Sang, named Xiao and styled Ziming, was a man of Yizhou. Orphaned young, he kept a school at Honghuabu. He was by nature quiet and self-contained, going out twice a day to take his meals with the eastern neighbor and sitting still the rest of the time. His neighbor joked with him, "You live alone—are you not afraid of ghosts and foxes?" "What need has a man to fear them?" Sang answered, smiling. "If a male comes I have a sharp sword; if a female, I will open the door and take her in." The neighbor went home and plotted with a friend, and, setting a ladder, sent a prostitute over the wall, who tapped at the door. Sang, looking through, asked who it was. The woman said she was a ghost. Sang was greatly frightened, his teeth chattering; and the woman slunk away. When the neighbor came in the morning to his study and heard the story, and that Sang meant to go home, he clapped his hands. "Why did you not open the door and take her in?" he said. Sang, suddenly seeing through the trick, settled down again as before. Half a year later, a woman came by night to knock at his door, and Sang, thinking it another trick of his friend, opened and let her in—a beauty of matchless charm. Astonished, he asked where she came from. "I am Lianxiang," she said, "a courtesan of the western house." As the quarter was full of brothels, he believed her, and, blowing out the candle, they mounted the bed and passed the time in dalliance. From then on she came every three or five nights.
One evening, as Sang sat alone wrapped in thought, a woman came gliding in. Taking her for Lianxiang, he rose to greet her, but on looking at her face he found she was quite another, a girl of fifteen or sixteen with hanging sleeves and a child's hair, winsome and pretty, and as she walked she seemed to come and go. Much alarmed, he suspected a fox. "I am of a respectable family," said the girl, "surnamed Li. I admire your elegance, and hope you will look on me kindly." Sang was pleased and took her hand, which was cold as ice. "Why so cold?" he asked. "My frail body is lightly clad," she said, "and the night is full of frost and dew; how should it be otherwise?" Then, undoing her silken gown, she proved to be a virgin. "For love's sake," said the girl, "I have given up my pure maidenhood, and, if you do not despise my homeliness, I would gladly serve you in your bed. Is there no one else in the house?" "No one," said Sang, "only a neighbor courtesan, and she does not come often." "You must be careful to avoid her," said the girl. "I am not like the women of the quarter. Keep my secret. When she comes, I go; when I come, she goes." At cockcrow she rose to go, giving him an embroidered shoe, saying, "This is what I wore on my foot; toying with it will serve to keep me in your thoughts. But beware of showing it where others may see!" He took it and examined it; it was as pointed as a bodkin, and he prized it greatly. The next evening, when no one was about, he took it out and toyed with it, and the girl came gliding in; so he gave himself up to her. From then on, whenever he took out the shoe, she appeared at his call. Wondering, he asked how it was. "It was just the right moment," she said, smiling.
