Even the Dead Could Not Escape Office Politics

From Notes from the Thatched Study (阅微草堂笔记), Volume VI — Luanyang Summer Records, Part VI

By Ji Yun (纪昀, 1724–1805) · Translated with annotations

A magistrate quit his post because officialdom disgusted him. Then he died, refused reincarnation, became an underworld bureaucrat — and quit again. Now he lives alone in a mountain cave, hiding from both the living and the dead.

The Story

The scholar Dai Dongyuan told this story:

In the late Ming dynasty, a man named Song went into the deep mountains of Shexian County to find a burial site. Dusk was falling, and a storm was coming. He saw a cave beneath a cliff and ducked inside for shelter.

A voice spoke from the darkness within: "There is a ghost in here. Do not come in."

Song asked, "Then why are you in here?"

"Because I am the ghost."

Song asked to see him.

"If we meet face to face, the clash of yin and yang will make you ill — chills, fever, a general unease. Better that you light a fire to protect yourself, and we talk from opposite sides of the cave."

Song agreed, and asked: "You must have a grave. Why are you living here?"

The ghost said:

"I was a county magistrate under Emperor Shenzong of Ming (r. 1572–1620).^{[1]Emperor Shenzong of Ming (明神宗, r. 1572–1620): The Wanli Emperor, whose long reign is remembered for its political paralysis — factions feuded endlessly at court while the emperor himself refused to hold audiences for decades. A magistrate who served under Shenzong and grew disgusted with infighting was not describing a personal misfortune; he was describing the entire system.} I loathed how officials fought over profit and schemed against each other for advancement, so I resigned and went home to farm. When I died, I begged Yánluó, the King of the Underworld,^{[2]Yánluó (阎罗): The Chinese adaptation of Yama, the Buddhist lord of death. By the Ming dynasty, Yánluó had been absorbed into a bureaucratic model of the afterlife: he judged the dead, assigned them to their next station, and managed a hierarchy of underworld officials — all modeled on the structure of a real imperial government. The ghost's request to "convert my next life's rank" into an underworld posting is exactly how Ming officials swapped between ministries in the living world.} not to send me back for reincarnation. He agreed, and converted my next life's official rank into a position as an underworld official.^{[3]Underworld official (阴官, yīnguān): A position in the celestial bureaucracy governing the dead. In popular religion, righteous officials were sometimes "recruited" after death to serve in the underworld administration — a concept that mirrored the real-world practice of the imperial government reassigning officials between posts. The irony here is sharp: the ghost assumed the underworld would be different, but it was the same hierarchy with the same politics.}

I did not expect that the underworld would be exactly the same — the same scrambling, the same backstabbing. So I resigned again, and returned to my grave.

But the grave was surrounded by other ghosts, coming and going, making an intolerable racket. I had no choice but to flee out here to the mountains. Yes, the wind and rain are bleak. Yes, the solitude is hard. But compared to the storms of official life and the traps of the world, this is like being reborn into the Trāyastriṃśa Heaven.^{[4]Trāyastriṃśa Heaven (忉利天, Dāolìtiān): One of the six heavens in Buddhist cosmology, located on the peak of Mount Sumeru. It is the heaven of the Thirty-Three Gods, presided over by Śakra (Indra), and is described in sutras as a place of extraordinary pleasure and contentment. The ghost's comparison — a freezing, rain-soaked cave equals heaven — is the most bitter line in the entire story.}

In this empty mountain, I have forgotten the years. I don't know how long it has been since I last saw a ghost; I don't know how long since I last saw a human. I was content — freed from every entanglement, my mind merged with the turning of the world.

And now a human has found me again. Tomorrow I will move somewhere else.

Do not be the fisherman of Wuling who comes back looking for Peach Blossom Spring a second time."^{[5]Peach Blossom Spring (桃花源, Táohuāyuán): A famous fable by the Jin dynasty poet Tao Yuanming (陶渊明, c. 365–427). In it, a fisherman from Wuling wanders up a stream bordered by peach blossoms and discovers a hidden village where people have lived in peace for generations, unaware of the dynastic wars outside. He leaves, tells the local governor, and expeditions are sent to find it — but the entrance is gone forever. The ghost's warning to Song is clear: you found my refuge; do not return and destroy it the way the fisherman destroyed his.}

With that, the ghost said nothing more. Song asked his name, but received no answer. Song happened to have brush and ink with him. He dipped the brush and wrote two large characters on the cave mouth — 鬼隐, "Ghost in Hiding" — and went home.

