Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies (Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library) (15 page)

Yang T’ing-yi tells about the time he saw two mice come into the open and a snake gobble one of them down. The other mouse, eyes popping like peppercorns, kept his distance as he glared. The snake got the mouse it had caught into its belly and slithered for its hole. It was more than halfway in when the second mouse dashed forward and clamped his teeth around the snake’s tail. Furious, the snake backed out. The ever-nimble mouse darted to safety in a flash. The snake gave chase but failed to catch the mouse, so it returned to its hole. As it was entering, the mouse seized its tail exactly as he had before. Each time the snake crawled in, the mouse struck; each time the snake came out, the mouse ran. This went on for quite a while, until the snake spat the dead mouse onto the ground. The second mouse came up and cried over his friend. Then, squeaking dolefully, he picked up the corpse in his mouth and left. My friend Chang Li-yu wrote a poem in its honor called “The Faithful Mouse.”

—
P’u Sung-ling

A man of Luan had run afoul of the law and was about to be executed. His son scraped together all the family’s savings, which came to a hundred pieces of silver, to appeal the case to the governor. When the son mounted his donkey and set out for the capital, his black dog followed after him. The son shouted at the dog to go home, but the moment he started to ride away, the animal followed again. Even when he whipped the dog it hung around and sidled after him.

Man, donkey, and dog had gone a dozen miles or so in this manner when the son dismounted and hurried to the side of the road to relieve himself. Then he began throwing stones at the dog, until the animal finally fled for its life. Once free, the man and the donkey set out and made good time, when suddenly the dog reappeared. Breathing so hard its sides were like pumping bellows, it snapped at the donkey’s tail and ankles. Angrily the son laid his whip to his pet. It yelped and barked, but leaped ahead and snapped at the donkey’s head as if it were trying to block the way.

Angrier than ever, the son turned the donkey around and rode back the way he had come, driving the dog before him. When he had it running a long way ahead of him, he swung around and galloped toward the capital.

It was nightfall when he arrived. He felt for the satchel of silver at his side. Half the money was missing! He broke into a heavy sweat and lost his wits completely. All night he tossed and turned, until it struck him that there must have been a reason for the commotion the dog had made.

He had to wait until early morning for the city gates to open. Then he rode carefully back the way he had come, with a sharp eye out for his money. Travelers on the roads were thick as ants, however, and he figured there was little chance of finding it. He came to the spot where he had dismounted to relieve himself. There in the high grass he saw the dog’s lifeless body, its fur soaked as if it had been bathed. He lifted the dog’s ear and saw the silver, intact, before his very eyes.

Moved by the dog’s devotion, the son bought a coffin and buried it. The place is still known as the Loyal Dog’s Tomb.

—
P’u Sung-ling

The philosopher Yang Chu had a younger brother named Pu. One day Pu left the house wearing white clothes. A storm came up and soaked them, so he changed into some dark ones. When he returned home, his dog did not recognize him and barked furiously. Pu was angry and raised his arm to beat the dog, when his older brother said, “Don’t hit him. Would you recognize your dog if he went off white and came home black?”

—
Lieh Tzu

In the fall of the year a traveler was riding home from a business trip with five or six hundred pieces of silver. In a county called Chungmou he dismounted from his mule and sat by the roadside to rest. A young man with a long pole on which he was carrying a dog sat down beside him.

The dog whimpered piteously at the merchant as if begging for his freedom, so the traveler bought the dog from the youth and set it loose. Meanwhile the young man noticed that the merchant’s sack was heavily loaded. He quietly followed the traveler to a deserted spot, where he beat him to death with the pole. He dragged the body to a small bridge that crossed a stream, covered the corpse with sand and reeds, shouldered the sack, and left.

Seeing the stranger dead, the dog kept out of sight but trailed the youth home. He took note of the place and left, running all the way to the county courthouse. It happened that the judge was opening the day’s sessions, and the sergeants-at-arms were in position, strict and severe. The dog dashed forward and made a great outcry, half moaning, half appealing. He could not be driven off.

“What’s your complaint?” asked the judge. “I’ll send an officer to follow you.” The dog led the officer to the foot of the bridge where the traveler’s body was hidden; then he barked toward the water. The officer pulled up the reeds and discovered the corpse. He reported back to the judge, but there was no way to apprehend the culprit. The dog also returned to the courthouse, where
he barked and flung himself about. “You know who did it?” asked the judge. “I might as well send officers to follow you.”

This time the judge dispatched several men with the dog. They trailed him for seven or eight miles until they came to a house in a remote village. The dog entered it, leaped on a young man inside, and savaged him, tearing his clothes and drawing blood. The officers dragged the man to the courthouse, where he confessed and gave details of his crime. “The merchant’s silver has not been touched,” he told them, and they returned to the house for it. Inside the merchant’s sack of money they also found a document with his name and village.

The judge passed sentence on the young man and had the sack placed in the public treasury. Again the dog planted himself and barked without letup. The judge reflected, “Although the merchant is dead, his family must be alive. The sack belongs to them; that must be why the dog is barking.” So he sent his officers off to the dead man’s village. The dog followed.

When they arrived, the merchant’s family was terribly shocked to learn that he was dead. The man’s son went back with the officers to Chungmou, where the culprit had already died in jail. The judge took the sack of silver, checked it carefully, and turned it over to the son.

The dog meanwhile followed the son to Chungmou and then back again when the coffin was escorted home. And in all the hundreds of miles that they covered, the animal conducted itself like a human being.

—
Hsü Fang

One morning a woodsman was walking through a bamboo grove. All of a sudden he lost his footing and fell into a tiger’s lair. Two little cubs were inside the pit, which was shaped like an upside-down bowl. Sharp, jagged stones stuck out on three sides. The front wall was smooth but well over ten feet high. It was an unbroken drop like a slide—the tiger’s pathway.

The woodsman leaped up and fell back down a number of times. Then he walked around inside at his wit’s end. Tearful, he awaited his death. The sun set, and the wind brought the tiger’s howl. She scaled the wall and entered the pit with a freshly killed elk, which she tore in half for her two cubs. Next she saw the woodsman cowering on the ground. She spread her claws and flexed her front legs, but then circled him pensively as if she had had a second thought. Instead of attacking, she fed him a scrap of the meat. As he ate it, she went into her niche with her cubs to rest.

The woodsman figured that the tiger was not hungry now but would surely devour him come morning. Instead, the tiger leaped out of the pit at the crack of dawn. At midday she returned, bringing a musk deer, which she fed to her cubs. And as before, she threw the leftovers to the famished woodsman, who devoured them. To relieve his thirst he drank his own urine. This went on for nearly a month, and gradually he became used to the tiger.