The Princess Who Came Back for Three Days / 紫玉韩重

The story behind one of the oldest tomb-romances in Chinese literature

From In Search of the Supernatural (搜神记), Book XVI — by Gan Bao (干宝, c. 286–336) · Retold by Cathay Tales

A king refused to let his daughter marry a young scholar. She died of grief. Three years later, when the scholar came home from his studies and went to weep at her grave, she walked out of it to meet him — and gave him three days.

The Story

The story takes place in the kingdom of Wu (吴), in the last troubled years of its existence. The king is Fuchai (夫差) — the same Fuchai who in the standard histories spends his reign lurching between brilliant military campaigns and disastrous personal mistakes, and who in 473 BCE will lose his entire kingdom to a neighbor he had once spared.^{[1]Fuchai (夫差, r. 495–473 BCE) — the last king of the state of Wu (吴), in what is now southern Jiangsu province. He is best known to history for two things: defeating the rival kingdom of Yue (越) early in his reign, and then sparing the life of the Yue king Goujian (勾践) — who would spend the next twenty years sleeping on firewood and licking gallbladders ("卧薪尝胆") to nurse his hatred, eventually returning at the head of an army to destroy Wu and force Fuchai to commit suicide. The capital of Wu was at modern Suzhou (苏州). The Chang Gate (阊门) where Ziyu was buried still exists, in heavily reconstructed form, in the Suzhou old city.} At the time of this story, the kingdom is still standing. The king has a daughter.

Her name is Ziyu (紫玉, "Purple Jade"). She is eighteen. The old text says only that she has both talent and beauty — which in the compressed style of early Chinese historiography is the highest single sentence anyone gets.

There is a young man named Han Zhong (韩重) — a tóng zǐ (童子, "young scholar," the term used for an unmarried man pursuing his studies before official appointment), nineteen years old. He is studying with masters in the states of Qi and Lu (齐鲁) — the intellectual heartland of the Confucian world, far to the north — and he has acquired some skill in what the text vaguely calls dào shù (道术, "the arts of the Way" — early Daoist disciplines that included cultivation, divination, and what we would now loosely call magic).

Ziyu has been seeing him in secret. The text uses the phrase sī jiāo xìn wèn (私交信问) — they exchanged private letters and secretly visited each other. She has promised to be his wife.

Before he leaves for his studies, Han Zhong asks his parents to do the proper thing: to formally request a marriage from the king on his behalf.

The king refuses.

The text gives no reason. Han Zhong is a scholar, not a noble. The king is a king. That is reason enough.

Ziyu does what women in this kind of story do. The old text uses a phrase that is hard to translate: jié qì sǐ (结气死) — literally her vital energy knotted up and she died. It is what classical Chinese medicine called dying of grief — the breath catches in the chest, the qi (气, the life-force that circulates through the body) cannot move, and after weeks or months of refusing to eat, the body fails.

She is buried outside the Chāng Gate (阊门) — the western gate of the Wu capital, in what is now the city of Suzhou.

Three years pass. Han Zhong finishes his studies and comes home.

He goes to his parents to ask, perhaps with some anxiety, what has happened with the marriage.

His father and mother answer carefully. The king was furious. The princess died of grief. She has been in the ground for some time.

Han Zhong walks to her tomb.

He brings the offerings a betrothed husband would have brought to his wedding: a sacrificial animal, ceremonial silks, the small ritual gifts a scholar was meant to lay before his bride's family. He arrives at the tomb and weeps.

The text is almost brusque about what happens next. Yù hún cóng mù chū (玉魂从墓出) — the soul of Yu came out of the tomb.

She sees him. Tears stream down her face. She speaks first.

"After you left," she says, "I asked my parents to go to the king. I was certain it would all turn out the way we wanted. I never expected this. There is nothing to be done now."

She turns her head to one side and bends her neck — a gesture the old text describes precisely: yuán gù wǎn jǐng (左顾宛颈), the posture of a woman about to sing.

And she sings.

The song is preserved in the text. It is one of the oldest love-laments in Chinese literature, predating most of the Tang and Song poetry tradition by a thousand years:

On the southern hill there is a bird; on the northern hill the net is set. The bird is already in flight — what use now is the net?

I longed to follow you. The slanderers were many. Sorrow knotted into sickness. My fate ended in the yellow earth.

My destiny was unmade. What can I do against this wrong?

Of all the winged creatures, the longest-lived is called the phoenix. In one day she lost her mate. For three years she mourned. Though many other birds came, none would she take as her pair.

So my wretched form has met your shining face. In body far apart, in heart still close — how could I forget you, even for a moment?

