Li Bao, a name of my district and a successful jinshi candidate, was magistrate of Huaining in Gansu and was transferred to be professor at the Anqing prefectural school, and went to his post alone. The previous incumbent’s family had not returned, so he lodged for the time being under the colonnade of the Hall of the Ten Kings.
One evening he heard a great clamour of voices in the hall. Li got up and peeped, and saw lamps and candles brilliant, with clerks waiting in two rows; a purple-faced, red-bearded man in a high cap and belt stood holding a register in the eastern corner. Presently the king came out in his crown, and they saluted in order.
The king said: “Thirty years without auditing the ghost registers, and I fear abuses have accumulated. Now they must be examined in detail, with no concealment.” The purple-faced, red-bearded man at once held up the register and presented it.
Then those with cangues and chains came in in single file from the eastern colonnade. When the names were called they swaggered out by the western colonnade.
Then the register of soul-snatching was audited, and the names were called three or four times, and not one answered.
The king said: “Eighty-seven thousand death-summoning ghosts — why is not one of them here?”
The purple-faced, red-bearded man came forward and said: “By order of the Wheel-Turning King of the rear hall, the men have been made doctors and the women prostitutes, and all reborn into the world of the living.”
The king said sadly: “Snatching souls and capturing spirits has its fixed limit in the underworld. If we let that sort spread poison through the world, I fear there will be no end to those who arrive.”
Then the register of hungry ghosts was audited, and a clerk came forward and knelt and reported: “The former guard of the Ghost Gate was careless in inspection, and the hungry ghosts took their chance to escape. Now they are all living in the world of the living.”
The king asked: “What do they do there?”
He said: “More than half are county magistrates.”
The king said: “That sort buried their heads in hell and starved for a thousand years. Now that they have their way, they will certainly eat like wolves and tigers, and the living will have no survivors.”
The clerk said: “May we have them taken back?”
The king thought a long while and said: “That too is a great deal of trouble. Those who can endure hunger — let them be. But if their starving mouths open, the heavy cases have their names struck off the salary register and their descendants put into the beggars’ field; the light cases are demoted to cold offices and made to freeze and starve all their lives, to restore their original form.”
Li watched through a crack and could not help laughing aloud. In a moment the lamps and candles all went out and the hall was silent.
Later he met me at a travellers’ lodge in Qinhuai and told me the whole thing, and asked me to write it down.
The Duo comment: “I heard that when Li was at Huaining he fought bandits in armour and achieved some distinction. His transfer to a school mastership was also the meaning of withdrawing at the height of success. He once wrote a couplet to mock him: ‘Scholars with learning are all of our sort; vulgar officials who can be cultivated reach this post.’ One can imagine the man. This is probably his joking talk.”