One night Lianxiang came and started back. "How wan your spirit is grown!" she cried. "I did not notice it," said Sang. Lianxiang took her leave, promising to return in ten days. After she was gone, the Li girl came every night without fail. "Why has your love stayed away so long?" she asked. Sang told her of the appointed ten days. "Which of us do you think the prettier," said Li, laughing, "Lianxiang or I?" "You may be called two peerless beauties," said Sang; "but Lianxiang's flesh is warm." Li's face changed. "You call us both beautiful, but that is for my ear," she said. "She must be a fairy of the moon; I am sure I cannot compare with her." And she was out of humor. She counted the ten days, and, when they were up, made Sang promise not to reveal it, for she meant to spy on Lianxiang. The next night Lianxiang came, and their talk and laughter were very pleasant; but when they lay down, she started up in alarm. "Alas!" she cried. "In ten days not seen, how are you worn and wasted! Surely you have met with someone else?" Sang asked what she meant. "I can tell by your spirit," she said. "Your pulse flickers like tangled silk—it is the pulse of one haunted by a ghost." The next night the Li girl came, and Sang asked, "When you spied on Lianxiang, how did she strike you?" "Beautiful, indeed," said she. "I always said there was no such beauty on earth—she is a fox. As she went I followed her; she lives in a cave on the southern hill." Sang thought she was jealous and answered vaguely. The next night he joked with Lianxiang. "I would not have believed it," he said, "but someone says you are a fox." "Who said so?" she asked quickly. "I was only teasing you," laughed Sang. "Is a fox different from a human being?" asked Lianxiang. "Those it bewitches fall ill," he said, "and in bad cases die; that is why one should fear them." "Not so," said Lianxiang. "At your age, three days after the embraces one's vital spirit is restored; what harm could a fox do you? But if one were to spend every night in debauchery, a human being is worse than a fox. Are all the wasted corpses in the world the work of foxes? Still, there must be someone who has spoken of me." Sang denied it strongly, but she pressed him the more; and at last, unable to keep it back, he told her. "I wondered why you were so worn," she said. "But how did it come to this? Is she not human? Say nothing; tomorrow night I shall spy on her as she spied on me." That night the Li girl came, and had spoken but a few words when she heard a cough outside the window and fled in haste. Lianxiang came in. "You are lost!" she cried. "That is a real ghost! To love her beauty and not break with her—you are near the road to the dark shades!" Sang thought she was jealous and was silent. "I know you cannot forget her," said Lianxiang; "but I cannot bear to see you die. Tomorrow I will bring medicine to purge the poison. The root is not yet deep; in ten days the sickness will be cured. Let me share your bed and watch over your recovery." The next night she gave him a dose of medicine, and presently he had two or three loose motions; he felt his bowels clear and his spirit restored. Though grateful, he still would not believe the Li girl was a ghost. Lianxiang slept with him every night and clung to him, but when he would have lain with her she always stopped him. In a few days his flesh filled out again. When she would have gone, she earnestly charged him to break with the Li girl, and he promised to humor her. But no sooner had he closed the door and trimmed his lamp than, thinking of her and toying with her shoe, the Li girl came. After so many days' separation she wore a wounded look. "She has been playing the doctor for me night after night," said Sang; "do not be angry. My love is yours." The Li girl was somewhat appeased. Sang whispered on the pillow, "I love you very much, and yet there is one who calls you a ghost." The Li girl was speechless for a while, then cried out, "It must be that wanton fox who has poisoned your ears! Unless you break with her, I will come no more!" and she wept and sobbed. Sang comforted her with a hundred words, and she was pacified. The next night Lianxiang came and, learning that the girl had been there again, was angry. "You would be the death of yourself!" she cried. "Why are you so jealous?" laughed Sang. "You have planted the root of death," said Lianxiang, "and I would root it out for you. What more would I have of one who is not jealous?" Sang jested, "She says my illness of the other day was caused by a fox." "If that is so," sighed Lianxiang, "you are past saving. You are obstinate and will not see; if any harm befall, how can I clear myself with a hundred tongues? I take my leave now. In a hundred days I shall see you lying on your death-bed." He could not keep her, and she went away in a huff. From that time the Li girl was with Sang morning and night. After some two months he felt worn out. At first he made light of it, but day by day he grew thinner, taking only a bowl of gruel. He would have gone home to his family, but could not bear to tear himself away. A few days more and he was so sunk he could not rise. His neighbor, seeing his sickness, sent his servant each day with food and drink. Only now did Sang begin to suspect the Li girl, and he said to her, "I repent that I did not heed Lianxiang, and am come to this!" He closed his eyes as he spoke, but soon revived and, opening them, looked about—the Li girl was gone, and he saw her no more. Sang lay in his empty study, longing for Lianxiang as the drought longs for rain.
