It made the eyes swim to look at, so I changed it back.
Endurance. On Tuan Mountain there was a fat pig. In the great quake of the wuzi year it was buried beneath its sty, gnawed rotten wood, drank rain and dew, and escaped after thirty-six days, gaunt as a sheep. The villagers marveled that it had not died, admired the firmness of its will, gave it the name Zhu Jianqiang, and supported it for the rest of its life. The rotten wood it ate was ci bamboo, antler-like in form; once decayed it turns into bamboo fruit, which those who avoid grain sometimes take as food.
Merchant Card. There is a kind of card shaped like a credit card, made of black metal and engraved with a borneol tree, produced by merchants in northern Shanxi. My colleague Fan Xuan has one. It may be used as money at inns, wineshops, and trading houses, and there is no need to repay the principal, only to price it in tears, reckoned pearl by pearl. There is also a villager named Yang Liang who has such a card engraved with Mu Fei, and who uses hair in place of gold.
Mending. At Haiyin in Guangzhou there is a shop called Gibbon, specializing in restoring the data stored on damaged hard drives and discs. The owner, surnamed Hou, uses steel needles to make dot-matrices and tinfoil patches like needlework. In a quarter of an hour he can restore one terabyte, with all lost data intact. It is said he is a descendant of Hou Jian of Liangshan.
Chatterbox. In Xiangyang there was a man who loved to talk to himself. He worked at a certain office. On the first day he quarreled with others; within three months one employee had reported sick; within half a year all the old hands had resigned, and those who remained suffered hair loss, insomnia, and weakened hearing. In the Five Dynasties there was filthy speech that tormented two monks, and songs of abuse that drove back enemies by verbal arts. This belonged to the same kind.
Taobao. On Taobao there is a shop called Fifteen, selling curious objects: scissors with red handles, apricot-blossom wine bottles, four liang of rainwater, candlelight at midnight, the sound of a dog’s bark, and the like. Anyone who has no need of them cannot make sense of what they are for. Master Yu once bought half a mouse whisker there. After his house cat ate it, the cat could swim.
Wizard. In central Guizhou there are wizards said to descend from Nanzhao. Their method consists of three forms: bending, lying, and bracing. With them they can push objects through the air. Someone practiced these arts and by mistake killed a friend. Passersby bound him and took him to the yamen, but no one believed the story. In the Northern Court there was once a marshal who hung up a reward of a thousand gold pieces, betting that no one in the world possessed supernatural abilities. On hearing of this, he secretly ruined his own promise.
Former People. There is a saying in Chongqing: trouble rises from Tangjiatuo. In the summer of the wuzi year, floating corpses often appeared there. Some seemed drowned, some crushed by falling rock, and the people of Chongqing took them for missing Sichuan folk after the earthquake. Yet all the corpses wore their hair bound up, long robes, and square headcloths; a few even had jade pendants at the breast. I believe they were former people living hidden away in the mountains.
Enteromorpha. In the summer month of the sixth year of Jinhe, a tide of green enteromorpha broke out in the Bohai, turning the coast entirely green so that boats could not pass. In Bohai Commandery there was a boat race that could not begin on schedule and had to be postponed half a month. In that same month a tsunami came up from the South Sea, its waves dozens of zhang high, yet fortunately the ships had all already entered port. The Travel Record of Jin Physicians and Wizards says that when enteromorpha rises to three chi or so, it heralds an approaching storm.
No Divination. A fortune-teller set up his table for divination before the Zhou household gate. All the neighbors had their fortunes cast, and those who received his verses praised them highly. Zhou himself came forward and held out his hand for a reading. The diviner looked up at him, went pale, waved him off, packed his stall, and fled. An idle bystander chased after him and asked why. The diviner said, “I do not wish to earn money from the dead.” Seven days later there was a fire, and the Zhou family line was extinguished.
Status Message. Yuanzi said that one night long ago she suddenly saw her boyfriend come online at the hour of hai and change his status message to: “The wind sighs, sighs; the Yi River runs cold. Once the brave man goes, he never returns.” Yuanzi found it strange. Her boyfriend said he wanted to see her, then immediately logged off. The next day Yuanzi heard that the previous night, when he had gone out, he had been robbed and murdered just outside the gate of Yuanzi’s residential compound. After that Yuanzi swore never to marry.