shi , this version is now included in GJTS, 493:485.

32. Alternatively, this line can be read as I meant to nurse or bring up our boys and girls, since huai could mean to cherish, to think of, or to carry in one’s bosom.

33. Originally collected in the Huanyuan ji , this version is now included in GJTS, 493:480.

34. originally collected in the Tongyou lu , this version is now included in GJTS, 493:492.

35. SSJ, p. 37.

36. TPGJ, 4:2614; see also another story in the SSJ (pp. 118–119), in which a ghost requests reburial because water is flooding its coffin.

37. Collected in YYZZ (xuji), 3.9b-10b; see also the story of Chen Chong in the Hou Han-shu , juan 76, where Chen heard sounds of weeping whenever it rained. When the exposed skeletons of people who perished in “chaotic times” were gathered and buried, the weeping ceased.

38. Originally collected in the Leshan lu , this version is now included in GJTS, 493:519.

39. Originally collected in the Guangyi ji , this version is now included in GJTS, 493:490. See also the story of Zhao He (TPGJ, 4:2749), who met the ghost of a young girl killed by bandits and buried for three years in the desert sand. She requested that her bones be gathered and taken back for burial in her native region. Chao agreed, and she at the end fulfilled her promise of requital by transmitting to him her grandfather’s secret alchemical formulas, which could transform bricks into gold.

40. De Groot, Religious System of China, 4:421.

41. SSJ, pp. 122–124.

42. Originally collected in the Tongyou ji, this version is now included in TPGJ, 4:2635–2638 and GJTS, 493:486–487.

43. Ma and Lau, pp. 400–403.

44. I use the translated version contained in Ma and Lau, pp. 404–409.

45. Ibid., p. 385.

46. Although the ghost and the fox spirit remain two different creatures in most stories of the fantastic, they become identical in some tales. See, for example, SSJ, p. 141; LZZY, 1:201–204; 2:535–547.

47. originally collected in the T’ung-yu lu, this version is now included in GJTS, 493:492.

48. Originally collected in the Jiyi ji , this version is now included in GJTS, 493:509.

49. See, for example, the story of Scholar Wu, originally collected in the Youguai lu , now included in GJTS, 493:519–20, and “The Eternal Prisoner Under the Thunder Peak Pagoda,” the Chinese version of Lamia, in Ma and Lau, pp. 355–378. Admittedly, the temptress figure in the last story is a serpent, not a ghost, but progress in the plot conforms to the pattern I described.

50. David K. Jordan, God, Ghosts, and Ancestors (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972); Emily M. Ahern, The Cult of the Dead in a Chinese Village (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1973).

51. QSGY, pp. 117–118.

52. Ibid., pp. 159–163.

53. LZZY, 3:985–990.

54. See, for example, the story of Liang Jing , originally collected in the Xuanshi zhi, with the present version included in GJTS, 493:506.

55. The story, collected in GJTS, 493:527, has as its protagonist the Yuan poet Yang Weizhen (zi Lianfu [1296–1370]). Yang’s biography can be found in L. Carrington Goodrich, ed., Dictionary of Ming Biography, 1368–1644 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 2:1547–1553. The subject of his poetic eulogy is one Lady Wang, who, according to the Xin Yuanshi (j uan 144), was kidnapped by a garrison commander after her husband and his parents had been killed. When the commander tried to force her submission, she threw herself over a cliff, after using the blood of a bitten finger to write a poem. Yang’s first poem in the story can be found in the Tieya shiji , bk. 6 (), p. 8, in Song fenshi congkan , ed. Dong Kang [1867–1947], juan 58, 1st ser. (1917 ed.). I have not been able to locate his second poem in any of his known poetical collections.

56. The story of Cai is recorded in the Hou Hanshu, juan 114.

57. Originally collected in the Xuanshi zhi, this version is now included in GJTS, 313:1058–1059.

58. LZZY, 2:627–631:

59. See, for example, LZZY, 2:582–587; 822–825; 1166–1173; 4:1534–1559.

60. See the preface in James L. Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski, eds., Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).

61. H. C. Chang, Chinese Literature, p. 4.

62. Eliade, Occultism, p. 41.

63. LZZY, 4:1684. A similar assertion, “a good death is not as desirable as a wretched existence” , can be found in The Journey to the West, chap. 63.

64. The statement is found in the story of Deng Cheng , originally collected in the Guangyi zhi and now preserved in GJTS, 393:1069.

65. This statement is found in the story of Wu Quansu , originally collected in the Zhiming lu and now preserved in GJTS, 393:1059.