Translator's Reflection

I laughed out loud the first time I read this. The setup is almost a joke: man quits corrupt office, dies, gets assigned to corrupt afterlife office, quits again. The punchline lands when he's sitting in a freezing cave in the rain and calls it paradise — because at least nobody is plotting against him.

What I didn't expect is how sad it gets on the second read. He asked not to be reincarnated. That's a serious request in Chinese religious thinking — most souls want another turn at life. He was so disgusted by one lifetime of office politics that he chose eternal ghosthood instead. And then the underworld turned out to be the same office with different desks.

The Peach Blossom Spring reference at the end is what pushes it from satire into melancholy. In Tao Yuanming's famous fable, a fisherman stumbles into a hidden utopia where people have lived in peace for centuries, untouched by the dynastic wars outside. He leaves, tells the authorities, and they try to find it again — but the entrance has vanished. The ghost is quoting that story at Song: don't come back and ruin this for me. He's chosen his own Peach Blossom Spring, and it's a damp cave in the mountains where nothing ever happens. The bar for paradise, for this ghost, is simply: nobody bothering you.

I had to look up 忉利天 — the Trāyastriṃśa Heaven. It's a Buddhist celestial realm, one of the higher heavens, often described as a place of surpassing contentment. The ghost is being deeply ironic: a cold cave is heaven compared to the bureaucracy. The joke is on us, not on the cave.

Ji Yun doesn't add a moral. He just gives you the two characters Song wrote on the rock and walks away. I think that's the point — there isn't a lesson. There's just a ghost who wanted to be left alone, and couldn't be, even in death.

Next tale: The Man Who Lit His Books by a Ghost's Eyes — what to do when a giant face emerges from the wall while you're studying. → [Coming soon]

From Notes from the Thatched Study (阅微草堂笔记), Volume I — Luanyang Summer Records, Tale 1

By Ji Yun (纪昀, 1724–1805) · Translated with annotations

A pig in a Qing dynasty village hated exactly one elderly neighbor. It would charge to bite him on sight — and ignore everyone else. Then the old man realized why.

The Story

Hu Muting, a censor (an imperial inspector who audited other officials), told this story:

In his village, a man kept a pig. Whenever the pig caught sight of a certain elderly neighbor, it would glare with fury, bellow wildly, and charge to bite him — yet it behaved normally toward everyone else.

At first, the old man was enraged. He wanted to buy the pig and eat its flesh.

Then, suddenly, he came to his senses: "Could this be what the Buddhist sutras call a karmic debt from a past life^{[1]Karmic debt from a past life (夙冤, sù yuān): A core Buddhist concept. Sù means "from long ago" or "from a previous existence"; yuān means "grievance" or "unjust treatment." The idea is that unresolved conflicts from previous incarnations carry forward, manifesting as irrational hostility between individuals who may have no present-day cause for enmity. This is more specific than the Western idea of "karmic baggage" — it implies a relationship between two souls that must be reconciled, not merely a residue to be worked off.}? There is no enmity in this world that cannot be resolved."

He purchased the pig at a fair price and delivered it to a Buddhist temple, where it was kept as a chángshēng zhū — a "long-life pig," an animal dedicated to the temple and spared from slaughter as an act of merit-making.

After that, whenever the pig saw the old man, it lowered its ears and nuzzled up to him affectionately. Nothing like its former ferocity.

I once saw a painting by Sun Zhong (a Qing dynasty artist known for Buddhist subjects), Arhat Taming a Tiger, with an inscription by Li Yan of Baxi (an ancient commandery in present-day Sichuan — not the country of the same Chinese name):

The sage rides a fierce tiger, guiding it as though it were a fine steed. Was the tiger ever truly docile? It is the power of the Way that tames its ferocity. Thus we know that in this world, all sentient beings may find accord — guard a heart steadfast as metal and stone, and harbor no needless fear or suspicion.^{[2]The inscription poem: This five-character regulated verse (五言律诗) encapsulates a philosophical position: ferocity is not innate but circumstantial; compassion and moral cultivation (道力, "the power of the Way") can dissolve even the deepest hostility. The phrase 金石心 ("heart of metal and stone") suggests an unwavering commitment to goodwill — an echo of both Buddhist bodhicitta and Confucian rèn (仁, benevolence).}

This poem, I think, serves well as a commentary on the tale.

