The Haunted Thief

In the late 1300s, after vanquishing the hated Mongol rulers of the Yuán 元 dynasty (period 19) and founding the Míng 明 dynasty (period 20), the first emperor of Míng ordered the redesign and rebuilding of the ancient Great Wall to prevent any further incursions by Mongol peoples from the north. The rebuilt wall was studded with watchtowers as well as closely guarded gates or passes. (It is the Míng period wall that has been restored in places for the delight of tourists today.)

Among the watchtowers built into the Great Wall near the village of Chéngzǐyù 城子峪, in Fǔníng county 抚宁县 of Héběi 河北 province, was one which stood more or less intact until it was destroyed by Red Guards in Chairman Máo’s 毛 “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” which sought to destroy all that was old.

The tower had originally been used to store ammunition, and after it was destroyed by the Red Guards, local people found thousands of arrow heads once kept on the top floor, as well as some iron cannons, and nearly five hundred ceramic vessels originally used to store gunpowder. Some people wondered how these things had remained there since Míng times, but a local story explains that they had supernatural protection. Here is what is told:

By the time of the Hóngzhì 弘治 emperor (reign 19-10, 1488-1505), the dynasty was well over a century old, and there was no very great likelihood of an invasion from the north, despite an occasional minor raid now and then that killed only an occasional soldier on one side or the other of the Great Wall. Morale was therefore low among the bored guardians assigned to the wall, and there was little effort to keep the weapons sharp or the gunpowder dry.

The petty military official in charge of the armory and ammunition depot near Chéngzǐyù was a foolish and corrupt person named JIĀNG 姜, and when his wife pointed out that the gunpowder vats could be used for salting eggs and making pickles, he had no compunctions about bringing some home for that use.

They proved to be perfect for the purpose, and soon he began removing more of them and presenting them to delighted friends and relatives until his whole social circle was salting eggs and making pickles in antique gunpowder vats. In time he also began removing metalwork as well: spears, arrows, cannons, which could be sold as scrap metal.

One night Jiāng had a terrible dream in which he was suddenly surrounded by figures covered with blood and terrible wounds, some with missing limbs, even missing heads. Some still had arrows protruding from their bodies. One of them told him they were the ghosts of soldiers who had died because they lacked the gunpowder and weaponry to defend themselves and were dependent upon hand-to-hand combat against an enemy with both gunpowder and weapons. And at death they had become lìguǐ 厉鬼, dangerous demons inclined to do great harm to the living. Jiāng awoke, shaken, but relieved that it was only a bad dream.

But the dream returned the following night, and the next, and the next. Sometimes he would also dream that he was on the Great Wall, in hand-to-hand combat, and his brothers and cousins died and came back to get revenge on him for causing their deaths.

And so, in desperation, Jiāng travelled to the nearby Temple of the Three Original Ones (Sānyuán Miào 三元庙) to consult a Daoist diviner. The Daoist consulted his oracles and determined that Jiāng was being haunted by fox fairies (húxiān 狐仙). Fox fairies had ruled this region before the wall was restored and resented the building of the armory, he announced, and now they wanted to dominate it again. Fortunately, such beings were easily controlled, and he was able to write a large charm (dàofú 道符), which would almost certainly solve the problem by driving the fox fairies away.

That didn’t really square with what the ghosts in his dream had told him, but Jiāng took the charm and pasted it on the armory door, as the Daoist had instructed.

But the Daoist was wrong. The charm had no effect, and the dreams continued.

Returning to the Temple of the Three Original Ones, Jiāng once again consulted the Daoist. On further consideration, the Daoist decided that Jiāng must have done the spirits some great injury to make them act this way. Ashamed, Jiāng confessed that over the years he had been taking gunpowder vats and metal from the decaying armory, and admitted that being deprived of their equipment had probably cost some soldiers their lives.

The Daoist was appalled and ordered Jiāng to recover everything he had stolen and replace it in the watchtower armory, just as it had been.

Once he told his friends and relatives what had happened, Jiāng was able to get back the “pickle vats” he had given away, and he used his own money to buy replacements for the canons and arrowheads and other metal work, which had long since been reworked into other things.

Once everything had been returned to the armory, the terrible dreams stopped. And ever after, at least until the guard tower was destroyed in the Cultural Revolution, no one dared to remove anything from it, because everyone knew it was guarded by fox fairies.

(This story is retold from story 19 in a bilingual collection compiled by a resident of Chéngzǐyù: ZHĀNG Hèshén 张鹤神 2009 长城民间传说：汉英对照。 Běijīng: 五洲传播出版社。 P. 120-125, where it is entitled “狐仙与军火库” & “Haunted for Helping Himself.”)