Scholar Huo and Scholar Yan of Wendeng County, Shandong Province, were playmates in their childhood and often teased each other even after they grew up, trying hard to get the upper hand in those exchanges.
Among Huo’s neighbors was an old woman, who had to help deliver Yan’s child. She one day told Huo’s wife that there were two tumors in the private parts of Yan’s wife. Huo’s wife relayed the story to her husband.
Scholar Huo and his friends therefore decided to play a practical joke on Yan. One day, when they learned that Yan was coming, Huo told his friends in low voice meant for Yan to hear: “Yan’s wife is having affair with me.” The friends pretended not to believe what Huo said. Huo therefore told in detail the story of their “affair” and concluded: “I’m telling the truth and I even know there are two tumors in her private parts.” The eavesdropping Yan heard every word of what Huo said. He went straight home and tormented his wife for the truth. The wife felt wronged and refused to give in. Yan tormented her all the more. Unable to bear it, the wife hung herself. Huo regretted having played such a vicious joke with his friend but he dared not tell the latter that he had lied.
After the death of Yan’s wife, her ghost often cried sadly at midnight and the family was very much disturbed. A few days later, Yan himself died and the ghost stopped crying. Huo’s wife dreamed of a woman with her hair disheveled shouting at her： “What a tragic death I died. How can you think to live so peacefully?” She fell ill after waking up and died a few days later. Huo himself, too, dreamed of a woman pointing at him and counting his wrongdoings. She scolded him and slapped him on the mouth. Huo was startled and woke up. Feeling his lips faintly painful; he touched them with his hand. They were swollen. Three days later, a pair of tumors developed from the swell. The tumors would not be cured. Huo dared not speak or laugh loudly because any sharp movement of the mouth brought extreme pain.
This writer says: “One can turn into a ghost after one’s death. This is the result of the pent-up injustice one has suffered. But the illness in one’s private parts finding expression in the mouth of one’s foe seems almost absurd, though the shifting of illness is possible.”
A person in the village, who was named Wang, often played jokes on a schoolmate of his. One day, the schoolmate’s wife went home to her parents. Wang, learning that her donkey was a nervous animal, hid in the weeds by the road. When the woman on the donkey approached where he was hiding, Wang suddenly jumped out. The donkey was really startled and threw the woman on its back to the ground. Since the boy attending the woman was too young to help her back onto the donkey, Wang came up to her and offered his help gallantly. Taking advantage of helping her, he fondled her. He took pride in having managed that and told others that he had made love to the woman in the weeds while the boy servant was chasing the donkey. He described in detail the woman’s underwear and shoes. The schoolmate went away in extreme shame. After a while, Wang saw through the crack between the window panes the wildly angry schoolmate rushing towards him, with one hand clenching a dagger and the other pushing his wife. Very much scared, Wang jumped over the wall and ran for his life. The schoolmate was hot on Wang’s heels. He did not continue the chase but saw he was losing the race and returned home before he’d covered two or three li. Wang was running so desperately that his lungs seemed about to burst. He suffered asthma after that incident and could not be cured of the illness for years.
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