The Old Servant Who Traded His Life for His Dead Master / 李通判

In which a faithful old servant volunteers to die in place of his young master, two green-eyed things gnaw open a coffin, and a thunderbolt writes a seventeen-character verdict across a sorcerer's corpse

From Zi Bu Yu (子不语 · What the Master Would Not Discuss), Volume 1 — Compiled by Yuan Mei (袁枚, 1716–1797)

Translated and annotated by Cathay Tales

A twenty-seven-year-old vice-prefect died of illness in the far south, leaving seven concubines, a mountain of treasure, and one old servant who had held him in his arms as an infant. A wandering priest came to the mourning altar and said he could call the dead man back to life — for the one price the underworld never waives: a substitute. The seven young women looked at each other and fell silent. The old servant, whose remaining years were worth less to everyone, including himself, stood up and volunteered his. Three days later something climbed out of the coffin wearing his master's face. It did not speak with his master's voice. And Heaven — which audits such transactions more carefully than either party expects — had already sent a barefoot monk to slip the servant a paper packet: five iron claws, and one rope.

The Richest House in Guangxi

The story does not give a year. Yuan Mei rarely does when his source is a household rather than a gazetteer. There was, in Guangxi,^{[1]Guangxi (广西), in the far southwest of the Qing empire, was in the literary imagination of the Qianlong period a byword for the remote and the uncanny — miasma forests, non-Han populations, and a reputation for sorcery and poison-cults (the gǔ 蛊 traditions). Setting a body-snatching scheme there is the Qing equivalent of setting a scam in a border town: the place does half the atmosphere work.} a certain Vice-Prefect Li (李通判).^{[2]A tōngpàn (通判) was a vice-magistrate or assistant prefect in the Ming-Qing provincial bureaucracy — formally the sub-prefectural vice-administrator, responsible for grain, taxes, waterworks, and the surveillance of his own superior. In the Qing a tōngpàn in Guangxi ranked roughly 6b/7a in the nine-rank system. "Guangxi Li Tongpan" means "the Vice-Prefect Li of Guangxi"; the man's given name is not recorded — the tale is titled after his office.} The Li family was, in the plain four-character phrase of the original text, jù fù — enormously rich (巨富). The household kept seven concubines (家蓄七姬),^{[3]The seven concubines (七姬) and the "treasures piled like mountains" are there to establish stakes, not character: the household is exactly rich enough to be worth a sorcerer's patient three-day con, and the master exactly young and healthy enough to be worth inhabiting. In a richer man of seventy the same scheme would not pay.} and its jewels and rarities were piled like mountains (珍宝山积).

Then the vice-prefect fell ill, and at twenty-seven he died.

Among the servants of the house was an old man who had served the family for decades. The text gives him four characters of biography: sù zhōng jǐn — loyal and careful by nature (素忠谨). He had almost certainly carried his master in his arms as a baby, watched him grow, taken his orders as an adult, and now, before his time, he was asked to bury him. The old servant grieved that his master had died so young. Together with the seven concubines, he set up the mourning rites — the zhāijiào (斋醮),^{[4]Zhāijiào (斋醮) is the general term for the Taoist memorial rituals for the dead — the altar, the lamps, the chanting of scriptures, the burning of petitions to the underworld bureaucracy. A wealthy Qing household in mourning would engage priests to perform these for days; it is precisely the presence of an altar and a professional cleric that lets the villain arrive looking like part of the scenery.} the Taoist memorial services with their altars, candles, and chanting, through which a Chinese family of means guided the newly dead toward their next account.

It was in the middle of these observances that the stranger arrived.

The Priest at the Mourning Gate

A Taoist priest appeared at the gate, holding a clerical register (持簿), come to collect alms (化缘).^{[5]Huàyuán (化缘), literally "transforming [karmic] conditions," is the Buddhist term for a monk or priest collecting alms; by Yuan Mei's time it was used loosely for Taoist mendicants as well. The priest's register (簿) is his alms-book — the prop that establishes him, at the gate, as just another cleric working a rich house in mourning.} The old servant, busy with the altar and short of patience, scolded him: "The master of this house has just died. We have no leisure to give you anything."

