In my county1 there was a young scholar named Wang, the seventh of his generation, from an old family. From his youth he had longed to learn the Way, and hearing that Mount Lao2 was home to many immortals, he shouldered his book box and set off to travel there. Climbing one of its peaks, he came upon a Daoist temple, deep in seclusion. A Daoist sat on a rush cushion, his white hair hanging down to his collar, his look clear and vigorous. Wang bowed and spoke with him, and found his teaching profound and subtle, so he asked to become his disciple. “I am afraid,” said the Daoist, “that you are too pampered and lazy to bear hard work.” “I can bear it,” Wang answered. The Daoist had a great many disciples. At dusk they all gathered, and Wang joined them in bowing to the Master. And so he stayed on at the temple.

At first light the Daoist called Wang, gave him an axe and sent him off with the others to cut firewood. Wang respectfully did as he was told. After a month and more, his hands and feet were thick with calluses. He could not bear the hardship, and secretly he began to think of going home. One evening, coming back, he found two guests drinking with the Master. Night had already fallen, and still no lamp or candle had been lit. So the Master cut a piece of paper into a round like a mirror and stuck it on the wall. In a moment a bright moon shone on the wall, so clear that a single hair could be seen by it, and the disciples stood round the guests, waiting on them and running their errands. One guest said, “On so fine a night, such joy should be shared by all.” He took a pot of wine from the table, gave it to the disciples to share, and told them to drink until they were drunk. Wang thought, “There are seven or eight of us. How can one pot go round?” Each of them found a bowl or a cup, and they raced to drain theirs first, afraid the pot would run dry. Yet though they poured from it again and again, it never grew the least bit less. Wang marvelled at it. Presently one guest said, “You have favoured us with the light of the moon, yet we drink in silence. Why not call Chang’e3 to join us?” He threw a chopstick into the moon, and a beautiful woman came out of the light. At first she was less than a foot tall, but when she reached the ground she was as tall as anyone. With her slender waist and graceful neck, she danced the Rainbow Skirt4, light as a bird. Then she sang: “Lightly, lightly I dance — will you return? Or will you keep me shut away in the Palace of Vast Cold5?” Her voice was clear and high, as piercing as flute and pipes. When the song was done she whirled and rose, and leapt onto the table — and as they stared in astonishment, she was a chopstick again. The three men laughed aloud. Then a guest said, “Tonight has been the happiest of all, but I cannot hold any more wine. Will you see me off with a farewell cup in the Moon Palace?” The three of them moved their seats and went little by little into the moon. The disciples watched the three sitting and drinking in the moon, every hair of their beards and brows plain to see, like reflections in a mirror. After a while the moon began to dim. A disciple lit a candle and brought it in: the Daoist sat alone, and the guests had vanished. The dishes and fruit were still on the table, and the moon on the wall was only a circle of paper like a mirror. “Have you all had enough to drink?” the Daoist asked them. “We have,” they said. “Then you had better go to bed early. Don’t be late for the firewood.” The disciples said they would and withdrew.

Wang was secretly thrilled and full of longing, and his thoughts of going home were laid to rest. But after another month the hardship was more than he could stand, and still the Daoist had not taught him a single art. He could hold out no longer, and went to take his leave. “Your disciple came hundreds of li6 to study under an immortal master,” he said. “Even if I cannot learn the art of living forever, a little teaching of some kind would still comfort the heart that came here seeking it. Now two or three months have gone by, and all I do is cut firewood in the morning and come back at night. At home, your disciple never knew hardship like this.” The Daoist laughed. “I told you from the start that you could not bear hard work, and now it is plain. Tomorrow morning I shall send you on your way.”

“Your disciple has laboured here many days,” said Wang. “If you would teach me some small trick, Master, then I will not have come for nothing.” The Daoist asked what art he wanted. “I have often seen that wherever you walk, Master, walls cannot stop you,” said Wang. “If I could just learn that, it would be enough.” The Daoist laughed and agreed. He taught him a spell and had him recite it himself. When Wang had finished, the Daoist called out, “Go in!” Wang stood facing the wall and did not dare. “Try going in,” the Daoist said again. So Wang walked at it unhurriedly, and when he reached the wall it stopped him. “Duck your head and go in fast,” said the Daoist. “Don’t hang back.” So Wang stepped back a few paces from the wall and ran at it — and when he reached it, it was as if nothing were there. He looked back, and he was outside the wall. Overjoyed, he went back in to thank the Daoist. “When you get home,” the Daoist said, “you must keep yourself pure, or it will not work.” Then he gave him money for the road and sent him home.

Back home, he boasted that he had met an immortal and that even the thickest wall could not stop him. His wife did not believe him. So Wang did as he had done before: he stood a few feet from the wall and ran at it. His head struck the hard wall, and down he went. His wife helped him up and looked: on his forehead a lump had swelled up like a big egg. His wife laughed at him. Ashamed and furious, Wang could only curse the old Daoist for a scoundrel.

The Historian of the Strange7 says: No one hears this story without laughing aloud. Yet people do not know how many Scholar Wangs there are in the world. Here is some boor who loves what poisons him and dreads the medicine that would cure him. And so there come those who would lick his boils and suck his piles8, offering him the arts of flaunting power and doing violence to suit his taste, and they deceive him: “Go forth with this art and you can ride roughshod over anyone, and nothing will stand in your way.” The first time he tries it, it never fails to work a little, and so he decides that the whole wide world can be walked through like this. He will not stop until he runs into a hard wall and falls flat on his face.