The Bamboo Spirit

In the southeast rises a mountain called Green Hat, where bamboo grows in abundance. The oldest of these, through many years, may grow aware — though the world seldom knows it.

Shen Yan of Kuaiji, styled Huaiqing, was orphaned young and poor, but of an upright temper and a lover of bamboo. He built a thatched hut of three bays beside the bamboo hollow and passed his days facing the groves, playing the qin and reciting verse for his pleasure. The villagers laughed at his folly; he disdained them.

In the year Gengzi, the autumn rains fell without cease for weeks, and the mountain torrents broke loose. Among the grove stood an ancient bamboo, Green Plenty by name, more than a hundred years old; its roots gnawed by the flood, it was about to fall. Yan, seeing this, braved the rain to bind it with rope and carry stones to shore its earth, labouring through the night until the bamboo stood.

Three days later the moon was bright as water. Yan was drinking alone when a woman's voice came from beyond the door, clear as broken jade: “You have given me life.” He opened the door and saw a maiden standing among the bamboo shadows, dressed in blue-green, fair as a painted figure, yet the joints of her fingers faintly showed the grain of bamboo. She said her surname was Bi and her name Yao, born of the Green Plenty bamboo; grateful for his saving, she would serve him.

Yan was startled and glad, but dared not draw near. Bi Yao smiled: “Do you not fear what is strange?” Yan said: “The virtue of bamboo is an empty heart and upright joints — what strangeness is there?” Bi Yao sighed, and entered, tending his qin and brewing tea, vanishing into the bamboo at midnight.

Thenceforth, on every moonlit night, Bi Yao came. When Yan was pinched by want, she took the broken bamboo of the hollow, split and wove it into baskets, mats, and flutes, which Yan sold in the market to live. Yan would speak of marriage; Bi Yao grew grave: “I am of grass and wood, borrowing a human shape. To bind the tie of husband and wife would, I fear, stain your name and shorten your years.” Yan wept; Bi Yao comforted him: “Only remember this — bamboo never wrongs a man, nor should a man wrong bamboo. That is enough.”

The next spring a rich merchant heard of the famed Green Plenty bamboo and offered a great price for its root, meaning to fell it for his wares. Yan would not permit; the merchant set dozens of servants to surround the hollow. That night Bi Yao went to the merchant's house and showed herself as a giant bamboo; the wind roared through the wood and tiles and stones shook, and the merchant fled in fear.

Some years on, Yan was raised to the rank of xiaolian and called to the capital. Bi Yao came to take leave, her face pale. Yan asked: “Where will you go?” She said: “My form is lodged in Green Plenty; when its years are spent, I too must return to the earth. After you leave, do not grieve.” Yan held her hand and felt it grow cold as bamboo. At dawn he looked: beside the door a new bamboo had sprung, green and lovely; when the wind passed, a flute seemed to sound.

Yan went away, and whenever he thought of her, he drank facing the bamboo. When at last he returned, all the grove stood, but Green Plenty was gone, leaving only one slender new cane. Yan stroked it, and felt a faint warmth.

The Chronicler of the Strange says: Plants and trees have no feeling, yet with long years they may become spirits; the human heart has awareness, yet in a moment it may be darkened. Scholar Shen, by a single thought of kindness, saved a bamboo of a hundred years; the bamboo, by the devotion of one body, kept a humble man's honour whole. The world chases gold and fells forests, and cannot match a single bamboo in knowing gratitude. Yet Bi Yao would not, in her grass-and-wood shape, burden the one she loved — in her uprightness she is worthy to be told. Alas, if even bamboo can be thus, how should man not be?