13

Mr. Zhao Spoils His Son and Dies as a Result

Magistrate Zhang Sentences an Unfilial Son to Death in an Ironclad Case

As the poem says,

The bond between father and son is eternal;

Unfilial acts are never defensible.

Since adult crows regularly feed their mothers,

They should be taught to curse unfilial humans.

Our story makes the point that filial piety has a vital place in the fabric of human life. Average parents go through goodness only knows how many mental and physical tribulations from the earliest three years of nursing to the child’s coming of age. They worry day and night that he may fall prey to all manner of illnesses. At all times, they expect him to be intelligent and make something of himself. There are no lengths to which they will not go in raising him with love and care. As The Book of Songs puts it,

My suffering parents gave their all in raising me;

Their kindness, vast as the sky, is more than I can repay.1

As far as repayment is concerned, even the paragons of filial devotion—including the one who prostrated himself on ice in order to use his body heat to thaw the ice and find fish with which to feed his starving mother, the one who wept in a bamboo grove because no bamboo shoots were to be had for his mother until a bamboo shoot grew, and the one who fanned his parents’ pillows in summer and warmed their bed in winter before they went to sleep—can hardly pay off one ten-thousandth of their indebtedness to their parents. What is worse, many live in the lap of luxury but leave their parents hungry and cold, treating them as strangers or, worse, as enemies. Even dogs and pigs are not capable of such violations of proper family relationships and heavenly principles.

Let me now tell a story about an unfilial son, a story that has no match in all of history. In the Zhengde reign period [1506–21], there lived in Songjiang [in present-day Shanghai] a rich man, Mr. Yan, and his wife. Still childless when they were in their thirties, they prayed to gods and the Buddha for a son. At all times of the day and night, wherever they were, the idea of having a son took full possession of their minds. One night, as she was drifting into sleep, Mrs. Yan heard a voice saying from midair, “The prayed-for son will find an ear missing. You who gain an heir will lose a few teeth.”

Mrs. Yan heard the words loud and clear. The next day, she repeated them to her husband, but they found the meaning of the two lines quite baffling.

Soon thereafter, Mrs. Yan began to experience changes in her appearance. Her breasts swelling and her belly protruding, she found that she was pregnant. After all the trials and tribulations of a full-term pregnancy, she gave birth to a baby boy with well-formed brows and bright eyes. Husband and wife were overwhelmed with joy. Their only wish, to the exclusion of everything else, was that he grow up well and healthy.

Time was on the wing. Three years flashed by. The boy turned out to be quick and clever. His parents satisfied his every whim and never said no to him. They bent over backward to find him anything he asked for. Even if he had wanted to have things that were out of this world such as the stars or reflections of the moon in the river, they would gladly have climbed to the sky to pick the stars or dived into the water to scoop up the moon. (MC: The way doting parents usually are.) Examples of their indulgence of the boy were too numerous to cite.

As the saying goes, “Apply the rod and you have a filial son; spare the rod and you get a rebel.” Thus spoiled by his parents, Yan Junior grew up to be a man with the high and mighty airs of a son of heaven. (MC: This is only to be expected.) With the riches of his parents, he cultivated friendships with some vicious, sly, and depraved yamen runners. (IC: Falling in with the wrong crowd.) Therefore, most people dared not get on the bad side of him but humored him at every turn. He had a passion for gambling and fell in with a group of expert gamblers who, with designs on his deep pockets, showered him with honeyed words and made much of him in order to wheedle money out of him. Believing that those people genuinely liked him and truly showed him every consideration, he gambled with abandon, losing gold and silver as if they were water without ever bothering his head with the figures. His father tried desperately to talk him out of gambling, but, as doting as ever, he limited his admonishment to only a few words and gave up the attempt when his son turned a deaf ear. However, the family wealth was not boundless, and the son’s excesses over the span of three years gradually drained it.

Having built his fortune by scrimping and saving, Mr. Yan Senior was distressed to see his pile of money dwindle. One day, when he was out on business, he passed a gambling house where a crowd was gathered at the door, making a clamor. Mr. Yan Senior walked up to them and, craning his neck, saw that the crowd was demanding payment of a gambling debt from his son. Ignoring the young man’s protests, they pulled and tugged at him. Mr. Yan Senior began to fear that they might hurt him. His heart aching, he parted the crowd and, shielding his son with his own body, announced, “I’ll pay you whatever he owes you. Please go away now and come to my humble house tomorrow to claim your money.” So saying, he angrily hauled his son home.

