Sun Zichu, a celebrated man of letters of Guangxi, had a sixth finger growing on one of his hands. He was unrealistic by nature, halting in speech and inclined to accept the deceitful words of others at face value.
If singing girls or courtesans happened to be present at a gathering, he would invariably run off as soon as he caught sight of them. When those who knew of his peculiarity tricked him into coming and had prostitutes press themselves upon him, he would redden to the base of his neck, and sweat would trickle down his face. He was made the butt of everyone’s laughter. People wrote descriptions of his witless antics, circulated them as items of abusive gossip and nicknamed him Sun the Fool.
Old Man Jia, a big merchant in the district, had wealth enough to rival a prince, and his relations were all of noble blood. His daughter Precious was incomparably beautiful. When the time came to choose her a suitable mate, sons of major families rushed to offer marriage presents, but none measured up to the old man’s wishes. The scholar had been bereaved of his wife sometime before, and someone tricked him into sending a go-between. The scholar, singularly unmindful of his own limitations, went ahead and followed this suggestion. The old man had long heard of the scholar’s reputation but considered him too poor. As the go-between left the house she came upon Precious, who.asked the purpose of her coming. When the go-between told her, the girl said jokingly: “If he gets rid of that extra finger, I’ll be his.”
The go-between reported this to the scholar, who said,”That won’t be difficult.” After the go-between left, the scholar chopped off his finger with a hatchet. Excruciating pain pierced him to the heart, and blood spurted out till he was on the brink of death. Several days passed before he could rise from his bed. He went to see the go-between and showed her the finger. The startled woman ran to tell the girl. She too was taken aback. She jokingly required that he also get rid of his folly. When the scholar heard this he protested loudly that he was not a fool, but he had no way to see her and bare his heart to her. Then it occurred to him that Precious might not have the beauty of an angel after all. What gave her the right to rate herself so highly? His earlier ardor cooled abruptly.
Then came Tomb-Sweeping Day. According to custom this was the day when girls and women went outdoors to stroll, and frivolous young men followed after them in groups, brazenly discussing their merits. Several members of his club strongly urged the scholar to go along with them. One said mockingly:”Don’t you want to have a look at your Precious?”The scholar knew they were making fun of him, but the ridicule he had suffered at the girl’s hands made him want to see her in person. He gladly followed the group to get a look at her. From a distance they saw a young woman resting beneath a tree, surrounded by a wall of obnoxious young men. The members of the group exclaimed, “That must be Precious.” They hurried over and sure enough it was she. Close scrutiny proved her to be matchlessly beautiful. Soon the crowd became thicker. The girl rose and walked abruptly away. Everyone was bowled over. They set up a wild hubbub of appraisals of her face and comments on her legs. Only the scholar kept silent. When the group went elsewhere, they looked back and saw the scholar, still standing numbly in the same spot. They called to him, but there was no response. They pulled at his arm, saying:”Has your soul left you to follow after Precious?”Still he did not answer. No one thought this strange, because they knew him to be slow of speech. Some pushed and some pulled until they got him back. Once home he climbed straight into bed and lay there all day without rising. He was in stupor, as if drunk, and could not be roused. His family suspected that his soul had left his body. They went to deserted fields and prayed for his soul’s return without success. When they slapped him and forced him to respond to their questions, he answered indistinctly: “I am at Precious’ house.” They asked specific questions, but he would say no more. His family was dismayed and baffled.
Earlier, when watching the girl walk away, the scholar could not bear to see her go, and felt his body walking behind her. He gradually moved toward her and leaned against her sash, without anyone reprimanding him. He followed her home and stayed beside her every moment. At night he made love to her, to the great delight of both. Then he felt a tremendous hollowness in his stomach. He wanted to make the trip back to his home gate, but he did not know the way. The girl herself dreamed repeatedly of copulating with a man. When she asked his name he said “Iam Sun Zichu.”She was unable to confide her amazement to anyone.
The scholar lay at home for three days, drawing each halting breath as if it might be his last. Deeply frightened, his family sent someone to communicate the matter to the old man in a roundabout way and ask if they could say soul-summoning prayers in his house, at which he laughed and said”Our two families have never visited back and forth: how could he have left his soul in my house?” Sun’s family would not give up their pleading, so the old man finally assented. The shaman went to his house, carrying Sun’s sleeping mat and a suit of his clothes. The girl was greatly shocked to learn his reason for coming. She led him straight to her chamber, not letting him go anywhere else,and instructed him to leave after summoning Sun’s soul. By the time the shaman returned to the Sun family gate, the scholar was moaning on his bed. Upon waking, he unerringly named and described all the toiletries and possessions in the girl’s chamber. Hearing of this, the girl was amazed and secretly moved by the depth of his affection.
Upon leaving the bed the scholar spent his waking hours absorbed in thought and lost in forgetfulness. He constantly watched for Precious, in hopes that fortune would favor him with another encounter. He learned that she would offer incense at the Moon-in-the-Water Monastery on Buddha-Bathing Festival, so he went early in the morning and stationed himself beside the road to wait. He watched the crowd until his eyes blurred and ached in their sockets. The sun had passed its zenith before the girl arrived. Glimpsing the scholar from within her carriage, she pulled aside the curtain with slender fingers and redoubled his excitement by fixing her gaze upon him. He fell in line behind her. Unexpectedly, she sent a servant to ask his name and courtesy title. He eagerly identified himself, losing what little composure he still had left. He did not return until the carriage left. At home he fell ill again. He lapsed into a fog and stopped eating. He kept calling out Precious’ name in his dreams, and cursed his soul for failing to do what it could before.
