When young I went to the prefectural seat to take an examination and happened to be there on Spring Festival. According to custom, on the eve of this day all the shopkeepers decorated their storefronts and organized a musical procession that went through town to the yamen of the provincial treasury. This was called the “Spring Performance.”
Some friends and I went to take it in. The streets were lined with walls of spectators. At the head of the provincial treasury hall sat four officials in red silk robes facing each other, two each on the east and west. I was too young then to know their names and titles. All I could hear was the clamour of voices mingled with the din of the procession outside.
In the middle of all this a man with loads on a carrying pole led a long-haired boy to the front of the hall. He seemed to be announcing something, but I could not make out the words in the waves of intermingled sounds. I could see, however, that the people at the head of the hall were laughing. Then a black-robed servant ordered them in a loud voice to perform an act. As the man got ready to play, he asked, “What act shall I perform?” The officials spoke a few sentences among themselves. A clerk came down and proclaimed their wish to know his best trick.
“I can transform living creatures,” he answered. The clerk relayed this to the officials. After a moment he came down from the hall again and ordered the magician to materialize a peach. The latter agreed to do so, but taking off his coat and laying it over his wicker trunk, he murmured with feigned resentment, “These authorities don’t know what they’re saying! The ice out there is still inches thick: where am I supposed to get a peach? But if I don’t get one, I’m afraid I’ll make these lords angry at me. What should I do?”
”You’ve already agreed to it,” said his son. ”There is no backing out now.”
After grumbling for quite some time, the magician said, “I’ve mulled it over from every angle. Where on this earth can a peach be found in early spring when snow is still piled on the ground? The only place where one could conceivably be found is in the garden of the Mother Queen of the west, where plants never wither or shed leaves, no matter what the season. But the only way to get a peach would be to steal it from heaven.”
“Humph!” exclaimed his son. “Can you scale a ladder up to heaven?”
“I have magic for this,” came the answer. Whereupon he opened his trunk and brought out a coil of rope that appeared to be several hundred feet long. He got one end of the rope ready and threw it upwards. The rope stood suspended straight in the air as if it were hanging from something. As he flung more and more rope upwards, the end climbed higher and higher until it was soon lost in the clouds and the coil in his hands was all played out. Then he called to his son: “Come here, son! I’m old and weak. My body is too unwieldy to make the climb. You’ll have to be the one to go.” He handed the rope to his son saying: ”This is the only way up.”
His son took the rope reluctantly. “You must be out of your mind, old man!” he said in exasperation. ”You want me to grab onto a flimsy rope like this and climb into the blue yonder. If it breaks when I’m halfway, there won’t even be any bones left of me.”
Patting the boy’s back, the father urged him to act, “My claim has already been made. I can’t take it back now. Would you please go? And don’t take it so hard. If you steal one and bring it back, they’ll be sure to give us a handsome reward, which I’ll use to get you a beautiful wife.”
The son took hold of the rope and ascended swayingly hand over foot, like a spider on its filament, until he entered the cloud layer and was lost to sight. After some time a bowl-sized peach fell out of the sky. Overjoyed, the magician presented it to those in the hall. The officials took turns examining it for quite some time without being able to tell whether it was real or fake.
Suddenly the rope fell to the earth. “This is awful!” exclaimed the magician. “Someone up above cut my rope. How will my son hold on there?” In a moment an object hurtled to the ground. It turned out to be the boy’s head. He held it up and sobbed: “He must have been caught stealing the peach by a guard. It is all over for my boy.” Before long a leg fell earthwards, followed by the remaining pieces of a dismembered corpse. The grief-stricken magician gathered up the pieces, placed them in his trunk and snapped it shut, saying ”I had only this one son. He was with me in all my wanderings. Now, compelled by his father’s command, he has met an unexpected and horrible end. I have no choice but to carry this trunk away and inter his remains.”
He paused to walk up to the hall, where he knelt and pleaded: ”My son lost his life because of that peach. If you take pity on me and help with the burial, I swear that I will repay you even after death.” Each of the stunned officials had a sum of gold for him.
The magician put it into his waist pouch, then knocked on the trunk and called, ”Dear son, won’t you come out and thank these men for their presents? What are you waiting for?” Suddenly a tousle-haired boy pushed open the lid with his head, came out and kowtowed toward the north where the officials were seated. And who should it have been but the magician’s son!
I remember this even now because it was such an amazing feat of magic. Later I heard that the White Lotus cult was capable of such wizardry. Could these two have perhaps been among its latter-day adherents?
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