On reaching home, he closed the gate, grabbed the young man by the hair, hardened his heart, and made as if to hit his son, but the young man struggled free. Mr. Yan Senior ran after him and took firm hold of him, but the young man turned around and landed a fist on his father’s face. As stars danced before his eyes, the old man fell down unconscious. (MC: Doting parents, be warned!) The son panicked and felt obliged to help him up. As it turned out, two of the old man’s front teeth had been knocked out, and blood was streaming down to his chest.

Realizing that he was in trouble, the son showed a clean pair of heels and ran out of the house. On waking up a good while later, Mr. Yan Senior was consumed with rage. He thought, “I’ve spent my life pinching and saving, but this vile son of mine squandered my fortune and almost killed me. He’s worse than a beast! Why would I want to keep him!” He went straight to the prefectural yamen, where he wrote an accusation paper and submitted it to the prefect who happened to be holding a court session. With the two front teeth as evidence, Mr. Yan Senior charged his son with filial impiety. The prefect accepted the case before adjourning the court session, and the old man returned home.

Now, Mr. Yan Junior’s best friend, a certain Qiu San, worked in the prefectural yamen as a lictor. He was a most cunning and treacherous man. (MC: Serviceable at this time!) Noticing that the accusation paper had been accepted, he rushed out of the yamen, found Mr. Yan Junior, and told him about this development. In alarm, Yan asked Qiu San for a plan for getting him out of trouble, but Qiu San deliberately sounded hesitant, whereupon Yan said, “I have on me three taels of silver for a gambling game. Take it for now and use it to save my life.”

Again, Qiu San calculatedly fell silent and said a good while later, “It’s too late now. Let’s meet tomorrow morning in front of the yamen. I’ll have something to say to you.” Mr. Yan Junior agreed, and they parted ways.

The next morning, when they met in front of the yamen, Yan asked, “What wonderful plan do you have for saving me?”

Qiu San motioned him to a quiet spot, saying, “Come! Come! Let me have a word with you.”

Yan turned his head so that his ear was aligned with Qiu’s mouth. As he waited for Qiu to speak, he heard an appalling sound. With a loud cry, he covered his ear and said bitterly to Qiu San, “I begged you to save me. Why did you have to bite off my ear? (MC: That’s the wonderful plan!) I’m not going to let you off easy!”

With an icy smile, Qiu said, “What makes you think your ear is so precious and your old man’s teeth so worthless? (MC: Very funny.) Take it easy and listen to what I’m here to say. You just stick to the story I’m going to give you.” He went on with his instructions and said in conclusion, “That will surely get you off the hook.”

“Good idea!” exclaimed Yan. “In exchange for a little pain, I get to stay out of harm’s way.”

When the prefectural court session began, Mr. Yan Junior was brought into the presence of the prefect, who said, “What an unfilial son you are! Because of your addiction to gambling, you resented your father’s admonishment and knocked out his front teeth. What do you have to say for yourself ?”

Tearfully, Yan said, “With all due respect, Your Honor, how could this humble man dare talk and act in improper ways? The fact is, the other day I happened to witness a fight at the gambling house. I stopped to watch. It so happened that my father was also there. He suspected me of having taken part in the wager and dragged me home for a good thrashing. Unable to take it anymore, I raised my head. I shouldn’t have done that, but as I did, my father bit me savagely and chewed off my ear. At his age, his teeth are wobbly, and with that angry bite, two teeth fell out. (MC: Nice!) It wasn’t my doing. Please use your wise judgment, Your Honor.”

The prefect told him to approach the bench for an examination. Sure enough, one of the young man’s ears was mutilated, and what remained of that ear bore fresh tooth marks and dried blood. Believing the young man’s story, the prefect said with a slight smile, “It’s true. There’s no need for further questions. But watching a gambling fight does arouse suspicions of improper behavior. In addition, your father did lose two teeth after all. You’re to be given ten strokes of the rod and thrown out of the court. No further action need be taken.”

Delighted that he was released unhurt, the son pleaded with his parents after returning home, “I’m willing to mend my ways and take care of you. Since the government has already punished me, you can do whatever you want to me, Father!” (MC: There is still some hope for him.)

Mr. Yan Senior had gone to the prefectural yamen the day before in a moment of anger, but now that one day had elapsed, and especially after his son had been beaten at court and was now so conciliatory, his heart softened. After all, he and his wife loved their son to excess. Recalling what had happened in the past, he thought, “When he was first conceived, the mother heard this in her dream: ‘The prayed-for son will find an ear missing. You who gain an heir will lose a few teeth.’ And now I’ve lost two teeth, and he one ear. The prophecy has been borne out. This is all predestined. No more need be said.”

