“Next day Wang strolled into the garden, which was of moderate size, with a well-kept lawn and plenty of trees and flowers. There was also an arbour consisting of three posts with a thatched roof, quite shut in on all sides by the luxuriant vegetation. Pushing his way among the flowers, Wang heard a noise from one of the trees, and looking up saw Ying-ning, who at once burst out laughing and nearly fell down. ‘Don’t! don’t!’ cried Wang, ‘you’ll fall!’ Then Ying-ning came down, giggling all the time, until, when she was near the ground, she missed her hold and tumbled down with a run. This stopped her merriment, and Wang picked her up, gently squeezing her hand as he did so. Ying-ning began laughing again, and was obliged to lean against a tree for support, it being some time before she was able to stop. Wang waited till she had finished, and then drew the flower out of his sleeve and handed it to her. ‘It’s dead,’ said she; ‘why do you keep it?’ ‘You dropped it, cousin, at the Feast of Lanterns,’ replied Wang, ‘and so I kept it.’ She then asked him what was his object in keeping it, to which he answered, ‘To show my love, and that I have not forgotten you. Since that day when we met I have been very ill from thinking so much of you, and am quite changed from what I was. But now that it is my unexpected good fortune to meet you, I pray you have pity on me.’ ‘You needn’t make such a fuss about a trifle,’ replied she, ‘and with your own relatives too. I’ll give orders to supply you with a whole basketful of flowers when you go away.’ Wang told her she did not understand, and when she asked what it was she didn’t understand, he said, ‘I didn’t care for the flower itself; it was the person who picked the flower.’ ‘Of course,’ answered she, ‘everybody cares for their relations; you needn’t have told me that.’ ‘I wasn’t talking about ordinary relations,’ said Wang, ‘but about husbands and wives.’ ‘What’s the difference?’ asked Ying-ning. ‘Why,’ replied Wang, ‘husband and wife are always together.’ ‘Just what I shouldn’t like,’ cried she, ‘to be always with anybody.’”
The pair were ultimately united, and lived happily ever afterwards, in spite of the fact that the young lady subsequently confessed that she was the daughter of a fox, and exhibited supernatural powers. On one occasion these powers stood her in good stead. Being very fond of flowers, she went so far as to pick from a neighbour’s tree.
“One day the owner saw her, and gazed at her some time in rapt astonishment; however, she didn’t move, deigning only to laugh. The gentleman was much smitten with her; and when she smilingly descended the wall on her own side, pointing all the time with her finger to a spot hard by, he thought she was making an assignation. So he presented himself at nightfall at the same place, and sure enough Ying-ning was there. Seizing her hand to tell his passion, he found that he was grasping only a log of wood which stood against the wall; and the next thing he knew was that a scorpion had stung him violently on the finger. There was an end of his romance, except that he died of the wound during the night.”
In one of the stories a visitor at a temple is much struck by a fresco painting containing the picture of a lovely girl picking flowers, and stands in rapt admiration before it. Then he feels himself borne gently into the painted wall, à la “Alice through the Looking-glass,” and in the region beyond plays a part in a domestic drama, finally marrying the heroine of the picture. But the presence of a mortal being suspected by “a man in golden armour with a face as black as jet,” he was glad to make his way back again; and when he rejoined a friend who had been waiting for him, they noticed that the girl in the picture now wore her hair done up as a married woman.
There is a Rip van Winkle story, with the pathetic return of the hero to find, as the Chinese poet says—
“City and suburb as of old,
But hearts that loved us long since cold.”
There is a sea-serpent story, and a story of a big bird or rukh; also a story about a Jonah, who, in obedience to an order flashed by lightning on the sky when their junk was about to be swamped in a storm, was transferred by his fellow-passengers to a small boat and cut adrift. So soon as the unfortunate victim had collected his senses and could look about him, he found that the junk had capsized and that every soul had been drowned.
The following is an extract from a story in which a young student named Liu falls in love with a girl named Fêng-hsien, who was the daughter of a fox, and therefore possessed of the miraculous powers which the Chinese associate with that animal:—