Adventure · Society · The strange
古典小说Gǔdiǎn xiǎoshuō · Classical fiction
Step inside another life.
Journey through kingdoms, enchanted landscapes and intimate households, where imagined lives illuminate human choices.
Jin
晋265–420Gān Bǎo干宝
A Jin historian associated with the collection In Search of the Supernatural (Sōushén jì).
3 readings in this room
Sòng Dìngbó zhuō guǐ
宋定伯捉鬼
Song Dingbo Catches a GhostComplete tale
Sòng Dìngbó zhuō guǐ
宋定伯捉鬼
Song Dingbo Catches a GhostComplete taleHistorical background
A transmitted tale of the strange
The story is transmitted in In Search of the Supernatural, the collection traditionally associated with the fourth-century historian Gan Bao. It belongs to zhiguai, accounts of strange beings and events, a category whose historical compilers did not necessarily observe the modern boundary between imaginative fiction and reports of marvels.
The collection has a complex later transmission, so the attribution names a received literary context rather than guaranteeing a surviving authorial manuscript for this exact wording. The closing reference to Shi Chong is part of the tale’s claim to circulation and authority. It does not independently verify that a supernatural encounter or sale occurred.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
南阳宋定伯，年少时，夜行逢鬼。
When Song Dingbo of Nanyang was young, he met a ghost while travelling at night.
问之，鬼言：“我是鬼。”
He questioned it, and it said, “I am a ghost.”
鬼问：“汝复谁？”定伯诳之，言：“我亦鬼。”
The ghost asked, “And who are you?” Dingbo deceived it: “I am a ghost too.”
鬼问：“欲至何所？”答曰：“欲至宛市。”
“Where are you going?” asked the ghost. “To the market at Wan,” he answered.
鬼言：“我亦欲至宛市。”遂行。
“I too am going to Wan market,” said the ghost. They walked on together.
数里，鬼言：“步行太亟，可共递相担，何如？”
After several li, the ghost said, “Walking is exhausting. Why not take turns carrying each other?”
定伯曰：“大善。”鬼便先担定伯数里。
“An excellent idea,” said Dingbo. The ghost carried him first, for several li.
鬼言：“卿太重，将非鬼也？”
“You are very heavy,” said the ghost. “Could it be that you are not a ghost?”
定伯言：“我新鬼，故身重耳。”
“I am a new ghost,” Dingbo replied, “which is why my body is still heavy.”
定伯因复担鬼，鬼略无重。如是再三。
Dingbo then carried the ghost, which weighed almost nothing. They changed places several times.
定伯复言：“我新鬼，不知有何所畏忌？”
Dingbo asked again, “As a new ghost, I do not know what we should fear or avoid.”
鬼答言：“惟不喜人唾。”于是共行。
“Only human spit displeases us,” answered the ghost. They continued together.
道遇水，定伯令鬼先渡，听之，了然无声音。
They came to water. Dingbo asked the ghost to cross first and listened: it made no sound at all.
定伯自渡，漕漼作声。
When Dingbo crossed, the water splashed noisily.
鬼复言：“何以作声？”
The ghost asked again, “Why are you making a noise?”
定伯曰：“新死，不习渡水故耳，勿怪吾也。”
“I have only just died and have not learned to cross water,” said Dingbo. “Please do not think it strange.”
行欲至宛市，定伯便担鬼著肩上，急持之。
As they approached Wan market, Dingbo put the ghost on his shoulder and held it tightly.
鬼大呼，声咋咋然，索下，不复听之。
The ghost cried out, shrieking to be put down, but he no longer listened.
径至宛市中下著地，化为一羊，便卖之。
He went straight into the market and set it on the ground. It turned into a sheep, and he sold it.
恐其变化，唾之。得钱千五百，乃去。
Fearing another transformation, he spat on it. He received fifteen hundred coins and left.
于时石崇言：“定伯卖鬼，得钱千五百文。”
At the time, Shi Chong said, “Dingbo sold a ghost and received fifteen hundred coins.”
Appreciation · A closer reading
The first victory is control of the conversation
When the ghost identifies itself, Song Dingbo does not flee. He claims to be a ghost too. This quick invention changes the relationship: the unknown being is encouraged to speak as a companion and to disclose the assumptions governing its own world.
The proposal to carry one another turns conversation into a test. Song Dingbo’s human weight threatens his disguise, but he explains it by claiming to have died recently. The same explanation will be used again at the water crossing. Repetition makes his improvisation feel like a workable strategy rather than a single lucky answer.
Small observations become usable knowledge
Weight, sound and an aversion to human spit are ordinary or bodily details. The narrative gives each one a practical role. The ghost is light enough to carry; it crosses water without splashing; it freely admits what it fears.
Song Dingbo’s claimed inexperience lets him ask questions without immediately provoking suspicion. Once the answer about spit is given, the reader possesses information that will matter at the end. Suspense comes from waiting to see how this detail will be used, even as the ghost continues to regard the exchange as harmless.
The marketplace completes the comic reversal
Near the market, carrying changes from cooperation into capture. Song Dingbo refuses to release the ghost, which becomes a sheep and is sold. Spitting prevents another transformation within the story’s supernatural rules. The previously disclosed weakness becomes decisive.
The precise sum of money supplies an unexpectedly prosaic ending. Terror has been converted into a commodity and an anecdote worth repeating. A modern reader may also notice the ghost’s trustfulness and the human’s opportunism: the text does not show the ghost first attacking him. That complication need not cancel the comic celebration of quick thinking, but it makes the story more interesting than a simple proof that every human action is virtuous and every ghost malicious.
Gān jiāng mò yé (Sān wáng mù)
干将莫邪（三王墓）
Gan Jiang and Mo Ye: The Tomb of Three KingsComplete tale
Gān jiāng mò yé (Sān wáng mù)
干将莫邪（三王墓）
Gan Jiang and Mo Ye: The Tomb of Three KingsComplete taleA ruler’s arbitrary violence produces a revenge that consumes both the victim’s son and his anonymous helper. The supernatural ending erases the physical distinction between king and avengers. This is a dark legend about power, obligation, and the terrible price of redress.
Historical background
One version in a changing sword-legend tradition
This tale is transmitted in the received In Search of the Supernatural, associated with the fourth-century historian Gan Bao. The collection’s surviving form has a complicated history of loss and reconstruction. Stories of the sword makers Gan Jiang and Mo Ye also appear elsewhere with different rulers, settings, and events, so their versions should not be combined into one supposedly consistent biography.
The present tale places the conflict under a king of Chu and ends with an explanation of the name Tomb of Three Kings. That place-based conclusion gives the legend an air of local memory; it is not proof that its supernatural revenge occurred. Chibi’s name and several phrases also vary in transmission. The page follows the linked received version as a complete narrative.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
楚干将莫邪为楚王作剑，三年乃成。王怒，欲杀之。剑有雌雄。
Gan Jiang and Mo Ye of Chu made swords for the king; they took three years to finish. The angry king wished to kill Gan Jiang. There were a male and a female sword.
其妻重身当产。夫语妻曰：“吾为王作剑，三年乃成。王怒，往必杀我。
His wife was pregnant and about to give birth. He told her, “I have taken three years to make the king’s swords. He is angry and will kill me when I go.
汝若生子是男，大，告之曰：‘出户望南山，松生石上，剑在其背。’”
If your child is a boy, tell him when he grows up: ‘Go out and look toward the southern mountain; a pine grows on stone, and the sword is behind it.’”
于是即将雌剑往见楚王。王大怒，使相之。
He took the female sword to the king, who grew furious and had it examined.
剑有二，一雄一雌，雌来雄不来。王怒，即杀之。
There were two swords, one male and one female; only the female had come. The king angrily killed him.
莫邪子名赤比，后壮，乃问其母曰：“吾父所在？”
Mo Ye’s son, named Chibi, grew up and asked his mother, “Where is my father?”
母曰：“汝父为楚王作剑，三年乃成。王怒，杀之。
She said, “Your father made swords for the king of Chu and took three years. The king killed him in anger.
去时嘱我：‘语汝子出户望南山，松生石上，剑在其背。’”
Before leaving, he told me: ‘Tell your son to go out and look toward the southern mountain; a pine grows on stone, and the sword is behind it.’”
于是子出户南望，不见有山，但睹堂前松柱下石低之上。
The son looked south from the doorway. He saw no mountain, only a pinewood pillar before the hall standing upon its low stone base.
即以斧破其背，得剑，日夜思欲报楚王。
He split the back of the pillar with an axe and found the sword, then thought day and night of vengeance against the king.
王梦见一儿，眉间广尺，言欲报雠。王即购之千金。
The king dreamed of a boy with a broad space between his brows who threatened revenge, and offered a thousand gold pieces for him.
儿闻之亡去，入山行歌。
Hearing this, the boy fled into the mountains, singing as he went.
客有逢者，谓：“子年少，何哭之甚悲耶？”
A stranger met him and asked, “You are young; why do you weep so bitterly?”
曰：“吾干将莫邪子也，楚王杀吾父，吾欲报之。”
He replied, “I am the son of Gan Jiang and Mo Ye. The king of Chu killed my father, and I wish to avenge him.”
客曰：“闻王购子头千金。将子头与剑来，为子报之。”
The stranger said, “The king offers a thousand gold pieces for your head. Give me your head and sword, and I will avenge you.”
儿曰：“幸甚！”即自刎，两手捧头及剑奉之，立僵。
The boy said, “I am fortunate indeed!” He cut his own throat and held out his head and sword, his body remaining upright.
客曰：“不负子也。”于是尸乃仆。
The stranger said, “I will not fail you.” Only then did the body fall.
客持头往见楚王，王大喜。
The stranger brought the head to the king, who was delighted.
客曰：“此乃勇士头也，当于汤镬煮之。”
He said, “This is the head of a brave man; it must be boiled in a cauldron.”
王如其言煮头，三日三夕不烂。头踔出汤中，踬目大怒。
The king had it boiled for three days and nights, but it did not soften; it sprang within the water, glaring in fury.
客曰：“此儿头不烂，愿王自往临视之，是必烂也。”
The stranger said, “If Your Majesty looks into it yourself, the head will surely soften.”
王即临之。客以剑拟王，王头随堕汤中，
The king leaned over; the stranger struck with the sword, and the king’s head fell into the cauldron.
客亦自拟己头，头复坠汤中。
The stranger then struck off his own head, which also fell in.
三首俱烂，不可识别。乃分其汤肉葬之，故通名三王墓。
The three heads dissolved until none could be distinguished. Their remains were divided and buried, and the graves were collectively called the Tomb of Three Kings.
今在汝南北宜春县界。
It is said to stand within the boundaries of Northern Yichun County in Runan.
Appreciation · A closer reading
The hidden sword carries an interrupted obligation
The father’s cryptic instruction preserves something beyond the king’s reach. The son must interpret it before he can act, turning inheritance into an act of reading as well as a material possession. The pillar becomes a substitute mountain and tree, making domestic architecture hold the secret. This small puzzle briefly delays the violence and gives the son agency. Yet the sword also binds him to an unresolved conflict from before his birth, so finding it opens a burden rather than an uncomplicated heroic future.
Trust is tested at an impossible extreme
The stranger asks for the very life he offers to avenge. The boy’s body remains standing until a promise is given, using supernatural action to make trust physically visible. The scene should be understood as an extreme literary construction, not a practical model for conduct. Its intensity exposes a world in which ordinary avenues of justice are absent. The anonymous helper then accepts the same fatal cost, so the story refuses the easy pattern of a rescuer who secures victory and walks away unharmed.
Three heads remove the ruler’s last distinction
The king’s delight in receiving the head becomes the means by which he is drawn toward the cauldron. At the end, ruler, son, and stranger cannot be separated by appearance. Calling their graves the tomb of three kings gives the two powerless figures a posthumous equality with the tyrant, while also emphasizing that all are dead. Revenge has changed the distribution of honor but has restored no life. That double outcome makes the legend more troubling and memorable than a simple celebration of successful retaliation.
lǐ jì zhǎn shé
李寄斩蛇
Li Ji Slays the SerpentComplete tale
lǐ jì zhǎn shé
李寄斩蛇
Li Ji Slays the SerpentComplete taleThe officials maintain a cycle of sacrifice; a young woman interrupts it through preparation and action. Li Ji’s courage overturns the assumption that daughters are useless, even though the tale still speaks in the gendered language of its time.
Historical background
A heroic legend in a collection of the strange
Li Ji’s story is transmitted in the received In Search of the Supernatural, associated with Gan Bao in the fourth century. Its setting in the Min region and its closing reference to surviving songs connect it with local legend. Neither the giant serpent nor the royal marriage should be presented as independently verified history.
The tale preserves social assumptions as well as challenging them. Officials select enslaved or otherwise vulnerable girls for sacrifice, while Li Ji initially describes daughters as a burden. Her achievement contradicts that dismissal. The parents’ refusal also matters: they do not willingly sell her away. Reading these tensions is more accurate than either treating the work as an uncomplicated modern statement of equality or repeating its devaluation of daughters as the narrator’s final truth.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
东越闽中有庸岭，高数十里，其西北隰中有大蛇，长七八丈，大十余围。
In Min, in eastern Yue, stood Mount Yong. In the wet lowlands northwest of it lived an enormous serpent, seven or eight zhang long and more than ten arm-spans around.
土俗常惧。东冶都尉及属城长吏，多有死者。
The local people lived in fear, and many officials of Dongye and its subordinate towns had died.
祭以牛羊，故不得祸。
They offered cattle and sheep in sacrifice, seeking protection from disaster.
或与人梦，或下谕巫祝，欲得啖童女年十二三者。
The serpent appeared in dreams or sent messages through ritual specialists, demanding girls of twelve or thirteen to eat.
都尉、令、长并共患之。然气厉不息。
Commandants and magistrates worried together, but the malignant danger did not cease.
共请求人家生婢子，兼有罪家女养之。
They sought girls born into household servitude and daughters of convicted families, and kept them for the offering.
至八月朝祭，送蛇穴口，蛇出吞啮之。累年如此，已用九女。
At the eighth-month sacrifice they sent a girl to the cave, where the serpent swallowed her. This continued for years, consuming nine girls.
尔时预复募索，未得其女。
Now they were searching for another girl but had not yet found one.
将乐县李诞，家有六女，无男。其小女名寄，应募欲行。父母不听。
Li Dan of Jiangle had six daughters and no sons. The youngest, Ji, volunteered to go, but her parents refused.