Henceforth, the son, true to his word, turned over a new leaf and served his parents with devotion. Later, he was blessed with a natural and peaceful death. This is a case of Heaven forgiving those who mend their ways.

My next story is about an unrepentant wayward son who received divine justice later in life.

In a certain county of a certain prefecture in a certain dynasty, there lived a man with the surname Zhao. Being his parents’ sixth child, he was called by all and sundry Zhao the Sixth. He had a spotless reputation and was laden with riches. He and his wife had only one child, a son, whom she had just weaned. The boy was the very breath of their lives and the darling of their hearts. Before his birth, they had already spent more money than they could count, offering incense and making pledges at one temple after another. Then, all too unexpectedly, the boy contracted smallpox at age three. Unable to sleep night after night, husband and wife went to every famous physician they could find and sought prescriptions everywhere, sparing no expense. Their only wish was that the child recover, for which they would even gladly offer their own lives. In fear and trepidation, they waited for his recovery, and when it did happen, they were more ecstatic than if they had come upon a precious luminous pearl in the darkness of the night.

They nursed the boy back to health, feeding him goodness knows how many doses of medicinal soup, wearing themselves out ministering to his needs and running up prodigious expenses. Solicitously, they took care of him, and, when he reached six or seven years of age, they engaged an experienced and renowned teacher for him. On a chosen day, they led their son to the teacher for a formal introduction. The boy was then given a school name: Zhao Cong. His education began with Child Prodigy Poems and Poetry from a Thousand Poets and later progressed to The Great Learning.2 Fearful that their son would have to work too hard and that his health might suffer under the teacher’s discipline, Mr. and Mrs. Yan called off the daily lessons before the teacher had gone through many lines. Well aware of his parents’ worries, Zhao Cong often feigned illness and shunned the classroom altogether. His parents dared not stop him. (MC: This is an intractable ailment afflicting legions of benighted parents.)

Judging from the look of things, the teacher thought, without saying anything out loud, “This is the kind of pernicious love that beasts have for their young. Regrets for such an upbringing will be too late.” But he remained a dispassionate observer and let his employers have their way.

After a few months, a matchmaker came with an offer from a family whose head, a Prefect Yin, had passed away. Embracing a marriage alliance with a family of higher status, Zhao the Sixth asked for the girl’s natal chart from the matchmaker, picked an auspicious date, and sent over lavish engagement gifts. Thereafter, every festive occasion called for an exchange of gifts between the two families, involving the Zhaos in great expense. (MC: This intractable ailment also afflicts rich people.)

Time sped by. The much-pampered Zhao Cong did not finish the required classics until he was fourteen. Still, the father rejoiced, believing his son was head and shoulders above others. At age fifteen or sixteen, Zhao Cong was supposed to start writing essays. By this time, Zhao the Sixth’s family fortune had shrunk by more than half. Wishing for his son’s success in life, he gladly went into debt and engaged a learned but expensive teacher for the boy. Tuition amounted to fifty taels of silver per year, and gifts on festive occasions and the provision of food and other amenities were taken for granted. Zhao Cong, with his love of a life of ease, stayed away from his studies nine days out of ten. The teacher was only too happy to be relieved from his duties while enjoying a handsome salary. In consequence, there was no lack of unaccomplished but shameless scholars who offered the Zhao family their services, although there were also proud and honest scholars who turned the Zhaos down. (MC: The latter are hard to come by.) One can thus easily tell the difference between the high-minded and the despicable.

Let me not encumber our story with idle comments but come to the preliminary-level civil service examination in the following year. Zhao the Sixth told his son, as unprepared as he was, to go and sit for the exam. At the same time, he pulled some strings and begged for favors, throwing more money down the drain. After the exam was over, he planned to hold the wedding ceremony for his son. But being a little strapped for cash at this time, he had to ask a middleman to draw up a loan contract for four hundred taels of silver. The middleman, Wang San, provided such services to Zhao on a regular basis and had brokered all of the several loan contracts that Zhao had entered into. This time, he obtained four hundred taels of silver from a Squire Liu and delivered the money to Zhao, who then bought gifts for the bride, presented them to the Yin family on a chosen day, and set a date for the wedding ceremony. Two months later, when the wedding day was drawing nearer, Zhao the Sixth found himself short of money for the procession to the Yin residence that would bring the bride to her new home. He saw no option but to scrape some money together on his own. He took a few articles of clothing and jewelry to the pawnshop and got forty taels of silver in exchange, but that amount proved insufficient. So he was obliged to go to Wang San again for another voucher, with which he borrowed sixty taels of silver from Squire Chu. Only then was the procession possible. After Mr. Yin Junior escorted his sister the bride to the Zhao residence, Zhao the Sixth was all humility and deference toward her. The feast lasted for five to seven days before the party broke up.

