Free Chinese Ghost Stories by Lafcadio Hearn Page A

the following legend from the thirty-fourth chapter of the Ganyingpian, or Book of Rewards and Punishments —a work attributed to Laozi, which contains some four hundred anecdotes and traditions of the most curious kind:
         Dong Yong, who lived under the Han dynasty, was reduced to a state of extreme poverty. Having lost his father, he sold himself in order to obtain … the wherewithal to bury him and to build him a tomb. The Master of Heaven took pity on him, and sent the Goddess Zhi Nü to him to become his wife. She wove a piece of silk for him every day until she was able to buy his freedom, after which she gave him a son, and went back to heaven.— Julien’s French Translation, p. 119.
    Lest the reader should suppose, however, that I have drawn wholly upon my own imagination for the details of the apparition, the cure, the marriage ceremony, etc., I refer him to No. 96 of Giles’s Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio , entitled, “A Supernatural Wife,” in which he will find that my narrative is at least conformable to Chinese ideas. (This story first appeared in “Harper’s Bazaar,” and is republished here by permission.)
    “ The Return of Yan Zhenjing ”—There may be an involuntary anachronism in my version of this legend, which is very pithily narrated in the Ganyingpian. No emperor’s name is cited by the homilist; and the date of the revolt seems to have been left wholly to conjecture. Baber, in his Memoirs , mentions one of his Mongol archers as able to bend a two-hundred-pound bow until the ears met.
    “ The Tradition of the Tea Plant ” — My authority for this bit of folklore is the brief statement published by Bretschneider in the “Chinese Recorder” for 1871:
         A Japanese legend says that about a.d. 519, a Buddhist priest came to China, and, in order to dedicate his soul entirely to God, he made a vow to pass the day and night in an uninterrupted and unbroken meditation. After many years of this continual watching, he was at length so tired that he fell asleep. On awaking the following morning, he was so sorry he had broken his vow that he cut off both his eyelids and threw them upon the ground. Returning to the same place the following day he observed that each eyelid had become a shrub. This was the tea-shrub ,unknown until that time.
    Bretschneider adds that the legend in question seems not to be known to the Chinese; yet in view of the fact that Buddhism itself, with all its marvelous legends, was received by the Japanese from China, it is certainly probable this legend had a Chinese origin—subsequently disguised by Japanese chronology. My Buddhist texts were drawn from Fernand Hu’s translation of the Dhammapada , and from Leon Feer’s translation from the Tibetan of the Sutra in Forty-two Articles . A scholar of Eastern subjects who should condescend in a rare leisure-moment to glance at my work might also discover that I had borrowed an idea or two from the Sanskrit poet, Bhâminî-Vilâsa.
    “ The Tale of the Porcelain God ”—The good Père D’Entrecolles, who first gave to Europe the secrets of Chinese porcelain-manufacture, wrote one hundred and sixty years ago:
         The Emperors of China are, during their lifetime, the most redoubted of divinities; and they believe that nothing should ever stand in the way of their desires.…
         It is related that once upon a time a certain Emperor insisted that some porcelains should be made for him according to a model which he gave. It was answered that the thing was simply impossible: but all such remonstrances only served to excite his desire more and more.… The officer charged by the demigod to supervise and hasten the work treated the workmen with great harshness. The poor wretches spent all their money, took exceeding pains, and received only blows in return. One of them, in a fit of despair, leaped into the blazing furnace, and was instantly burnt to ashes. But the porcelain that was being baked