寄曰：“父母无相，惟生六女，无有一男，虽有如无。
Ji said, “You have been unfortunate to have six daughters and no son; having us is counted as having none.
女无缇萦济父母之功，既不能供养，徒费衣食，生无所益，不如早死。
I have not helped my parents as Tiying did; unable to support you, I merely consume food and clothing. If my life brings no benefit, better to die early.
卖寄之身，可得少钱，以供父母，岂不善耶！”
Selling me could bring a little money for you—would that not be good?”
父母慈怜，终不听去。寄自潜行，不可禁止。
Her loving parents still refused. Ji went secretly, and they could not prevent her.
寄乃告请好剑及咋蛇犬。
Ji requested a fine sword and a dog trained to bite snakes.
至八月朝，便诣庙中坐，怀剑将犬。
At the beginning of the eighth month, she sat in the temple with the sword and dog.
先将数石米餈，用蜜麨灌之，以置穴口。
She first placed rice cakes dressed with honey and toasted grain at the cave mouth.
蛇便出，头大如囷，目如二尺镜，闻餈香气，先啖食之。
The serpent emerged, its head like a granary and eyes like great mirrors. Smelling the cakes, it began to eat.
寄便放犬，犬就啮咋，寄从后斫得数创。
Ji released the dog to bite it and struck from behind, inflicting several wounds.
疮痛急，蛇因踊出，至庭而死。
In terrible pain the serpent sprang out and died in the courtyard.
寄入视穴，得九女髑髅，悉举出，
Ji entered the cave, found the skulls of the nine girls, and brought them all out.
咤言曰：“汝曹怯弱，为蛇所食，甚可哀愍！”
She exclaimed, “You were timid and were eaten by the serpent—how pitiful!”
于是寄乃缓步而归。
Then Ji walked calmly home.
越王闻之，聘寄女为后，指其父为将乐令，母及姊皆有赏赐。
The king of Yue heard of her, took her as queen, appointed her father magistrate of Jiangle, and rewarded her mother and sisters.
自是东冶无复妖邪之物。其歌谣至今存焉。
From then on Dongye had no such monstrous threat. Songs about her, the narrator says, still survived.
Appreciation · A closer reading
Authority manages the danger instead of ending it
The serpent’s demands become an administrative routine. Officials worry, recruit, keep girls, and send them to the cave, but their procedures reproduce the harm. The repetition over nine victims makes the system’s failure unmistakable before Li Ji enters. Her intervention is therefore more than an isolated duel with a monster. It exposes the difference between holding office and solving a public problem. The most vulnerable kind of person in the existing arrangement becomes the person capable of changing that arrangement.
Courage appears as preparation, not mere fearlessness
Li Ji requests a suitable sword and dog, prepares attractive food, and waits for the serpent to be occupied. Each detail reduces the advantage of the much larger opponent. The coordinated attack gives her success a practical logic within the fantastic story. Her calm walk home completes the contrast with the officials’ recurring anxiety. This composure is earned by planning and decisive action; the tale does not simply announce an innate heroic quality and ask readers to admire it without seeing how it works.
The rescued memory of the victims remains difficult
Bringing out the skulls acknowledges the girls whose deaths preceded the victory. Li Ji’s reproach of their weakness, however, places responsibility on victims who lacked her opportunities and resources. Modern readers can recognize that limitation without erasing the line. The royal reward then restores the heroine to an established hierarchy rather than imagining a transformed society. These features make the ending historically revealing. The story opens a striking space for female agency, while retaining assumptions about merit, marriage, and status that its own heroine has partly unsettled.
The opening sacrifice sentence varies in transmission and interpretation; its role here is an attempted response to a danger that continues.
Liu Song
南朝刘宋420–479Liú Yìqìng刘义庆
A Liu Song prince traditionally credited with compiling A New Account of Tales of the World, a collection of brief portraits of speech and conduct.
3 readings in this room
Yǒng xuě
咏雪
Finding Words for SnowComplete anecdote
Yǒng xuě
咏雪
Finding Words for SnowComplete anecdoteThis small family anecdote makes literary intelligence visible through a comparison. Two young people are asked what falling snow resembles. The difference between their answers lies not simply in correctness, but in how much life and movement an image can bring into a familiar scene.
Historical background
An Eastern Jin scene remembered in a later collection
The anecdote appears in the Speech and Conversation chapter of A New Account of Tales of the World, compiled in the fifth century and traditionally associated with Liu Yiqing and his literary circle. Its setting belongs to the earlier Eastern Jin: Xie An gathers younger family members for literary discussion on a snowy day.
The niece is identified at the end as Xie Daoyun, daughter of Xie Wuyi and wife of Wang Ningzhi. The familiar title On Snow is a reading title for this short entry, not evidence that it was originally a separately titled poem. The collection preserves a crafted cultural memory of elite conversation rather than a demonstrably verbatim transcript.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
谢太傅寒雪日内集，与儿女讲论文义。
On a cold, snowy day, Grand Tutor Xie gathered the younger members of his family indoors to discuss literature.
俄而雪骤，公欣然曰：“白雪纷纷何所似？”
Suddenly the snow fell thickly. Delighted, he asked, “What does this swirling white snow resemble?”
兄子胡儿曰：“撒盐空中差可拟。”
His nephew Hu’er said, “Salt scattered in the air is a fair comparison.”
兄女曰：“未若柳絮因风起。”
His niece said, “Better to say: willow catkins rising on the wind.”
公大笑乐。
He laughed heartily in delight.
即公大兄无奕女，左将军王凝之妻也。
She was the daughter of his eldest brother Wuyi and the wife of Wang Ningzhi, General of the Left.
Appreciation · A closer reading
The setting makes the question feel spontaneous
The family is already discussing texts when the snow grows heavier. Xie An’s question allows an event outside to enter the gathering’s intellectual life. Learning here is social, responsive and pleasurable, not presented as an examination with a predetermined model answer.
His nephew’s scattered salt offers an immediate visual analogy. It catches whiteness and the dispersal of small particles through the air. Taking that answer seriously helps the reader appreciate the next one: the contrast is between two ways of seeing, not between a meaningless response and the only conceivable truth.
Willow catkins add an account of movement
The niece imagines willow down lifted by the wind. The comparison evokes lightness, irregular drifting and a force that carries the flakes rather than merely drops them. It brings a spring image into the winter scene, allowing remembered experience to enrich present sight.
The strength of the image therefore lies in a relationship: falling snow is understood through another delicate material moving in air. No claim that snow and catkins are physically identical is required. The anecdote offers a compact example of how literary comparison can communicate motion and atmosphere together.
The ending honours talent without recording a score
Xie An laughs with delight, but the text does not explicitly state that he declares one child the winner. Readers often infer special approval of the niece because the narrator follows with her identification. That inference should remain distinct from words the account never puts into his mouth.
The final genealogy both preserves a talented woman’s presence and locates her within the family networks through which the collection recognises people. The scene is valuable as a literary memory of female intellectual participation, while not proving that all women of the period enjoyed the same access. Its charm rests in allowing a brief imaginative act to outlast the gathering that first received it.
chén tài qiū yǔ yǒu qī xíng
陈太丘与友期行
An Appointment and a Child’s ReplyComplete anecdote
chén tài qiū yǔ yǒu qī xíng
陈太丘与友期行
An Appointment and a Child’s ReplyComplete anecdoteA child answers an adult’s anger by returning to the terms of an agreement. The story’s force comes from its exact distribution of responsibility: the late arrival accuses the person who waited, and the child quietly exposes the reversal.
Historical background
A later collection remembers an Eastern Han family
The anecdote appears in the Upright Conduct section of A New Account of Tales of the World, compiled in the fifth century under Liu Yiqing and his circle. Chen Taiqiu is Chen Shi, remembered by his official title; Yuanfang is his son Chen Ji. Their lives belong to the Eastern Han, earlier than the collection that preserves this exchange.
The work’s short, polished dialogue should be read as a transmitted character anecdote rather than an independently verified transcript. Such stories identify qualities through a decisive moment. Here, punctuality, trustworthy agreement, and proper speech become tests of character. The seven-year-old’s reply also fits the collection’s interest in precocious children who can reveal adult failures through unusually clear judgment.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
陈太丘与友期行，期日中。
Chen, magistrate of Taiqiu, arranged to travel with a friend, meeting at noon.
过中不至，太丘舍去，去后乃至。
The friend had not arrived after noon, so Chen left; only afterward did the friend come.
元方时年七岁，门外戏。
Yuanfang, then seven, was playing outside the gate.
客问元方：“尊君在不？”
The visitor asked him, “Is your honored father here?”
答曰：“待君久不至，已去。”
He replied, “He waited a long time for you, but you did not come, and he has gone.”
友人便怒曰：“非人哉！与人期行，相委而去。”
The friend grew angry: “What a man! To arrange a journey with someone and then abandon him!”
元方曰：“君与家君期日中。日中不至，则是无信；
Yuanfang said, “You and my father agreed on noon. Not arriving at noon is a failure of trust;
对子骂父，则是无礼。”
to insult a father before his son is a failure of courtesy.”
友人惭，下车引之。
Ashamed, the friend stepped down from his carriage and reached toward him.
元方入门不顾。
Yuanfang entered the gate without looking back.
Appreciation · A closer reading
The opening settles facts before emotions enter
The noon appointment, the delay, and the father’s departure are given in a nearly procedural sequence. Readers therefore know the relevant facts before the visitor becomes angry. This arrangement makes the later accusation legible as a distortion, not an equally plausible account competing with the child’s version. The father’s absence also removes the possibility of a direct adult quarrel. His character must be defended by someone with less age and social authority, increasing the significance of the reply without requiring a longer plot.
Two standards answer one outburst
Yuanfang does not respond with a matching insult. He separates the visitor’s conduct into two failures: not keeping the agreed time and speaking abusively about a father to his child. The parallel structure gives his answer composure. It also shows that trust and courtesy are related but distinct. The man’s anger does not excuse lateness, and lateness does not authorize abuse. The reasoning is persuasive because it applies recognizable standards to observable actions rather than claiming that the child’s family deserves special treatment.
The closed gate leaves a question about reconciliation
The visitor’s shame and movement from the carriage indicate a change in posture. Yuanfang’s refusal to look back preserves the anecdote’s emphasis on firmness, but it can also prompt readers to ask how a justified rebuke should relate to forgiveness. The text does not narrate a later reconciliation or explain the child’s private motive. Its ending is deliberately compact. We can recognize the correction of blame while remaining attentive to the unresolved social moment after correction, when an apology may be beginning but has not yet been fully spoken.
wáng róng bù qǔ dào páng lǐ
王戎不取道旁李
Wang Rong and the Roadside PlumsComplete anecdote
wáng róng bù qǔ dào páng lǐ
王戎不取道旁李
Wang Rong and the Roadside PlumsComplete anecdoteThe same abundance that attracts the other children makes Wang Rong suspicious. His insight comes from connecting the fruit with its location and asking why earlier passersby have left it untouched. A tiny story turns an ordinary roadside scene into a test of inference.
Historical background
A childhood scene preserved under composure
This anecdote belongs to the Magnanimity or Composure section of A New Account of Tales of the World. The collection was assembled in the fifth century under Liu Yiqing and associates, while Wang Rong was a third-century figure who later held high office and was associated with the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove.
The narrative presents childhood conduct as an early indication of a remarkable mind. That is a literary and biographical pattern, not a guarantee that every childhood anecdote can be independently confirmed. It also does not summarize Wang Rong’s entire adult character. The complete four-sentence episode is best appreciated as a carefully selected demonstration of calm observation amid collective excitement.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
王戎七岁，尝与诸小儿游。
When Wang Rong was seven, he went out with other children.
看道边李树多子折枝，诸儿竞走取之，唯戎不动。
They saw a roadside plum tree with so much fruit that its branches bent; the others raced to pick it, but Wang Rong stayed still.
人问之，答曰：“树在道边而多子，此必苦李。”
Asked why, he replied, “A tree beside the road still bearing so much fruit must have bitter plums.”
取之，信然。
They picked some, and it was indeed so.
Appreciation · A closer reading
Location changes the meaning of abundance
A tree heavy with fruit might ordinarily imply good fortune. Beside a well-used road, however, untouched abundance raises another possibility: other people may already have tested and rejected it. Wang Rong combines two observations that the rushing children treat separately. The insight is not simply that attractive things can disappoint. It is that the surrounding conditions alter what an attractive appearance should lead us to expect. The story’s reasoning remains concrete, depending on a road, available fruit, and the likely actions of earlier travelers.
Stillness becomes an intellectual action
The boy’s lack of movement first makes him seem the exception to the group. Only the subsequent question reveals that staying still has a reason. This order lets the reader briefly share the others’ puzzlement. The narrative then reclassifies his inaction as judgment rather than indifference or hesitation. Such economy is characteristic of the collection: a gesture acquires meaning through one sharp exchange. No lengthy description of intelligence is necessary because the contrast between the group’s movement and the boy’s explanation makes it visible.
The test confirms this inference, not every suspicion
The final tasting supplies evidence, so the story does not ask readers to accept clever speech alone. Yet its certainty belongs to this narrated case. In ordinary life, fruit could remain for other reasons, and an inference from absence can require further checking. That qualification does not weaken the anecdote’s lesson about attention. It clarifies it: observe context, form a plausible judgment, and compare it with what happens. The work’s lasting appeal lies in showing how a small difference in reasoning can become apparent through a simple, shared test.
Ming
明1368–1644Féng Mènglóng冯梦龙
A late-Ming author and compiler who gathered vernacular stories, songs and anecdotes about human judgment.
2 readings in this room
Zhìnáng · Cáo Chōng
智囊·曹冲
Cao Chong Weighs an ElephantComplete anecdote
Zhìnáng · Cáo Chōng
智囊·曹冲
Cao Chong Weighs an ElephantComplete anecdoteCao Chong’s solution works by changing the form of a problem. The adults face an animal they cannot directly weigh; the child sees that its weight can be represented by a mark on water and then replaced with manageable objects. The anecdote makes intelligence an ability to find an equivalent question.
Historical background
A Ming compilation retells an earlier historical anecdote
This is the complete Cao Chong entry in the section on quick understanding in Feng Menglong’s Zhìnang, a late-Ming collection of examples of human judgment. The characters belong to the end of the Han dynasty, many centuries before Feng. The page groups the entry by its compiler’s period, not by the lifetime of the child.
