Mouse vs Cat in Chinese Literature Page 13
West are the five rat demons subdued. Judge Bao’s mistaken condemnation
of Yan Chasan is a well-known story, but usually it is not combined with the tale of the five rats. But a song that lists the most famous cases of Judge Bao in the late eighteenth-century songbook Rainbow Skirt: A Continued Score (Nichang xupu; 1795) contains the lines “Only because he had mistakenly
condemned Yan Chasan, / He caused the five rats to create chaos in the
Eastern Capital. / These rats that had become demons / Were deemed by you
an unsolvable problem.” This suggests that a play that combined the
unfounded execution of Yan Chasan with the problems caused by the five
rats may once have enjoyed a wide circulation.32
When in the middle of the nineteenth century the Beijing storyteller Shi
Yukun created his version of the legend of Judge Bao, he turned the five rats into faithful, fully human assistants of Judge Bao. We already encountered
the names of this fivesome in the final section of The Lament of the Mouse.
Through a number of adaptations, Shi Yukun’s narrative eventually became,
in the edition of the great philologist Yu Yue (1821–1907), the famous martial arts novel The Seven Heroes and Five Gal ants, which in its turn inspired many sequels and adaptations, also providing subjects for New Year prints.33 Episodes from The Seven Heroes and Five Gal ants also were frequently adapted for the stage and the silver screen. A detailed discussion of the adventures of these five human “rats” falls outside the scope of this volume.
The case of the Five Rats Creating Chaos in the Eastern Capital is not the
only case of Judge Bao that involves a cat. In one of the most famous incidents in his fictional career, Judge Bao reunites the Humane Ancestor with his
birth mother. In the first known version of this tale, she, Concubine Li, had given birth to a baby boy at the same moment her rival, Concubine Liu, had
given birth to a baby girl. With the help of the head eunuch, Concubine Liu had the two infants switched, and after the frustrated Concubine Li has
accidentally killed the baby girl, she is thrown out of the palace. She survives in greatest poverty until, after many years, she meets with Judge Bao, who brings about the reunion of mother and son and has the eunuch involved
executed.34 In later versions of this story, such as in The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants, Concubine Liu replaces the infant of Concubine Li not with her own child (she is now barren) but with a skinned cat, accusing Concubine
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Li of witchcraft. This story, widely popular in print and onstage, became
known as “A Cat Replaces the Crown Prince” (Limao huan taizi), but the
skinned animal in that story is as dead as dead can be.
The Execution of the Five R ats
One of the earliest accounts of the common legend of the Five Rats is found in chapter 58 of the late sixteenth-century novel One Hundred Court Cases.35
The earliest-known edition of this novel dates from 1594 and carries as its full title A Newly Printed Capital Edition of the Popular Exposition of One Hundred Cases Judged by Judge Bao (Xinkan jingben tongsu yanyi Bao Longtu pan Baijia gong’an); it was compiled by the otherwise unknown “Man of Leisure
of Qiantang” An Yushi (Qiantang sanren An Yushi). While this work is com-
monly designated as a novel, it might better be characterized as a collection of vernacular stories, because each chapter is devoted to a single court case.
As hardly any actual court case is known from the career of the historical
Bao Zheng, the compiler not only relied on the legends that had grown up
around his name and been adapted as plays and ballads, but also freely bor-
rowed from other collections of court cases that were in circulation at the time, replacing the name of the original judge by that of Judge Bao. In the case of his version of the story of the Five Rats, he most likely based himself on a prosimetric ballad of the fifteenth or sixteenth century. In the early seventeenth century, the One Hundred Court Cases served as one of the main sources of The Court Cases of Judge Bao, which became the most popular collection of Judge Bao stories for most of the Qing dynasty. The rare surviving copies of the One Hundred Court Cases became known to the scholarly world only in the last quarter of the twentieth century, and the novel now is available both in photographic reprints and in modern typeset editions.36
The Execution of the Five Rats That Created Chaos in the Eastern Capital T h e v e r dict:
If it wasn’t for Judge Bao, who fetched the magic beast,
The strange monsters could never have been removed.
Gentlemen, who are my friends, don’t laugh repeatedly:
In this section it’s difficult to tell the truth from fiction.
