A Han Folktale
There once lived a
landlord who loved money as he loved his own life. In his eyes the smallest
coin seemed as large as a millstone. He was always on the lookout for some new
way of making money and was very mean to his peasant tenants. They all called
him "Skinflint."
One year a long spell of
drought devastated the area, ruining the entire crop. The peasants, who were
used to living from year to year, and never had a reserve of grain to fall back
on, were reduced to eating bark and roots to survive, and now even these were
all consumed. Starvation drove them to ask for a loan of grain from Skinflint,
whose granaries, big and small, were filled to overflowing. Although the grain
was sprouting and the flour was swarming with maggots, he was such a miser that
he wouldn't part with a single speck of either. His peasants went away seething
with anger and resentment, and resolved to find some way to teach him a lesson.
They put their heads
together and came up with rather a good plan. They collected together a few
tiny silver ingots and also managed to procure a scraggy little horse. They
stuffed the silver up the horse's behind and bunged it up with a wad of cotton
floss. Then they selected one of their number, a peasant whose gift of gab had
earned him the nickname "Bigmouth" and who was credited with the
power of talking the dead out of their graves. They sent him to Skinflint with
the horse. Seeing them enter, Skinflint flew into a rage. His whiskers
bristled.
He glowered at Bigmouth,
pointing at him angrily and shouting, "You damn fool! You have fouled my
courtyard enough. Get out of my sight!"
"Please keep your
voice down, Master," said Bigmouth with a cunning smile. "If you
frighten my horse and make him bolt, you'd have to sell everything you've got
to make good the damage."
"There you go,
Bigmouth, bragging again!" said Skinflint. "What can this scraggy
little horse of yours possibly be worth?"
To which Bigmouth replied,
"Oh, nothing, except that when he moves his bowels silver and gold come
out."
In an instant Skinflint's
anger evaporated and he hastened to ask, "Where did you get hold of this
beast?"
"I dreamt a dream the
night before last," began Bigmouth. "I met a white-bearded old man
who said to me, 'Bigmouth, the colt who used to carry gold and silver ingots
for the God of Wealth has been demoted and sent down to Earth. Go to the
northeast and catch him. When he moves his bowels, silver and gold come out. If
you catch him, you'll make a fortune.' Then the old man gave me a push and I
woke up. I didn't take it seriously, thinking it to be nothing but a dream. I
turned over and fell asleep again. However, as soon as I closed my eyes, the
old man reappeared and urged me to hurry up. 'The horse will fall into
another's hands if you delay!' he said, and gave me another push which woke me
up again. I put on my clothes and ran out. In the northeast I saw a ball of
fire. When I ran over, sure enough, there was the colt, grazing contentedly. So
I led him home. The following day, I set up an incense burner and as soon as I
lit the incense, the colt began to produce silver ingots from its behind."
"Did it really?"
asked Skinflint eagerly.
Bigmouth replied,
"There's an old proverb which says, 'The proof of the pudding is in the
eating.' If you don't believe me, allow me to arrange a demonstration."
He asked Skinflint to set
up a burner and light some incense. Meanwhile, he himself held a plate below
the horse's behind. He secretly pulled out the wad of cotton and the tiny
silver ingots fell jingling onto the plate. On seeing the horse perform like
this, Skinflint asked avidly, "How much does he produce a day?"
"Three or four taels
a day for us less lucky folk," replied Bigmouth. "But the old man in
my dream said that if he meets a really lucky person he produces thirty or
forty."
Skinflint thought to
himself, "I must be one of those. Supposing I get the horse, he is bound
to produce at least twenty taels a day. That means six hundred taels a month
and seven thousand two hundred taels a year."
The longer his sums
became, the fonder he grew of the horse. He decided that he must buy him, and
talked it over with Bigmouth.
At first Bigmouth
pretended to be unwilling. Skinflint tried again and again to persuade him and
promised to pay any price he asked. In the end Bigmouth sighed and said,
"Oh well, so be it. My luck is evidently worse than yours. I'll sell. But
I don't want silver or gold, just give me thirty bushels of grain."
Skinflint considered the
price very cheap and readily agreed. They made the exchange then and there.
Bigmouth hurried back with
the grain and distributed it among his fellow peasants. They were all very
happy to have it. Skinflint, for his part, felt even happier to have the horse,
and just couldn't stop chuckling to himself. He was afraid of losing the horse,
however, and tried to tie him up in a great many places, but none of them
seemed safe enough. Finally, he tied him up in his own living room. He laid a
red carpet on the floor and set up an incense burner. The whole family watched
the colt in eager anticipation, expecting him any minute to start producing
silver and gold.
