Let me tell you now about Chang’an, which generations and dynasties of kings and emperors have made their capital, in the northwest province of Shaanxi. It was a city of great beauty, spread across three counties threaded with rivers and carpeted with flowers. When Guanyin arrived, the emperor Taizong—second of the Tang dynasty—had been on the throne for thirteen years. The country was at peace and people of the entire world declared themselves his subjects.
At court one day, Taizong’s prime minister Wei Zheng made a suggestion to the emperor. “We should copy the practice of earlier dynasties and hold examinations to recruit the best scholars and administrators to run the government.” And so Taizong sent out an empire-wide edict: Any man, of whatever background, who could write well and was fluent enough in the Confucian classics to have passed the three basic literary qualifications should come to Chang’an to take the imperial civil service exam.
When a gentleman called Guangrui from Haizhou learned of the imminent exam session, he immediately asked his mother’s permission to attend. “If I were lucky enough to earn an official posting, it would enhance our family’s reputation, and benefit my future wife and sons.”
“You’re ready for this,” his mother—a lady surnamed Zhang—agreed. “But take care, and come back as soon as you’ve been given a job.” Guangrui reached Chang’an just in time for the start of the exams and, when the results came out, discovered that he had come in first. After receiving a certificate signed by the emperor himself, he was toured on horseback through the streets of the capital for three whole days.
The procession passed by the house of Yin Kaishan, one of Taizong’s chief ministers, who had a captivatingly pretty, unmarried daughter called Wenjiao. At the very moment that Guangrui passed beneath, Wenjiao was about to drop an embroidered ball from a decorated tower; whomever it chanced to hit would be her husband. The moment she laid eyes on Guangrui, Wenjiao could see that he was an exceptional young man, a first impression corroborated by his ranking top in the civil service exam. Not coincidentally, the embroidered ball scored a direct hit against Guangrui’s black silk hat. A symphony of pipes and flutes erupted, and an army of maidservants rushed out of the building, grabbed the bridle of Guangrui’s horse, and welcomed the examination star into the house of his future in-laws. Yin Kaishan and his wife immediately summoned guests and a master of ceremonies, and married the young lady off to Guangrui. The new couple bowed to heaven and earth, to each other, and to the girl’s parents. The minister gave a huge banquet and, after an evening’s revelry, the new couple retired hand in hand to the bridal chamber.
At court early the next day, Taizong and his officials appointed Guangrui governor of Jiangzhou and ordered him to leave straightaway to take up the post. After thanking the emperor, Guangrui informed his wife and in-laws, and the newlyweds headed off to begin a new life. As they left Chang’an, spring was in the air: a gentle breeze and rain were encouraging green shoots and rosy blossoms. Since the road to Jiangzhou passed by Haizhou, Guangrui paid a visit to his old home, where he and his wife bowed to his mother. “Congratulations!” Mrs. Zhang exclaimed. “A job and a wife!” After Guangrui explained how it had all come about, he invited his mother to accompany them to his new posting. She happily accepted, and the three of them set out again.
After a few days on the road, they put up at the Myriad Flowers Inn. That evening, Guangrui’s mother suddenly fell ill and asked to rest for a couple of days before they continued on their way. The following morning, Guangrui bought a live golden carp from a hawker outside the inn, with a view to having it cooked for his mother. Just as he was about to order it to be gutted, he noticed it blinking its eyes energetically. “I heard somewhere that this is a sign of supernatural abilities,” he observed, and—after asking for directions from the fisherman—returned it to the river where it had been caught.
Although his mother was pleased to learn what Guangrui had done, she still did not feel well enough to travel, especially as it was the hottest time of the year. “Could you rent me some lodgings here, while you carry on to Jiangzhou? You can come and fetch me in autumn, when it’s cooler.” After some deliberation, Guangrui and Wenjiao secured her a room, left her some money, and resumed their journey.
Soon they came to the River Hong and hired two boatmen—named Liu Hong and Li Biao—to take them across. At this point, a calamity predetermined by a previous existence overtook Guangrui. Liu Hong was immediately infatuated by the beauty of Wenjiao—by her pale, moonlike face, dark eyes, tiny red mouth, and willowy waist—and hatched a wicked plot with Li Biao. After punting the boat to a deserted part of the river, in the middle of the night they killed the couple’s servant, then beat Guangrui to death and threw both bodies into the water. When Wenjiao tried to hurl herself into the river after her dead husband, Liu Hong wrapped his arms tightly around her. “Do what I say or I’ll cut you to pieces.” Unable, for the time being, to think of a better plan, Wenjiao submitted, while Liu Hong ferried the three of them to the other side of the river. Leaving the boat with Li Biao, Liu Hong put on Guangrui’s cap and robe and proceeded to Jiangzhou with Wenjiao, where he passed himself off as the new governor.