The young couple fell deeply in love and enjoyed conjugal bliss in a separate apartment next to Zhao Senior’s. Miss Yin had many positive attributes, but there was one drawback: She was puffed up with self-importance and considered her parents-in-law beneath her notice. She was also very miserly, looking on one penny as if it were worth a thousand strings of coins, and she incited her husband to vicious and ruthless behavior. Had she been a kinder person and exhorted him to virtue, the grim calamity that befell them later would not have happened.

Good wives always bring more weal than woe to their men;

Filial sons give peace of mind to their fathers.

But these events still lie ahead of us. To get on with our story: Yin-shi had brought with her a lavish dowry worth three thousand taels of silver, but she maintained tight control over the money. Even though Zhao the Sixth went out of his way to please his daughter-in-law, mortally afraid of getting on the wrong side of her, Zhao Cong and his wife still found him a nuisance in more ways than one. (MC: He is suffering consequences of his own making.)

Time sped past. Another three years went by. Old Mrs. Zhao’s ailment of excessive phlegm and internal heat confined her to bed, so she turned the management of the household over to her daughter-in-law. Yin-shi accepted the responsibilities. In the beginning, she did a good job serving her parents-in-law, but gradually, several months later, she stopped bringing them food or tea. Such negligence was more than they could bear. Sometimes, they forced themselves to speak up and plead for food and tea. On these occasions, Yin-shi would say, “What immense family wealth have you entrusted to me that gives you the right to keep demanding this and that? Why don’t you take it all back and run the household yourselves? I don’t want this thankless job, being pestered like this all day long!”

Zhao the Sixth swallowed the humiliation. What could he say in his defense when there was indeed little family fortune left to transfer to her? With a sigh, he told his wife about this on her sickbed. She had heard the commotion and witnessed her daughter-in-law’s coldness, but the family circumstances were not at all what they had been three years earlier. With debtors gathered at their door demanding payment, she and her husband had given most of their remaining articles of clothing and jewelry to pay for the interest on the loans. The few mu of remaining land also went for interest payments. Mrs. Zhao had been no stranger to the comforts of life, but now, in her reduced circumstances, she found herself subject to the icy hostility of her own daughter-in-law, not to mention outsiders. Is it any surprise that these thoughts depressed her? In her exasperation, her head swam, her vision turned blurry, and she began to refuse to eat or drink. Her son and daughter-in-law did not even bother to go to her bedside to see how she was or to offer her nourishing soup. With nothing but rice with salted and minced vegetables for all three meals of the day, how she suffered! About half a month later, she died in a violent fit of phlegmatic coughing.

Her son and daughter-in-law let out a few tearless wails and went away. Zhao the Sixth stomped his feet and thumped his chest as he wept. After he had his cry, he went to his son’s apartment and said to him, “Now that your mother has passed away, I have no money for a funeral. If you cherish your love for her, buy a good coffin, lay her body in it, and then choose a piece of land for burial in a few days. That will go to show your filial devotion.”

Zhao Cong said, “How do you expect me to have enough money for a coffin? And I’m not talking about high-quality timber with its high price. Even coffins made of thin, inferior splints of wood cost two or three taels of silver each. How can I afford it? Carpenter Li in the next village has a cheap coffin. Why don’t you go get it on credit for now? We’ll think of a way to pay for it tomorrow.”

His eyes brimming with tears, Zhao the Sixth dared not utter another word. In resignation, he went to see Carpenter Li.

Zhao Cong returned to his own apartment and said to Yin-shi, “The old man has no sense! He wants a nice coffin for Mother. I told him that even poor-quality coffins cost two or three taels of silver each, not to speak of nice ones. I told him to get a cheap one on credit from Carpenter Li and pay him tomorrow.”

Without missing a beat, Yin-shi asked, “And who’s going to pay Mr. Li, pray?”

“We are. Let’s spare ourselves a headache and pay something for the coffin, for better or for worse.”

Yin-shi flew into a rage. “Where did you get the money to buy a coffin for someone else? To be able to afford one for yourself would have been good enough! You can pay for it if you like, but I have no money. Your parents never did anything for me. Don’t you have better things to do than pester me with this? If we give in to him once, there will be a further ten times. What do you have to fear if we say no to him ten times out of ten?”

Zhao Cong was reduced to silence. When he found his tongue again, he said, “You’re right, wife. I’m not going to pay for it.”

Soon, two men hired by Zhao the Sixth carried a coffin home and laid Mrs. Zhao’s body in it. This was followed by the funeral and the libation of one cup of diluted wine.