The priest smiled. "Would you also like your master to come back to life?" he said. "I can perform the rite. I can make his soul return (令其返魂)."

The old servant was stunned. He ran to tell the concubines. The whole household was astonished — and when they hurried out to bow to the priest and press him to stay, he was already gone. The door stood open. The lane was empty. The old servant and the seven women looked at one another and began, in the time-honoured manner of people who have just wasted a miracle, to blame each other (各相归咎) for having slighted an immortal and driven him away.

They need not have worried. The priest had not gone far.

The Price of a Returned Soul

Not long afterwards, the old servant was crossing the marketplace when he met the priest on the road. Startled and overjoyed at once, he seized hold of him and would not let him go, pleading guilty, begging, pressing him to return.

The priest let himself be pleaded with. Then he explained, with the calm of a man quoting a tariff:

"It is not that I begrudge your master his resurrection. It is the rule of the underworld (阴司例): when a dead person returns to the living, a substitute must be found (死人还阳，须得替代).^{[6]The substitute belief (替代/tìshēn) is widespread in Chinese ghost lore: certain deaths — especially suicides by hanging or drowning and untimely deaths in general — leave the soul bound to the spot and unable to be reborn until it lures a living person into the same death. The hanged ghost in Yuan Mei's tale of the "Broad-Minded Scholar" (豁达先生, Zi Bu Yu juan 1) carries her rope to exactly this errand. The priest twists the folk rule into a sales contract: the underworld, he says, charges the same "tax" even for a negotiated return.} I was afraid that no one in your household would be willing to die in his place. That is why I left."

"Let me go back and discuss it," said the old servant.

He dragged the priest home and repeated his words to the concubines. The women's reaction is recorded in two beats, and Yuan Mei's comedy of human nature lives in the gap between them: when they first heard that the priest had come back, they were delighted (甚喜); when they then heard that someone would have to die in the master's place, they were all resentful (皆恚). They looked at one another. Each looked at the others. Not one of them made a sound (各相视噤不发声).

It was the old servant who broke the silence. He said it resolutely (毅然):

"You ladies are in the flower of your youth — it would be a pity. This old slave's remaining years — what are they worth (老奴残年何足惜)?"

He went out to the priest. "If this old slave substitutes — is that acceptable?"

"If you can do it without regret and without fear," said the priest, "then it is acceptable."

"I can."

"Given your sincerity," said the priest, "go out and take your leave of your relatives and friends. Wait for me to perform the rite: in three days the rite is complete; in seven days it is verified."

The Farewell Tour

The old servant installed the priest in the house and waited on him morning and evening with deep reverence. Then he went out to make his farewells.

He walked from house to house — to this family and that (shēn zhì mǒu mǒu jiā, the text says, "he went in person to such-and-such houses," the classical narrator's way of saying that the names belong to the household, not to us) — told each household what was about to happen, wept, and said goodbye.

His reception was a small census of human nature. Of his relatives and friends, some laughed at him (有笑者); some respected him (有敬者); some pitied him (有怜者); and some mocked him outright and refused to believe a word (有揶揄不信者). A man who announces that he is about to die as a ritual substitute for his dead employer does not, it turns out, get one reaction. He gets four. The old servant took all four of them without argument. He had more important business.

The Barefoot Monk

His route took him past the Temple of the Holy Emperor (圣帝庙)^{[7]The Temple of the Holy Emperor (圣帝庙) is a temple of Guan Yu (关羽) in his deified form as Guān Shèng Dìjūn (关圣帝君), the "Holy Emperor Lord Guan." By the Qing, Guan Yu had been promoted by imperial decree to the highest grade of state worship — a god of loyalty, oaths, contracts, and martial justice, and the natural patron of a faithful servant praying over a death-promise. Note the irony the servant does not yet see: he prays for Guan Yu to help the priest, and Guan Yu answers by sending an agent to defeat him.} — the temple he had worshipped in all his life. He went in, bowed, and prayed:

"This slave is about to die in his master's place. I beg the Holy Emperor to aid the priest in releasing my master's soul and bringing it home."

