When I was a child, I went to the prefectural examination during the Spring Festival. By old custom, on the day before, the merchants of every trade set up gaily decorated towers with drums and music and paraded to the provincial treasurer's office; this was called "Performing Spring." I went along with some friends to watch.
That day the visitors thronged like a wall. Four officials in red robes sat on the dais, facing each other east and west. I was very young then and did not know what offices they held, only that a great hubbub of voices rose and drums and pipes were deafening. Suddenly a man leading a child with flowing hair came up the dais steps carrying a load on a shoulder-pole, as if to say something. In the roar of ten thousand voices one could not hear his words, but the officials on the dais laughed. Then a man in blue called out loudly, commanding them to perform. The man, having received the command, was about to begin when he asked, "What shall we perform?" The officials conferred a few words, and a clerk came down to ask their special skill. He answered, "We can invert the order of living things." The clerk reported this to the officials, and after a little came down again, commanding them to fetch peaches.
The conjurer assented and, taking off his robe and laying it over his box, put on a show of complaint. "The officials are quite unreasonable!" he said. "The ice is not yet melted—where can I get a peach? If I do not bring one, I fear the wrath of those seated facing south. What is to be done?" His son said, "Since you have given your word, how can you back out?" The conjurer brooded for a long while, then said, "I have thought it all through. In early spring, with snow on the ground, where in the human world can peaches be found? Only in the garden of the Queen Mother, where flowers bloom all four seasons without fading, might there be some. I must steal one from Heaven itself." "Ha!" cried his son. "Is Heaven climbed by a ladder?" "There is a way," said the conjurer. Opening his box, he drew out a coil of rope several tens of fathoms long, took hold of the end, and flung it into the air. The rope stood upright in mid-air, as though something held it fast. Presently he tossed it higher and higher until it vanished into the clouds, the rope in his hand all paid out. Then he called his son, "Come here, my boy! I am old and weary, too heavy and clumsy to climb; you must go in my place." So he gave the rope to his son, saying, "Hold this and you can mount." The boy took the rope with a look of distress, complaining, "Father, you are muddle-headed! A thread of rope like this, and you would have me climb ten thousand fathoms into the sky; if it breaks midway, what will become of my bones!" His father patted and comforted him, saying, "I have spoken too hastily and cannot undo it. Do me this one errand. If you steal a peach, there will surely be a reward of a hundred pieces of gold, and I shall find you a pretty wife." The boy took the rope and swarmed up it, hand over hand, foot following, like a spider on its thread, until he faded into the clouds and was seen no more. After a long while a peach as large as a bowl dropped down. The conjurer rejoiced, caught it, and offered it to the officials on the dais. They passed it about for a long time, unable to tell whether it was real or not.
Suddenly the rope fell to the ground, and the conjurer cried in alarm, "Alas! Someone above has cut my rope—where will my boy rest!" After a moment something dropped; it was his son's head. He caught it up and wept, saying, "This must be that the theft of the peach was discovered by the keeper. My boy is done for!" After another moment a foot fell; then, before long, limbs fell piece by piece until nothing remained. The conjurer, in bitter grief, picked them all up and put them into his box, closing the lid. "I had but this one son," he said, "who traveled north and south with me all day. Now, by stern command, he has met this cruel end! I must carry him away and bury him." So he went up the steps and knelt, saying, "For the sake of a peach you have killed my son! If you will pity this poor man and help to bury him, I shall repay you even as a ghost does, with grass bound in gratitude." The officials were astounded, and each gave him money.
The conjurer received it and bound it about his waist, then rapped on the box and called, "Child! Why do you not come out and thank your patrons?" Suddenly a boy with tousled hair pushed up the lid of the box and appeared, kowtowing toward the north—it was his son. Because the trick was so marvelous, I still remember it. Later I heard that the White Lotus Sect could perform such arts; perhaps he was a descendant of theirs.