The coffin remained in the house, but the son and the daughter-in-law neither kept vigil by its side nor prepared any food for the shrine of the departed. Every day, they offered nothing but the usual bowlfuls of salted and minced vegetables. At night, Zhao the Sixth kept vigil at the coffin, alone and forlorn. The distraught Zhao the Sixth burst into tears whenever his thoughts turned to the deplorable way things stood.

Fourteen days after Mrs. Zhao’s death, Carpenter Li came to demand payment for the coffin. Zhao the Sixth said, “Go ask my son for it.”

And so Carpenter Li went to see Zhao Cong and said to him, “Could you please pay for the coffin that your family bought from me on credit?”

Throwing him a withering look, Zhao Cong said with a snort of disgust, “Are you seeing a phantom? You’re not blind, are you? Who went to your house the other day to get the coffin on credit? You should talk to him instead of me!”

“It was your father who bought the coffin on credit, and he told me just a moment ago to talk to you.”

“Don’t listen to his nonsense! Shame on him! He does have the money for the coffin. How can he expect others to foot the bill? (MC: Like a bickering wedded couple.) Off you go now, before I get angry!” With his hands clasped behind his back, he returned to the interior part of the house.

On coming back to Mr. Zhao Senior, Carpenter Li repeated Zhao Cong’s words to him. The old man broke down in sobs. (MC: Too late.) Li offered him these words of comfort: “Mr. Zhao, don’t cry. If you don’t have silver, you can pay me in kind. Anything will do.”

And so, Zhao the Sixth went into his room, rummaged through his trunks and cases, and found three articles of winter clothing and a piece of silver jewelry, which he then offered to Craftsman Li.

Soon, the forty-nine days of mourning were up. Zhao the Sixth did indeed lack sense. The unpleasantness surrounding the purchase of the coffin should have taught him not to ask favors of his son under any circumstances. But now that the mourning period was over, that episode passed completely from his memory, and he said to his son, “I’d like to find a piece of burial land for your mother. The decision rests with you.”

Zhao Cong retorted, “Why should it be up to me? (MC: The son is of course infuriating, but the father is also a fool. Exactly the kind of father who deserves such a son.) I’m no feng shui master. What do I know about burial places? Even if I go around looking for a piece of land, would anybody give one to me free of charge? I propose cremation to the east of the village on a chosen day. That would be the best thing to do.”

Speech was beyond Zhao the Sixth. As tears fell from his eyes, his son stopped talking and took himself off. The old man thought, “She spent the better half of her life as the wife of a rich man. Little did she know that she would end up being denied even a burial place. Oh well, why plead with such a vile son! Let me go through the trunks again and see if there’s anything left to pawn that can pay for a piece of land and a burial ceremony.”

Again, he opened the trunks and went through the contents until he had picked two suits of clothes and a gold hairpin. Out of the six taels of silver he got from the pawnshop, he bought one-fifth of a mu of land with four taels and used the remaining two taels to engage four monks for a prayer service and a few carriers to carry the coffin to the burial ground. After everything was done, Zhao the Sixth returned home, quite pleased, and began to relax and take things as they came.

Before long, winter rolled around. Feeling cold, Zhao the Sixth bought one jin of silk floss on credit. With no money for repayment, he could not do otherwise than take out a piece of summer clothing and say to his son, “I’ve got a piece of clothing here. If you want it, you can buy it from me. If not, I’ll pawn it with you for a couple of maces of silver.”

Zhao Cong said, “Buying summer clothes in winter? This is just as they say, ‘Who will waste money on filling up the holes of a bamboo strainer?’ Won’t this be mine if it sits around long enough? Why would I want to buy it now? No, I’m not buying or accepting it as a pawn!”

“If that’s the way it’s to be, let’s drop the idea!” said Mr. Zhao Senior as he took back the piece of clothing.

When Zhao Cong told his wife about what had happened, she said, “This time, you’re the fool. Since you turned him down, he’ll surely take it to a pawnshop, and you’ll never see it again. You’d better take it from him and give him a few maces. It will be a good deal for you.”

Zhao Cong promised to do her bidding. He went to his father and said, “My wife wants to take a look at that piece of clothing. Maybe she’ll be able to pawn it.”

“All right, you can take it. If she pawns it, seven maces of silver will do.”

When Zhao Cong showed it to his wife, she said, “Give him four maces. Tell him he can take it or leave it. If he demands more, give it back to him.”

