The Jade Guanyin Who Chose to Die / 崔待诏生死冤家

She came back from the grave, and she wasn't finished with him yet

From Jingshi Tongyan · Stories to Caution the World (警世通言), Volume 8 — A Southern Song tale collected by a Ming dynasty editor

By Feng Menglong (冯梦龙, 1574–1646) · Translated with annotations

Hook: A carver in the Southern Song capital held the most beautiful jade in the royal treasury and refused — on principle — to make anything except a Guanyin. He did it for the girl who watched him work.

The Story

In the Southern Song dynasty, the Xian'an Military Commissioner Han Shizhong (咸安郡王)^{[1]Han Shizhong (韩世忠, 1089–1151) was a real Song dynasty general who fought at the Battle of Huangtianden and saved Emperor Gaozong from capture by Jurchen forces. Feng Menglong transplants his name into this storyteller's tale — a common practice in vernacular fiction, lending historical weight to fictional situations.} — a powerful warlord in the capital — saw a pretty young woman on the street. She was with her father, an elderly calligrapher who made his living mounting scrolls in the city. The commissioner took a liking to her and brought her into his household as a yangniang^{[2]A yángniang (养娘) was a female attendant or servant in a noble household, often with skills in embroidery or domestic arts. The term carried connotations of youth and beauty and was often used in the context of palace women taken into official or military households. Once a woman entered such a household, she was legally the property of that household and could not leave without permission.} — a palace seamstress and attendant.

She was eighteen, and she could embroider like nothing the capital had ever seen.

One day the commissioner brought home a slab of the finest white jade he'd found in the imperial treasury and called all his jade-carvers in. What should we make with this?

Wine cups, one said.

A doll for the Qixi festival, another suggested.

A young man at the back of the room stepped forward. He was twenty-five, a carver named Cui Ning (崔宁, a master jade craftsman in the capital, originally from Jiankang). He bowed and said: This jade has a clear top and a pointed bottom. The only thing it should become is a Guanyin of the Southern Sea.

The commissioner agreed. Two months later, Cui Ning delivered the jade Guanyin. It was exquisite. The commissioner submitted it to the emperor; the emperor was delighted. Cui Ning received a raise and a permanent post in the capital.

On a warm spring afternoon, Cui Ning was leaving a tavern when he saw smoke billowing from the commissioner's mansion across the street. A fire in the commissioner's house! He ran. In the chaos — servants screaming, everyone running — he passed the inner courtyard and found a woman he recognized.

It was the young seamstress. She grabbed his sleeve. Cui Ning. I'm getting out of here. If you don't take me with you, they'll force me into something worse.

Cui Ning hesitated. But she had him. She told him what would happen if he didn't comply; she threatened to scream. He didn't have a choice. That night they fled the capital with everything they had, eventually settling in Tanzhou (modern Changsha), six hundred miles south, where no one knew either of their names. They opened a jade-carving shop. For a year they lived in something like peace.

Then a man appeared. He was a porter in the commissioner's household — a 排军 (páijūn, a soldier-turned-attendant)^{[3]A páijūn (排军) was a soldier assigned to non-combat duties — palace guard, porter, messenger — in a military or noble household. Guo's role as a porter who runs errands for the commissioner places him at the bottom of the household's social hierarchy, which explains both his vulnerability (he can't refuse even an absurd mission) and his motivation (denouncing the fugitives may have seemed like a path to advancement).} named Guo. He had come to Tanzhou to deliver a gift to a local official and had nothing to do with them. But he saw them through the shop window, recognized the young woman, and reported back.

The commissioner was furious. Soldiers were dispatched. Within two months they were captured and dragged back to the capital.

The commissioner drew his sword — one of the famous blades he'd taken from enemy generals — and the household knew what that meant. His wife intervened from behind a screen. This is the capital. If they broke the law, send them to the court. You cannot execute people on your own authority.

The commissioner cooled down slightly. He threw the girl into the back garden and sent Cui Ning to the magistrate for trial. The magistrate found Cui Ning guilty of absconding with a palace woman and exiled him to Jiankang. The girl was held in the garden.

The soldiers escorting Cui Ning were three miles north of the capital when a palanquin came up from behind. The curtain lifted. It was her.

You're going to Jiankang. What about me?