While the corpse of the servant floated away on the current, Guangrui sank to the bottom of the river, where his body was spotted by a spirit patrol and shown to the dragon king. “My benefactor!” the dragon exclaimed. “One good turn deserves another. I will save his life.” He forthwith made an official request to the municipal deity and local spirit to hand over Guangrui’s soul to his patrol, who then led it back to the dragon’s palace. “Who are you?” asked the dragon. “Why were you beaten to death?” After Guangrui had spilled out his tragic tale, the dragon revealed who he was. “I was the golden carp you released a few days ago. I’m determined to help you out of your predicament.” He then placed a preservative pearl in the mouth of Guangrui’s corpse, to prevent it from rotting while he worked to reunite it with the governor’s soul, and gave Guangrui a temporary posting, and a splendid banquet, in his Department of Water.
Meanwhile, Wenjiao was tormented by murderous loathing of Liu Hong but, because she was pregnant, had to yield to her captor. The staff at Jiangzhou were all taken in by the bogus “Guangrui,” and held a grand welcoming feast for their new governor. Time flew by, and one day, when Liu Hong was far away on official business and Wenjiao was thinking sadly about her mother-in-law and husband, she was suddenly overwhelmed with fatigue and collapsed with agonizing stomach cramps. While she was giving birth, a voice whispered to her: “I am the Star Spirit of the South Pole. Guanyin sends you this baby, for he is an exceptional child and one day will be famous throughout China. But when that bandit returns, he will try to kill the boy. You must protect him. The dragon king has rescued your husband, and one day your family will be reunited and your injustices avenged. Remember everything that I’ve told you. Now wake up!” Coming to from her stupor, Wenjiao hugged her baby, recalling the spirit’s words. But she could not think of how to protect him, and when Liu Hong returned he ordered her to drown the baby. “It’s too late to go out to the river tonight,” Wenjiao argued. “Wait till tomorrow.”
As luck would have it, the following morning Liu Hong was sent away on urgent business. Liu Hong will kill the baby as soon as he returns, Wenjiao thought. I might as well leave him in the river and hope that Heaven will take pity and send someone to rescue him. To help identify him in the future, she bit her finger and wrote a letter in blood giving the name of his parents and the reasons she had abandoned the child, then bit off the child’s left little toe. She wrapped the baby in her underclothes and, when no one was around, slipped out to the river near the governor’s house. Weeping bitterly, she was about to throw the child into the river when she spotted a plank near the riverbank. After praying to Heaven, she tied the baby to the wood, tucked the letter next to his chest, and pushed the plank down the river. Having watched it drift away, she returned tearfully to the house.
The plank drifted on the current until it reached the Temple of the Golden Mountain, whose abbot—named Faming—had achieved immortality through the pursuit of religious truth. While meditating, he heard a baby crying and discovered the child on the plank by the riverbank. The abbot immediately rescued him and read the letter tucked inside his swaddling. He named the baby Riverflow, found someone to care for him, and carefully hid the letter of identification. The years flew by and Riverflow turned eighteen, at which point the abbot asked him to become a monk, giving him the religious name Xuanzang.
One fine spring day, as the temple’s monks debated the finer points of Zen under the shade of some pine trees, a good-for-nothing who was wrong-footed by the subtlety of Xuanzang’s questions lashed out at him: “You bastard! You don’t even know who your mother and father are!”
His eyes smarting with tears, Xuanzang kneeled before the abbot and begged him to reveal the names of his parents. Faming brought Xuanzang to his room, where the abbot took down from a beam a small box containing the letter and undergarment from eighteen years earlier, then passed both to the young man. As soon as Xuanzang had read the letter, he kneeled, weeping, before the abbot. “Even as I owe my very survival to you, my teacher, I must avenge the wrongs suffered by my parents. Permit me to seek out my mother, and I will beg for funds to rebuild our temple to repay your kindness.”
“Take the letter and the cloth,” instructed the abbot, “and visit the residence of the governor of Jiangzhou as a mendicant—you’ll find your mother there.”
Xuanzang went directly to Jiangzhou. Heaven had ordained the reunion of mother and son, for on the day that he visited the governor’s house, Liu Hong was once more out on business. That morning, Wenjiao was thinking about the dream she had had the previous night, in which a waning moon had become full once more, when she heard someone reciting Buddhist scriptures and crying for alms outside the house. As soon as she could, Wenjiao slipped out to invite Xuanzang in. Studying him closely while she served him rice and vegetables, she noticed a remarkable resemblance to her husband. She then dismissed her maid so that she could question him more closely. “What is your name? When did you leave your family to become a monk?”