When Zhao Cong gave the four maces to his father, the latter gladly accepted the money, knowing all too well that he was in no position to haggle. Thereupon, Zhao Cong wrote a note, saying that if not redeemed in five months, the pawned item was to be his property. (MC: Wonderful.) He handed the note to his father and went off. On reading the note, Zhao the Sixth felt the blood rush into his face. Tearing that piece of paper into shreds, he gave a drawn-out sigh and said, “I must have sinned in a previous incarnation, hence this retribution from my own son. This is all a matter of destiny!” And so he went on bewailing his fate.

The next morning, when he was washing and doing his hair after he got out of bed, Wang San the middleman suddenly barged in. Zhao the Sixth gave a start, and his face was drained of all color. Truly,

Ask not the ups and downs in someone’s life;

Just read his face and you will know.

After saluting Zhao the Sixth, Wang San said, “Mr. Zhao, don’t think ill of me for disturbing you, but it’s about the sixty taels of silver you borrowed from Squire Chu. Even though you’ve paid interest every year, you’ve paid in kind and not always in the most forthright manner. This year, Squire Chu asks for settling the interest as well as the principal, but I don’t know what to say to him in response. Could you please bite your lip, do the math, and pay off everything? That will save us a lot of breath, and you’ll clear all outstanding debts.”

With a sigh, Zhao the Sixth said, “I ran up several large debts for my wayward son’s wedding, and with the interest growing year after year, I’ve run out of money. I was hoping to borrow from my son in order to pay back Squire Chu, but nothing will ever make him and his wife part with a penny. As for this old man, I don’t even have enough for my daily expenses. How am I going to get money to pay off Squire Chu? Mr. Wang, please help me out and put in a good word for me. If I can be granted an extension, I’ll be ever so grateful.”

Wang San’s face hardened. “Mr. Zhao,” said he, “what do you mean by that? I’ve talked myself dry in the mouth on your behalf to Squire Chu. You have no idea how often his men come to my house to press for repayment. The harassment I’ve suffered isn’t worth the little commission I received. But the mistake has been made, and there’s nothing I can do about it. While Squire Chu sends his men every so often to press me for repayment, you do nothing but talk nonsense. Even if you’re short of cash at this time, you can borrow from your son since you spent the money on him in the first place. What can be wrong with that? (MC: He is not in the least sympathetic.) Since I have no good reply for Squire Chu, I’ll just sit here.”

His eyes filled with tears, Zhao the Sixth did not know how to respond. Humbly he said, “You’re absolutely right, Mr. Wang. I’ll talk to that disobedient son of mine. Please go home now. I’ll surely have an answer for you tomorrow morning.”

Wang San said, “All right, I’ll go, but you must not put this business on hold as soon as my back is turned. I never asked you for a bowl of tea or half a cup of wine. What do I get out of all this?” (MC: Spoken like a middleman.) So saying, he went jauntily out of the house without even bidding the old man good-bye.

In his despair, Zhao the Sixth thought, “If I relay this message to Zhao Cong, I’ll only be asking for an insult. But if I don’t, there’s absolutely no other way out. Old Wang was right. It was for Zhao Cong’s sake that I ran up this debt in the first place. He may be able to do something.” Reluctantly, he dragged his feet to Zhao Cong’s apartment.

Seeing a busy scene with smoke rising from the kitchen chimney, Zhao the Sixth asked, “What’s all this bustle about?”

Someone answered, “Young Master Yin is staying for lunch. That’s why we’re all busy.”

Crestfallen, Mr. Zhao Senior saw nothing for it but to turn back. But then he said to himself, “Since he’s keeping his brother-in-law for lunch, let me see if he’s going to give his father a treat as well.”

After a while, his lunch was delivered. It was the usual fare of two bowls of coarse brown rice. Zhao the Sixth was choked with rage and lost all appetite. With Zhao Cong and Young Master Yin spending the rest of the day wining and dining, Zhao the Sixth could not bring himself to intrude. Resignedly, he turned in for the night.

The next morning, he went to his son’s apartment again but was told that Zhao Cong was still in bed. The old man waited motionlessly for about two hours before Zhao Cong emerged from inside and asked, “What do you have to say to me so early in the morning?”

Managing a smile, the old man said, “It’s not that early anymore. Well, I have something important to say to you. I’m only afraid that you may not agree with me.”

Zhao Cong said, “Say it if you think I’ll like it, and don’t say it if you think I won’t like it. Simple as that!”

Haltingly, Zhao the Sixth said (MC: Poor thing.), “I borrowed sixty taels of silver from Squire Chu for your wedding, and I’ve been paying him interest every year since then. This year, however, he asks for repayment of the principal as well, but how can I do so? Repayment of the principal is out of the question. I can afford only the interest, as before. I truly and honestly am penniless. I wouldn’t have told you about this if it hadn’t been a loan I took out for your sake. So I had to come to you to borrow some money just to pay off the interest.”

