Liu, a juren, remembered things from his former lives (Note: Juren is the title conferred on those successful candidates at the provincial level in the imperial examination) and confided in my deceased cousin, Pu Wenfen, as they both became juren in the same year.
Liu had started out as a court official and had performed many misdeeds during his lifetime. After he died at the age of sixty-two and was taken to see the King of Hell, the latter greeted him in the traditional manner of the village, offering him a seat and serving him tea. From the corner of his eye, Liu saw that the tea in the king’s cup was clear and transparent, whereas that in his cup looked cloudy, like unstrained wine. He was overcome by suspicion. Could this be a magic potion? So when the King of Hell turned his head aside, he quickly picked up the cup and poured the tea down the corner of the table, pretending he had drunk it all. After a while, when the king had checked the records of Liu’s past misconducts, he was very angry and ordered the little demons to drag Liu from his seat and, as penalty, make him a horse in his next life. Immediately, ferocious-looking demons appeared, bound him and took him away.
They came to a house. The threshold was so high Liu found it hard to cross. Just as he hesitated, the demon whacked him with his hatchet. It was so painful that he jumped and the next thing he knew, he was lying in a stable. He could hear somebody say, “The black horse has given birth to a pony. It’s a male.” Liu knew in his heart what it was all about, but he just couldn’t speak. He felt very hungry. Faced with no other alternative, he tried to reach beneath the mother horse for some milk.
Four or five years passed and Liu had grown into a big, tall steed. But he was very much afraid of the horsewhip and would run for his life every time he saw it. When the master rode him, he always put padding under the saddle, loosened the rein and trod along slowly, so it wasn’t too bad. But when the servants or the groom rode him, they never used padding and would kick his belly with their heels which made it extremely painful. Finally, he got so mad that he refused to eat for three days and died.
So once again, he was back in hell. The King of Hell checked with the life-and-death book and found that Liu had not finished serving his term. He reprimanded Liu for intentionally escaping punishment. He was condemned to have his skin peeled off and be a dog in his next life. Liu was full of remorse. He did not want to go, but a group of demons gave him a thorough beating which hurt so much that he scurried off to the countryside. He thought to himself, “Why it’s better to die than to live like this.” So he jumped down from the edge of a precipice and fell to the ground below. Unable to get up, he took a look at himself and found he was curled up in a cave with a female dog licking him and caring for him. He realised that he had returned to the world of mortals.
When he had grown a little bigger, he recognised urine as something dirty. Although he thought it smelled rather good, he knew in his heart he must never taste it. When as a dog he was one year old, he thought of killing himself again, being so angry with his lot. But he feared the King of Hell would charge him again with intentionally evading punishment. Besides, the master treated him well and would not slaughter him. So what he did was to bite off a big chunk of flesh from the master’s leg. Infuriated, the master beat him to death with a stick.
Back in hell, the king checked to find out why he was dead. He was very angered by Liu’s disobedience and called on his followers to give Liu several hundred lashes and then send him back to the world of mortals as a snake. Thus, Liu was shut up in a dark room where he could not see the light of day. It was so dull that he crawled up along the wall and made a hole in the roof. Out in the open, he saw that he was lying in a grass thicket and had actually turned into a snake. From then on, he made up his mind never to injure a living thing and ate only fruits from the trees to stay his hunger.
Another year or so passed. He couldn’t kill himself, much as he wanted to. Nor could he die by injuring others. He racked his brains to think of a safe way to die, but was unsuccessful. One day, he was curled up in the grass by the roadside when he heard a cart coming his way. He suddenly thrust himself forward and lay stretched out across the road. The cart rolled right over him, cutting him in half. The King of Hell was surprised by his fast return. So he crouched on the ground and revealed his wish. Since he had been killed this time without committing any crime, the king pardoned him. He said he could stay in hell until his term was up and then return to the world as a man. That’s how Liu, the juren, came to be.
Liu knew how to talk at birth and could recite essays and books after one reading. He won the title of juren in the first year of the reign of Tianqi (1621) towards the end of the Ming Dynasty. He often admonished others to put a thick padding under the saddle when they went horseback-riding and that pressing one’s heels against the horse’s belly is worse than lashing it with a whip.
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