The story goes that fifteen li outside the district capital of Qinghe there lived a student with the name Shi Jun.37 He came from a family of officials This content downloaded from 129.174.21.5 on Wed, 17 Jul 2019 13:04:32 UTC
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and had married the daughter of Millionaire He in the city. The He family
was extremely rich, and they had only this one daughter, Saihua, who was
not only quite beautiful but also an expert in needlework. Ever since she
had joined the Shi family all food and drink and other necessities were provided by her father’s family, so Shi Jun could devote himself to the study of the classics and histories—he was filled with the desire for glory and fame.
When one day he learned that examinations for the selection of officials
would be held in the Eastern Capital, he wanted to say good-bye to his wife and set out on his journey.38 But Lady He advised him, “Glory and decay
depend on fate, and wealth and status are determined by Heaven. On top
of that I am here without any relative, so on whom can I rely once you have left? If you are predestined to have a career, it will not be too late if you wait until the next round of exams.” Shi Jun replied, “When your father’s family knows that I have left for the capital, they are bound to send a maid to keep you com pany. How can I neglect this opportunity after ten years of intensive study? I will be back in six months or one year at the most.” When Lady He
saw that he was determined to go, she did not dissuade him any further. The next day she prepared his luggage, and when he was about to depart, his father-in-law sent a servant who brought him ten ounces of silver as a present. Shi Jun was overjoyed on receiving this, and after he had taken leave of his wife, he left. Indeed:
It clearly is the sword of sorrow over separation
That cuts apart the tears of parting on the bridge.
At that time it was the first ten-day week of the Third Month and spring
was at its loveliest; red flowers and green willows lined the road, while the weather was most pleasant. While on the road Shi Jun and his servant boy,
Little Two, left at dawn and rested at night, ate when hungry and drank
when thirsty. After they had traveled for several days they arrived at an inn at the foot of a mountain. Now, the base of this mountain here measured
six hundred li in circumference, and its back side bordered on the area of the Western Capital.39 Its dark woods and deep valleys with its steep and
towering cliffs and rocks were rarely visited by human beings and produced
many demonic monsters. There was a bunch of five rats that had fled from
the Western Para
dise; their transformations were supernatural and their
movements were unfathomable. At times they transformed themselves into
elderly people who cheated traveling merchants out of their money and goods; at times they transformed themselves into girls who seduced the sons and
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younger brothers of good families; and at times they transformed them-
selves into young men who bewitched the beautiful women of rich families.
These monsters were named in order of seniority Rat One, Rat Two, et
cetera, and they lived together in a hole below the Rock That Overlooks the Seas. That day, those monster rats were looking for a person to seduce, so
one had transformed itself into an innkeeper, welcoming passing guests in
front of the mountain. The one he met with was Shi Jun, a stripling young
fellow. When asked about his hometown and background Shi Jun told him
his hometown and that he was on his way to the Eastern Capital to sit for
the examinations. The monster was secretly very pleased and that evening
treated him to wine, drinking along with Shi Jun as his table companion.
While they were drinking, their discussion ranged over past and present,
and that monster had a ready answer to all questions, his insight probing ten thousand li! Shi Jun was greatly surprised and thought to himself, “This is only an innkeeper, and yet he is so erudite! I may have studied the classics and histories for ten years, but even I cannot memorize so many classic
cases.” So he asked him, “Sir, did you also engage in study?” The monster
replied with a smile, “Sir, I will be honest with you. A few years ago I also sat for the examinations two times, but the times were not favorable and I was
not fated to succeed. So I abandoned the Odes and Documents and opened
this inn in order to make a living here.”40 Shi Jun was filled with respect, and they continued drinking till late at night. That monster came up with
a crafty scheme: he breathed a mouthful of poison into the wine that he
handed to Shi Jun. As long as Shi Jun had not drunk that wine all was well, but as soon as he had drunk it down he collapsed in a stupor below his
chair. Little Two immediately helped him to his feet and took him to his
room. Shi Jun felt a pain in his stomach that was insupportable, and Little Two was at a loss what to do because there also was no physician to be found anywhere around.
When eventually dawn arrived, the innkeeper of last night had disap-
peared. But from the room in the back appeared an old woman. Little Two
told her that his master had collapsed after drinking wine and asked her for some hot water. When the old woman asked him what had happened, Little
Two provided her a detailed account of the events. Alarmed, the old woman
said, “Your master, too, has been poisoned by that monster!” When Little
Two asked her what she meant, the old woman said: “Strange monsters are
roaming this place. They appear quite often to seduce traveling merchants.
That innkeeper of yesterday was the manifestation of one of these monsters.
