Lion and Dragon in Northern China

by Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston

Photo by Ah Fong, Weihaiwei.
THE CITY-GOD OF WEIHAIWEI (see p. [368]).

Soon afterwards he fell asleep. He slumbered long and deeply, and in the middle of the night he suddenly woke up and to his horror found himself bound hand and foot to one of the rafters of the roof, and there unseen hands proceeded to subject him to an unmerciful beating. The more he howled the faster and heavier came the blows. When he had suffered excruciating pain for what seemed to him a long time, the thongs that bound him were mysteriously loosened by ghostly fingers and he was lowered to the floor. Then the flogging began again, and the wretched Chao was driven screaming out of the temple precincts. Outside the gates he fell unconscious to the ground. When he came to himself he was hardly able to move; his body was still bruised and scarred, and when he tried to drag one leg after the other he writhed in agony. After many weary days the pains left him, but his contempt for alien gods was a thing of the past: he had become a grave and religious man. Before leaving the city on his return journey he took care to prove his remorse by presenting the outraged deity with a beautiful paper horse, which was of course despatched to the spirit-world through the usual agency of fire.

There is a quainter and more touching story told of the city-god of the neighbouring district-city of Jung-ch'êng. The Chinese, as we have seen,[350] regard three days in the year as specially consecrated to the spirits of the dead, just as there are three special holidays for the living. On each of the spirit-festivals the Ch'êng Huang is expected to hold a formal inspection of his city. His image is accordingly brought out of the dingy temple in which it usually reposes, placed in an official chair, and carried in a noisy and not very solemn procession through the principal streets of the town. The story goes that during one of these periodical excursions a young girl, a member of a well-known local family, was watching the procession with the keenest interest. As the god's palanquin passed the spot where she was standing, she saw the image—or believed she saw it—deliberately turn its face in her direction and smile at her with a look of friendly interest. Full of excitement the girl went home and poured out her tale in the ear of her mother. The good lady treated the story as a kind of joke and laughed gaily at her daughter's fancy. "It is clear," she said, "that Ch'êng Huang Lao-yeh wants you for his wife: so off you go to him."

A few days passed by and the girl became seriously ill. A doctor was called in, but all he did was to look wise, give her a charm to hang over her door, and make her swallow some disagreeable medicine. In less than a month after the meeting with the city-god the girl was dead. During the night following her death her mother had a strange dream. She was visited by the spirit of her dead daughter, who told her that she was now well and happy, for she had become the bride of the Ch'êng Huang. Needless to say the dream soon became the common talk of the neighbours, through whom it reached the ears of the district-magistrate. After evidence had been given and duly corroborated it was officially decided that the Ch'êng Huang's will had manifested itself in an unmistakable manner and that to thwart it would bring certain disaster on the city. The girl's body was therefore buried with much pomp and ceremony within the temple grounds, her image, robed in real silks, was installed in the central pavilion beside that of the god himself, and she received formal recognition as the Ch'êng Huang's consort.

As time went on the dead girl began to acquire some local fame as a healer of various diseases, and persons who believed she had cured their ailments took to buying little votive offerings such as tiny pairs of shoes, hair-combs, ear-rings, and other trinkets such as Chinese ladies love. These were all stored up in the temple, where many of them may still be seen. The citizens of Jung-ch'êng who tell the story to strangers and fear it will not be believed are in the habit of mentioning a prosaic little fact which, they think, must banish all doubt. Every morning, they say, a basin of clean water is taken by the priest into the inner room which is supposed to serve as the sleeping-chamber of the Ch'êng Huang and his wife. Having put the basin on its stand the priest discreetly withdraws. In half an hour he returns and takes the basin away: and lo! the water is clean no longer. This realistic touch is rather characteristic of Chinese tales of wonder. Whatever the real origin of the legend may be there is no doubt that the city-god of Jung-ch'êng does share the honours of local worship with a female spirit whose image rests beside his own; and if any one questions whether she was ever a living human being he may ask for an introduction to the descendants of the very family to which she belonged,—for their name is Ts'ai and their home is in one of the city suburbs, where they flourish to this day.[351]

Just as every town has its Ch'êng Huang Lao-yeh, so every village has its T'u Ti Lao-yeh or Old Father T'u Ti. He is of course inferior in rank to a Ch'êng Huang, and instead of possessing an ornate temple and being represented by a full-sized robed and bearded image he has no better resting-place, as a rule, than a little stone shrine three or four feet high. In the case of the Weihaiwei villages this shrine is generally situated on the roadside close by the village to which it belongs. The ordinary villager's ceremonial visits to the local T'u Ti miao or temple of the village-god are not very frequent. If he or any member of his family is sick he will beseech the T'u Ti to grant a restoration to health, and on such occasions, or after a cure has been effected, he will very often hang little flags of scarlet cloth—they are often mere rags—on a stick or pole in front of the shrine. The popular T'u Ti of a large village sometimes possesses a dozen of these simple offerings at one time. The death of a villager must be formally announced to the T'u Ti, whose duty it is to act as a kind of guide to the dead man when he finds himself for the first time in the bewildering world of ghosts. It is a common sight and a somewhat pathetic one to see a long row of wailing mourners, clad in loose and unhemmed sackcloth and with hair dishevelled, wending their way along the village street in the direction of the shrine of the T'u Ti to report the death of a relative or fellow-villager. The T'u Ti is, in fact, a kind of registrar of deaths: the unseen record kept by him in the underworld and the family record kept by the people in their homes or in their ancestral temples, are sufficient to satisfy all Chinese requirements in the matter of death-registration.[352] Births are not reported to the T'u Ti, who, being concerned chiefly with the world of spirits, is not supposed to take any special interest in the multiplication of living men. It is to the ancestors that a child's birth (if the child be a boy) is naturally supposed to bring joy and consolation.

SHRINE TO THE GOD OF LITERATURE (see p. [361]).