An earlier version appears in Cao Chong’s biography in the Records of the Three Kingdoms. It says that Sun Quan sent Cao Cao an elephant and describes the young boy’s weighing method. That written precedent is important, although the anecdote still reaches us through historical narration rather than a surviving measurement record from the event.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
曹冲字仓舒，自幼聪慧。
Cao Chong, whose courtesy name was Cangshu, was intelligent from childhood.
孙权尝致巨象于曹公，公欲知其斤重，以访群下，莫能得策。
Sun Quan once sent a huge elephant to Lord Cao. Cao asked his attendants how to discover its weight, but none could devise a method.
冲曰：“置象大船之上，而刻其水痕所至，
Chong said, “Place the elephant on a large boat and mark the level the water reaches.
称物以载之，一较可知矣。”
Then weigh other objects and load them aboard; a comparison will tell you the answer.”
冲时仅五六岁，公大奇之。
Chong was then only five or six. Lord Cao was greatly astonished by him.
Appreciation · A closer reading
The opening creates a problem of scale
The elephant is enormous, while the available advisers cannot supply a method. The account does not spend time describing every failed proposal. That compression keeps the obstacle clear: ordinary direct weighing has not produced an answer.
Cao Chong’s speech begins with an action anyone present could imagine carrying out. A boat can support the elephant even when a suitable balance cannot. The problem is moved to a system large enough to accommodate it.
A waterline holds the place of the missing number
The mark records how deeply the loaded boat sits. After the elephant is removed, other objects can be added until the same waterline is reached, and those smaller loads can be weighed. Under comparable conditions, the boat provides a way to compare the two loads.
The story does not show Cao Chong stating a modern mathematical law of buoyancy or deriving a formula. His insight is practical substitution. It is enough to recognise a stable relation between load and immersion and to use that relation to connect an unmanageable object with manageable ones.
Why the child’s age comes last
The closing reminder that he is only five or six places youth against the adults’ collective inability to proceed. Cao Cao’s astonishment supplies the social recognition of an ability that could not have been predicted simply from rank or seniority.
Within a collection devoted to intelligence, the episode offers more than praise for a prodigy. It shows a repeatable habit of thought: when an object is hard to examine directly, look for a relation that preserves the feature you need to know. The concise telling mirrors that economy. Once the alternative method has been found, the apparently overwhelming problem becomes a short sequence of intelligible actions.
zhì náng · wén yàn bó sī mǎ guāng
智囊·文彦博 司马光
Two Children, Two Uses of WaterComplete paired anecdotes and compiler’s comment
zhì náng · wén yàn bó sī mǎ guāng
智囊·文彦博 司马光
Two Children, Two Uses of WaterComplete paired anecdotes and compiler’s commentWater retrieves a ball in one scene and traps a child in the other. The paired anecdotes make intelligence a matter of responding to the actual obstacle rather than repeating a fixed method. Feng Menglong’s comment adds a question about how early promise is judged.
Historical background
A Ming compiler looks back to Song statesmen
Feng Menglong included this paired entry in the Quick Intelligence division of his Treasury of Wisdom, or Zhinang. Wen Yanbo and Sima Guang were prominent Northern Song statesmen, centuries earlier than Feng’s late Ming compilation. The book collects and evaluates inherited stories rather than claiming that its compiler witnessed them.
The jar-breaking story also appears in the later official History of Song, which helps explain its broad circulation as an exemplary childhood episode. The page presents the complete paired entry and Feng’s comment, rather than isolating the more famous Sima Guang scene. This arrangement preserves the compiler’s comparison and his rebuttal of the familiar claim that childhood cleverness necessarily fades in adulthood.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
彦博幼时，与群儿戏，击球，球入柱穴中，不能取，
When Wen Yanbo was young, he played ball with other children; the ball went into a hole beside a pillar, and they could not retrieve it.
公以水灌之，球浮出。
He poured water into the hole, and the ball floated out.
司马光幼与群儿戏，一儿误堕大水瓮中，已没，
When Sima Guang was a child playing with companions, one fell into a large water jar and went under.
群儿惊走，光取石破瓮，遂得出。
The other children ran away in alarm; Guang took a stone and broke the jar, and the child escaped.
〔评〕二公应变之才，济人之术，已露一斑。
Comment: These two men already showed a glimpse of their ability to meet changing circumstances and help others.
孰谓“小时了了者，大定不佳”耶？
Who says that one who is clever in childhood will certainly turn out poorly as an adult?
Appreciation · A closer reading
One obstacle is approached through the surrounding medium
Wen Yanbo does not try harder to reach the trapped ball. He changes the conditions around it, using buoyancy to bring it within reach. The account is brief because the decisive act needs little elaboration. The reader can understand the physical relation immediately. This is an example of practical reasoning rather than a supernatural feat, and it establishes the pattern for the next anecdote: the successful response begins by asking what can be changed in the situation, not by accepting the first apparent route as the only one.
Saving a person requires sacrificing a container
Sima Guang’s case is more urgent. The other children’s flight marks fear, while his action changes the problem from lifting someone out of water to releasing the water itself. Breaking the jar also implies a judgment of value: the container can be destroyed to preserve a life. The story does not need to state that principle abstractly because the action embodies it. Set beside the floating ball, it shows that water can be either resource or danger, and that intelligence includes recognizing which role it plays now.
The compiler’s verdict is part of the work
Feng reads the children’s actions in light of the statesmen they later became. His conclusion challenges a sweeping dismissal of youthful ability by presenting counterexamples. That retrospective structure should remain visible: the stories have been selected partly because their protagonists became famous. They do not prove that every clever child will become an effective adult. The entry’s more durable contribution is its definition of useful wit—adaptable, concrete, and directed toward solving a problem or helping someone. Retaining the comment lets readers see both the narrative examples and the compiler’s reasoning about them.
The complete source entry includes both Wen Yanbo and Sima Guang; the familiar jar rescue is the second anecdote.
Luó Guànzhōng罗贯中
The author traditionally associated with Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a novel shaped by earlier histories and storytelling.
3 readings in this room
Sānguó yǎnyì · Táoyuán jiéyì
三国演义·桃园结义
The Oath in the Peach GardenNovel excerpt · chapter 1
Sānguó yǎnyì · Táoyuán jiéyì
三国演义·桃园结义
The Oath in the Peach GardenNovel excerpt · chapter 1The Peach Garden oath gives the opening of Romance of the Three Kingdoms an emotional centre. Three strangers choose obligations as binding as kinship, linking their personal future to the rescue of a troubled political world. The later novel will repeatedly test whether those commitments can remain compatible.
Historical background
The scene belongs to the novel’s shaping of history
The novel is traditionally associated with Luo Guanzhong, a figure of the late Yuan and early Ming, and reached its familiar forms through a long history of storytelling and editing. Its first chapter sets the heroes’ meeting amid the late-Han crisis and the Yellow Turban uprising. Liu Bei wants to act but lacks resources; Zhang Fei offers support; Guan Yu joins their discussion.
Early historical writing describes Liu Bei’s affection for Guan Yu and Zhang Fei as brotherlike, but does not establish this particular ceremony in a peach garden. The scene should therefore be read as a famous literary crystallisation of their bond, not as a surviving transcript of a historically verified oath.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
飞曰：“吾庄后有一桃园，花开正盛；
Zhang Fei said, “Behind my estate is a peach garden, now in full bloom.
明日当于园中祭告天地，我三人结为兄弟，协力同心，然后可图大事。”
Tomorrow let us offer sacrifice to heaven and earth there and become sworn brothers. United in purpose, we can then undertake great things.”
玄德、云长齐声应曰：“如此甚好。”
Xuande and Yunchang answered together, “An excellent plan.”
次日，于桃园中，备下乌牛白马祭礼等项，三人焚香再拜而说誓曰：
The next day they prepared a black ox, a white horse and other offerings in the peach garden. Burning incense and bowing twice, the three swore:
“念刘备、关羽、张飞，虽然异姓，既结为兄弟，则同心协力，救困扶危；
“We, Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, though of different surnames, have become brothers. We shall unite our hearts and strength, rescuing those in distress and helping those in danger;
上报国家，下安黎庶；
we shall serve the state above and bring peace to the common people below.
不求同年同月同日生，只愿同年同月同日死。
We do not ask to have been born in the same year, month and day; we wish only to die in the same year, month and day.
皇天后土，实鉴此心。背义忘恩，天人共戮！”
August Heaven and Sovereign Earth, bear witness to our hearts! If we betray righteousness or forget kindness, let heaven and humankind destroy us!”
誓毕，拜玄德为兄，关羽次之，张飞为弟。
After the oath, they acknowledged Xuande as the eldest brother, Guan Yu as the second, and Zhang Fei as the youngest.
祭罢天地，复宰牛设酒，聚乡中勇士，得三百余人，就桃园中痛饮一醉。
When the rites were over, they slaughtered cattle and served wine. More than three hundred local volunteers gathered and drank their fill in the peach garden.
Appreciation · A closer reading
A private garden becomes a public beginning
Zhang Fei proposes the garden behind his estate, where the peach blossom is at its height. The setting gives the solemn act a vivid, life-filled background. Preparations, offerings and repeated bows convert a personal agreement into a ritual witnessed by heaven and earth.
The men explicitly acknowledge their different surnames. Brotherhood is something they are making, not something inherited automatically. This act of chosen kinship provides the novel with a relationship strong enough to organise future expectations and make later separations emotionally consequential.
The oath moves outward from three men to a country
Their promises include mutual effort, aid to those in danger, service to the state and protection of ordinary people. Loyalty is presented as more than private affection. The new bond claims legitimacy through its contribution to a wider order.
The wish to die together, despite not having been born together, gives that obligation its most extreme expression. It is an oath, not a factual statement that the historical men eventually died on the same day. The possibility of failure or contradiction is precisely what gives a promise of this scale its force.
The celebration opens onto the difficulties of action
The ritual establishes Liu Bei as elder brother, Guan Yu next and Zhang Fei youngest. Fellowship therefore includes an internal hierarchy. The feast then brings local recruits into the scene, turning three men’s language into the beginnings of collective military action.
The excerpt ends at this hopeful point, but the complete novel places personal loyalty amid competing political duties, strategy and vengeance. Reading onward allows the opening ideal to be tested rather than preserved as a free-standing slogan. The garden’s importance comes partly from the distance between the clarity of a vow and the difficult world in which it must be kept.
sān guó yǎn yì · lóng zhōng duì
三国演义·隆中对
A Plan at LongzhongNovel excerpt · Chapter 38 · Continuous speech
sān guó yǎn yì · lóng zhōng duì
三国演义·隆中对
A Plan at LongzhongNovel excerpt · Chapter 38 · Continuous speechIn Chapter 38, a visit to an apparently secluded scholar opens onto a map of the entire realm. Zhuge Liang’s proposal turns Liu Bei’s uncertain future into a conditional political strategy, while the novel makes an act of consultation feel like the beginning of destiny.
Historical background
The historical setting and the novel’s version
The scene looks back to the final decades of the Eastern Han, when regional commanders competed while the dynasty retained its name and emperor. Liu Bei’s repeated visits to Zhuge Liang are traditionally dated to 207. The historical Record of the Three Kingdoms preserves a strategic conversation, but the present wording belongs to Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a much later literary work traditionally associated with Luo Guanzhong. It should not be presented as a transcript of an actual conversation.
In the novel, Liu Bei’s persistence in visiting the scholar establishes his willingness to recognize talent. The advice is the reward for that humility, and also the point at which the narrative gives his wandering career a larger shape.
What the proposed geography means
Jingzhou covered strategically important territory around the middle Yangtze, while Yizhou included the Sichuan basin. The plan depends on maintaining both bases, cooperating with Sun Quan, and waiting for an opportunity against Cao Cao. Its famous balance of three powers is therefore an argument about resources and alliances, not simply a prediction that three kingdoms must inevitably appear.
The troop totals and confident account of popular support belong to the speaker’s persuasive rhetoric. Modern readers should not treat the reported million soldiers as a verified census, or the promise of universal welcome as evidence of what every local population wanted.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
孔明曰：“自董卓造逆以来，天下豪杰并起。
Kongming said: “Ever since Dong Zhuo began his rebellion, powerful men have risen throughout the realm.
曹操势不及袁绍，而竟能克绍者，非惟天时，抑亦人谋也。
Cao Cao was weaker than Yuan Shao, yet eventually defeated him through human planning as well as favorable circumstances.
今操已拥百万之众，挟天子以令诸侯，此诚不可与争锋。
Cao now commands a million men and uses his control of the emperor to issue orders to the lords. You certainly cannot challenge him head-on.
孙权据有江东，已历三世，国险而民附，此可用为援，而不可图也。
Sun Quan holds the lands east of the river, under the third successive leader of his family. His territory is well defended and his people loyal: seek his alliance, not his conquest.
荆州北据汉、沔，利尽南海，东连吴会，西通巴、蜀，此用武之地，非其主不能守。
Jingzhou commands the Han and Mian rivers to the north, draws resources from the southern seas, joins the Wu and Kuaiji region in the east, and reaches Ba and Shu in the west. This is strategic ground, which only a capable ruler can hold.
是殆天所以资将军，将军岂可弃乎？
Perhaps Heaven is offering it to you, General. How could you abandon it?
益州险塞，沃野千里，天府之国，高祖因之以成帝业。
Yizhou has formidable defenses and vast fertile plains, a natural treasury upon which the Han founder built his imperial enterprise.
今刘璋暗弱，民殷国富，而不知存恤，智能之士，思得明君。
Liu Zhang is now weak and undiscerning. His people and land are prosperous, but he does not know how to care for them; able men long for an enlightened ruler.
将军既帝室之胄，信义著于四海，总揽英雄，思贤如渴，
You, General, descend from the imperial house. Your good faith is known everywhere; you gather outstanding men and thirst for worthy advisers.
若跨有荆、益，保其岩阻，西和诸戎，南抚彝、越，外结孙权，内修政理；
If you hold both Jingzhou and Yizhou, secure their natural defenses, make peace with the western peoples, conciliate the southern Yi and Yue, ally with Sun Quan abroad, and improve government at home;
待天下有变，则命一上将，将荆州之兵，以向宛、洛；
then, when circumstances change, order a senior general to lead Jingzhou’s troops toward Wan and Luoyang.
将军身率益州之众，以出秦川，百姓有不箪食壶浆以迎将军者乎？
Lead Yizhou’s forces yourself into the Qin plain. Would the people not welcome you with baskets of food and jars of drink?