Your master is the victim of the poison it put in his wine, and he is bound to This content downloaded from 129.174.21.5 on Wed, 17 Jul 2019 13:04:32 UTC
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lose his life if we tarry in rescuing him.” When Little Two heard this, he
knelt down and beseeched the old woman for the recipe that might save
his master. “I cannot save him,” said the old woman. “He can only be saved
if you go to Mount Mao, ask the Immortal Dong for a cinnabar pill, and
have him swallow it, so he will then spit out the original poison.” Little Two asked, “How far is it from here to Mount Mao?” “If you leave early, you can get there in one day,” was the old woman’s answer. Little Two went back to
their room and explained the situation to his master. Shi Jun was frightened and sick with worry. He immediately took out five ounces of silver as a gift for the immortal and sent Little Two off to Mount Mao. Indeed:
Because of a desire for glory and fame he set out for the examinations
And so brought about a fateful disaster that shook the imperial court.
At the same, that demonic monster had sneaked away and turned him-
self into the spitting image of Shi Jun. Abandoning his journey, he returned home. Lady He was just busy finishing her makeup when she heard that her
husband had returned, and when she hurried outside to have a look, it was
indeed him! Her face all smiles, she asked, “You have only been gone for
over twenty days. How come you returned so quickly?” That demonic mon-
ster replied, “When I approached the Eastern Capital, I met students who
had gone to take the examinations who said that the examinations had been
canceled and that the students were all leaving the capital. When I heard
this, I did not enter the city but turned around to go home.” When Lady
He asked, “But why didn’t Little Two come back together with you?” that
demonic monster replied, “Little Two could not walk, so I entrusted the
luggage to a friend who will bring it back and told him to come later, so he has not yet arrived.” Lady He believed his story, so she prepared breakfast and enjoyed it together with the demonic monster. When the relatives came
to pay a visit, they all took him to be the real one. From that day the monster and Lady He made merry—how could she know that her true husband was
suffering at the inn? Indeed:
Dispersed clouds and finished rain make for a distant separation;
For whom this springtime of blushing flowers and green willows?
Half a month later Shi Jun, still at the inn, had received the cinnabar
medicine of Immortal Dong. After he had dissolved it in hot water and
drunk it, he indeed was fully cured. But when he wanted to proceed to the
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Eastern Capital, he heard that the examinations had been finished, and after he and Little Two had expressed their gratitude to the old woman they went
back. By then it was the time of yellow plums and ripening wheat, and on
the road it was so hot that one could barely walk, so it took them a long time to arrive back home, more than twenty days! Little Two was the first to go
inside, and it just so happened that Lady He and that demonic monster were
drinking wine behind the hall. When Lady He heard that Little Two had
come back, she promptly got on her feet and came outside, where she asked
him, “How come it took you so much time to come back home?” Little Two
replied, “Don’t complain it took so much time! The master had almost lost
his life!” When Lady He asked, “Which master?” Little Two replied, “The
one that went to the Eastern Capital with me. How can you ask ‘which mas-
ter?’” But Lady He said with a smile, “You were too lazy to walk while on
the road, but your master arrived back home more than twenty days ago!”
&
nbsp; “What kind of nonsense is that!” replied Little Two. “The master and I traveled together by day and slept together by night. We were never separated by even an inch, so how can you say that he came back earlier?” When Lady He
heard this, she was puzzled and confused. That very moment Shi Jun entered
the gate, and when he had greeted Lady He, he embraced his wife and wept.
While he explained how that monster had stolen his shape to seduce her,
that monster, on hearing this, came out of the room and shouted: “Who
dares to abuse my wife?” Shi Jun was enraged, and stepped forward to vilify the monster, but eventually he was chased out of his own house by that
monster. When the neighbors heard about it, they were all amazed and stu-
pefied. Shi Jun did not know what to do and saw no other solution than to
appeal to his father-in-law, to whom he explained the situation. His father-in-law was very much upset and ordered him to lodge an accusation with
Minister Wang at his office.
When Minister Wang had read his statement, he greatly marveled at the
affair, and he immediately ordered his runners to arrest this demonic mon-
ster, Lady He, and all other involved parties for an interrogation. When
they knelt down before the steps and Minister Wang observed them, the
two Shi Juns were indeed exactly alike! Those among his personnel who saw
them all said, “Only the Great Prefect Bao can bring light in this case. It’s too bad he is serving at the border and has not yet returned.” Minister Wang called Lady He to approach the bench for a detailed investigation, and she
informed him in detail of what had happened. The minister said, “Your
true husband must have some sign on his body by which to recognize him.”
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