Translator's Reflection

What got me is the old man's first reaction wasn't forgiveness — it was wanting to eat the pig out of spite. The mercy comes after the anger, not instead of it. That's a much more honest story than I expected from a Qing scholar writing about Buddhist virtue.

The pig's transformation is also more specific than I first realized. The Chinese phrase 弭耳昵就 (mǐ ěr nì jiù) literally means "ears laid flat, drawing close with intimacy." That's not a trained animal — that's an animal that got what it wanted. Its grudge was real, and somebody finally acknowledged it.

Then Ji Yun does something unexpected: he doesn't end with the story. He ends with someone else's poem about someone else's painting. It took me a moment to get it — he never tells you what to think. He shows you a phenomenon, places a lens beside it, and walks away. You pick it up or you don't.

All of this in about 120 characters of classical Chinese. I keep coming back to that.

Next tale: The Fox in the Study — a fox spirit exposes the hypocrisy of a virtuous official, and flees only before a simple, illiterate servant woman. → [Coming soon]

A Qing Dynasty Tale of Atonement, Filial Piety, and Mount Tai

From Notes from the Thatched Study (阅微草堂笔记), Volume XVII — Gu Wang Ting Zhi (Part III)

By Ji Yun (纪昀, 1724–1805) · Translated with annotations

A famine drove an old couple north to look for their missing son. They never found him. What they found instead was his widow — waiting beside his grave for six years, ready to serve them as her own. She also was not quite human.

The Story

My clan-nephew Zhuting told this story:

A man from Wen'an had gone out beyond Gubeikou (the mountain pass guarding the road north from Beijing) to work as a hired laborer. There had been no word from him for a long time. When famine struck, his elderly parents also crossed the pass — partly hoping for food, partly hoping to find their son. They, too, vanished from sight for years.

Eventually someone met them at the foot of Mount Tai. This is what they said had happened:

They had reached a place northeast of Miyun. Dusk was falling. Wind and clouds rose together. In a distant valley they saw the glow of a lamp, and made their way toward it, hoping for shelter. They came upon a small earthen cottage ringed by a fence of sorghum stalks. An old maidservant answered the door. She asked where they were from, took the answer inside, then came back with more questions: their names, their ages, whether they had ever had a son who'd crossed the pass, his name, his age. They answered everything honestly.

Suddenly a young woman stepped out in fresh clothes. She showed them to the seats of honor, bowed deeply to them, and stood in attendance. She hurried the old maidservant along, fussing over the kitchen, treating the couple like family.

They could make no sense of any of it. They stood up and demanded to know who she was.

She gave a sharp cry, dropped to the ground, and confessed:

"I would not dare deceive my husband's parents. I am a húxiān (a fox spirit — one of those creatures from old Chinese stories that live long enough to become human)^{[1]Fox spirit (狐仙, húxiān): In Chinese folklore, foxes that live long enough — often centuries — accumulate spiritual energy and gain the ability to shapeshift into human form, most often as beautiful women. Some are predatory, draining the vital essence of their human lovers; others are loyal, virtuous, sometimes more humane than the humans around them. Ji Yun's collection is full of both kinds, and he is unusually fair to the latter.}. I was once your son's wife. Our love was mutual; I never sought to bewitch him. But he loved me past all reason, and died of consumption.^{[2]Died of consumption (瘵, zhài): A wasting illness, almost certainly what we now call tuberculosis. In Chinese medical thought, excessive sexual intimacy — especially with a supernatural partner — was believed to drain a man's jīng (vital essence), leaving him vulnerable to láozhài (痨瘵), the chronic wasting that ends in death. The fox's confession that he "loved me past all reason" is not metaphor; it is a medical diagnosis in folk-religious terms.} The guilt has never left me. I swore never to take another husband, and have lived beside his grave ever since. Today I meet you by no design of my own. Please — do not go elsewhere. I can still care for you."

They were terrified at first. But seeing how earnestly she meant it, they held her and wept, and stayed.