One day, as he sat musing, someone raised the curtain and came in—it was Lianxiang. "Country clown," she said, coming to his bedside with a smile, "was I not right?" Sang sobbed for a long time, confessed his fault, and begged her to save him. "The sickness has reached the very marrow," she said; "there is no cure. I have come but to bid you a last farewell, and to show that I was not jealous." "There is a thing under my pillow," wept Sang; "do me the kindness to destroy it." Lianxiang searched and found the shoe, and held it up before the lamp, turning it over and over. The Li girl came in suddenly and, seeing Lianxiang, turned to flee; but Lianxiang barred the door with her body, and she knew not where to go. Sang reproached her, and she could not answer. "Now at last," said Lianxiang, laughing, "I can meet my lady face to face. Once I said your illness was not of my making—how is it now?" The Li girl hung her head and begged pardon. "So lovely a creature," said Lianxiang, "and to make an enemy of love!" The girl threw herself on the ground, weeping, and begged for mercy. Lianxiang raised her and asked her history. "I was the daughter of a certain Judge Li," she said, "and died young, and am buried beyond the wall. Like the spring silkworm that is dead, my thread of silk was not yet spun out. To be with your master was my wish; to bring him to death was far from my heart." "I have heard," said Lianxiang, "that a ghost delights in a man's death, so that after death they may be together forever. Is that so?" "No," said the girl. "Two ghosts meeting have no joy at all. If there were joy, are there not young men enough in the underworld?" "Simpleton!" said Lianxiang. "Even a human being could not bear such nightly dalliance, let alone a ghost!" "Foxes can kill men," said the Li girl; "how is it your art does not?" "I am of the sort that takes no vital spirit," said Lianxiang; "that is why. So there are foxes that do no harm, but never a ghost that does not, for the yin spirit of the dead is strong." Hearing this, Sang knew at last that the ghost and the fox were both real; but being used to them he was not greatly alarmed. Yet thinking his breath hung on a thread, he could not but cry out in pain. "What are we to do for your master?" asked Lianxiang. The Li girl blushed and would have excused herself. "I fear," laughed Lianxiang, "that once your master is strong again, the jealous wife will be eating green plums!" "If you have the art to cure him," said the Li girl, drawing herself up, "so that I may not have harmed him, I will bury my head in the earth and never show my face in the world again!" Lianxiang opened her satchel and brought out some medicine. "I knew this day would come," she said, "and after I left you I gathered herbs on the Three Mountains for three months till I had the full stock. Whoever is wasting away to death and takes this comes round again. But for the remedy one must know the malady's source; so I am forced to beg your help." "What do you need?" asked the girl. "A little of the fragrant spittle of your cherry lips," said Lianxiang. "I put a pill in his mouth, and you must press your lips to his and spittle upon it." The girl's cheeks burned, and she hung her head, turning to look at her shoe. "Your shoe is all you can be proud of!" teased Lianxiang. The girl was still more abashed, and knew not where to look. "This is an old trick of yours," said Lianxiang; "why are you so shy of it now?" So she put the pill into Sang's mouth and urged the girl on till, helpless, she spat upon it. "Again!" said Lianxiang, and the girl spat again, and so three or four times, till the pill went down. In a little while his belly rumbled like thunder; another pill was given, and Lianxiang herself pressed her lips to his and breathed upon it. Sang felt the fire kindle in his lower belly and his spirit revive. "You are cured!" said Lianxiang.
At cockcrow the Li girl went away, hovering at the door. As Sang was but newly recovered and needed careful tending, Lianxiang shut the door and, pretending that Sang had gone home, cut off all visitors, watching over him day and night. The Li girl came every evening, waiting on him attentively and treating Lianxiang like an elder sister, while Lianxiang grew deeply fond of her. After three months Sang was as well as ever, and the Li girl ceased to come nightly; when she did come, she would take one look and go. When they met she seemed downcast and ill at ease. Lianxiang would have kept her to share the bed, but she would not. Sang pursued and caught her, and carried her in in his arms, light as a figure of straw. She could not escape, and so lay down fully dressed, curled up so that she took less than two feet of space. Lianxiang pitied her and secretly made Sang embrace her, but she could not be roused even by shaking. When Sang fell asleep and woke again, she was gone. For more than ten days after that she came no more. Sang yearned for her and would take out her shoe to toy with. "So slender and winning is she," said Lianxiang, "that I who am a woman feel a tenderness for her—how much more a man!" "When I toyed with the shoe she used to come," said Sang; "I suspected it, but never thought her a ghost. Now, looking on the shoe and thinking of her, my heart aches." And he wept.
