The History of China - Strange Tales 2: The Living Dead

Episode Date: October 17, 2017

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You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. TD Direct Investing offers live support. So whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. Hey there, everyone. It's that time of the year again. Cold winds, dead leaves, flickering lanterns in the windows. That's right, it's time for another installment of Strange Tales

from a Chinese Studio. This go-round, we've got just one story from our teller, Pu Songling, thanks in part to a poorly timed chest cold knocking me out of commission, and the entirely justifiable critique that I can't do a woman's voice to save my own life. Even given this time's abbreviated nature, I hope that you'll agree that it's still worth it in the end. After all, what could be less restful than being forced to sleep with the dead? Unless, that is, they stop being quite so dead. The Living Dead by Pu Songling

A certain old man of Yangxin came to live at Cai village, a few miles from my hometown. Here he and his son opened a roadside tavern, where travelers could put up for the night. It became a regular halt for the many carters and itinerant merchants who plied their trade on that route. One evening, as dusk fell, four strangers arrived at the inn and asked for lodging, only to be told by the landlord that every bed was taken. They protested that it was too late for them to journey on, and pleaded with him to take them in. Finally, after much pondering and hesitation, he said that he could perhaps offer them a place for the night,

but that he feared it would not meet with their liking. They replied that any lodging, even a mat in an outhouse, would suit them well. They were in no position to be choosy. It so happened that the old man's daughter-in-law had only recently died, and her body was lying in one of the rooms of the inn. His son had gone away to buy the wood for the coffin, but had not yet returned. The landlord led the travelers to this room, which was set slightly apart from the main compound, on the other side of the thoroughfare.

It had been chosen as a lying-in room for its relative seclusion. When they entered, they saw a lamp burning on a small table, beyond which curtains were draped across the room. Through the curtains, they caught a glimpse of the corpse itself, stretched out on the trestle bed, and covered with a paper shroud. In an alcove to one side of the room, the men saw a row of four beds, and exhausted from their day's journey, they threw themselves down and were soon snoring loudly, with the exception of one. And even he was finally beginning to doze off when he heard a creaking sound coming from the trestle bed on which the dead body was laid out. Opening his eyes, he was able by the light of the lamp to distinguish the figure of the girl as she lifted off her paper shroud, got down from the bed and started to move across the alcove where he and the other three were sleeping. Her face gave off a golden glow and she had a turban of raw silk wrapped around her forehead.

When she reached the beds, she blew on each of the three sleeping men in turn. And the fourth man, terrified that she would come to him next, stealthily drew the bedcloths up over his face and lay there holding his breath and listening. He heard her breathe on him just as she had done on the others. And then he heard the sound of her footsteps as she walked back from the alcove, and the rustling of the paper shroud as she climbed back onto her trestle bed. Poking out his head, he saw her lying there, a rigid corpse once more. He did not dare to make a sound, but stretched out a foot and furtively kicked his companions, not one of whom made the slightest movement in response. His only hope of survival, he now decided, lay in getting dressed and making a dash for it.

He rose up in his bed and was about to put on his clothes when he heard the creaking sound again, and dived back in terror under the covers. Once more, the girl walked over to the alcove, and once more she breathed on him to the covers, this time several times, before returning to her bed. He heard the trestles creak and knew she must be lying down again. This time he reached slowly for his trousers, hardly stirring from his bed, then slipped quickly into them and ran barefoot towards

the door. The next instant, the corpse rose from its bed and set off in hot pursuit after him. He had already unbolted the door and was gone, but she chased him through the village. All the while, he ran ahead of her, screaming. Not a single villager seemed to hear, and he did not dare to stop and rouse the landlord by knocking on either door, for fear that the slightest delay might result in his capture by the fiend. Instead, he kept running as fast as his legs could carry him, out of the village and in the direction of the county town. As he came to the eastern outskirts of the town, he caught sight of a Buddhist temple and heard the tok-tok of the wooden fish that the monks were beating during their prayers. He ran up and knocked urgently at the temple gate, but the monks were too frightened to let in an unknown stranger in the middle of the night and turned him away. When he looked behind him,

he saw the living corpse bearing down on him. He had not a second to lose. Before the temple stood a poplar tree, some four or five feet in circumference. He darted behind it and dodged this way and that, always keeping the trunk between himself and the corpse, who now

seemed to be growing increasingly fierce. They were both becoming more and more exhausted, when all of a sudden, the corpse stood stock still. On his side of the tree trunk, the man was perspiring heavily from his exertions, and quite out of breath. Suddenly, he too froze, and the corpse lunged violently forward, reaching out both arms in a desperate and unsuccessful attempt to clutch him around the tree. In utter terror, the man collapsed on the ground. The corpse remained there, fixed in

place, rigidly embracing the tree. The monks had been following all of this from the safety of the temple precincts, and when the sound of the struggle died away, they came creeping out to find the man lying on the ground. They shone a lamp on him, and though at first he seemed dead, when they felt his heart, they detected the faintest trace of a pulse. They carried him inside, and late that night, when he finally regained consciousness, they gave him some broth to drink, and he told the whole story. When the morning bell rang, they went out into the misty light to examine the tree, and found the girl's corpse still tightly clamped to it. In great consternation, they reported this strange event to the county magistrate,

who came in person to investigate and conduct an inquest. He ordered his men to pull the girl's hands away from the tree, but this proved almost impossible, and on closer inspection they could see that her fingers, which were curled like hooks, had penetrated into the trunk of the tree, burying her nails deep in the wood. It took the concerted effort of several men to pry her away. The finger holes were long and narrow, as if they had been bored by a carpenter's awl. A messenger was sent to inform the old landlord, whose inn was in a state of great commotion, both at the disappearance of the corpse and at the discovery of the three travelers dead in their beds.

The old man followed the messenger back and gave instructions for the dead body of his daughter-in-law to be transported back to the inn on a stretcher. The surviving traveler tearfully confided to the magistrate the difficulty of his own situation. The four of us left home together when I returned to my village on my own. No one's going to believe my story. The magistrate provided him with a written certificate of the facts and an allowance for his journey home. Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered. Follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over ten generations,

or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast.