My old friend Su Xiao came from Shuyang in northern Jiangsu. She once told me that out in the Shuyang countryside there was a rough earthen temple enshrining two guardian figures, one with a red face and protruding fangs, the other with a blue face and golden horns. According to local legend, they represented the celestial generals Clairvoyant Eyes and Wind-Following Ears. During the Cultural Revolution, the statue of Clairvoyant Eyes was smashed, and only Wind-Following Ears remains to this day.

Su Xiao had a younger male cousin who was blinded by fever after catching a cold at the age of four. His mother often carried him to the temple to burn incense. By the time he was seven, they accidentally discovered that whenever someone flipped through a book near him, he could tell exactly what was written on the page, without ever failing. A volunteer teacher in the village refused to believe it and brought him a rare copybook that no one had shown him before, asking him to read it aloud. Sure enough, he recited it character for character without a single mistake. Later I looked through the county gazetteer of Shuyang and found that in the Qing there really was a record stating that “in a certain village, two gods of heavenly sight and heavenly hearing are worshipped, and all those who pray to them for ailments of the eyes or ears receive efficacious response.” Su Xiao said that in her home village there were seven or eight people, like her cousin, who could listen to books.

Scattered Remnants of Northern Jiangsu records that east of Huai’an there was a village of a little over one hundred people. Those living in the east of the village were surnamed Mo, those in the west were surnamed Fu, and everyone among them possessed extraordinarily keen ears. The Mo family hired a private tutor to teach in their household, and the Fu family, instead of hiring one of their own, merely prepared the Four Books and Five Classics so that their children could sit at home and listen to the tutor’s lessons from afar. When the Fu family hired an opera troupe for a festival, the Mo family no longer bothered to do the same, but sat at ease in their own flower hall listening to the performance. If relations between the two households soured, they would remain inside their own courtyards and quarrel with one another from afar without ever leaving home.

In Scattered Remnants of Northern Jiangsu I also found another story. During the provincial examination in ancient Pengzhou, some candidates cheated by soaking the Confucian classics in ear oil. If they filtered out a few drops of the ear oil and dripped them into the ear canal, then during the examination they could recall in full whatever had been written in any book that had once been soaked in it. This method of cheating was popular for several years until it was uncovered after one examinee died from dripping in too much oil, whereupon it was immediately banned. Thereafter, examination inspections included procedures for checking the ears and nose. I have collected many similar stories. What puzzles me is not whether they are true, but why so many legends concerning the ears should all occur in northern Jiangsu. It is truly difficult to explain.