It is a poem about a hunter laying a net for a bird that is already flying away — a poem about being too late.

When she finishes, she weeps. And then she invites him into the tomb.

Han Zhong is afraid.

He gives the answer a Confucian scholar is supposed to give: The paths of the living and the dead are different. I fear I would commit a transgression. I cannot accept your invitation.

She answers him carefully.

"I know the paths are different," she says. "But once we part now, there will be no second meeting. Are you afraid I am a ghost who would harm you? My desire is honest. Why will you not trust me?"

He follows her into the tomb.

The text records, with the matter-of-fact compression of early Chinese historiography, what happens for the next three days: Yǔ zhī yǐn yàn, liú sān rì sān yè, jìn fū fù zhī lǐ (与之饮䜩，留三日三夜，尽夫妇之礼) — they drank and feasted together, for three days and three nights, completing the rites of husband and wife.

What was meant to happen at a wedding three years earlier happens, finally, underground.

When the time is up, she gives him a parting gift: a pearl, jìng cùn (径寸, "an inch in diameter") — a pearl the size of a thumbnail, the kind a king's daughter might wear, and the kind that no commoner would ever be able to explain owning.

"My name has already been ruined," she says. "My will was already cut off. What more is there to say? Take care of yourself. If you ever pass by my home — pay your respects to the king."

He leaves.

Han Zhong does what she asks. He goes to the palace and tells the king everything.

The king is enraged.

My daughter is dead, the king says, and now this commoner makes up lies to defile her memory. This is grave-robbing dressed up as a ghost story. Arrest him.

Han Zhong runs. He runs back to her tomb.

"They are coming for me," he tells the air, the mound, the empty grass.

She speaks from inside.

"Don't worry. I will go and tell the king myself."

In the palace, the queen — Ziyu's mother — is at her morning toilet. She is combing her hair before a mirror, fixing her makeup. She looks up.

Her daughter is standing in the room.

The queen freezes. Her face goes through three things at once: terror, grief, joy.

Why are you alive, she asks.

Ziyu kneels. She speaks formally, the way a daughter speaks to a mother in the throne room.

"Once a young scholar named Han Zhong came to ask for me," she says. "The great king refused. My name was destroyed. The bond was broken. I died of it. Han Zhong came back from far away. He heard I was dead. He brought offerings. He came to my tomb to mourn me. I was moved by the depth of his faithfulness. So I met with him. I gave him a pearl, as a token. He did not rob the grave. Please — do not punish him."

The queen reaches for her daughter. She wraps her arms around her.

The text says: yù rú yān rán (玉如烟然) — Yu was like smoke.

Her daughter dissolves in her arms.

Translator's Reflection

There are a few things in this story that surprised me.

The first is the song. Most ghost-bride stories from this period are short — a few sentences, an apparition, a token, an explanation, end. This one stops dead in the middle to give us a thirteen-line poem, fully preserved, in Ziyu's voice. The compiler thought the poem mattered. So someone, somewhere, was treating Ziyu less as a ghost and more as a poet — a woman who left a real piece of writing behind. That is a strange thing to do for a girl who, in the official histories of Wu, does not exist at all.

The second is what Han Zhong does when he hears she is dead. He doesn't faint, doesn't write a poem, doesn't go drink wine in a pavilion. He brings the offerings of a husband and goes to weep at his wife's grave. They were never married in any version of this world that the king of Wu would have recognized. He behaves as if they were anyway. That is the moment Ziyu's soul comes out of the tomb.

The third is the king's reaction, which is the only one in the story that has not aged well. Even three years after his daughter's death he is still more interested in protecting his dignity than in believing her. When Han Zhong comes to the palace with the pearl, the king sees only a peasant with stolen jewelry. He is incapable of imagining that his dead daughter might have had something to say to him.

The fourth, and the one that is hardest to read, is the queen. She is not warned. She is at her dressing table in the morning, doing the small ordinary things a mother does. Her daughter walks in. She holds her. The girl dissolves. We are not told whether the queen ever spoke to the king about it.

Ziyu's three days are exactly three days. The pearl is real — Han Zhong leaves with it in his sleeve, and the old text never tries to explain how. The wedding she was promised takes place underground, three years after she died. Her last act in the world is to clear the name of the man who came to mourn her.

It is, I think, one of the more dignified ghost stories in the Chinese canon. Nobody in it is wronged who does not eventually speak for themselves.

Next tale: The Old Man Who Slept in His Own Coffin — a young scholar takes shelter from a storm in a stranger's house, finds a coffin in his guest room, and watches a corpse climb out of it to light a pipe. → Coming later today.