Cui Ning didn't know what to do. She climbed into the palanquin with him, and they went on to Jiankang together. He didn't know how she had gotten out, and he didn't ask. They opened a new shop. His old in-laws — her parents, who had hanged themselves when their daughter disappeared — appeared at their door one day; someone had brought them. The four of them lived together in peace.

Then the emperor noticed something. One day at court he picked up the jade Guanyin and a small ornament on its hem had come loose — a tiny jade bell. Can we get the carver who made this?

Cui Ning is in exile in Jiankang, they told him.

Fetch him.

Cui Ning came back to the capital, repaired the bell, and was given a new residence permit for the capital. His shop was open again. Life was returning to something like normal.

One afternoon a familiar face walked in: Guo the porter, who had recognized them in Tanzhou. He saw the young woman — the seamstress — through the doorway. His face went pale. He backed out of the shop and ran.

She called after him. Cui Ning, stop him. He ruined us once.

Cui Ning caught him. Guo was stammering, his eyes wild. He couldn't get coherent words out. He went back to the commissioner's mansion and stood in front of his lord and said: There is a ghost.

What?

In Tanzhou, I saw her. She was there with Cui Ning. She's been dead for a year. She was buried in the garden.

The commissioner took this very badly. You're telling me the girl I buried in my garden is haunting the streets of Tanzhou? Prove it. Bring her here. If she's real, I'll have her executed again. If you're lying — I'll execute you.

Guo went to Cui Ning's shop in the capital with two porters and a palanquin. The commissioner wants to see the woman. Get in.

The young woman went in the palanquin. The porters carried it north. At the commissioner's gate Guo lifted the curtain and found — nothing. Just an empty palanquin. She had been there a moment ago. The curtain was open and she was gone.

A ghost, Guo said. There's truly a ghost.

The commissioner laughed coldly. He had Guo beaten with fifty strokes of the cane.

That night Cui Ning sat in his shop feeling ill. He had seen Guo's face. Something was wrong.

His wife came out of the back room. She was still in her funeral clothes.

Sit down, she said. I'll tell you everything.

She explained: she had been beaten to death in the garden by the commissioner's men and buried there. She had come back. She had come back for Guo — and she had gotten what she wanted. But now everyone knew what she was. She couldn't stay.

She walked toward him. Her hands reached out.

He fell dead at her feet.

The neighbors came in the morning. They found four bodies: Cui Ning on the floor, the young woman's parents by the river (they had drowned themselves years ago, and now their ghosts had come to take their daughter), and the young woman in the room. All four dead. All four ghosts.

Later people said:

The commissioner couldn't swallow his pride.
Guo couldn't hold his tongue.
The seamstress couldn't release her living love.
And Cui Ning couldn't escape a ghost.

Translator's Reflection

The first time I read this story I was surprised by the ending. The woman — Xiu Xiu, though she's never actually called by name in the title — spends the whole story acting with extraordinary agency. She engineers the escape, she engineers the reunion, she engineers the revenge. She is not passive. She is not a victim who accepts her fate quietly.

And then she kills Cui Ning.

That seemed wrong to me, the first time. But the story doesn't present it as a villain's act. It presents it as a conclusion. The four-character summary — four ghosts, one grave — sounds almost peaceful. A family, reunited, finally.

What was the alternative? She couldn't stay as a ghost — everyone knew. She couldn't exist alone. She couldn't live in the normal world. She had given everything she had to come back and make Guo suffer, and when it was done she had nowhere left to go. In the folk logic of this story, the only path forward was down.

Feng Menglong — who compiled this tale in 1624, in the last years of the Ming dynasty — was one of the great editors of Chinese vernacular literature. He spent his life collecting stories about women who had no legal standing and no family protection, and he wrote about their suffering with a directness that embarrassed later moralizing editors. The closing quatrain is his: four lines, one for each person, each ending on a word that names their fundamental nature. For the seamstress it is shē (舍) — to cling, to refuse to let go. She clings to her living love. That is what she is. That is what kills them both.

I keep coming back to the moment she gets into the palanquin. She knows she's going to disappear. She goes anyway. Not because she's forced. Because she wants Guo to see her. Because she wants the commissioner to know. The disappearing is the point.

Next tale: The Red Umbrella That Made Old Bones Speak — a Song dynasty forensic mystery about one man's strange obsession with the truth. → [Coming soon]