The daughter of Prefect Zhang of Changde was betrothed to a son of the Zhou family; at seventeen she died of consumption. Zhou separately contracted a girl of the Wang family, also seventeen; the match was barely made, not yet the wedding day, when the Wang girl suddenly fell into a fit and slapped her own face, saying: “I am Miss Zhang the Fourth. Who are you, to dare steal my bridegroom?”
The Zhou boy heard and told the prefect. The prefect’s lady, who kept a strict house, flew into a rage on hearing it, and hung the dead girl’s portrait and scolded it: “You were betrothed to young Zhou but never wed; you died, and it is the common way of rites that he marry again — why go and harm the Wang girl, so shameless as this!” Having scolded, she broke a peach branch and whipped the portrait. Before many blows, young Zhou came running from outside the gate to beg pardon; asked why, he said: “The Wang girl says Miss Zhang the Fourth cried out in pain and went, and begs someone to plead for her with her mother — so the bridegroom came specially.” And the Wang girl was indeed cured.
Xie the old man of Mapo Lane in Hangzhou made his living selling fish and had two daughters, both pretty. A military licentiate Li saw them and was pleased. Li was himself handsome; earlier a cousin Wang had admired him and sent a go-between, but Li refused Wang and wedded into the Xie family; Wang died of consumption. Less than a month after the Xie girl married, she suddenly let down her hair and raved, crying “I am Wang! You a mere fishwife’s daughter, how dare you take my licentiate?” She took the scissors from the table and stabbed herself in the heart, saying “I take your honey-orange.”
Xie and his wife went to the licentiate’s house, burned paper money and performed a fasting rite on their knees to beg, but could not save her. Asked what a “honey-orange” was, she said: “Your daughter’s heart and liver.” Before long the girl died. The licentiate came again to ask for her younger sister; Xie, wary, refused. The sister admired his looks and said: “I fear no ghost; if it comes I shall wave my knife and kill it, to avenge my sister.” Xie had no choice and married her to him after all. After the wedding the ghost was silent indeed, and bore the licentiate a son before she was widowed.