诚如是，则大业可成，汉室可兴矣。
If this is accomplished, your great enterprise can succeed and the Han house can rise again.
此亮所以为将军谋者也。惟将军图之。”
This is the plan I, Liang, offer you. I ask you to consider it.”
Appreciation · A closer reading
A survey that narrows into action
The speech begins with a national crisis, compares the strongest rivals, and then identifies the territories Liu Bei might obtain. This movement from panorama to practical sequence gives the listener a sense of order. The repeated distinction between whom to fight and whom to befriend makes judgment more impressive than aggression.
Notice the conditional words: “if,” “when,” and “if this is accomplished.” They are essential to the reasoning. The later fame of the Three Kingdoms can make the reader forget how many uncertain steps the proposed future requires.
Legitimacy, leadership and an unfinished future
Liu Bei’s imperial descent and reputation for good faith are political assets within the speech. Military terrain alone is insufficient; a ruler must attract advisers and administer his territory. The imagined baskets of food transform a campaign into a scene of welcome, presenting restoration as the people’s desire.
Read this selection beside the empty-city episode. Here Zhuge Liang succeeds through broad preparation; there he survives a crisis through an opponent’s expectations. Together the scenes reveal the novel’s varied construction of intelligence, while reminding us that literary admiration is different from historical verification.
sān guó yǎn yì · kōng chéng jì
三国演义·空城计
The Empty-City RuseNovel excerpt · Chapter 95 · Continuous passage
sān guó yǎn yì · kōng chéng jì
三国演义·空城计
The Empty-City RuseNovel excerpt · Chapter 95 · Continuous passageThe empty-city story makes a military confrontation depend on interpretation. Open gates, an unhurried musician and a few sweeping figures become terrifying because Sima Yi believes Zhuge Liang would never expose himself without a plan.
Historical background
A retreat after the loss of Jieting
Chapter 95 places the episode amid the collapse of a northern campaign after Ma Su loses the position at Jieting. Zhuge Liang has sent forces away and is supervising the removal of supplies. In the novel’s account, only 2,500 men remain when news arrives of a vastly larger army. The preceding paragraph describes his orders: conceal the flags, open the gates, keep silence, and have soldiers pretend to be ordinary people sweeping.
The selection begins with Sima Yi’s scouts encountering this staged scene. It ends with Zhuge Liang explaining why flight would have been even more dangerous. The complete chapter continues with the retreat and the opposing commander’s later discovery.
A famous story rather than an established event
Zhuge Liang, Sima Yi and the campaigning of the Three Kingdoms period are historical subjects. This particular encounter, however, should be read as an episode of the received historical novel, not as an independently established record of their actions. Earlier traditions about an empty-city stratagem and the novel’s polished scene are not interchangeable with reliable proof that it happened this way.
The distinction matters because the episode is often retold as practical military history. Its precise troop totals, dialogue, music and staged attendants are details of the literary narrative being read here.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
却说司马懿前军哨到城下，见了如此模样，皆不敢进，急报与司马懿，
Meanwhile, Sima Yi’s forward scouts reached the city. Seeing this strange sight, none dared advance; they urgently reported it to him.
懿笑而不信，遂止住三军，自飞马远远望之。
He laughed in disbelief, halted his forces, and rode forward to observe from a distance.
果见孔明坐于城楼之上，笑容可掬，焚香操琴。
There indeed sat Kongming on the tower, smiling pleasantly, burning incense and playing the qin.
左有一童子，手捧宝剑；右有一童子，手执麈尾。
An attendant boy on his left held a precious sword; another on his right carried a fly whisk.
城门内外有二十余名百姓，低头洒扫，旁若无人。
Inside and outside the gate, more than twenty apparent civilians swept with bowed heads, behaving as though no one else were there.
懿看毕大疑，便到中军，教后军作前军，前军作后军，望北山路而退。
Deeply suspicious, Sima Yi returned to his command, ordered the rear to become the vanguard and the vanguard the rear, and withdrew toward the northern mountain road.
次子司马昭曰：“莫非诸葛亮无军，故作此态？父亲何便退兵？”
His second son, Sima Zhao, asked: “Could Zhuge Liang be acting this way because he has no troops? Father, why withdraw so quickly?”
懿曰：“亮平生谨慎，不曾弄险。今大开城门，必有埋伏。
Sima Yi replied: “Liang has always been cautious and never gambles. These wide-open gates must conceal an ambush.
我兵若进，中其计也。汝辈岂知？宜速退。”
If our men enter, we fall into his trap. What do you youngsters know? Withdraw at once.”
于是两路兵尽退去。孔明见魏军远去，抚掌而笑。
Both columns withdrew. Watching the Wei army disappear, Kongming clapped his hands and laughed.
众官无不骇然。乃问孔明曰：“司马懿乃魏之名将，今统十五万精兵到此，见了丞相，便速退去，何也？”
Every official was astonished. They asked: “Sima Yi is a celebrated Wei commander, with 150,000 picked troops here. Why did he retreat as soon as he saw you, Chancellor?”
孔明曰：“此人料吾平生谨慎，必不弄险；见如此模样，疑有伏兵，所以退去。
Kongming replied: “He judged that, being habitually cautious, I would never take such a risk. This appearance made him suspect an ambush, so he withdrew.
吾非行险，盖因不得已而用之。此人必引军投山北小路去也。吾已令兴、苞二人在彼等候。”
I did not choose danger for its own sake: necessity forced this device upon me. He will take the narrow road north of the mountain; I have already stationed Xing and Bao there.”
众皆惊服曰：“丞相之玄机，神鬼莫测。若某等之见，必弃城而走矣。”
They all exclaimed in admiration: “Even spirits could not fathom your subtle plans! We would certainly have abandoned the city and fled.”
孔明曰：“吾兵止有二千五百，若弃城而走，必不能远遁。得不为司马懿所擒乎？”
Kongming said: “I have only 2,500 soldiers. If we abandoned the city, we could not escape far. How could we avoid capture by Sima Yi?”
Appreciation · A closer reading
The enemy completes the deception
Zhuge Liang does not manufacture the appearance of a strong army. He displays the absence of one. Sima Yi supplies the hidden forces through his own reasoning: because his opponent is cautious, such exposure must be a trap. A reputation built over time becomes a resource that the surrounded commander can spend.
Sima Zhao’s question briefly states the correct explanation. The father dismisses it, making the scene particularly tense: the truth has entered the conversation, yet confidence in an established character judgment prevents it from being accepted.
Stillness, explanation and the limits of a lesson
The qin, incense and attendants compose a portrait of cultivated composure. Their quiet contrasts with the numerical force outside the gate. The reader watches a performance whose success depends on the audience, not on the music possessing supernatural power.
After danger passes, the explanation converts suspense into admiration. Yet Zhuge Liang says necessity compelled him. That admission prevents a careful reading from treating the story as a universal recommendation to bluff. The stratagem works within this particular fictional relationship, where one commander knows how the other understands him.
Wú Chéng’ēn吴承恩
Traditionally associated with Journey to the West; the novel’s authorship and long development remain subjects of scholarship.
3 readings in this room
Xīyóu jì · Shuǐlián dòng
西游记·水帘洞
Through the WaterfallNovel excerpt · chapter 1
Xīyóu jì · Shuǐlián dòng
西游记·水帘洞
Through the WaterfallNovel excerpt · chapter 1The Stone Monkey’s leap through the waterfall is an early demonstration of the qualities that will make him a leader: courage, curiosity and the ability to discover possibilities where others see a barrier. The surprising reward is not a weapon or treasure, but a place in which a community might live.
Historical background
Before the pilgrimage and before the name Sun Wukong
Journey to the West took shape from a long story tradition and survives in a hundred-chapter Ming novel. It is conventionally attributed to Wu Cheng’en, although that attribution has been debated. Its fantasy should be distinguished from the seventh-century monk Xuanzang’s historical travels, which stand behind the much later pilgrimage story.
This passage comes from chapter 1, well before that pilgrimage. The monkeys follow a stream to its waterfall and promise kingship to whoever can enter, discover its source and return unharmed. The Stone Monkey volunteers. The selected passage describes the discovery itself; his report to the others and recognition as their king continue beyond its endpoint.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
你看他瞑目蹲身，将身一纵，径跳入瀑布泉中，
Watch him close his eyes, crouch, spring up and leap straight into the waterfall.
忽睁睛抬头观看，那里边却无水无波，明明朗朗的一架桥梁。
Opening his eyes and looking up, he finds no water or waves inside, only a bridge clearly visible before him.
他住了身，定了神，仔细再看，原来是座铁板桥。
He stops, steadies himself and looks carefully: it is a bridge of iron plates.
桥下之水，冲贯于石窍之间，倒挂流出去，遮闭了桥门。
Below the bridge, water rushes through openings in the rock and falls outward like a hanging screen across the entrance.
却又欠身上桥头，再走再看，却似有人家住处一般，真个好所在。但见那：
He rises onto the bridge, walks on and looks around. It resembles a human dwelling—a splendid place indeed. There he sees:
翠藓堆蓝，白云浮玉，光摇片片烟霞。
Green moss heaped like blue-green pigment; white clouds floating like jade; light trembling through patches of coloured mist.
虚窗静室，滑凳板生花。
Open windows, quiet rooms; smooth benches with patterns flowering in the wood.
乳窟龙珠倚挂，萦回满地奇葩。
Dragon pearls hang beside dripping cave formations; curious blossoms wind across the ground.
锅灶傍崖存火迹，樽罍靠案见肴渣。
Pots and stoves beside the cliff retain traces of fire; wine vessels by the tables stand among scraps of food.
石座石床真可爱，石盆石碗更堪夸。
Stone seats and stone beds are delightful; stone basins and stone bowls deserve still more praise.
又见那一竿两竿修竹，三点五点梅花。
Here and there rise stems of slender bamboo, with scattered spots of plum blossom.
几树青松常带雨，浑然像个人家。
A few green pines seem always wet with rain: altogether, it is like a household.
看罢多时，跳过桥中间，左右观看。
After looking for some time, he bounds across the middle of the bridge and gazes to either side.
只见正当中有一石碣，碣上有一行楷书大字，镌着“花果山福地，水帘洞洞天”。
In the centre stands a stone tablet. Large, regular characters are carved on it: “Flower-Fruit Mountain, a blessed land; Water-Curtain Cave, a grotto-heaven.”
Appreciation · A closer reading
The pace changes immediately after the leap
Closing his eyes and gathering his body, the monkey commits to the jump before he can know what lies beyond the water. The verbs give the action speed and physical concentration. Then he opens his eyes, steadies himself and looks again.
That pause changes an adventure into an act of perception. What appeared to be a continuous wall is a curtain concealing a bridge. The scene rewards the decision to cross a threshold while also showing that bravery must be followed by attentive observation.
A marvellous cave becomes recognisably domestic
The descriptive verse slows the reader among moss, clouds, flowering growth and luminous rock formations. Prose briefly yields to patterned language, a common way for the novel to expand an extraordinary scene beyond straightforward action.
Cooking places, vessels, tables, beds and bowls then give the grotto an unexpectedly household character. The empty dwelling feels prepared for habitation. This mixture is part of the comedy and appeal: the supernatural world is remarkable, yet its attractions include comfort, shelter and practical arrangements a reader can readily understand.
The inscription names more than a hiding place
The stone tablet identifies Flower-Fruit Mountain as a blessed place and Water-Curtain Cave as a dongtian, a grotto-heaven. This Daoist-inflected vocabulary places the home within a sacred geography, while its discovery remains an exuberant episode of monkey life.
In the wider chapter, finding and sharing this refuge helps turn the volunteer into a king. Later, awareness of death will show that even a delightful home cannot answer every fear. The scene therefore establishes a form of fulfilment that the novel can subsequently complicate. Its immediate joy is real within the story, but it is only the first horizon of a much longer search.
xī yóu jì · rú lái zhǎng zhōng dǔ sài
西游记·如来掌中赌赛
The Wager in the Buddha’s PalmNovel excerpt · Chapter 7 · Continuous passage
xī yóu jì · rú lái zhǎng zhōng dǔ sài
西游记·如来掌中赌赛
The Wager in the Buddha’s PalmNovel excerpt · Chapter 7 · Continuous passageA journey that seems to reach the edge of the cosmos ends on a fingertip. The scene combines physical comedy with a question about understanding: what if extraordinary power cannot reveal the limits of one’s own perspective?
Historical background
Where the wager enters the story
This scene occurs in Chapter 7, near the culmination of Sun Wukong’s rebellion in Heaven. Heavenly weapons and punishment have failed to subdue him. The Buddha intervenes and offers a wager: if the monkey can leap beyond his right palm, he will win the heavenly throne; if he cannot, he must abandon his challenge and continue cultivating himself.
The passage begins after those terms have been agreed. It follows the outward journey, the inscription and the return without an internal omission. Immediately afterward, Wukong attempts another escape and is pinned beneath the mountain formed from the Buddha’s five fingers.
A Ming novel and its religious imagination
Journey to the West reached its familiar hundred-chapter form in the Ming period, drawing upon an extended tradition of pilgrimage narrative and supernatural storytelling. It is traditionally associated with Wu Cheng’en, although the attribution and the work’s development require scholarly caution. The cosmic conflict is fictional: it is not an episode from the historical monk Xuanzang’s travel record.
The novel brings Buddhist figures into conversation with a celestial bureaucracy and Daoist practices. Its imaginative mixture should not be mistaken for a systematic statement accepted identically by all Chinese religious traditions.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
那大圣收了如意棒，抖擞神威，将身一纵，站在佛祖手心里，却道声：“我出去也。”
The Great Sage put away his staff, summoned his powers, sprang into the Buddha’s palm and called, “Here I go!”
你看他一路云光，无形无影去了。
Watch him streak away in a trail of shining cloud, disappearing from sight.
佛祖慧眼观看，见那猴王风车子一般相似不住，只管前进。
With his eye of wisdom, the Buddha watched the Monkey King whirling like a windmill, continuously pressing forward.
大圣行时，忽见有五根肉红柱子，撑着一股青气。
As he traveled, the Great Sage suddenly saw five flesh-red pillars supporting a mass of blue-green vapor.
他道：“此间乃尽头路了。这番回去，如来作证，灵霄宫定是我坐也。”
“This must be the end of the road,” he said. “When I return, the Tathagata will bear witness: the heavenly palace must be mine.”
