The Ferry God

At Old Camphor Crossing, thirty li southwest of Qingxi, a green torrent runs between two hills, churning over rocks heard half a mile off. No bridge, no ferryman—travelers hail the crossing themselves. On the left bank stands a foot-tall shrine with a clay boy in green, barefoot, a short oar in hand: the locals call him the Ferry God.

They say a spirit boat answers. You stand and call "cross," and a single skiff drifts from the reeds, needing no hand at the oar, settling at your feet. The sincere step aboard, close their eyes a moment, and open them on the far bank. The crooked of heart, the boat turns at midstream and carries them back.

Zhou the Peddler has borne his two bamboo baskets through these villages twenty years. Slow of speech, he weighs fair and cheats no one; he has crossed a hundred times and the boat has met him every one. One snowy night a woman across the water labored to give birth; Zhou left his trade, hailed the crossing, and the skiff broke the snow faster than ever to fetch the midwife.

Zhao the Tyrant—born Zhao Gui—seized the Zhous' three mu of riverside land and lent at usury until a man died. On the twenty-third of the twelfth month he drove two boats of New Year goods to market and hailed the crossing alone. The skiff came; he stepped aboard; at midstream it turned like a living thing and bore him back. He cursed, hailed again, was carried halfway, returned again—three times. Furious, he whipped the planking; the boat sank with a groan into the green water and rose empty, and Zhao floundered across, his padded robe leaden, near drowned, his account books scattered down the stream.

Next spring the private bridge Zhao had raised was washed away by the peach-bloom flood—right over the land he had stolen. The families he had wronged, kept on the near side by the broken bridge, came to no harm. Zhao was stranded three days on the far bank, gnawing raw taro, yellow with hunger, until the Ferry God's skiff brought him home.

The Chronicler says: men wonder that the god is harsh only to the wicked. But the Ferry God shows no favor—the wicked are heavy and the boat will not bear them; the good are light and cross easily. The water runs on; the skiff lies among the reeds. To cross or not is not the god's, but your own.