Now, there was in that region a rich man of the Zhang family whose daughter, named Yanner, had died at fifteen without sweating. But she revived after a night and, rising, tried to run away. Her father bolted the door, but could not keep her. "I am the soul of the judge's daughter," she said. "Moved by Master Sang's affection, I gave him my shoe, which is still there. I am indeed a ghost; what is the use of shutting me in?" As there was something in her words, they asked how she had come there. The girl looked this way and that, and could not explain. Someone said that Sang had gone home sick; the girl insisted this was false. The family were much puzzled. The eastern neighbor, hearing of it, climbed the wall to spy, and saw Sang talking with a beauty. He slipped in to look close, but in the confusion the beauty was gone. The neighbor, astonished, asked about it. "Did I not tell you long ago," laughed Sang, "that if a female came I would open my door and take her in?" The neighbor told him of Yanner's words. Sang then opened his door, meaning to go and spy her out, but could find no way. When Zhang's mother heard that Sang had in truth not gone home, she wondered the more, and sent an old servant to ask for the shoe. Sang brought it out and gave it to her. Yanner was glad to have it, but when she tried it on she found it a good inch too small, and was greatly astonished. She took up a mirror and looked at herself, and suddenly understood that she had borrowed another body to live in, and told the whole story. Then her mother believed. Looking again in the glass, the girl wept bitterly. "My old face was one I could take pride in," she said; "when I saw sister Lian I was always a little ashamed. But now to be worse than before—the living is not equal to the dead!" She held the shoe and sobbed, and none could comfort her. She lay stiff under the coverlet, would not eat, and her whole body swelled. For seven days she ate nothing, yet did not die; and the swelling gradually went down. Then she was so hungry she could not bear it, and ate again. In a few days she itched all over, and her skin peeled off. One morning her sleeping-shoe fell off, and when she sought it and put it on, it was far too big. She tried her old shoe and found it a perfect fit, and was glad. Looking in the mirror again, she found her brows, eyes, cheeks, and chin exactly as they had been in life, and was still more glad. After washing and dressing she went to her mother, and all who saw her were struck with wonder.
When Lianxiang heard of this wonder, she urged Sang to send a matchmaker; but because of the vast difference between rich and poor, he did not venture. It happened that the old woman's birthday came round, and he went with her son-in-law to pay his respects. The old woman, seeing Sang's name, purposely bade Yanner peep from behind the curtain at the guests. Sang came last, and the girl, springing out, caught him by the sleeve and would have gone home with him. Her mother chid her, and she went in ashamed. Sang, looking at her, found her the very image of the Li girl, and, unable to contain himself, wept and bowed to the ground. The old woman raised him up, not taking it amiss. Sang went out and begged the girl's uncle to act as matchmaker, and the old woman chose an auspicious day for Sang to come as son-in-law. Sang went home and told Lianxiang, asking how it should be managed. Lianxiang was silent and sorrowful for a long while, then would have left. Sang was alarmed and wept. "If you are to have your wedding torches in another's house," she said, "what face should I have in coming with you?" Sang planned to take her home with him first and afterwards to fetch Yanner; and Lianxiang agreed. Sang told Zhang of his intention. Zhang, hearing he had a wife, was angry and heaped reproaches on him; but Yanner argued so strongly that he consented at last. On the day Sang went to fetch the bride, and his own house was but meanly furnished. When he came home, from the gate to the hall the ground was spread with rugs, and a thousand hundred candles blazed like brocade. Lianxiang, supporting the new bride into the nuptial chamber, raised her veil, and the two met as old friends. As they drank the nuptial cup, Lianxiang asked the story of the soul's return. "That day," said Yanner, "I was so dull and weary of life, thinking myself a thing of another world and feeling all too ugly. After I parted from you I would not go back to my grave, but drifted on the wind. Whenever I saw the living I envied them. By day I rested on grass and trees; by night I wandered where my feet would carry me. At last I came to the Zhang house and, seeing a young girl lying on the bed, drew near and entered her; I did not know I could come to life again." Lianxiang heard this and fell into a thoughtful silence.