They waited till midnight.
Suddenly the horse opened his hind legs. Skinflint sensed that he was about to
"produce." He quickly brought over a lacquered tray and held it right
below the horse's behind. He waited for ages, but nothing happened. Skinflint
was so anxious by now that he lifted the horse's tail, bent down and peered
upwards to keep an eye on further developments. There was a sudden
"splash," and before Skinflint could do anything about it, the horse
had splattered him all over his face. The "liquid gold" ran down the
back of his head and down his neck, covering his whole body. The stench was so
vile that Skinflint started jumping and shouting and then felt nauseous and
began to vomit again and again. Next the horse urinated in great quantity,
ruining the lovely red carpet. The whole room stunk to high heaven. Skinflint
realized that he had been cheated, and in a fit of rage, he killed the horse.
The following morning,
first thing, he sent some of his hired thugs to track down Bigmouth. But the
peasants had already hidden him away. Skinflint's men searched for him high and
low but always came back empty handed, to his fury and exasperation. There was
nothing he could do except send out spies and wait.
In the twinkling of an
eye, it was winter. One day Bigmouth failed to hide properly and was caught by
one of Skinflint's henchmen. When he came face to face with his foe, Skinflint
gnashed his teeth with rage and without saying a word, had Bigmouth locked up
in his mill. He had him stripped of all his padded clothes and left him with
nothing but a cotton shirt, hoping to freeze him to death. It was the very
coldest season of the year. Outside, snow was falling and a bitter wind was
blowing. Bigmouth sat huddled up in a corner, trembling with cold. As the cold
was becoming unbearable, an idea suddenly occurred to him. He stood up at once,
heaved a millstone up off the ground and began walking back and forth with it
in his arms. He soon warmed up and started sweating. He passed the entire night
in this way, walking around with the millstone and occasionally stopping for a
rest.
Early next morning
Skinflint thought Bigmouth must surely be dead. But when he unlocked the mill
door, to his great surprise, he found Bigmouth squatting there in a halo of
steam, his whole body in a muck of sweat. Bigmouth stood up at once and begged
him, "Master, take pity on me! Quick, lend me a fan! Or I shall die of
heat!"
"How come you are so
hot?" asked the dumbfounded Skinflint.
"This shirt of mine
is a priceless heirloom," Bigmouth explained. "It's called the Fire
Dragon Shirt. The colder the weather, the greater the heat it gives off."
"When did you get
hold of it?"
"Originally it was
the pelt cast off by the Lord Fire Dragon. Then the Queen of the Western Heaven
wove it into a shirt. Later on it somehow fell into the possession of my
ancestors and became a family heirloom. It has been passed down from generation
to generation until finally it came into my hands."
Seeing how unbearably hot
he was, Skinflint swallowed the whole story. He was now set on getting hold of
this Fire Dragon Shirt and had completely forgotten the episode of the gold
colt. He insisted on bartering his fox-fur gown for the shirt. Bigmouth
absolutely refused at first, but when Skinflint added fifty taels of silver to
the price, he said with a sigh, "Alas, what a worthless son am I, to have
thus lost my family's treasured heirloom!"
Having said this, he took
off his shirt and put on Skinflint's fox-fur gown. Then he pocketed the fifty
taels of silver and strode away.
Skinflint's joy knew no
bounds. Several days later his father-in-law's birthday came round. In order to
show off his new acquisition, he went to convey his birthday greetings wearing
nothing but the Fire Dragon Shirt. In the middle of the journey, a fierce wind
came up and it began to snow. Skinflint felt unbearably cold. The place was far
from village or inn, and there was no shelter of any sort to be found. He
glanced over his shoulder and saw a tree by the roadside, half of which had
burnt away in a fire. It was hollow in the middle and the space was wide enough
for a person to stand up in. Skinflint hurried over and hid inside. Shortly
afterwards his whole body became numb with cold, and soon he died.
Several days later the
family found his body. They knew that he had been cheated again by Bigmouth,
and sent men to seize him.
"My precious shirt
burns whenever it comes into contact with kindling, grass or timber,"
explained Bigmouth. "The master must have been burned to death in this
way. I am not to blame. I never told him to hide inside a tree. If you look,
you will see that half of the tree has been burnt away."
When the family examined
the tree and saw that it was indeed as Bigmouth had described, they had no
choice but to set him free.
- Source: Favourite Folktales of China, translated by John Minford (Beijing: New World Press, 1983), pp. 39-48. No copyright notice.
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