又思量说：“且住，等我留下些记号，方好与如来说话。”
Then he thought: “Wait. I should leave a mark to support my account to the Tathagata.”
拔下一根毫毛，吹口仙气，叫：“变！”
He plucked out a hair, blew his enchanted breath upon it, and cried, “Change!”
变作一管浓墨双毫笔，在那中间柱子上写一行大字云：“齐天大圣，到此一游。”
It became an ink-filled writing brush. On the middle pillar he wrote in large characters: “The Great Sage Equal to Heaven was here.”
写毕，收了毫毛。又不庄尊，却在第一根柱子根下撒了一泡猴尿。
He finished and put the hair away. Then, with further indecorum, he urinated at the foot of the first pillar.
翻转筋斗云，径回本处，站在如来掌内道：“我已去，今来了。你教玉帝让天宫与我。”
Turning his somersault cloud around, he returned directly to the Buddha’s palm. “I went, and now I am back. Tell the Jade Emperor to give me his palace.”
如来骂道：“我把你这个尿精猴子，你正好不曾离了我掌哩。”
The Tathagata scolded him: “You urinating monkey! You never left my palm.”
大圣道：“你是不知。我去到天尽头，见五根肉红柱，撑着一股青气，我留个记在那里，你敢和我同去看么？”
“You do not understand,” said the Great Sage. “I reached heaven’s limit, where five red pillars held up blue-green vapor. I left a mark. Will you come and see?”
如来道：“不消去，你只自低头看看。”
“There is no need to go,” the Tathagata said. “Just lower your head and look.”
那大圣睁圆火眼金睛，低头看时，原来佛祖右手中指写着“齐天大圣，到此一游”。
The Great Sage opened his fiery eyes wide and looked down. On the Buddha’s right middle finger were the words: “The Great Sage Equal to Heaven was here.”
大指丫里，还有些猴尿臊气。
There was even a smell of monkey urine in the cleft beside the thumb.
大圣吃了一惊道：“有这等事？有这等事？
Astonished, the Great Sage exclaimed: “How can this be? How can this be?
我将此字写在撑天柱子上，如何却在他手指上？莫非有个未卜先知的法术？
I wrote those words on a pillar holding up the sky. How are they on his finger? Does he possess some spell of foreknowledge?
我决不信，不信。等我再去来。”
I will not believe it! I will not! Let me go again.”
Appreciation · A closer reading
The mark becomes evidence against its maker
Wukong is not content simply to claim victory. He writes an inscription and leaves a bodily trace, trying to make his achievement demonstrable. Those precautions produce the reversal: the very evidence intended to prove that he traveled beyond the Buddha instead proves that he remained within the palm.
The five pillars are described before they are recognized as fingers. Readers experience a shift of scale with the character, revising what seemed to be a stable landscape. His error lies less in poor eyesight than in assuming that the first explanation of what he sees must be the right one.
Comic defiance and the beginning of discipline
The grand title “Equal to Heaven” becomes a boastful visitor’s inscription. Urination places a deliberately undignified gesture inside a cosmic contest, preserving Wukong’s irreverent energy even at defeat. The humor keeps the passage from becoming a solemn abstract lecture.
One persuasive reading sees the episode as a distinction between restless ability and insight. This is an interpretation supported by the contrast between Wukong’s movement and the Buddha’s knowing gaze, not a claim that every detail has a single doctrinal equivalent. His repeated refusal to believe the evidence also leaves his character vividly unfinished: the pilgrimage will require a change in how he uses his gifts.
Simplified characters are used. The older graph 觔 is normalized to 筋 in 筋斗 (jīn dǒu).
xī yóu jì · bái gǔ jīng chū biàn
西游记·白骨精初变
The White-Bone Demon’s First DisguiseNovel excerpt · Chapter 27 · Continuous passage
xī yóu jì · bái gǔ jīng chū biàn
西游记·白骨精初变
The White-Bone Demon’s First DisguiseNovel excerpt · Chapter 27 · Continuous passageThe first encounter with the White-Bone Demon turns a rescue into an accusation. Although the reader knows that the woman is a disguise, the pilgrims cannot agree on what the apparent evidence means, and their disagreement threatens the journey itself.
Historical background
An attack during the pilgrimage
Chapter 27 finds the pilgrims traveling through dangerous country. Wukong leaves to fetch fruit, and a demon approaches in the form of a young woman carrying food. The narrative has already revealed the creature’s wish to eat Tripitaka and obtain longevity. Readers therefore possess knowledge that the monk and Pigsy lack.
When Wukong returns, he recognizes the disguise. His attempt to explain becomes insulting: he accuses his master of being attracted to the apparent woman. The selected continuous paragraph begins with the shame this provokes and ends with Pigsy’s competing explanation of the exposed food.
A first stage, not the whole famous episode
The scene is only the first of the demon’s three disguises. Later appearances as elderly relatives intensify Tripitaka’s belief that his disciple is killing innocent people; the conflict eventually leads to Wukong’s dismissal. The complete chapter link allows the reader to follow that escalation instead of mistaking this passage for the entire story.
These events belong to a Ming supernatural novel traditionally associated with Wu Cheng’en, not to the historical Xuanzang’s biography. The demon’s promise of immortality through eating a pilgrim is part of the fictional world and the creature’s motivation, not a factual religious claim.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
三藏正在此羞惭，行者又发起性来，掣铁棒，望妖精劈脸一下。
While Tripitaka was still embarrassed, the Pilgrim lost his temper again, drew his iron staff and struck at the demon’s face.
那怪物有些手段，使个“解尸法”，见行者棍子来时，他却抖擞精神，预先走了，把一个假尸首打死在地下。
The creature knew a trick of shedding a corpse. Seeing the staff descend, it slipped away in spirit, leaving a false body to fall dead on the ground.
吓得个长老战战兢兢，口中作念道：“这猴着然无礼，屡劝不从，无故伤人性命。”
The elder trembled in alarm and muttered: “This monkey is truly outrageous. He ignores repeated warnings and kills without cause.”
行者道：“师父莫怪，你且来看看这罐子里是甚东西？”
The Pilgrim said: “Master, do not blame me. Come and see what is in this pot.”
沙僧搀着长老，近前看时，那里是甚香米饭，却是一罐子拖尾巴的长蛆；
Sandy supported the elder as he approached. There was no fragrant rice: the pot held long, wriggling maggots.
也不是面筋，却是几个青蛙、癞虾蟆，满地乱跳。
Nor was there wheat gluten, but frogs and toads hopping all over the ground.
长老才有三分儿信了。
Only then did the elder begin to believe him a little.
怎禁猪八戒气不忿，在傍漏八分儿唆嘴道：
But an aggrieved Pigsy could not resist stirring up trouble from the side:
“师父，说起这个女子，他是此间农妇，因为送饭下田，路遇我等，却怎么栽他是个妖怪？
“Master, this woman was a local farmer’s wife who met us while taking food to the fields. Why falsely accuse her of being a demon?
哥哥的棍重，走将来试手打他一下，不期就打杀了。
My elder brother’s staff is heavy. He came up to try a blow and unexpectedly killed her.
怕你念甚么紧箍儿咒，故意的使个障眼法儿，变做这等样东西，演幌你眼，使不念咒哩。”
Afraid you would recite the tightening-headband spell, he deliberately changed the food with an illusion, deceiving your eyes so you would spare him the spell.”
Appreciation · A closer reading
Two explanations for the same evidence
Wukong expects the transformed food to settle the dispute. Maggots and frogs should demonstrate that the meal was a deception. Pigsy, however, argues that Wukong has created this evidence himself to escape punishment. The same sight can therefore support opposite stories, depending on which person the observer trusts.
The fractions of belief and insinuation give the narrator a colloquial way to measure persuasion. The monk believes only a little, while Pigsy supplies a much larger helping of suspicion. The passage is as concerned with communication and damaged trust as with supernatural recognition.
Compassion under pressure
Tripitaka’s objection arises from the prohibition against killing, an ethical commitment that the novel does not simply discard. Yet his inability to identify the danger makes that commitment vulnerable to manipulation. Wukong sees more accurately, but his anger and humiliating language make it harder for his master to accept what he knows.
A useful appreciation holds these features together. The scene need not become a simple slogan that kindness is foolish or force is always justified. Its dramatic power comes from a group whose necessary qualities—compassion, perception and strength—fail to cooperate. The reader’s privileged knowledge makes their misunderstanding both frustrating and revealing.
The selection follows one continuous paragraph. Variant graphs 諕 and 麵觔 are normalized here as 吓 and 面筋; it does not include the demon’s second and third transformations.
Qing
清1644–1912Jǐ Yún纪昀
An eighteenth-century Qing scholar and compiler, also known as Ji Xiaolan, who wrote short accounts of unusual events and human reasoning.
2 readings in this room
Hé zhōng shí shòu
河中石兽
The Stone Beasts in the RiverComplete anecdote
Hé zhōng shí shòu
河中石兽
The Stone Beasts in the RiverComplete anecdoteJi Yun’s river anecdote stages a contest between explanations. Each new speaker appears more convincing than the last, but the central issue is the same throughout: a true observation about one part of a situation may still produce a wrong conclusion about the whole.
Historical background
A Qing notebook and a reported local event
The story comes from volume 16 of Notes from the Thatched Cottage of Close Observations, Ji Yun’s late-eighteenth-century collection of anecdotes, strange reports and reflections. The familiar title The Stone Beasts in the River is an editorial reading title. Its setting is a riverside temple south of Cangzhou.
The narrative reports a successful search, but provides none of the measurements needed to treat it as a modern hydraulic case study. Its historical literary context is the notebook tradition, where a compact incident can become an occasion for judging human conduct or reasoning. The final question makes that reflective purpose explicit.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
沧州南一寺临河干，山门圮于河，二石兽并沉焉。
South of Cangzhou, a temple stood beside a river. Its gate collapsed into the water, and two stone beasts sank with it.
阅十余岁，僧募金重修，求二石兽于水中，竟不可得。
More than ten years later, the monks raised money for repairs and searched the river for the beasts, but found neither.
以为顺流下矣，棹数小舟，曳铁钯，寻十余里，无迹。
Thinking they had drifted downstream, they rowed several small boats and dragged iron rakes for over ten li, without a trace.
一讲学家设帐寺中，闻之笑曰：“尔辈不能究物理，
A scholar teaching at the temple heard this and laughed: “You have not investigated how things behave.
是非木杮，岂能为暴涨携之去？
These are not wood shavings. How could a flood carry them away?
乃石性坚重，沙性松浮，湮于沙上，渐沉渐深耳。
Stone is hard and heavy, while sand is loose and light. They were buried in the sand, sinking gradually deeper.
沿河求之，不亦颠乎？”众服为确论。
Is it not foolish to search along the river?” Everyone accepted his explanation as sound.
一老河兵闻之，又笑曰：“凡河中失石，当求之于上流。
An old river guard heard this and also laughed: “For stones lost in a river, look upstream.
盖石性坚重，沙性松浮，水不能冲石，
Stone is hard and heavy, while sand is loose and light. The water cannot sweep the stone away;
其反激之力，必于石下迎水处啮沙为坎穴。
its force, rebounding, scours a hollow in the sand beneath the stone’s upstream face.
渐激渐深，至石之半，石必倒掷坎穴中。
The scouring gradually deepens the hollow. When it reaches halfway beneath the stone, the stone topples into it.
如是再啮，石又再转。
The scouring happens again, and the stone turns again.
转转不已，遂反溯流逆上矣。
With repeated turning it moves back against the current, upstream.
求之下流，固颠；求之地中，不更颠乎？”
Searching downstream is foolish; is searching beneath its original place not more foolish still?”
如其言，果得于数里外。
They followed his advice and indeed found the beasts several li away.
然则天下之事，但知其一，不知其二者多矣，可据理臆断欤？
In the affairs of the world, we often know one aspect and miss another. Can we judge by reasoning based on mere assumptions?
Appreciation · A closer reading
A failed search creates room for confident speech
More than ten years have passed since the gate and stone beasts fell into the river. When rebuilding begins, the monks search downstream, assuming that flowing water has carried the objects with it. Their failure leaves the location unexplained.
The lecturer laughs and appeals to material properties: heavy stone should not travel like wood, while loose sand allows it to sink. The crowd accepts this as decisive. His argument sounds informed because its individual observations are plausible. The narrative invites us to feel that persuasive force before introducing what the explanation has left out.
The river worker adds an interaction
The experienced soldier also considers the stone’s weight and the sand’s looseness, but adds the action of water around the obstacle. In his account, scouring on the upstream side creates a hollow; the stone tips into it, and the process repeats.
The distinction is not simply books against experience. It is a static account of separate properties against an account of interacting conditions over time. The lecturer’s error comes from treating partial knowledge as sufficient. The worker’s practical familiarity enables him to imagine a mechanism the earlier explanation did not consider.
The final question should also govern our reading
Within the story, the search succeeds upstream, and the narrator asks whether one may confidently infer a conclusion from knowing only part of a matter. The paired laughter now looks revealing: certainty and social authority can arrive before an adequate account of the evidence.
That lesson also prevents us from turning the tale into a universal rule that all heavy objects in rivers move upstream. Actual outcomes depend on flow, sediment, shape and other conditions. We can appreciate the narrative’s argument for fuller inquiry while keeping its reported distance and mechanism separate from a scientifically verified law. Reading cautiously is itself a way of applying the story’s closing challenge.
Láng zǐ yě xīn
狼子野心
The Wolves Raised in a HouseholdComplete notebook entry, including regional introduction
Láng zǐ yě xīn
狼子野心
The Wolves Raised in a HouseholdComplete notebook entry, including regional introductionThe household story is preceded by an account of coastal wolves and methods used against them. That frame makes the owner’s forgetfulness especially pointed. Ji Yun then turns from animal behavior to the human problem of confusing familiar appearances with reliable understanding.
Historical background
A reported story within a longer notebook entry
The received entry appears in volume fourteen of Ji Yun’s Notes from the Thatched Cottage of Close Observations. The familiar title Wolfish Nature is a later selection title, not a guarantee that the household episode originally stood alone. This page includes its preceding coastal account and the sentence identifying the narrator’s informant, so the note is not silently reduced to a schoolbook excerpt.
