Shuimang is a poisonous plant. It grows as a creeper, like kudzu; its flowers are purple, like those of the hyacinth bean. Whoever eats it by mistake dies at once and becomes a shuimang ghost. Folk belief has it that such a ghost cannot pass on to rebirth1 until someone else is poisoned and dies in its place. That is why, they say, these ghosts are especially many along the Taohua River in Chu2.

In Chu, people born in the same year call each other “same-year3”. They send in their visiting cards and call on one another, addressing each other as “elder year-brother” and “younger year-brother”, and their sons and nephews call them “year-uncle”. Such is the custom. A scholar named Zhu was on his way to visit one of his year-mates, and on the road he grew parched and longed for a drink. Presently he saw an old woman by the roadside who had put up an awning and was giving out drinks, and he hurried over. She welcomed him in under the awning and served him most attentively. But when he sniffed the drink it had a strange smell, not like tea. He set it down untouched, rose and went out. The old woman hurried to stop him and called out, “Sanniang4, bring a cup of good tea!” In a moment a girl came out from behind the awning, holding the tea in both hands. She was about fourteen or fifteen and dazzlingly beautiful; the rings on her fingers and the bracelets on her arms shone so bright they gave back reflections. Zhu took the cup, and his heart went out to her. He sniffed the tea: its fragrance was strong beyond compare. He drank it down and asked for more. Watching till the old woman had gone out, he playfully caught the girl’s slender wrist and slipped a ring off her finger. She blushed and smiled faintly, and Zhu was all the more bewitched. He asked a little about her family. “Come back in the evening,” she said, “and I will still be here.” Zhu begged a pinch of the tea leaves and went off with them and the ring hidden on him. By the time he reached his year-mate’s house he felt sick in his chest. Suspecting the tea, he told his friend what had happened. The friend was aghast. “You are done for! That was a shuimang ghost. My late father died of it. There is no saving you. What can be done?” Zhu was terrified. He took out the tea leaves to look, and they were indeed shuimang. He also brought out the ring and described the girl. The friend thought for a while. “That must be Kou Sanniang.” The name matched exactly. “How did you know?” asked Zhu. “She was the daughter of the Kous, a rich family in the South Village, long famous for her beauty. A few years ago she ate shuimang by mistake and died. It must be she who has bewitched you.” Someone said that if a person bewitched by a ghost knows its family and name, and can get its old trousers to boil and drink, he can be cured. The friend hurried to the Kous, told them the truth, and knelt long before them, pleading. But because Zhu was to die in their daughter’s place, they held back and would not give them. He came back furious and told Zhu. Zhu ground his teeth in hatred. “When I am dead, I will never let that girl of theirs be reborn!” The friend had him carried home, but he died just short of his own gate. His mother wailed and wept, and buried him. He left a son just a year old. His wife could not keep the widow’s vow of the Cypress Boat5; after half a year she remarried and left. The mother kept the orphan and nursed him herself, worn out beyond bearing, weeping morning and night. One day, as she sat crying in her room with the child in her arms, Zhu suddenly walked in without a sound. His mother was terrified. Wiping away her tears, she asked what this meant. “Down below I heard you weeping, Mother,” he said, “and it grieved me to the heart, so I have come to wait on you morning and evening. Though I am dead, I have a wife now. She has come with me to share your work. Don’t grieve, Mother.” “Who is your wife?” she asked. “The Kous sat by and let me die, and I hated them for it. After I died I wanted to find Sanniang, but I didn’t know where she was. Lately I met a year-uncle of mine, and he showed me the way. When I got there, Sanniang had already been reborn into the family of Vice Minister Ren6. I rode after her, seized her by force and brought her back. Now she is my wife; we get on well, and she is not unhappy at all.” After a while a young woman came in from outside, richly dressed and lovely, and bowed to the ground before the mother. “This is Kou Sanniang,” said Zhu. She was not a living person, but seeing her, the mother felt somewhat comforted. Zhu set Sanniang to the housework at once. She was not at all used to it, but she was so willing and obedient that it was touching. From then on they lived in his old room, and stayed. Sanniang asked the mother to let her family know. Zhu would rather they were not told, but the mother went along with the girl’s wish and in the end told them. Old Mr. and Mrs. Kou were astonished at the news and came in haste by carriage. They looked, and it was indeed Sanniang. They faced her and wept aloud, and she coaxed them to stop. Mrs. Kou saw how very poor Zhu’s household was, and it grieved her deeply. “I am a ghost now,” said Sanniang. “Why should I mind being poor? Zhu and his mother are so warm and kind to me; I am quite content here.” They asked, “Who was the old woman with the tea?” “Her name was Ni,” she said. “She was ashamed that she could not lure travellers on her own, so she begged me to help her. She has now been reborn into the family of a drink-seller in the prefectural city.” Then she turned to Zhu. “You are their son-in-law now, and you have not bowed to my parents. How do you think that makes me feel?” So Zhu threw himself down and bowed to them. Sanniang went into the kitchen, did the cooking in the mother’s place and served her parents. Mrs. Kou’s heart ached to watch her. As soon as they were home they sent two maids to wait on her, with a hundred catties of silver and several dozen bolts of cloth and silk; gifts of wine and meat came often after that, and Zhu’s mother grew modestly well off. The Kous often had Sanniang home to visit, too. After a few days she would say, “There is no one at home to do the work. You had better send me back soon.” If they kept her on purpose, she would simply drift home on her own. Old Mr. Kou built Zhu a large house and furnished it with everything. But Zhu never once went to his father-in-law’s house.

One day a man in the village who had been poisoned by shuimang died and came back to life, and everyone talked of it as a marvel. “It was I who brought him back,” said Zhu. “He had been done in by Li Jiu, and I drove the ghost off for him.” “Why don’t you take someone to replace yourself?” asked his mother. “I hate their kind,” he said. “I mean to drive every one of them away. Why would I stoop to that? Besides, serving you is my greatest joy, Mother. I have no wish to be reborn.” After that, people poisoned by the plant would often lay out a rich feast and pray in his courtyard, and it always worked.

More than ten years went by, and the mother died. Zhu and his wife mourned till they wasted with grief, but they did not receive the mourners; they only had their son put on hemp mourning, beat his breast and stamp7, and taught him the rites. Two years and more after the burial, they found the son a wife: the granddaughter of Vice Minister Ren. Some time before, a concubine of Lord Ren’s had borne him a daughter, who died at a few months old. Later, hearing the strange story of Zhu, he drove to his house and settled with him that they were father-in-law and son-in-law. Now he gave his granddaughter to Zhu’s son as wife, and the two families visited constantly. One day Zhu said to his son, “For my service to the world of men, the Lord on High has appointed me Dragon-Herding Lord of the Four Rivers8. I go now.” In a moment four horses appeared in the courtyard, drawing a carriage with yellow curtains; the horses’ legs were all covered in scales. Zhu and his wife came out in full dress and climbed into the carriage together. Their son and his wife bowed, weeping, and in the blink of an eye they were gone. That same day the Kous saw their daughter come. She bowed farewell to her parents and said what Zhu had said. Her mother wept and tried to keep her. “Zhu has gone on ahead,” said Sanniang. She went out of the door and was never seen again.

Their son, whose name was E, with the courtesy name Lichen9, asked old Mr. Kou for Sanniang’s remains and buried them with Zhu’s.