Two months later Lianxiang bore a son. After the birth she fell suddenly ill and day by day wasted away. Seizing Yanner's arm, she said, "I must burden you with my poor child—my son is your son." Yanner wept and comforted her. She refused the doctors and shamans that were called, and, sinking deeper, her breath thin as a thread, while Sang and Yanner wept over her, she suddenly opened her eyes. "Do not so," she said. "You love life; I love death. If there be fate between us, we may meet again in ten years." She died as she spoke. When they raised the coverlet to put her in her shroud, her body had changed into a fox. Sang would not treat it with disrespect, but buried it with honor. The son was named Huer (Fox-child), and Yanner brought him up as her own. Every Qingming festival she carried the boy to Lianxiang's grave and wept over it. Later Sang passed the provincial examination and his family grew comfortably off, but Yanner was barren. Huer was clever, but frail and sickly, and Yanner often wished Sang to take a concubine. One day a maid announced, "An old woman at the gate has brought a girl for sale." Yanner called her in and, at the first sight, cried out in surprise, "Is it Lianjie again?" Sang looked and found the likeness striking, and was alarmed too. "How old is she?" he asked. "Fourteen," said the old woman. "What is the price?" "I have only this one bit of flesh," she said; "if she finds a good home, I shall have a place to eat, and my old bones will not be thrown into a ditch—that is all I ask." Sang paid her a handsome price and kept the girl. Yanner, taking her hand, led her into an inner room, and, pinching her chin, asked, smiling, "Do you know me?" "No," said the girl. Asked her name, she said, "My surname is Wei. My father was a rice-seller of Xucheng, and has been dead three years." Yanner counted on her fingers—it was exactly fourteen years since Lianxiang's death. She examined the girl's looks and manner, and found her in every point the very image of Lianxiang. So she patted her on the head and cried, "Lianjie, Lianjie! The promise to meet in ten years—you have not deceived us!" The girl woke as from a dream. "Eh!" she said, looking fixedly at Yanner. Sang laughed. "It is the 'swallow that comes back, seeming familiar'!" The girl wept. "It is so," she said. "My mother told me I could speak at birth, and, thinking it unlucky, she gave me dogs' blood to drink, which blinded my memory of a former life. Only today have I waked as from a dream. Are you not the sister Li who was ashamed of being a ghost?" They talked of their former lives, with mingled joy and sorrow. One day, at the Cold Food festival, Yanner said, "This is the day on which I and my husband used to weep at our sister's grave." So she and Sang climbed to the grave, where the grass grew thick and the tree had grown tall. The girl sighed too. Yanner said to Sang, "I and sister Lian loved each other through two lives and could not bear to part; let our white bones lie in one tomb." Sang did as she said, and, opening the Li girl's grave, brought back her bones and buried them with Lianxiang's. When the relatives heard of this wonder, they came in their festive dress to the tomb, several hundred of them, meeting there uninvited. In the year Gengxu I traveled south to Yi, and, hindered by rain, rested at an inn. A student Liu, styled Zijing, a cousin of the family, showed me the "Life of Master Sang" written by one Wang Zizhang of the same club, of more than ten thousand words, which I read through. This is but an outline of it.
The Historian of the Strange remarks: "Alas! The dead seek to live, and the living seek to die; is not the hardest thing in the world to be had the human body? Yet those who have it so often throw it away, until one is brazen in life yet worse than a fox, and one fades in death yet worse than a ghost."