The Lamp Maid

In the west of the city stood an old mansion, said to have belonged to a silk merchant in the previous dynasty. A maid there, named A Tan, tended the lamps. The merchant, enraged that she had let one go out, had her whipped; she fell into the well and died at seventeen.

The house passed through many owners. On windy, snowy nights the inner room's lamp would light itself, a pale blue flame that burned no paper. Those who lived there found it strange: move the lamp and it died; set it back and it burned again. Now and then someone rising at night saw a girl in green standing by the desk, sleeve brushing the flame as if adding oil — yet drawing near, they saw nothing.

Late in the Guangxu reign a poor scholar rented the house. With no money for candles he read by that lamp. It used no oil and lit the room fully. When he coughed, the girl's shadow seemed to turn — but she never showed herself. When he left for the autumn exams, the lamp did not burn; when he returned, it burned as before. The scholar understood: A Tan kept the lamp for a reader.

Later he prospered, bought the house, buried A Tan, and set a small stone by the well: “A Tan, Keeper of the Lamp.” After that the lamp no longer lit itself on snowy nights, yet the well stayed faintly warm — passersby none the wiser.

The Chronicler of the Strange says: The world treats servants as weeds, to be beaten at will. A Tan, a frail girl, guarded a single lamp even in death, to light a poor scholar's way. A lamp may go out; a heart need not. Among the weeds may burn a flame that will not die. How sad.