He had not finished speaking when a barefoot monk (赤脚僧)^{[8]The barefoot monk (赤脚僧) belongs to the folk-Buddhist archetype of the ragged, uncouth cleric who is secretly a deliverer — a cousin to the scabby, wine-swilling figure of Jìgōng (济公). His diagnosis, "your face is covered in demonic vapour" (满面妖气), follows the folk-physiognomic convention that occult danger manifests as a visible miasma around the victim, which is why the victim himself cannot see it but a holy stranger can read it at a glance.} appeared, standing in front of the altar table, and shouted at him:

"Your face is covered in demonic vapour (汝满面妖气)! A great disaster is upon you! I will save you — but be careful: do not reveal this to anyone."

He pressed a paper packet into the servant's hand. "When the moment comes," he said, "take it out and look."

And then he was gone (言毕不见).

The old servant went home. In private, he opened the packet a crack and peeked. Inside were five hand-claws (手抓五具) — the kind of iron talons a magistrate's executioner or a Taoist exorcist might mount on the fingers — and one length of rope (绳索一根). He closed the packet and put it in his bosom.

The Locked Room

The three-day term arrived.

The priest ordered the old servant's bed moved into the mourning hall and placed facing the master's coffin directly, bed-end to coffin-end. The door was locked with an iron lock (铁锁扃门), and a hole was bored through the wall to pass food and drink. The priest himself built an altar in the quarters nearest the concubines' rooms and began to chant his spells.

For a while, there was nothing at all strange (了无他异).

The old servant began to doubt. And his heart had barely stirred with doubt when he heard a rustling sound under the bed (床下飒然有声).

Two Green-Eyed Things

Two black figures leapt up out of the ground (两黑人自地跃出).

They had green eyes, deep-sunken sockets, and short fur over their whole bodies. They were about two feet tall (长二尺许) — and their heads were as big as cartwheels (头大如车轮).^{[9]The two black imps — green eyes, deep sockets, fur all over, two feet tall with cartwheel heads — are the summoned labor of the rite: corpse-openers. Their gnawing the coffin seam (啮棺缝) is one of the story's most queasy details, and their size-to-head ratio (dwarfish bodies, enormous heads) is a standard Chinese demonology template for netherworld functionaries, midway between imps and the executioner-servants of the underworld judges.} Their eyes flickered and glinted (睒睒) at the old servant; they watched him as they moved, walking in a circle around the coffin, and then they began to gnaw at the coffin's seams with their teeth (以齿啮棺缝).

The seam opened.

From inside came a coughing sound (闻咳嗽声) — exactly, unmistakably, the master's cough.

The two demons opened the coffin's front panel (前和),^{[10]The qián hé (前和) is the front board of a Chinese coffin — the panel at the head end, sealed at the funeral. The imps "open the coffin's front panel" (启棺之前和) rather than lifting the whole lid, the way one would unbolt a door from inside; the corpse is not being resurrected by miracle but let out by staff.} and helped the master out. He looked feeble and faint, as though too weak even for illness (状奄然若不胜病者). The two demons rubbed his belly with their hands; and gradually, his mouth began to make sound.

The old servant looked hard at him.

The form was his master's. The voice was the Taoist priest's (形是家主，音则道士).^{[11]The line "the form was his master's, the voice was the Taoist's" (形是家主，音则道士) is the story's pivot. In Taoist occult lore the technique is called yì xíng (易形, "exchanging forms") or duó shè (夺舍, "seizing the dwelling") — a soul's relocation into another's body. The verdict's phrase liàn fǎ yì xíng (炼法易形) confirms it: the priest had refined a rite whose whole design was to leave him walking around in the vice-prefect's body. The returning-soul con was never a resurrection. It was a property transfer.}

The Dragon on the Beam

The old servant's face fell. "The Holy Emperor's words," he said to himself, "could they be coming true after all (圣帝之言，得无验乎)?"

