| Guo, a scholar, was tough and eager to excel others. at a party on
the Mid-autumn festival the conversation turned to deities and specters,
whereupon he claimed he was not afraid of ghosts. when his friends urged
him to prove his courage by going to a haunted house he readily agreed
and set out with his sword. The house consisted of a few dozen rooms
kept vacant all year-round, and the courtyard, overgrown with weeds, looked
quite gruesome. Guo closed the gate behind him and sat down amid
the dead silence. At the fourth watch a man suddenly emerged at the
gate. Guo quickly drew his sword, but before he could get to his
feet a man brushed him with his sleeve, making him unable to move or speak,
though his mind remained sober. The man bowed to him and said, "you
are a brave man goaded into coming here. Since eagerness to win fame
is part of human nature, you need not bear too much blame for it.
As your host I should receive you with hospitality, but unfortunately it
is being Mid-Autumn festival tonight, and the female members of my family
will come out to watch the moon. To maintain a proper reserve between
the sexes, they have to be kept out of your sight. Since you have
nowhere else to go so late at night, I'll solve the problem by inviting
you to get into a jar; please don't feel offended. there will be
wine and dishes inside, which I hope you will enjoy."
Several men came to seize Guo and put him into a huge jar, which was
then covered with a square table and held down by a huge rock. After
a while Guo herd talking and laughter outside. there must be a few
dozen men and women having a jolly good time, eating, drinking and toasting.
Suddenly he smelled the fragrance of wine. Able to move by this time,
he fumbled in the dark to find a pot of wine, a cup, four dishes, and a
pair of ivory chopsticks. Hungry and thirsty, he began to have a
feast himself. Then he heard several young boys walking around the
jar while singing a love song. Someone knocked on the jar and called
out, "the master orders this performance to entertain the guest."
The song sounded melodious and quite pleasing to the years. After
a longtime Guo again heard the knock on the jar. "Don't be angry
with us, Mr. Guo," a voice said. "We are too drunk to move the stone.
Please bear it for a little longer; your friends will come soon."
After that all became quiet. The next morning Gou's friends got to
the house to find the gate bolted. Afraid that something terrible
had happened, they got in by climbing over the wall. At the noise
Guo shouted aloud for help. It took his friends a tremendous lot
of work to move away the huge rock to let Guo crawl out of the jar.
After Guo finished his story, they all clapped and roared with laughter.
When he turned to look at the utensils left in the jar, they seem to have
been taken from his own house. As it happened, his family were about
to enjoy a feast the night before when all the wine and dishes on the table
vanished into thin air, so he returned to find his family members swearing
angrily and searching up and down for the lost dishes. Those ghosts
were indeed mischievous, but their trick made one feel amused rather than
offended. Gou himself had burst out laughing the moment he was rescued
from the jar.
But the following incident cannot be called a light-hearted antic.
A young man staying in a temple in the mountain to study with his tutor
was told that a fox-woman living in the tower often came out to seduce
men. "The fox-woman must be a rare beauty," he told himself, so he
went to the tower every night to make a silent prayer for an amorous encounter.
When he was walking under a tree one evening, a young maid waived at him.
Jubilant, he went up to her, knowing she must have brought in a message
from the fox woman. "A sensible man like you should have known better,"
the maid said. "My mistress is very fond of you, but how could you
pray openly for something like that? The master was furious.
As you were a worthy man, he dared not harm you, but he began to keep a
watchful eye on the mistress. Luckily he is out tonight, so the mistress
has sent me to fetch you. Come with me." Following the maid,
they young man walked for a long time, making twists and turns down a road
that did not seem to belong to the temple. Finally they got to a
room with the door unbolted. Though there were no lights, a bed with
a mosquito tent was dimly visible. "The mistress is a bit shy at
this first meaning, and had lied down under the tent. Undress yourself
in slip into the bed quietly. Don't speak, or the other maids may
hear you." Having said this, she turned and left. The elated
young man went up to the bed, lifted the quilt, and took the woman into
his arms to kiss her. As she screamed in alarm, the young man stepped
back in dismay. The next moment the room with its bed and tent was
all gone, and the young man found himself facing his tutor, who had been
enjoying the evening cool under the eaves. Shocked and furious, the
tutor gave the young man a sound flogging. After the young man was
compelled to make a confession, the tutor drove him away. That was
really a wicked trick. My late teacher Qui Wenda remarked, "Guo was
merely trying to show off his courage, therefore the ghosts played a joke
on him. The young student, however, was motivated by an evil intention,
so the fox set him up in return. The severity of the retaliation
they got depended on the nature of their offense, not on whether the ghosts
and demons were benign or malicious." |