“I never knew my family,” Xuanzang replied. “My father was murdered and my mother taken captive by his killer. My abbot told me that I would find my mother here, in this house.”
“And what are the names of your parents?” Wenjiao asked.
“My mother is called Yin Wenjiao and my father Chen Guangrui. My childhood name was Riverflow, but since becoming a monk, I’ve been called Xuanzang.”
“I am Yin Wenjiao,” his mother revealed. “Can you prove your identity?”
Xuanzang burst into tears and produced the letter and the undergarment in which he was once swaddled. Wenjiao instantly saw that they were genuine and the two of them fell, weeping, into each other’s arms. “But you must leave immediately!” Wenjiao begged him. “If Liu Hong finds you here, he’ll kill you. Tomorrow, I will feign illness and insist on visiting your temple to donate shoes for the monks. We can talk more then.”
The next day, still light-headed with joy and anxiety, Wenjiao took to her bed, pretending to be ill. Liu Hong asked her what was wrong. “When I was younger, I promised to donate a hundred pairs of shoes to Buddhist monks. Five days ago, I had a dream in which a monk holding a knife demanded the shoes, and my illness began the following morning.”
“What a trifle!” sneered Liu Hong, and told his stewards to order a hundred families in the city to each deliver a pair of monk’s shoes within five days.
“Which local temple should I donate them to?” asked Wenjiao, when the shoes were ready.
“There’s Golden Mountain and Burned Mountain,” replied Liu Hong. “Either would be fine.”
“I’ve heard good things about the Temple of the Golden Mountain,” Wenjiao observed guilelessly. “I’ll take them there.” Liu Hong commissioned a boat, and Wenjiao and a trusted companion set off for the temple.
Meanwhile, Xuanzang had returned to Golden Mountain and told the abbot everything. Not long after, Wenjiao arrived. After receiving a warm welcome from the monks, she prayed and distributed the shoes. Once everyone else had left the hall of worship, Xuanzang kneeled next to her. Wenjiao asked him to take his shoes and socks off; she immediately saw that his left little toe was missing, and they once more tearfully hugged each other, then she thanked the abbot for looking after Xuanzang.
“But I worry the murderer will hear about your reunion,” Faming warned Wenjiao. “You must leave immediately, for your own protection.”
“Take this incense ring,” Wenjiao instructed Xuanzang, “and go to Hongzhou, some fifteen hundred miles northwest of here. There, you will find the Myriad Flowers Inn. Ask for an old lady by the surname of Zhang—your father’s mother and your grandmother. The ring will prove who you are. Then go on to the capital of the Tang empire—to the house of my father and your grandfather, Chief Minister Yin, to the left of the emperor’s palace. Give him this letter and ask him to have the emperor send soldiers to arrest and execute Liu Hong, to avenge your father. Then, at last, you can rescue me. I must go now, in case that villain gets suspicious.”
After Wenjiao’s boat had departed back to Jiangzhou, Xuanzang immediately set out for Hongzhou and made inquiries about a Mrs. Zhang at the Myriad Flowers Inn. “Oh, yes,” recalled the innkeeper. “She went blind and ran out of money. She became a beggar and now lives in a derelict potter’s kiln near the south gate of the city. I could never understand why we heard nothing more of the son who left her here.”
Xuanzang immediately sought out his grandmother. “You sound so like my son, Guangrui,” she said, sighing.
“I’m his son,” Xuanzang told her. “Wenjiao, your daughter-in-law, is my mother.”
“But why didn’t your parents come back for me?”
“My father was murdered by bandits,” Xuanzang revealed. “And one of them forced my mother to become his wife.”
“How did you find me?” she asked.
“My mother sent me, with this incense ring.”
Mrs. Zhang now wept freely. “My son died for the sake of wealth and reputation! Thinking that he had abandoned me, I cried myself blind for him. At last, Heaven has sent you to find me.”
“Take pity on us,” Xuanzang prayed, “and restore my grandmother’s vision.” He then licked his grandmother’s eyes and her sight returned.
“You’re the very image of Guangrui!” the old lady exclaimed, feeling a mixture of joy and sorrow. Xuanzang took her back to the Myriad Flowers Inn, rented her a room, and left her some money, promising to be back in a month.