He grabbed the paper packet from his bosom.

Five claws flew out (五爪飞出) — and became a golden dragon, several zhàng in length (变为金龙，长数丈).^{[12]The five-clawed golden dragon (五爪金龙) is not a random monster. In Qing iconography the five-clawed dragon is the imperial dragon, the agent of sovereign power — and Heaven is the sovereign above all sovereigns. Dragons are the supreme yang creature, and the thunder god (雷公) rides dragon-adjacent mythology; a bolt in Chinese folk justice is the dragon's discharge of yang fire against yin evil. The claws and rope in the monk's paper packet are the weapons the dragon materializes from — a five-piece talon-set and one binding line, delivered flat-packed.} It seized the old servant where he stood, lifted him through the air of the room, and with the rope bound him to the roof beam (以绳缚梁上). Dazed, hanging above the hall, he looked down and watched.

The two demons helped the master out of the coffin and walked him to the old servant's bed — the bed where the substitute was meant to be lying. There was nobody in it (至老仆卧床，无入焉者).

"The rite has failed!" the master shouted (法败矣).

The two demons, hideous and furious, circled the room hunting for the missing substitute. They could not find him. The master was enraged. He seized the bed-curtains and the bedding and tore them to shreds (碎裂之).

Then one of the demons lifted its head. It saw the old servant on the beam. It was delighted (大喜). Together with the master, it leapt into the air to seize him (腾身取之).

They had not yet reached the roof beam when a thunderclap split the room (震雷一声).^{[13]Thunder execution (雷殛/天诛) is a standing category in Chinese folk belief: certain crimes — sorcery in particular, and especially sorcery that murders to steal a body — are too serious for earthly courts, which is why the local magistrate never appears in this tale at all. Heaven's Ministry of Thunder (雷部) handles them directly, and the bolt is understood as a public verdict, not an accident: the body is left where the community can read it.}

The old servant fell to the floor. The coffin snapped shut as it had been before. The two demons were seen no more.

The Verdict Written in Sulphur

The concubines, hearing the thunder, came and unlocked the door. The old servant told them everything he had seen.

Then they all rushed to look at the priest.

The Taoist was already dead on his altar, struck by thunder (道士已为雷震死坛所). And across his corpse, written large in sulphur (硫磺大书), were seventeen characters:^{[14]The sulphur writing (硫磺大书) follows the folk convention that the thunder god's verdicts are burned — sometimes on the victim's flesh, sometimes on the wall beside him — in sulphurous characters no human hand wrote. Sulphur is the mineral of lightning (it smells at the strike point) and the standard ingredient of Taoist fire-talismans, so the signature is at once divine and clerical: Heaven writes in the priest's own ink.}

妖道炼法易形，图财贪色，天条决斩如律令^{[15]The seventeen characters read: 妖道炼法易形，图财贪色，天条决斩如律令. Yāo dào — demonic/heretical priest; liàn fǎ yì xíng — refined a rite to exchange forms; tú cái tān sè — schemed for wealth and lusted after women (the concubines are the second half of the loot); tiān tiáo — the statutes of Heaven; jué zhǎn — beheading without reprieve; rú lǜ lìng — "as [swiftly as] the law commands." The last three characters parody the closing formula of every Taoist talisman, jíjí rú lǜlìng (急急如律令, "quickly, quickly, in accordance with the law and the command!"): the priest spent the story chanting that formula to seize a body, and Heaven uses the same form of words to seize him.}

"This demonic priest refined a rite to exchange bodily forms, plotting wealth and lusting after women; by the statutes of Heaven he is beheaded — swiftly, as the law commands."

Translator's Note

The scam, once the thunder has cleared, is almost elegant.

