Author: Wu Ching-tzu, translated by Yang Xianyi

About: Wu Ching-tzu's legendary farce of Confucian values and the struggle to achieve in early Chinese society. A daring work that got its author into not a little bit of trouble back in the 18th Century.

Illustrated with 20 line-drawings.

Excerpt:

While they were sipping tea, another maid announced, “The new wife asks permission to pay her respects.”

“We won't disturb her,” the Wang brothers responded politely. Then they sat down for a chat and asked after their sister's illness, urging her, since she was so weak, to take more cordials. While they were talking, a feast was laid in the front hall and they were invited to the table.

In the course of conversation Senior Licentiate Yen's name came up. Wang Jen said to Wang Teh with a laugh, “I can't understand, brother, how anyone who writes so badly ever passed the examination and became a stipendiary.”

“That was thirty years ago,” Wang Teh answered. “In those days the examiners were all censors—what did they know about compositions?”

“He's been growing more and more peculiar,” said Wang Jen. “Since we are related, we invite him to several feasts each year, but he never offers us so much as a cup of wine. It was only the year before last, when he became a senior licentiate and put up a flagstaff, ¹ that he invited me to a feast.”

“I did not go,” said Wang Teh with a frown. “He made that senior licentiate rank a pretext to extract presents from everybody. County runners—even village heads—all had to fork out. He pocketed more than two hundred strings of cash altogether. But he never paid his cook, nor the butcher—even now he still owes them money. Every month or so they make a scene in his house. It's shocking.”

“I am really ashamed of him,” said Yen Ta-yu. “Though I have a little land, I don't mind telling you, our family of four usually feel it would be extravagant to buy pork. When my son is hungry, we just buy four cash worth of cooked meat for him. But although my brother has no land and so many mouths to feed, every other day he buys about five catties of pork and insists on having it cooked to a turn. Then they finish it all in one meal, and in the evening he gets fish on credit again. We inherited the same amount of land, but he has just eaten up his property; and now he sneaks out the family's ebony chairs through the back door to exchange for pork dumplings. What can I do about it?”

The Wang brothers burst out laughing, then said, “We've been so busy talking about that fool, we've forgotten to drink. Let's have the dice. Whoever wins first place among the palace scholars shall drink a cup.” Wang Teh and Wang Jen became palace scholars in turn, and drank a dozen cups apiece. Strangely enough, the dice seemed to know human affairs; because Yen Ta-yu did not become a palace scholar even once. Wang Jen and Wang Teh clapped their hands and roared with laughter, drinking until after midnight when they were carried home.