Zhao Cong’s face fell. Spreading out his hands, he said, “Isn’t this a joke? The way you put it, the bridegroom is supposed to pay for his own wedding. Let me ask around. If that’s the way it should be, I’ll pay.” (MC: Exactly the tone of a wayward son.)

Zhao the Sixth said, “I don’t mean for you to repay the loan. I just want to borrow a little from you for now.”

“What do you mean by borrowing a little for now? Chu wouldn’t have been dunning you if he believed you were going to repay him. Well, yesterday my brother-in-law gave me a gift of five maces of silver. If my wife approves, you can take it to treat the middleman to a meal and ask him for more time.” Having said that, he went inside.

“What can I do with five maces of silver?” thought Zhao the Sixth. “And he has to consult his wife. This looks hopeless.”

After waiting for some time without seeing Zhao Cong reemerge, the old man had to return to his own apartment. To his surprise, Wang San was already sitting there and saw him before he could avoid the encounter. Walking up to him, Wang San said, “How’s the plan we agreed on yesterday coming along? Squire Chu has been sending one man after another to my house.”

A shamefaced Zhao the Sixth said, “That vile son of mine wouldn’t hear of it. Repayment of the principal is quite impossible. I’ll have to find some more things to pay for this year’s interest. Please allow this old man more time and grant me this request.” So saying, he found himself sinking to his knees.

Turning his head away, Wang San stretched out a hand to help the old man rise to his feet and said, “How did it all come to this? If you can find things that are acceptable, I’ll take them to Squire Chu. He can’t do anything to me, and I’ll tell him to wait a bit longer.” (MC: It’s easier to talk to the middleman.)

So Zhao the Sixth went to his own room, opened his trunks, took out all of his wife’s remaining articles of jewelry and clothing plus his own clothes until there was nothing left in the trunks and offered them all to Wang San.

Assessing the items at greater value than they were worth, Wang San determined that they added up to the full amount of the owed interest—20 percent of sixteen taels of silver.3 After Wang San departed with the laden trunk, Zhao the Sixth was left with nothing but the clothes on his back.

Let us skip irrelevant details and come to the time when Wang San appeared again two days later to demand interest on the four hundred taels of silver borrowed from the Liu family, a much larger loan than the previous one. At a loss as to what to do, Zhao the Sixth resorted to lying: “I’ve borrowed two ingots of silver from my son and was about to have them melted and made into smaller pieces. You may go home now. I’ll deliver the money to your house tomorrow morning.”

Wang San had always known Zhao to be an honest man. In addition, there was little likelihood of the old man taking refuge elsewhere, so Wang San thought it best to return home.

Zhao the Sixth thought, “I’ve managed to get rid of him for now, but any boil will come to a head sooner or later. How can I get out of this mess?” Again, he went over to Zhao Cong and said, “Wang San came again today, this time to demand repayment of interest owed to the Liu family. I have nothing left except my life. Out of sympathy for your poor father, help me!”

Zhao Cong said, “The way you scare people when nothing is happening! If I had money, I would have paid for you, all right? If you want to die, go ahead! You’re not doing anything useful anyway!”

On hearing these words, the father grabbed the son and burst into loud wails. (MC: Too late.) Zhao Cong struggled free and disappeared into his own room. Someone managed to restrain Zhao the Sixth, who then returned to his own quarters.

Back in his own room, Zhao Senior racked his brains about what to do should Wang San come again. Flashes of inspiration come to those in desperation. After a good deal of thought, he suddenly said to himself, “I’ve got it! This is the only way to do it. Otherwise, even if I die, I will have died in vain.” As it was getting dark, he ate a perfunctory supper and went to sleep.

Meanwhile, Zhao Cong and his wife, having finished supper and washed their hands and feet, blew out the lamps and retired for the night. Zhao Cong was long in getting to sleep (IC: The way rich men are.) and was lying awake in bed when he heard footsteps nearby. He suspected a thief but made no sound. The fact was that the well-heeled Zhao Cong was always on the alert for burglars. He listened for a while longer and heard the door creak open and a rustling sound approach his bed. He remained silent. When the sound got right up to his bedside, he noiselessly reached a hand under the bed, picked up an ax that he had hidden there, and swung it. With a thud, a man fell by the bed. Zhao Cong quickly rose, planted a foot on the body, and swung the ax at the man two more times. Hearing no sound from the man, Zhao Cong believed he was dead. Immediately, he woke up Yin-shi, saying, “I’ve hacked a burglar to death!” Then he lit a lamp, and afraid that the burglar’s accomplices might be lurking outside, he went out and woke the neighbors, many of whom came over to offer help. There, for all to see, was a large hole in the wall to the left of the gate. Having already heard Chao Cong cry, “I’ve hacked a burglar to death! The body is in the house!” they swarmed in.