Ji Yun collected such material in the late eighteenth century, combining reports, strange events, local observations, and moral reflections. The informant attribution explains how the story is said to have reached him; it does not independently verify every event. Nor should the moral language be mistaken for a modern scientific account of wolf behavior or domestication.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
沧州一带海滨，煮盐之地，谓之灶泡。袤延数百里，并斥卤不可耕种。
Along the Cangzhou coast, salt-boiling grounds are called zaopao. They extend for hundreds of li over saline land that cannot be cultivated.
荒草黏天，略如塞外，故狼多窟穴于其中。
Wild grass seems to reach the sky, rather like the country beyond the frontier, and wolves make many dens there.
捕之者掘地为阱，深数尺，广三四尺，以板覆其上，中凿圆孔如盂大，略如枷状。
Hunters dig pits several feet deep and three or four feet wide, cover them with a board, and cut a bowl-sized hole in the middle, somewhat like a cangue.
人蹲阱中，携犬子或豚子，击使嗥叫。
A person crouches below with a puppy or piglet and makes it cry out.
狼闻声而至，必以足探孔中攫之，人即握其足立起，肩以归。
A wolf comes to the sound and reaches a paw through the hole; the hunter grasps it, stands, and carries it away.
狼隔一板，爪牙无所施其利也。
With the board between them, the wolf cannot use its claws or teeth.
然或遇其群行，则亦能搏噬。
But when encountered in a group, the wolves can attack and bite.
故见人则以喙据地嗥，众狼毕集，若号令然。亦颇为行客道途患。
On seeing a person, one may lower its muzzle and howl; the others gather as if summoned. They can trouble travelers on the road.
有富室，偶得二小狼，与家犬杂畜，亦与犬相安。
A wealthy household once acquired two wolf cubs and raised them with its dogs, with which they lived peacefully.
稍长，亦颇驯，竟忘其为狼。
As they grew, they seemed quite tame, and the owner eventually forgot they were wolves.
一日，主人昼寝厅事，闻群犬呜呜作怒声，惊起，周视无一人。
One day, sleeping in the hall, he heard the dogs growling, woke in alarm, and saw no one around.
再就枕将寐，犬又如前。
As he lay down to sleep again, the dogs repeated their behavior.
乃伪睡以俟，则二狼伺其未觉，将啮其喉，犬阻之不使前也。
He pretended to sleep and waited; the wolves watched for his unawareness and moved to bite his throat, but the dogs blocked them.
乃杀而取其革。此事从侄虞惇言。
He then killed them and took their skins. My younger kinsman Yu Dun told me this story.
狼子野心，信不诬哉！
The saying that a wolf cub retains a wild heart is indeed not groundless!
然野心不过遁逸耳，阳为亲昵，而阴怀不测，更不止于野心矣。
Yet wildness might mean only a wish to escape; to display affection while concealing harmful designs goes further than wildness.
兽不足道，此人何取而自贻患耶？
The animals need no further discussion; why did this man take them in and bring trouble upon himself?
Appreciation · A closer reading
Familiarity becomes an unsafe kind of forgetting
The owner’s mistake is expressed as forgetting what the animals are after observing apparently peaceful behavior. The story contrasts that easy confidence with the dogs’ repeated alarm. The first warning is dismissed because no human intruder can be seen. Only after recurrence does the owner test another explanation by pretending to sleep. The plot therefore turns on interpretation of evidence: an absence of the expected danger is not the same as an absence of danger. This is the narrative’s reasoning, even though its animal psychology remains part of a moral tale.
The regional frame complicates the simple opposition
The opening describes people trapping wolves and wolves sometimes attacking people. Predation and tactical response operate on both sides. Including this material prevents the household scene from appearing as the whole of Ji’s treatment of the animals. It also makes the transition into human space more dramatic: creatures previously encountered in marshes and on roads are now inside a prosperous home. The change of setting encourages a mistaken change of judgment. Domestic surroundings make the owner feel secure without, in the story, removing the conditions that could threaten him.
The final question returns responsibility to the owner
Ji distinguishes an animal’s wish for freedom from the calculated duplicity the story appears to display. Then he declines to stop at condemning the beasts and asks why the human brought the danger upon himself. This shift is characteristic of notebook moral reflection: the strange or troubling incident becomes a prompt for examining human judgment. The conclusion can be read as a warning about misplaced trust, but it should not license blanket suspicion of unfamiliar people or groups. Its useful focus is the owner’s failure to keep assessing what he believed he understood.
The popular title names the household episode. The full surrounding note and its stated informant are retained.
Cáo Xuěqín曹雪芹
The eighteenth-century Qing novelist associated with the first eighty chapters of Dream of the Red Chamber.
3 readings in this room
Hónglóu mèng · Wánshí rùshì
红楼梦·顽石入世
A Stone Longs for the Human WorldNovel excerpt · chapter 1
Hónglóu mèng · Wánshí rùshì
红楼梦·顽石入世
A Stone Longs for the Human WorldNovel excerpt · chapter 1Dream of the Red Chamber begins with a stone that feels useless and excluded, then longs to enter a world of splendour and affection. That apparently impossible speaker is already recognisably human: it wants significance, envies participation and imagines that another life might repair its dissatisfaction.
Historical background
The novel’s history and its mythic threshold
The eighteenth-century novel circulated in manuscript before the 1791 printed edition associated with Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E. Cao Xueqin is associated with its first eighty chapters; the origin and authorship of the additional forty chapters remain disputed. The opening scene belongs to the earlier portion, but the full-work link leads to a received complete edition rather than an authenticated final manuscript entirely by Cao.
The stone story is a mythic frame for the household narrative that follows. It draws on Nüwa’s repairing of heaven, then invents an unused stone left outside that cosmic achievement. This literary frame should not be treated as a factual account of the author’s own birth or as proof that every later character corresponds to one historical person.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
原来，当年女娲氏炼石补天之时，
Long ago, when Nüwa refined stones to mend the sky,
于大荒山无稽崖炼成高经十二丈，方经二十四丈顽石三万六千五百零一块。
at Baseless Cliff on Great-Wilderness Mountain she produced 36,501 rough stones, each twelve zhang high and twenty-four zhang square.
娲皇氏只用了三万六千五百块，只单单剩了一块未用，便弃在此山青埂峰下。
Nüwa used only 36,500 of them. One alone remained unused, and she abandoned it below Green-Ridge Peak.
谁知此石自经煅炼之后，灵性已通，
Who could have known that refining had awakened the stone’s awareness?
因见众石俱得补天，独自己无材不堪入选，遂自怨自嗟，日夜悲号惭愧。
Seeing every other stone chosen to mend the sky while it alone was considered unfit, it reproached itself and wailed in shame, day and night.
一日，正当嗟悼之余，俄见一僧一道远远而来，
One day, as it was lamenting, it saw a Buddhist monk and a Daoist coming from afar.
生得骨骼不凡，丰神迥异，说说笑笑来至峰下，坐于石边高谈快论。
Their bearing was extraordinary. Talking and laughing, they reached the foot of the peak, sat beside the stone and conversed freely.
先是说些云山雾海神仙玄幻之事，后便说到红尘中荣华富贵。
At first they spoke of immortals and mysteries amid cloudy mountains and misty seas; then they turned to wealth and splendour in the human world.
此石听了，不觉打动凡心，也想要到人间去享一享这荣华富贵，
Listening, the stone found worldly desire stirring within it. It too wanted to enjoy that splendour.
但自恨粗蠢，不得已，便口吐人言，向那僧道说道：
Regretting its own crude form, it finally spoke in a human voice to the two visitors:
“大师，弟子蠢物，不能见礼了。适闻二位谈那人世间荣耀繁华，心切慕之。
“Masters, I am a clumsy creature and cannot offer a proper greeting. Hearing you describe the glories of the human world, I long for them deeply.
弟子质虽粗蠢，性却稍通，况见二师仙形道体，定非凡品，
Though my substance is crude, I possess a little understanding. Your immortal forms and sacred bearing show that you are no ordinary beings.
必有补天济世之材，利物济人之德。
You surely have the ability to mend the sky and save the world, and the virtue to benefit living things.
如蒙发一点慈心，携带弟子得入红尘，在那富贵场中，温柔乡里受享几年，
If you would show a little compassion and carry me into the human world, to enjoy a few years amid its riches and tender pleasures,
自当永佩洪恩，万劫不忘也。”
I would cherish your great kindness for ever, never forgetting it through countless ages.”
Appreciation · A closer reading
One object remains outside a completed great work
The exact count of the stones makes the exception unmistakable: all but one are used. The remaining stone understands this as evidence that it lacks the necessary capacity. The narrator gives a mineral object the painful social experience of being passed over.
This beginning raises a question the novel will explore in many forms: what makes a life valuable? The stone first accepts the standard of a great public task and condemns itself for not fitting it. Its distress already connects cosmic usefulness with the more intimate desire to be included.
The human world becomes desirable through language
The monk and Daoist arrive speaking of extraordinary matters, but discussion of worldly wealth awakens the stone’s particular interest. It imagines the pleasures of prosperous and affectionate life before it has experienced their costs.
Its request is elaborate, deferential and flattering. It praises the two figures’ ability to repair the world while asking them to enable its own enjoyment. That mixture of moral vocabulary and private desire is gently comic. The supposedly crude stone already knows something of the language through which humans seek favour.
The excerpt stops before the warning is answered
The selected passage ends with the appeal to enter the red dust, a conventional image for the ordinary world of entanglement. In the following dialogue, the two figures warn that prosperity, pleasure and companionship are impermanent. The stone persists, and its transformation begins the movement toward the human story.
Knowing that continuation gives the request a double perspective. We can understand the attraction from within desire while anticipating the losses desire cannot yet imagine. The novel does not make affection meaningless simply because it passes. Its opening prepares a reader to value the lived detail of a fragile world and to recognise how memory and storytelling may preserve what possession cannot keep.
hóng lóu mèng · bǎo dài chū huì
红楼梦·宝黛初会
Baoyu and Daiyu’s First MeetingNovel excerpt · Chapter 3 · Continuous passage
hóng lóu mèng · bǎo dài chū huì
红楼梦·宝黛初会
Baoyu and Daiyu’s First MeetingNovel excerpt · Chapter 3 · Continuous passageBaoyu calls a first encounter a reunion, then rejects the precious jade that sets him apart. The conversation introduces an intimate bond while exposing a household where names, learning, possessions and emotional behavior all carry social weight.
Historical background
A new arrival in the Jia household
After her mother’s death, Lin Daiyu comes to live with her maternal grandmother in the wealthy Jia household. Chapter 3 follows her attentive observation of unfamiliar relatives, rooms and manners. She has heard warnings about her cousin Baoyu and expects a troublesome boy. Their encounter instead produces an immediate sense of recognition on both sides.
This continuous selection begins when Baoyu says he has seen her before and ends with his throwing the jade. The chapter continues with the household rushing to recover it and Grandmother Jia inventing a consoling explanation. The excerpt’s stopping point is therefore a dramatic break, not the conclusion of the chapter.
Fiction, family experience and the surviving novel
Dream of the Red Chamber is an eighteenth-century Qing novel. Cao Xueqin is associated with its first eighty chapters; the familiar 120-chapter printed form has a more complicated history. Chapter 3 belongs to the early portion of the story. Although the author’s family experience is relevant to scholarship, the scene should not be represented as a documented meeting between historical people.
The opening myth gives the relationship a perspective beyond ordinary kinship. Remembering that frame helps explain why Baoyu’s apparently unreasonable familiarity can feel emotionally true within the novel, even while Grandmother Jia calls it nonsense.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
宝玉看罢，因笑道：“这个妹妹我曾见过的。”
After looking at her, Baoyu smiled: “I have seen this younger cousin before.”
贾母笑道：“可又是胡说，你又何曾见过他？”
Grandmother Jia laughed: “More nonsense! When have you ever seen her?”
宝玉笑道：“虽然未曾见过他，然我看着面善，心里就算是旧相识，今日只作远别重逢，亦未为不可。”
Baoyu smiled: “Although I have not met her, her face seems familiar, so in my heart she is an old acquaintance. Surely I may regard today as a reunion after a long separation.”
贾母笑道：“更好，更好，若如此，更相和睦了。”
“Better still,” Grandmother Jia laughed. “Then you will get along all the more happily.”
宝玉便走近黛玉身边坐下，又细细打量一番，因问：“妹妹可曾读书？”
Baoyu sat down beside Daiyu and examined her closely again. “Have you studied, cousin?”
黛玉道：“不曾读，只上了一年学，些须认得几个字。”
Daiyu replied: “Not really. I went to school for only a year and know a few characters.”
宝玉又道：“妹妹尊名是那两个字？”黛玉便说了名。
“Which two characters make up your name?” he asked. Daiyu told him.
宝玉又问表字。黛玉道：“无字。”
He asked for her courtesy name. “I have none,” she said.
宝玉笑道：“我送妹妹一妙字，莫若‘颦颦’二字极妙。”
Baoyu smiled: “Let me give you a lovely one. Nothing could be better than ‘Pinpin’—‘Frowning Brows.’”
探春便问何出。宝玉道：“《古今人物通考》上说：‘西方有石名黛，可代画眉之墨。’
Tanchun asked its source. Baoyu replied: “The Comprehensive Study of People, Ancient and Modern says, ‘In the west there is a stone called dai that can replace the ink used to paint eyebrows.’
况这林妹妹眉尖若蹙，用取这两个字，岂不两妙！”
And Cousin Lin’s brows seem delicately drawn together. Is this not a doubly fitting name?”
探春笑道：“只恐又是你的杜撰。”
Tanchun laughed: “I suspect you have made it up again.”
宝玉笑道：“除《四书》外，杜撰的太多，偏只我是杜撰不成？”
Baoyu smiled: “Apart from the Four Books, there is plenty of invention. Why should I alone be accused of it?”
又问黛玉：“可也有玉没有？”
Then he asked Daiyu: “Do you have a jade as well?”
众人不解其语，黛玉便忖度着因他有玉，故问我有也无，因答道：
No one understood. Daiyu reasoned that he asked because he himself had one, and answered:
“我没有那个。想来那玉是一件罕物，岂能人人有的。”
“I have none. Surely such a jade is rare; how could everyone possess one?”
宝玉听了，登时发作起痴狂病来，摘下那玉，就狠命摔去，骂道：
At this, Baoyu immediately flew into a wild fit. He tore off his jade and flung it down, crying:
“什么罕物，连人之高低不择，还说‘通灵’不‘通灵’呢！我也不要这劳什子了！”
“Rare, indeed! It cannot even tell people’s worth, yet they call it spiritually knowing. I do not want this wretched thing either!”