The priest did not promise resurrection out of charity, and the "underworld rule" he quoted — a soul may return only if a substitute dies — was not invented for the occasion. It is a genuine strand of Chinese folk belief, the same logic that makes the hanged ghost in other tales wander the roads looking for a replacement to hang herself in her stead. A substitute death was, in this cosmology, a transferable token. What the priest did not explain was what the token bought. The seventeen-character verdict spells it out: liàn fǎ yì xíng (炼法易形) — he had refined a rite to exchange bodily forms. The corpse in the coffin was to be warmed and walked; the old servant was to die as the death-token; and then the priest's own spirit would take up residence in the twenty-seven-year-old vice-prefect's body. The payoff was the whole estate: the treasure piled like mountains, the official's rank, the seven concubines. That is why the thing that climbed out of the coffin looked like the master but spoke with the priest's voice. The voice was the tenant; the body was the property being moved into.

Yuan Mei plants the give-away in one flat clause and lets the reader catch up at the servant's pace. He also plants the reason the rite fails: the transfer requires the substitute to be present on his bed at the moment of opening — the death-token and the vessel must meet. When the golden dragon snatches the servant to the beam, the bed is empty, the transaction cannot close, and the vessel's furious tenants can only tear the bedding in frustration.

The human architecture of the story is as precise as the supernatural machinery. The seven concubines are given no villainous dialogue; they are given something worse — a silence (噤不发声), each pair of eyes checking the others for a volunteer who never comes. The old servant's answer is the moral hinge of the tale: youth is worth sparing; his own "remaining years" are the only currency in the room that no one will miss. His farewell tour then measures the world's response to such virtue in four reactions — laughter, respect, pity, mockery — and the story declines to grade them; it simply lists them, the way a census would.

The divine machinery has its own irony. The servant prays to Emperor Guan^{[7]The Temple of the Holy Emperor (圣帝庙) is a temple of Guan Yu (关羽) in his deified form as Guān Shèng Dìjūn (关圣帝君), the "Holy Emperor Lord Guan." By the Qing, Guan Yu had been promoted by imperial decree to the highest grade of state worship — a god of loyalty, oaths, contracts, and martial justice, and the natural patron of a faithful servant praying over a death-promise. Note the irony the servant does not yet see: he prays for Guan Yu to help the priest, and Guan Yu answers by sending an agent to defeat him.} — the deified Guan Yu, patron of loyalty and the god most likely in the Qing popular pantheon to take a personal interest in oaths and contracts — asking the god to help the priest. Heaven answers the prayer by saving the servant from the priest. The barefoot monk who delivers the counter-talisman belongs to the same folk-Buddhist family as the scabby, wine-drinking monks of legend who turn out, at the crucial moment, to be deliverers in disguise; his paper packet of five claws and a rope is the yang counter-rite to the priest's yin ritual — the five-clawed golden dragon is the emperor of scaled creatures and the thunder god's enforcer,^{[12]The five-clawed golden dragon (五爪金龙) is not a random monster. In Qing iconography the five-clawed dragon is the imperial dragon, the agent of sovereign power — and Heaven is the sovereign above all sovereigns. Dragons are the supreme yang creature, and the thunder god (雷公) rides dragon-adjacent mythology; a bolt in Chinese folk justice is the dragon's discharge of yang fire against yin evil. The claws and rope in the monk's paper packet are the weapons the dragon materializes from — a five-piece talon-set and one binding line, delivered flat-packed.} and thunder itself is the execution department of Heaven, the bolt that leaves a verdict written in sulphur where ordinary courts leave a warrant on paper.

Yuan Mei tells all of it — resurrection con, substitute death, demonic imps, golden dragon, thunder execution — in under seven hundred characters of classical Chinese, in the flat tone of a magistrate's report. The horror and the morality are left to do their own work. He also, characteristically, leaves the vice-prefect himself where he started: in his coffin. The body-snatch failed; the soul never came back; the only resurrection the household got was the priest's exposure.

In the Suiyuan thirty-eight-kinds recension (随园三十八种本) of Zi Bu Yu that our source text follows, "Li Tongpan" opens Volume 1; many modern printings lead the volume instead with the better-known "Cai the Scholar." Either way, it is the collection's keynote: the dead are not the dangerous ones in Yuan Mei's world. The people who know what the dead are worth — those are the ones to lock the door against.