Sure enough, there was a corpse with its head cut in half. Someone with a keen eye cried out, “Isn’t this Zhao the Sixth?”

The others gathered for a closer view and said, “Yes! It’s him! But why would he want to steal from his own family? And he ended up being killed by his son! How very strange!”

Someone said, “I don’t think he was here to steal. Maybe he was a dirty old man here to fornicate with his daughter-in-law, and the angry son bumped him off, making him out to be a burglar.”

Someone more experienced objected, “What a load of nonsense! Zhao the Sixth was no dirty old man!”

However mean and crafty they were, Zhao Cong and his wife were petrified with fear on this occasion, because they truly had no idea what could have led to this. Shedding insincere tears, Zhao Cong said in his own defense, “I honestly had no idea it was my old man. I thought it was a burglar, so I killed him without bothering to question him. You’ve all seen that hole in the wall, which goes to show that I didn’t plan it. I thought it was a burglar, so I killed him without thinking twice. Just look at that hole in the wall, and you’ll know that I didn’t do it on purpose.”

The neighbors said, “No, you’re not to blame because this is a case of burglary and you couldn’t see well in the darkness. But this is a serious matter. We’ll have to report it to the authorities.”

The commotion lasted throughout the night. At daybreak, the neighbors took Zhao Cong to the county yamen. Yin-shi, unnerved, surreptitiously put together some valuables for use as bribes.

The county magistrate, Zhang Jin, was an incorruptible and upright official endowed with a sharp intellect. After the neighbors escorted Zhao Cong into his court session, he asked questions about the case and ordered a coroner to examine the body. His conclusion was, “A son committing patricide deserves the most severe punishment.”

At this point, a scribe approached the bench and said, “Zhao Cong does deserve severe punishment for patricide, but he thought he was fighting a burglar in the darkness of the night. He didn’t know it was his father. The death penalty may not apply in this case.”

The local headman and the neighbors made the same plea. (MC: Sounds fair, but not enough as punishment for the crime.) Ignoring their arguments, Zhang Jin picked up his writing brush and wrote the following verdict: “Zhao Cong is hereby pardoned for his killing of a burglar, but he still deserves the death penalty for the crime of filial impiety. The son has money to spare but reduced his father to poverty and drove him to an act of burglary. (IC: Very perceptive.) The crime of filial impiety having been established beyond the shadow of a doubt, capital punishment is fully justified.” (MC: The satisfaction derived from this verdict outweighs concerns about its severity.)

After the judgment was delivered, Zhao Cong was given forty heavy strokes of the rod at the magistrate’s order. He was then sent to jail, wearing a cangue that marked him as a death row convict.4 Who would dare raise objections? Moreover, Zhao Cong’s lack of filial devotion had been known to the neighbors. Therefore, Zhang Jin’s ruling struck them as fair. Zhang Jin also ordered that Zhao Cong’s family fortune be used to pay for a coffin and funeral for Zhao the Sixth. Whatever Yin-shi’s powers, whatever riches she possessed, there were no strings she could pull this time. The best she could do was to bribe the jailers into letting her visit her husband in jail more often. As it turned out, however, after many visits, she caught a contagious disease that was going around the jailhouse (MC: By the will of Heaven.) and died in less than one month. As for Zhao Cong, he had always lived the good life. How could he withstand the hardships of life in jail? After Yin-shi’s death, with no one to deliver food to him, he died in jail after starving for three days. His body was dragged out of the jailhouse and thrown into a mass grave. Such is the retribution for an unfilial son!

Zhang Jin then ordered that all of Zhao Cong’s possessions be confiscated. When Squire Liu, Squire Chu, and others who had ever lent money to Zhao the Sixth presented their loan contracts to the yamen, Magistrate Zhang ruled that every one of them be repaid in full. What remained after the payments was turned over to the county treasury.

Zhao Cong and his wife had kept a close watch on their money for all those years, denying even one penny to their own parents in their wish to leave it to their offspring. Little did they know that they were to be left without a penny to their names and without a proper burial place. It can thus be seen that heavenly principles had been at work and that divine justice never misses its mark. Truly,

The net of Heaven is of large mesh,

But it never lets the guilty pass through.

The law of the land calls for careful judgments,

And the deities make no errors.