Appreciation · A closer reading
Reading books, reading faces
Daiyu’s modest reply about her education differs from the fuller account she gave her grandmother earlier. She has noticed the household’s expectations and adjusts her words. Her restraint contrasts with Baoyu’s rapid questions and playful invention of a courtesy name. One character cautiously reads social cues; the other makes intimacy by speaking as though it already exists.
The naming joke connects the dark pigment in Daiyu’s name with her brows. Tanchun’s challenge then punctures Baoyu’s supposed scholarly authority. The cited book and claim function inside a teasing conversation; they should not be treated as a dependable reference supplied by the website.
A treasured object loses its authority
The jade marks Baoyu as exceptional within the family. Discovering that Daiyu lacks one makes him question its worth rather than hers. The violent gesture turns affection into a rejection of an object everyone else values, revealing both emotional generosity and the disruptive freedom his privileged position allows.
His accusation that the stone cannot distinguish people’s worth reverses the normal relation between possession and status. Yet the scene remains uncomfortable: other people must manage the consequences of his feeling. Its richness lies in that mixture of tenderness, defiance and childish self-absorption, rather than an uncomplicated announcement of ideal love.
hóng lóu mèng · zàng huā yín
红楼梦·葬花吟
The Song of Burying FlowersNovel excerpt · Chapter 27 · Complete embedded poem
hóng lóu mèng · zàng huā yín
红楼梦·葬花吟
The Song of Burying FlowersNovel excerpt · Chapter 27 · Complete embedded poemIn Chapter 27, Lin Daiyu’s burial of fallen blossoms becomes a meditation on beauty, dependence and the fear of being forgotten. The complete embedded poem is given here, while its placement in a larger novel remains essential to understanding its emotional force.
Historical background
A poem spoken within the story
The poem follows a painful misunderstanding. Daiyu has been refused entry when she visits Baoyu’s quarters, without fully understanding the circumstances, and interprets what happens through her fear of exclusion. The following day’s garden activities bring the contrast between social festivity and her loneliness into focus. Baoyu hears the lament near the flower burial place.
Within the fictional world, Daiyu voices the poem; in a literary catalogue it belongs to Cao Xueqin’s novel. Distinguishing the character from the author prevents us from turning every statement into a direct confession about the historical writer’s life.
What a complete poem can and cannot tell us
All the poem’s lines in the linked Chapter 27 text are included, rather than only its celebrated ending. Editions differ in individual readings, so the chosen source matters. The surrounding novel gives the flowers social and emotional significance, but the poem can also be followed as a continuous movement from observed petals to an imagined funeral for their mourner.
Its anticipatory language is often read as foreshadowing Daiyu’s fate. That is a defensible literary reading. It does not, by itself, establish the precise details of an authorial ending lost or disputed in the novel’s complicated transmission from the early eighty-chapter text to the familiar 120-chapter edition.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
花谢花飞花满天，红消香断有谁怜？
Flowers fade and fly, filling the sky. Who pities their vanishing red, their broken fragrance?
游丝软系飘春榭，落絮轻沾扑绣帘。
Gossamer loosely clings and drifts by the spring pavilion; falling catkins lightly brush the embroidered curtain.
闺中女儿惜春暮，愁绪满怀无释处，
A girl within her chamber grieves for departing spring, her heart filled with sorrow she cannot release.
手把花锄出绣闺，忍踏落花来复去。
Holding a flower hoe, she leaves her decorated room, reluctantly treading fallen petals as she walks to and fro.
柳丝榆荚自芳菲，不管桃飘与李飞。
Willow threads and elm seeds flourish for themselves, indifferent to flying peach and plum blossoms.
桃李明年能再发，明年闺中知有谁？
Peach and plum can bloom next year; who knows who will inhabit the chamber then?
三月香巢已垒成，梁间燕子太无情！
By the third month, the fragrant nest is built: how heartless are the swallows among the beams!
明年花发虽可啄，却不道人去梁空巢也倾。
Next year they may peck at blossoms again, not knowing the people may be gone, the beams deserted, the nest fallen too.
一年三百六十日，风刀霜剑严相逼，
Through all the year’s three hundred and sixty days, wind’s knives and frost’s swords press relentlessly.
明媚鲜妍能几时，一朝飘泊难寻觅。
How long can radiance and fresh beauty last? Once scattered, they are hard to find.
花开易见落难寻，阶前闷杀葬花人，
Blossoms are easy to see, fallen petals hard to recover: beside the steps the one who buries flowers is stifled with grief.
独倚花锄泪暗洒，洒上空枝见血痕。
Alone she leans upon her hoe, shedding hidden tears; on the empty branches they seem like traces of blood.
杜鹃无语正黄昏，荷锄归去掩重门。
The cuckoo is silent at dusk; shouldering the hoe, she returns and shuts the doors behind her.
青灯照壁人初睡，冷雨敲窗被未温。
A dim lamp lights the wall as she first lies down; cold rain taps the window before the quilt grows warm.
怪奴底事倍伤神，半为怜春半恼春：
Why am I so deeply distressed? Half for love of spring, half in resentment of it:
怜春忽至恼忽去，至又无言去不闻。
I love its sudden arrival, resent its sudden departure; it comes without a word and leaves without a sound.
昨宵庭外悲歌发，知是花魂与鸟魂？
Last night a mournful song rose outside the courtyard: was it the spirit of a flower or of a bird?
花魂鸟魂总难留，鸟自无言花自羞。
Neither flower-spirit nor bird-spirit can be held; the bird is silent, the flower withdrawn.
愿奴胁下生双翼，随花飞到天尽头。
I wish two wings would grow beneath my arms, so I could follow the flowers to the edge of the sky.
天尽头，何处有香丘？
At the sky’s far edge, where is a fragrant resting place?
未若锦囊收艳骨，一抔净土掩风流。
Better to gather their lovely bones in a silk bag and cover their grace with a handful of clean earth.
质本洁来还洁去，强于污淖陷渠沟。
Pure in their coming, let them depart pure: better than sinking into a ditch’s filthy mud.
尔今死去侬收葬，未卜侬身何日丧？
You die today, and I gather you for burial; I cannot foresee the day when I shall die.
侬今葬花人笑痴，他年葬侬知是谁？
People laugh at me for burying flowers; who knows who will bury me in years to come?
试看春残花渐落，便是红颜老死时。
Look, as spring fades and petals fall: that is the time when youthful beauty grows old and dies.
一朝春尽红颜老，花落人亡两不知！
One day spring will end and beauty age; flowers fallen, their mourner gone, neither will know the other!
Appreciation · A closer reading
From returning spring to an uncertain human future
The flowers will bloom again, but the speaker asks who will occupy the chamber next year. Seasonal recurrence offers no assurance of personal survival. Even the apparently secure swallow’s nest becomes vulnerable when the house is emptied. Natural renewal and human continuity gradually separate.
The poem repeatedly shifts between flowers and the girl who tends them. Calling petals “bones” makes the burial literal in feeling without requiring the reader to forget that it is an imaginative act. The wish for wings briefly suggests escape, only for the question about a resting place to expose the uncertainty of that hope.
Purity, care and the fear of having no mourner
Gathering the blossoms in silk and clean earth gives the speaker an action she can perform when she cannot control loss. The insistence on purity expresses her desired self-respect within the novel’s difficult social world; it need not be reduced to a universal rule about women’s worth.
The most disturbing reversal comes when she asks who will bury her. She can care for the flowers, but cannot guarantee that someone will care for her. By the final line, both the flowers and their mourner disappear. The poem’s sadness develops through these successive questions, not merely through decorative images of a melancholy garden.
The full embedded poem follows the linked Chapter 27 reading, including “游丝软系飘春榭.” Other editions contain variant wording. The title is a conventional name for the poem within the novel.
Pú Sōnglíng蒲松龄
A Qing writer whose Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio explores human conduct through ghosts, fox spirits and other marvels.
3 readings in this room
Liáozhāi zhìyì · Yāoshù
聊斋志异·妖术
SorceryComplete tale, including the author’s comment
Liáozhāi zhìyì · Yāoshù
聊斋志异·妖术
SorceryComplete tale, including the author’s commentPu Songling’s Sorcery turns a prediction of death into an attempt to manufacture its own proof. The fortune-teller needs the threatened event to occur so that his authority will appear genuine. Against that manipulation, the story sets a traveller who refuses payment, watches carefully and responds to what actually happens.
Historical background
A Qing tale set in the preceding Ming
The story belongs to Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, Pu Songling’s Qing collection. It places Yu’s visit to the capital during the Chongzhen reign of the Ming, when he is there for the palace examination. That narrative setting does not establish a precise date of composition or independent evidence for the supernatural attacks.
The opening gives Yu a reputation for martial ability before he encounters the diviner. It also supplies a humane motive for the visit: concern about a sick servant. The supposed expert turns that concern into fear for Yu’s own life, then offers protection for money. The author’s closing comment, spoken through the Historian of the Strange persona, is retained as part of the complete tale.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
于公者，少任侠，喜拳勇，力能持高壶，作旋风舞。
A gentleman named Yu had been bold and chivalrous in his youth. He enjoyed boxing and feats of strength, and could hold a tall vessel while whirling like a gust of wind.
崇祯间，殿试在都，仆疫不起，患之。
During the Chongzhen reign he was in the capital for the palace examination. His servant lay seriously ill with an epidemic disease, and Yu was worried.
会市上有善卜者，能决人生死，将代问之。
There happened to be a fortune-teller in the market who claimed to predict life and death. Yu went to consult him about the servant.
既至，未言。卜曰：“君莫欲问仆病乎？”公骇应之。
Before Yu could speak, the fortune-teller asked, “Have you come about your servant’s illness?” Astonished, Yu said yes.
曰：“病者无害，君可危。”公乃自卜。
“The patient will be safe, but you are in danger,” he said. Yu then asked about his own fate.
卜者起卦，愕然曰：“君三日当死！”
The man cast a divination and exclaimed in alarm, “You will die in three days!”
公惊诧良久。卜者从容曰：“鄙人有小术，报我十金，当代禳之。”
Yu was stunned. The fortune-teller calmly continued, “I possess a small art. Pay me ten pieces of silver and I shall avert the disaster for you.”
公自念，生死已定，术岂能解；不应而起，欲出。
Yu thought: if life and death are fixed, how can a trick undo them? He rose to leave without accepting.
卜者曰：“惜此小费，勿悔勿悔！”
The man called after him, “Grudge this little payment, and you will regret it!”
爱公者皆为公惧，劝罄橐以哀之。公不听。
Those who cared for Yu feared for him and urged him to empty his purse and plead for help. He refused.
倏忽至三日，公端坐旅舍，静以觇之，终日无恙。
The third day soon came. Yu sat upright in his lodgings and quietly watched for danger; the whole day passed without harm.
至夜，阖户挑灯，倚剑危坐。
At night he closed the door, trimmed the lamp and sat erect with his sword beside him.
一漏向尽，更无死法。
The first night watch was almost over, with still no sign of anything that could kill him.
意欲就枕，忽闻窗隙窣窣有声。
He was about to lie down when he heard a rustling at a crack in the window.
急视之，一小人荷戈入；及地，则高如人。
Looking quickly, he saw a tiny figure carrying a weapon come through. On reaching the floor, it grew to human height.
公捉剑起，急击之，飘忽未中。
Yu seized his sword and struck, but the figure darted away and he missed.
遂遽小，复寻窗隙，意欲遁去。
It abruptly shrank again and searched for the window crack, trying to escape.
公疾斫之，应手而倒。烛之，则纸人，已腰断矣。
Yu slashed swiftly and brought it down. By lamplight he saw a paper figure, cut in half at the waist.
公不敢卧，又坐待之。
He dared not sleep and sat waiting again.
逾时，一物穿窗入，怪狞如鬼。
After a while, something came through the window, hideous as a demon.
才及地，急击之，断而为两，皆蠕动。
As soon as it reached the floor, he struck it into two pieces, both still writhing.
恐其复起，又连击之，剑剑皆中，其声不耎。
Afraid it would rise again, he struck repeatedly. Every blow landed with a hard sound.
审视，则土偶，片片已碎。
On examination, it was a clay figure, shattered into fragments.
于是移坐窗下，目注隙中。
He moved his seat beneath the window and fixed his eyes on the crack.
久之，闻窗外如牛喘，有物推窗棂，房壁震摇，其势欲倾。
After a long time he heard breathing outside like an ox’s. Something pushed the window frame; the walls shook as if about to collapse.
公惧覆压，计不如出而斗之，遂剨然脱扃，奔而出。
Fearing he would be crushed, Yu decided it was better to fight outside. He flung open the fastening and rushed out.
见一巨鬼，高与檐齐；
He saw a gigantic demon, as tall as the eaves.
昏月中，见其面黑如煤，眼闪烁有黄光；
In the dim moonlight its face was black as coal and its eyes flashed yellow.
上无衣，下无履，手弓而腰矢。
It wore neither shirt nor shoes, carried a bow and had arrows at its waist.
公方骇，鬼则弯矣。
While Yu was still recoiling in alarm, the demon had already bent its bow.
公以剑拨矢，矢堕；欲击之，则又关矣。
Yu knocked the arrow down with his sword. Before he could strike back, another was on the string.
公急跃避，矢贯于壁，战战有声。
He leapt aside. The arrow pierced the wall and vibrated with a buzzing sound.
鬼怒甚，拔佩刀，挥如风，望公力劈。
Enraged, the demon drew a blade, swung it like the wind and hacked hard at Yu.
公猱进，刀中庭石，石立断。
Yu darted forward like a monkey. The blade hit a courtyard stone and split it at once.
公出其股间，削鬼中踝，铿然有声。
Yu passed between its legs and cut at its ankle with a ringing clang.
鬼益怒，吼如雷，转身复剁。
Still angrier, it roared like thunder, turned and chopped again.
公又伏身入；刀落，断公裙。
Yu ducked forward once more. The falling blade sliced through the skirt of his robe.
公已及胁下，猛斫之，亦铿然有声，鬼仆而僵。
He had reached its side and struck fiercely. Another clang rang out, and the demon fell rigid to the ground.
公乱击之，声硬如柝。
Yu struck it again and again; the sound was hard, like a watchman’s wooden clapper.
烛之，则一木偶，高大如人。
In the light he saw a wooden figure, as large as a person.
弓矢尚缠腰际，刻画狰狞；剑击处，皆有血出。
The bow and arrows were still bound around its waist. Its carved features were fierce, and every sword-cut bled.