Xuanzang then traveled directly on to Chang’an, where he made straight for the mansion of Yin Kaishan. When the doorman announced the arrival of a monk claiming to be a relative, the chief minister was puzzled, for he knew of no monks in the family, until his wife intervened: “Last night, I dreamed that Wenjiao came back to us. Could this be a letter at last from our son-in-law?”
After Xuanzang was shown in, he kneeled, weeping, before his grandparents and handed over his mother’s letter to them. As soon as Yin had read it, he burst into tears. “This is our grandson,” he explained to his bewildered wife. “Our son-in-law was murdered by bandits, and one of them forced Wenjiao to become his wife.” When Mrs. Yin also began to cry, her husband soothed her: “I will tell the emperor and personally lead an expedition against the murderers.”
As soon as the emperor learned what had happened, he called up sixty thousand soldiers, who marched to Jiangzhou under Yin Kaishan’s command. After obtaining the cooperation of the local forces, the imperial troops surrounded the governor’s house before daybreak, broke in, and apprehended Liu Hong before he could get out of bed. Yin Kaishan now asked his daughter to come to him, but overwhelmed with shame at what had happened to her, she wanted to kill herself first. Xuanzang rushed to dissuade her: “How can I live, if you die?” Her father also tried to comfort her.
“A widow should join her husband in death,” she sorrowed. “After my husband was murdered, I had to yield to his murderer. Only thoughts of my child kept me alive. But now that my son is grown and my father has taken revenge on this murderer, how can I face my family? I must die, for my husband’s sake.”
“None of this was your fault,” reasoned her father. “Why should you feel ashamed?” Father and daughter burst into tears and hugged each other; Xuanzang watched, also weeping.
“No more sadness,” Yin Kaishan told them, wiping his eyes. “I’m going to deal with our criminal.” Proceeding to the execution ground, he discovered that a local official had also arrested Li Biao, Liu Hong’s accomplice. Yin Kaishan ordered both bandits to be flogged a hundred times. Then each signed a confession to the murder of Guangrui. Li Biao was nailed to a wooden frame and cut to pieces in the marketplace, after which his head was displayed on a pole. Liu Hong was taken to the exact spot on the River Hong where he had beaten Guangrui to death; there, his heart and liver were gouged out of him while he was still alive. Wenjiao, her father, and her son then stood on the bank, casting the two organs into the river as libations, while a eulogy to Guangrui was burned.
Their sobs resonated deep underwater and the eulogy—transmitted to the afterlife through burning—was delivered to the dragon king. “Wonderful news!” the monarch told Guangrui. “Your wife, son, and father-in-law are all making sacrifices to you on the riverbank. Now is the moment to return your soul to your family. I will send you back with a wish-granting pearl, ten bales of mermaid silk, and a pearl-encrusted jade belt.” Guangrui, of course, could not thank the dragon king enough. After a fond farewell, the king ordered an aquatic patrol to take Guangrui’s body up to the surface of the river and unite it with his soul.
Meanwhile, Wenjiao was so overwhelmed by grief that she would have drowned herself there and then if Xuanzang had not held on tightly to her. As they were struggling with each other, Guangrui’s body floated up to the bank. Immediately recognizing her dead husband, Wenjiao cried all the harder. Then Guangrui uncurled his fists and stretched out his legs. A moment later, to the amazement of everyone gathered on the bank, he climbed onto the bank and sat down. “What are you all doing here?” he asked, gazing at his wife, his father-in-law, and a young monk all sobbing their hearts out.
Wenjiao told him everything that had happened and introduced him to his son. “What are you doing here?” she asked him back. “I thought you were beaten to death by bandits some nineteen years ago.”
“That golden carp I bought then released at Myriad Flowers Inn,” Guangrui explained, “turned out to be the local dragon king, and he rescued and preserved me after I’d been murdered, as well as presenting me with the marvelous gifts I have with me now. How wonderful to see you all again, after such misfortune. And I have a son!”
After a grand banquet to celebrate, the family and the expeditionary force returned to Chang’an, passing by the Myriad Flowers Inn en route to pick up Xuanzang’s grandmother. That very day, magpies set to chattering loudly behind the inn. Just as she was wondering if this was a portent of sorts, her son and grandson rushed in. She and Guangrui burst into tears and embraced. After exchanging all their news of the last eighteen years, Guangrui paid the inn’s bill and the entire family was reunited in the mansion of Yin Kaishan. The following day, the minister reported everything that had happened to the emperor, who promptly appointed Guangrui to be Subchancellor of the Grand Secretariat, a key executive post in the court. Xuanzang was sent to the Temple of Immense Blessings to continue his religious studies. And as for Wenjiao: Wenjiao quietly committed suicide after all.