A parrot which the family had kept for a long time suddenly died. As his young son sat on the bed, holding and stroking it, the scholar thought to himself that if only he were a parrot he could arrive at the girl’s room with a few flaps of his wings. As his mind immersed itself in these thoughts, his body turned into a parrot with fluttering suddenness. In an instant he was off and flying straight to Precious’ place.
The delighted girl embraced the parrot, chained its leg to a perch and fed it with hemp seeds. She was taken aback when it cried,”Don’t chain me, sister. I am Sun Zichu!” She untied its bond, but it did not fly away. The girl offered a prayer, saying “Your deep affection is engraved upon my heart, but now we are different in kind – a human being and a bird. How can we ever join in marriage?”
“All I wish for is to be near your fragrance, said the bird. He would not eat when others fed him, but only when the girl fed him herself. When she sat he roosted on her knees; when she lay down he moved next to her bed. This went on for three days. The girl pitied him sorely and secretly sent someone to have a look at the scholar. He had lain stiff and unbreathing for three days, but the area around his heart was not yet cold. Once more the girl prayed to the parrot:”If you can turn back into a man, I vow to remain with you until death.”
“You are fooling me, said the bird, but the girl swore she was not. The bird cocked its head thoughtfully. Soon the girl removed the slippers from her bound feet and put them under her bed. The parrot leapt down all of a sudden, seized a shoe in its beak, and flew away. The girl anxiously called after it, but it had already flown far. An old servant-woman she sent to probe for news of the scholar found on her arrival that he had already awakened.
Moments before, his family had been thrown into consternation by a parrot which had flown in holding an embroidered shoe in its beak and dropped dead on the floor. Immediately afterwards the scholar awoke and immediately asked for the shoe. No one knew what lay behind his strange request. The servant-woman who had just arrived went in to see the scholar, and asked where the shoe was.
“I am keeping it as a token of Precious promise,” said the scholar.”Give her this reply: I will not forget your golden vow.”
When the servant woman reported back, the girl was doubly impressed and so had a maid reveal these events to her mother. After confirming the truth of this, the mother said, “This young man has quite a reputation for literary talent, but he is as poor as Xiangru. If we don’t do any better than this after all those years of trying to choose you a husband, I fear that people of good families will laugh at us.” But because of the shoe, the girl vowed she would have no one else. Her parents gave in and sent a messenger running to notify the scholar, whose malady was instantly cured by joy. When the old man suggested that he be brought into the family as a live-in son-in-law, the girl said, “It is not good for a man to remain long in the home of his in-laws. What is more, he is poor and such a step would eventually cause people to look down on him all the more. Now that I have given him my hand, I will gladly live under a thatched roof and eat wild greens without complaint.”
The scholar then went to escort her home, and the wedding ceremony was completed. They came together like lovers from a past lifetime. With the help of the girl’s dowry his family became moderately prosperous and acquired sizeable new assets. The scholar, however, was book-addled and did not know enough to handle the family enterprises. The girl was skilled in management and did not embroil the scholar in extraneous matters. Within three years the family was wealthy.
Then the scholar fell abruptly ill and succumbed to diabetes. The girl mourned him so grievously that she ceased eating and sleeping. She refused to be consoled, and under cover of night she hung herself. A maid discovered her and rushed to her rescue. She came to her senses, but refused to eat. Three days later when the scholar’s relatives gathered for the funeral, they heard moaning and gasping in the coffin. Lifting the lid, they found that he had come back to life.
“I was called before the king of the underworld,” he told them. “Because of my lifelong honesty, I was appointed to serve on an official board. Suddenly a man came and informed the king: The wife of Board Official Sun is about to arrive. The king checked the ghost register and said, ‘It is not yet her time to die.’”
“She didn’t eat for three days,” the man explained.
Turning to look at me, the king said, “In consideration of your wife’s sense of honor. I will allow you to live again for the time being.” Then he ordered a driver to hitch up horses and escort me back here.
After this, his health gradually returned to normal.
Then came the annual provincial examinations. As the time for entering the examination cells drew near, some young men played a joke on Sun by making up seven obscure composition topics. They dragged the scholar off to an out-of-the-way spot and said, “We got hold of these through certain family connections. To show our respect, we are giving them to you secretly.”
The scholar believed them and turned the questions over in his mind night and day until he succeeded in writing seven practice compositions. The group laughed at him behind his back. At that time the officiating examiner, concerned lest the familiar topics encourage plagiarism, made efforts to go against the convention. When the list of topics was handed out, all seven tallied with the ones Sun had prepared, and so the scholar took top honors. The year after that he was awarded the Doctorate of Letters and given a position in the Imperial Academy. The emperor, hearing of his wondrous story, summoned him and asked if it were true. The scholar informed the throne of everything, winning considerable favor from the emperor. Later he summoned Precious to an audience and bestowed presents of even greater munificence.
The Chronicler of the Tales comments:”Foolishness’ or fixation in a man’s character makes for dedication. Thus one who is fixated on books will surely write proficiently and one who is fixated on a craft will have consummate skill. The down-and-out losers of this world are all people who claim to be free of fixation. Look at those who throw money away on powdered ladies and ruin their families for gambling! Are they not playing the fool’s part? From this we can see that the worst foolishness is cleverness and cunning carried to extremes. What was so foolish about Master Sun?”
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