公因秉烛待旦，方悟鬼物皆卜人遣之，欲致人于死，以神其术也。
Yu kept the lamp burning until dawn. He now understood: the fortune-teller had sent these creatures to kill him and make his own art seem miraculous.
次日，遍告交知，与共诣卜所。
The next day he told his acquaintances, and they went together to the fortune-teller’s place.
卜人遥见公，瞥不可见。
The man saw Yu approaching and vanished in an instant.
或曰：“皆翳形术也，犬血可破。”
Someone said, “It is an art of concealment. A dog’s blood can break it.”
公如言，戒备而往。卜人又匿如前。
Yu prepared as advised and went back. The fortune-teller hid himself as before.
急以犬血沃立处，但见卜人头面，皆为犬血模糊，目灼灼如鬼立。
They quickly poured the blood where he stood. His head and face appeared, smeared with it, his eyes glaring like a standing demon’s.
乃执付有司而杀之。
They seized him and handed him to the authorities, who put him to death.
The author’s closing comment
异史氏曰：“尝谓买卜为一痴。
The Historian of the Strange says: “I have always thought paying for divination a kind of folly.
世之讲此道而不爽于生死者几人？
How many who practise this art are never wrong about life and death?
卜之而爽，犹不卜也。
A mistaken divination is no better than none at all.
且即明明告我以死期之至，将复如何？
Even if someone tells me plainly when my death will come, what can I then do?
况借人命以神其术者，其可畏尤甚耶！”
How much more dreadful are those who sacrifice human lives to make their art seem divine!”
Appreciation · A closer reading
The prediction is also a demand for payment
The diviner’s apparent knowledge of the servant’s illness first wins attention. His announcement that Yu will die within three days then creates the crisis for which he offers a paid remedy. Friends’ anxiety increases the pressure to comply.
Yu questions the logic: if the time of death is fixed, how could a technique change it? His refusal does not make him careless. On the appointed night he prepares, stays awake and observes. The tale distinguishes resisting intimidation from pretending there could be no danger.
Three attacks turn fear into examinable objects
The first attacker becomes a cut paper figure; the second leaves broken clay; the third proves to be a wooden figure after a much more dangerous fight. The sequence escalates in size, material solidity and physical threat. Each attack also supplies something that can be inspected once the struggle ends.
The final confrontation moves Yu out of the room when remaining inside risks being crushed. His survival depends on adaptation as well as strength. The changing tactics make the episode more than three repetitions of a single miracle. At dawn, the material remains allow him to connect the attacks with the person who had predicted his death.
The closing criticism goes beyond one fraudulent expert
The fortune-teller’s concealment and its defeat through dog’s blood belong to the supernatural machinery of the fiction. They are not practical claims about real invisibility or a recommended investigative procedure. Within the story, exposure leads to official punishment and reveals an attempt to kill in order to validate a prediction.
The final comment asks what useful control even an accurate announcement of death would provide. It condemns the more terrifying case in which someone stakes another life on proving special powers. The tale thus criticises dependence on divination without adopting a consistently non-supernatural universe. Its central concern is the human misuse of fear and authority, staged through the very marvels that make the narrative compelling.
The reading “head and face” (头面, tóu miàn) follows the corroborating text; the linked Wikisource transcription has a typographical variant at this point.
láng sān zé · qí èr
狼三则·其二
Two Wolves and a ButcherComplete second tale of Three Wolf Stories
láng sān zé · qí èr
狼三则·其二
Two Wolves and a ButcherComplete second tale of Three Wolf StoriesThe butcher survives by changing his response as the situation changes. Appeasement fails, a defensive position helps, and a final backward glance reveals the second danger. The story’s suspense depends on information being understood only after decisive action has begun.
Historical background
A complete tale within a group of three
This is the second complete tale in the Three Wolf Stories of Pu Songling’s Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. Pu wrote and revised his collection over many years in the early Qing period. The individual story is not securely dated, and its unnamed butcher is not identified as a documented acquaintance of the author.
Unlike many better-known Liaozhai tales, this one needs no ghost or magical transformation. Its strangeness lies in the apparently coordinated deception of the animals and the compact reversal of danger. The narrative treats wolves as moralized adversaries, a common literary practice. That depiction should be distinguished from zoological evidence or practical guidance for encounters with wildlife.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
一屠晚归，担中肉尽，止有剩骨。途中两狼，缀行甚远。
A butcher returned late, his meat sold and only bones left in his load. Two wolves followed him for a long way.
屠惧，投以骨。一狼得骨止，一狼仍从。
Afraid, he threw them a bone. One stopped for it; the other kept following.
复投之，后狼止而前狼又至。骨已尽矣，而两狼之并驱如故。
He threw another; the second stopped, but the first returned. The bones were gone, and both wolves still pursued him.
屠大窘，恐前后受其敌。
In great distress, he feared attack from front and rear.
顾野有麦场，场主积薪其中，苫蔽成丘。
He saw a threshing ground where the owner had stacked fuel under a covering, forming a mound.
屠乃奔倚其下，弛担持刀。
He ran to stand against it, put down his load, and held his knife.
狼不敢前，眈眈相向。
The wolves did not dare advance, but faced him with fixed stares.
少时，一狼径去，其一犬坐于前。
After a while one went away; the other sat before him like a dog.
久之，目似瞑，意暇甚。
In time its eyes seemed closed, and it looked very relaxed.
屠暴起，以刀劈狼首，又数刀毙之。
The butcher suddenly sprang up, struck its head, and killed it with several more blows.
方欲行，转视积薪后，一狼洞其中，意将隧入以攻其后也。
As he was about to leave, he looked behind the pile: the other wolf was burrowing through it to attack his rear.
身已半入，止露尻尾。
Half its body was inside, with only rump and tail exposed.
屠自后断其股，亦毙之。
He cut its hindquarters from behind and killed it too.
乃悟前狼假寐，盖以诱敌。
Only then did he understand that the first wolf had pretended to sleep as a decoy.
狼亦黠矣，而顷刻两毙，禽兽之变诈几何哉？止增笑耳。
The wolves were cunning, yet both died in an instant. How much can animal trickery accomplish? It only adds to the laughter.
Appreciation · A closer reading
The first strategy consumes a finite resource
Throwing bones seems reasonable because it briefly interrupts pursuit. But the two wolves alternate, so each concession buys less safety than the butcher hopes. When the bones run out, the threat remains unchanged. This sequence makes failure visible through repetition rather than a narrator’s lecture. The butcher’s fear is not mocked as cowardice; it is the starting condition from which he must learn. The story gives him no heroic identity in advance, allowing his resourcefulness to emerge from the pressure of an ordinary journey gone wrong.
The pile protects him and creates another blind spot
Standing against the fuel mound reduces the immediate risk of being surrounded. The choice of position is therefore part of his intelligence, not a neutral background detail. Yet the same mound conceals the second wolf’s tunnel. The setting changes function as the plot develops: what first appears to solve a problem can also hide a new one. This keeps the encounter dynamic. No single decision guarantees safety; survival requires continued attention after an initially useful adjustment.
Understanding arrives retrospectively
Only after killing the second wolf does the butcher fully interpret the first animal’s apparent sleep. The reader shares that delayed recognition. Looking back reorganizes earlier details into a coordinated plan, making the ending more satisfying than a simple sequence of attacks. The narrator’s laughter then reduces the wolves’ cleverness after the fact. That confident verdict belongs to the tale’s moral frame, while the preceding suspense preserves how uncertain the encounter felt before its outcome. The two tones together make danger memorable without allowing the defeated trickery the last word.
Zhòng lí
种梨
Planting PearsComplete tale and authorial comment
Zhòng lí
种梨
Planting PearsComplete tale and authorial commentA street performance turns a refusal to share one pear into the loss of an entire cartload. The revelation makes the seller a spectator to his own undoing. Pu Songling’s appended comment then widens the target from one man’s stinginess to a distorted scale of value.
Historical background
A complete Liaozhai tale and its authorial comment
Planting Pears belongs to Pu Songling’s Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, written and revised during the early Qing. The exact occasion of this individual tale is not known. Magical planting has older narrative precedents, so the scene should not be presented as Pu’s eyewitness report of a supernatural event.
The page retains the concluding comment spoken under Pu’s persona, the Historian of the Strange. That passage is essential to the full work: it identifies patterns of withholding aid while spending freely on destructive pleasures or self-preservation. The story is often summarized as a punishment for greed, but its detailed staging and the comment allow a more specific reading of how attention, generosity, and calculation become misdirected.
Read line by line · Pinyin / Chinese / English
有乡人货梨于市，颇甘芳，价腾贵。
A countryman sold sweet, fragrant pears in the market at a high price.
有道士破巾絮衣，丐于车前。乡人咄之，亦不去；乡人怒，加以叱骂。
A Daoist in a torn cap and ragged robe begged beside the cart. The seller shouted at him, but he stayed, provoking further abuse.
道士曰：“一车数百颗，老衲止丐其一，于居士亦无大损，何怒为？”
The Daoist said, “You have hundreds in the cart, and I ask for only one. It would cost you little—why be angry?”
观者劝置劣者一枚令去，乡人执不肯。
Onlookers urged the seller to give him an inferior pear and send him away, but he refused.
肆中佣保者，见喋聒不堪，遂出钱币一枚，付道士。道士拜谢。
A shop worker, unable to bear the quarrel, paid a coin for the Daoist, who bowed in thanks.
谓众曰：“出家人不解吝惜。我有佳梨，请出供客。”
He told the crowd, “A religious wanderer does not cling to possessions. I have fine pears to offer you.”
或曰：“既有之，何不自食？”曰：“我特需此核作种。”
Someone asked, “If you have them, why not eat your own?” He answered, “I needed this core for seed.”
于是掬梨大啖，且尽，把核于手，解肩上镵，坎地深数寸，纳之而覆以土。
He ate the pear, held the core, took a digging tool from his shoulder, made a shallow hole, and covered the core with earth.
向市人索汤沃灌。好事者于临路店索得沸渖，道士接浸坎处。
He asked for hot water. An eager spectator fetched boiling liquid from a roadside shop, and the Daoist poured it into the hole.
万目攒视，见有勾萌出，渐大；俄成树，枝叶扶苏；
All eyes gathered on a shoot that emerged and grew, soon becoming a tree with spreading branches and leaves.
倏而花，倏而实，硕大芳馥，累累满树。
In an instant it flowered and bore large, fragrant pears that filled the tree.
道士乃即树头摘赐观者，顷刻向尽。
He picked them for the spectators, and they were soon almost gone.
已，乃以镵伐树，丁丁良久，方断；带叶荷肩头，从容徐步而去。
Then he chopped the tree, striking for some time until it fell, shouldered its leafy trunk, and calmly walked away.
初，道士作法时，乡人亦杂众中，引领注目，竟忘其业。
While the magic was performed, the seller had joined the crowd, craning his neck and forgetting his trade.
道士既去，始顾车中，则梨已空矣。方悟适所表散，皆己物也。
After the Daoist left, he looked into his cart and found it empty. Only then did he realize that all the distributed pears had been his.
又细视车上一靶亡，是新凿断者。心大愤恨。急迹之。
Looking closer, he found a cart handle missing, freshly cut away. Furious, he hurried after the Daoist.
转过墙隅，则断靶弃垣下，始知所伐梨本，即是物也。
Around a wall he found the handle discarded and understood that it had been the supposed pear-tree trunk.
道士不知所在。一市粲然。
The Daoist was nowhere to be found, and the whole market laughed.
异史氏曰：“乡人愦愦，憨状可掬，其见笑于市人，有以哉。
The Historian of the Strange comments: “The countryman’s bewildered foolishness is vivid enough; the market had reason to laugh.
每见乡中称素封者，良朋乞米，则怫然，且计曰：‘是数日之资也。’
I often see wealthy people angered when a friend asks for grain, calculating, ‘That is several days’ provision.’
或劝济一危难，饭一茕独，则又忿然，又计曰：‘此十人、五人之食也。’
Urged to help someone in trouble or feed a person without support, they angrily calculate again: ‘That is food for five or ten people.’
甚而父子兄弟，较尽锱铢。
Even fathers, sons, and brothers reckon down to the smallest fraction.
及至淫博迷心，则倾囊不吝；刀锯临颈，则赎命不遑。
Yet when vice and gambling seize them, they empty their purses freely; when punishment threatens their necks, they cannot ransom themselves quickly enough.
诸如此类，正不胜道，蠢尔乡人，又何足怪。”
Such cases are too many to recount. Why be surprised at this foolish countryman?”
Appreciation · A closer reading
A small gift comes from someone with less to spare
The seller’s cart is full, yet it is a shop worker who resolves the initial quarrel by paying for a pear. This contrast establishes a moral scale before the magic begins. The Daoist’s request is modest, and the crowd even proposes an inferior fruit as a compromise. Repeated refusal therefore matters more than the mere existence of private property. Within the story’s logic, the seller demonstrates a disproportionate attachment to a tiny concession, making the later disproportionate loss feel like a designed reversal.
The spectacle captures the person who should watch his cart
Growth, flowering, and fruiting happen with impossible speed, directing every gaze toward the tree. The seller joins that collective attention and forgets the goods he had guarded so fiercely. The trick is therefore also a manipulation of perception. Readers initially share the crowd’s wonder and only later learn where the pears came from. The severed cart handle provides a second piece of evidence, converting the magical trunk into a material loss. The revelation retrospectively changes the meaning of the entire performance.
Laughter does not remove every ethical question
The market’s laughter supplies the comic ending, while Pu’s comment explains the satire of people who deny small help but squander much larger resources elsewhere. Modern readers may still question the fairness of taking all the seller’s goods; the text’s punishment need not become a rule for real conduct. Its value lies in exposing an inconsistency of priorities through exaggerated fiction. Retaining that distinction allows enjoyment of the trick and serious attention to the moral argument without assuming that supernatural success automatically makes every action just.
Open a work’s title to read it. Pinyin stays above its Chinese characters, and each English rendering follows its corresponding line or short passage. Modern Mandarin citation forms are used, with contextual readings for literary words. English conveys meaning rather than recreating metre or rhyme. Complete works, complete chapters and excerpts are individually labelled.
Another room to explore
Song Dingbo’s encounter reverses the expected direction of a ghost story. The young traveller becomes increasingly informed and confident, while the ghost becomes increasingly exposed. What begins as a frightening meeting on a night road ends with the matter-of-fact language of a sale.