The Monkey Spirit

Deep in the Wuyi mountains, by the village of Linxi, lived a woodcutter named Zhou Pu, past thirty, who tended his aged mother with devoted filial care. Pu was a plain, honest man. Every time he went up the mountain for firewood, he would tuck a few wild fruits into his pack and drop them in the hollow of an old pine's roots, to feed the monkeys that ranged there. At first the troop shied from him; in time they grew tame. The oldest of them, grey-furred and beardless at the throat, the villagers called Grey-Elder.

Late one winter a heavy snow came. Pu lost his way in the wind and mist, and the cold took him till his legs shook and his teeth chattered; all around was white, and he could not tell east from west. Then he felt a small weight on his shoulder: it was Grey-Elder, perched there, brushing the fog aside with one hand and leading him on. The snow swallowed their shins, yet the monkey walked as on level ground. After some miles they reached his gate. Pu would have thanked it, but when he turned, the mountain was empty and still; only the claw-marks lay clear upon the snow, three-toed like a painted inscription.

In the next village dwelt a certain Jiao, rich and cunning, who heard tell that the old monkey carried at its throat a pearl that shone in the dark, worth a thousand pieces of gold. He hung out gold and hired trappers to catch it. A hunter named Qian, greedy for the reward, went up and set a snare by the stream, baiting it with fruit. When Pu heard of it, he knit his brow and sighed: 'This creature harms no one and quarrels with none — how can one take its life for the sake of a single pearl?' That night he took his axe and crept up the mountain, loosed the trigger, and let the troop go; then he roundly scolded Qian. Qian, shamed by such sincerity, slunk away.

The next summer brought weeks of soaking rain, and the mountain torrents broke loose; the stream swelled past its banks. Pu's mother, frail and sick, could not rise from her bed. The water climbed the steps; Pu carried her upstairs and cried for help, but the flooded neighbours gave no answer. Then he heard a stir before the eaves: Grey-Elder had come with scores of monkeys, each bearing a broken branch for a raft. They bit through vines to lash the wood, and bore mother and son across to high ground. On the bank, Grey-Elder spat something from its throat into Pu's palm — not a pearl, but a mountain ginseng, amber-coloured, its roots still smelling of damp earth. It gave a low chitter, as if to say, 'Use this to mend your mother.' Then the troop melted into the mist.

His mother took the root and within ten days could rise again. From that time Pu never set a snare, and forbade the village to harm the apes. Each deep autumn he laid out fresh chestnuts at the foot of the old pine. Grey-Elder came too, every autumn, to sit on the branch and eat, unstartled at the sight of Pu; and when Pu stroked its back, it did not flee. The villagers marvelled, but Pu only smiled and never told them why.

The Chronicler of the Strange would say: The world's profit-seekers hunt for a pearl at a monkey's throat, spreading nets and snares, and in the end grasp nothing. Pu, with the gift of a single meal, moved the very spirit of the mountain, and in flood and fire kept his mother whole. Jiao's gold only fed Qian's greed; Pu's chestnuts fill the eaves year after year. Heaven's recompense follows the giver's heart. And if this is true of our dealings with beasts, how much more with men. Where sincerity reaches, even the dull become spirits; where greed drives, even spirits depart. In this tale one may read the whole way of living among creatures.