Geng Shiba1 of Xincheng2 fell gravely ill and knew he would not get up again. He said to his wife, “We will be parted for ever any day now. After I die, whether you stay a widow3 or remarry is up to you. Tell me what you mean to do.” His wife said nothing. Geng pressed her. “Staying a widow is good, of course,” he said, “but remarrying is only natural too. Say it plainly — what harm can it do? I am about to leave you. If you stay, my heart will be at ease; if you remarry, my thoughts of you end there.” At last his wife said miserably, “We haven’t so much as a sack of grain in the house. Even with you alive we haven’t enough. How could I stay a widow?” When Geng heard this he seized her arm and said bitterly, “How heartless!” With that he died. His hand gripped and would not open. His wife wailed. The household came running, and two of them had to pry at his fingers with all their strength before the hand came open.

Geng did not know he was dead. He went out of the gate and saw a dozen or so small carts, ten people to a cart, with names written on square sheets of paper pasted to them. The driver saw Geng and hurried him aboard. Geng saw there were already nine people in the cart; with him it made ten. He looked at the sheet pasted on it: his own name came last. The carts went creaking along with a din that shook his ears, and he had no idea where they were going. Before long they came to a place, and he heard someone say, “This is the Land of Homesickness.” The name made him uneasy. Then he heard the drivers talking among themselves: “Three to be cut down today.” Geng took fright again. Listening closely, he found that everything they said was about the world of the dead. Then he understood. “Have I not become a ghost?” he said to himself. At once his thoughts turned to home. There was nothing left there to worry over, except that his mother was very old, and once his wife remarried there would be no one to look after her. At the thought, his tears ran before he knew it. After a while he saw a terrace several fathoms high, crowded with people. Men with sacks over their heads5 and fetters on their feet were going up and coming down, sobbing. He heard someone call it the Terrace for Gazing Homeward4. When the carts reached it, everyone stepped down over the shafts and scrambled to climb up. The drivers whipped some and held others back; only Geng they urged to climb. He went up several dozen steps before he reached the top. He lifted his head and looked: there were his own gate and courtyard, as plain as if they were before his eyes. But the inner rooms were dim, as though wrapped in smoke and mist. He was overcome with grief. He looked round. A man in a short jacket was standing at his shoulder, and asked his name. Geng told him. The man said he was a craftsman from the Eastern Sea. Seeing Geng in tears, he asked, “What is it that weighs on your heart?” Geng told him that too. The craftsman proposed that they jump off the terrace together and escape. Geng was afraid the underworld would come after them, but the craftsman insisted it would do no harm. Geng worried too that the terrace was high and he would fall; the craftsman only told him to follow. He leapt first, and Geng did follow. They reached the ground quite unhurt. To their joy, no one had noticed. The cart Geng had ridden in was still at the foot of the terrace. The two of them ran hard. After a few paces Geng suddenly remembered that his name was pasted on the cart, and feared they would hunt him down by it. So he turned back to the cart, wet his finger with spit and rubbed out his name, and only then ran on again, mouth gaping, panting, not daring to stop for a moment. Soon he passed through the gate of his village, and the craftsman saw him to his room. Suddenly he saw his own corpse — and woke, and came back to life.

He felt drained and parched, and shouted for water at once. The household was terrified. They gave him water, and he drank more than ten pecks of it. Then he sat bolt upright and went through the motions of bowing; after that he went out of the gate, saluted with clasped hands as if thanking someone, and only then came back. Back inside, he lay stiff and did not stir. Because he had acted so strangely, the household suspected he was not truly alive; but as they watched him, little by little, they saw nothing else odd. Bit by bit they came near and questioned him, and then he told them the whole thing clearly from start to finish. “Why did you go out of the gate?” “To say goodbye to the craftsman.” “Why did you drink so much water?” “At first I was drinking for myself. After that it was the craftsman drinking.” They fed him broth, and in a few days he was well. From then on he despised his wife and never shared her pillow again, so it is said.