The fox served them in every way, more devotedly than a son would have. Six or seven years passed like this.

Then one day, with no warning, she sent the old maidservant out to buy a coffin, and to prepare a spade and a basket. The couple, alarmed, asked her why.

"You should rejoice for me," she said brightly. "All these years I served you, I was secretly mourning the one who died — trying to repay what little I could. I never imagined that the earth god would be moved by it, and would report me to the Lord of Mount Tai.^{[3]The Lord of Mount Tai (岳帝, Yuèdì): A senior figure in the celestial bureaucracy, governing matters of life, death, and human fate from his seat on Mount Tai (泰山) in Shandong. By the Qing dynasty, popular religion imagined him as something like a divine magistrate, receiving petitions and dispensing judgments much as a Qing official would — including the local earth god's report on this fox's conduct.} The Lord took pity. He has granted me release from my form and the attainment of the Way — without my having to complete the inner elixir.^{[4]Release from her form (解形证果, jiěxíng zhèngguǒ): A Daoist term. The standard path to immortality required cultivating an inner elixir (nèidān) through long years of meditation and refinement. Jiěxíng zhèngguǒ — literally "shedding the form and verifying the fruit" — is the rare shortcut: spiritual merit is great enough that the practitioner is permitted to discard the physical body and ascend directly. The fox is essentially being told she has earned the degree without having to write the dissertation.} Today I will bury my discarded shell beside my husband's grave, so that our tomb may be shared."

She led them to a side chamber. On the bed lay a black fox, its fur glossy as lacquer. They lifted it: it was light as a leaf. They tapped it: it rang like stone or metal. They knew then she truly was an immortal.

When the burial was finished, she spoke again:

"I now serve as a female official under the Goddess of Mount Tai.^{[5]Goddess of Mount Tai (碧霞元君, Bìxiá Yuánjūn): Literally "Sovereign of the Azure Cloud." A daughter (in some traditions, a subordinate) of the Lord of Mount Tai, and by the Qing dynasty one of the most widely worshipped female deities in northern China — particularly by women, who climbed Mount Tai to pray to her for children, safe childbirth, and protection. To be appointed as one of her female officials is a real bureaucratic promotion in the celestial civil service, not a vague spiritual honor.} I must go to her mountain. I ask that you come with me."

So they had traveled together to this place, and rented a house among the local people. The fox no longer let herself be seen — but her care for them continued exactly as before.

What became of them in the end, no one knows.

Ji Yun adds: This tale comes close to another fox story I recorded earlier. But that fox acted with a purpose in mind, and so she only barely escaped punishment. This one acted with no purpose at all — and so she attained the Way.

Translator's Reflection

When I first read this, I assumed it was going to be a horror story. A fox who loved her husband to death, living by his grave, knocking on doors in the mountains — that is exactly how the bad ones start in Chinese tales. I was waiting for the trap to spring.

It never sprang. She really was just sorry.

The thing that surprised me is that the parents also expected the trap. They demand to know who she is, she confesses, they are terrified — and only then, slowly, do they decide she means it. The story makes room for their suspicion. Nobody here is naive. The fox is not being trusted because the parents are gullible; she is being trusted because they watched her for a few hours and decided she was real.

I had to look up 解形证果 — the term the fox uses for her own ascension. It turns out to be a Daoist technicality: most aspiring immortals were expected to spend decades cultivating an inner elixir before they could shed their bodies. She skips that step entirely. Years of serving two grieving old strangers are accepted as the equivalent of a lifetime of meditation. I don't think that idea has a clean equivalent in the religion I grew up around.

The line I keep turning over is Ji Yun's last one. He says somewhere else in the collection he recorded another fox who also did good deeds — but with an angle, with something to gain. That one barely escaped punishment. This one had no angle. She wasn't even trying to become an immortal; she was trying to apologize to a dead man she loved. The reward came because she wasn't asking for one.

That one wrecked me a little. Most of what I do has an angle — even the kind things. I'd love to say I could serve two strangers for seven years with nothing in it for me, but honestly? I'm not sure I could. She did. And the universe noticed.

Next tale: The Ghost Who Resigned Twice — a Ming dynasty magistrate quit office, died, asked not to be reincarnated, became an underworld official... and quit again. → [Coming soon]