Dschang Liang

Dschang Liang came from one of the states that the Emperor Tsin Schi Huang had conquered and wiped out. Loyal to his dead king, he swore to strike back, and he gathered men who would help him kill the emperor.

His chance seemed to come when the emperor travelled across the country. On the plain of Bo Lang, Dschang Liang armed his band with iron clubs and lay in wait. But Tsin Schi Huang always travelled with two carriages that looked exactly the same; he rode in one, and somebody else sat in the other. The attackers fell upon the wrong carriage, and Dschang Liang had to run for his life from the emperor’s fury.

His flight brought him to a broken-down bridge. A freezing wind blew and snow swirled in the air. On the bridge sat a very old man in a black turban and a yellow robe. As Dschang Liang came near, the old man let one of his shoes drop into the water below. He looked straight at the fugitive and said, “Go and get it, little one.”

Dschang Liang swallowed his pride, climbed down, fished out the shoe, and brought it back. The old man simply held out his foot, and Dschang Liang knelt and put the shoe on for him, respectfully. The old man was pleased. “Little one, you may come to something,” he said. “Be here early tomorrow morning, and I will have something for you.”

At the first light of dawn Dschang Liang returned—but the old man was already waiting. “You are late,” he scolded. “I will tell you nothing today. Come earlier tomorrow.” The same thing happened for three days running, and still Dschang Liang did not lose patience. At last the old man was satisfied. He brought out a book called The Book of Hidden Complements and handed it over. “Study this,” he said, “and you will be able to guide a great emperor. When your work is done, look for me at the foot of Gu Tschong Mountain. There you will find a yellow stone, and I will be beside it.”

Dschang Liang studied the book and helped the founder of the Han dynasty win the empire, and the new emperor made him a count. From then on, Dschang Liang stopped eating ordinary human food and turned his mind inward. He spent his time with the four white-bearded sages of Shang Mountain, sharing with them the rose-colored clouds of sunset.

One day he met two boys singing and dancing:

Green the garments you should wear,
If to heaven’s gate you’d fare;
There the Golden Mother greet,
Bow before the Wood Lord’s feet!

Dschang Liang bowed to the children and explained to his companions what the song meant. The boys, he said, were heavenly messengers of the King Father of the East, who is the Lord of Wood. The Golden Mother is the Queen of the West. These two are the first powers of the world, the parents of everything male and female, the root of heaven and earth; every living thing owes them its birth and its food. The Lord of Wood rules the male immortals, the Golden Mother the female ones. Anyone seeking to live forever must first greet the Golden Mother and then bow to the King Father; only then can he rise to the Three Pure Ones and stand before the Highest. The children’s song, he said, showed the path to the hidden knowledge.

Around that time the emperor was persuaded to put some of his loyal servants to death. Dschang Liang left the court and went to Gu Tschong Mountain. There beside a yellow stone he found the old man, and from him he learned the secret teaching. He went home, pretended to fall ill, freed his soul from his body, and disappeared.

Years later, when the rebels called the “Red Eyebrows” rose up, his tomb was broken open. Inside there was no body—only a yellow stone. Dschang Liang was wandering with Laotsze in the unseen world. In the legend, Dschang Dau Ling, described as his grandson, travelled to Kunlun Mountain to visit the Queen Mother of the West, and there he met his grandfather. Dschang Dau Ling gained power over demons and spirits and became the first of a line of religious masters. The legend says that his family inherited this power.

About this story

“Dschang Liang” belongs to the historic legends in Richard Wilhelm’s The Chinese Fairy Book, in Frederick H. Martens’s English translation (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1921). Wilhelm spells names in the German style: Dschang Liang is the strategist usually written Zhang Liang today, and Tsin Schi Huang is the First Emperor of Qin.

Wilhelm’s note explains two details. The old man’s yellow robe marks him as a Taoist, and The Book of Hidden Complements is the Yin Fu Ging, a Taoist classic. The tale moves from a failed ambush to a test of patience, and then into Taoist lore of immortals, ending with a legendary genealogy of religious masters. The edition’s term ‘Taoist pope’ is a historical English analogy, not the title of an equivalent Christian institution. The supernatural biography and family relationship are claims within this telling.

Read the original: The Chinese Fairy Book, ed. Richard Wilhelm (Project Gutenberg)

Reading guidance: older children with adult discussion. Includes an attempted assassination, executions and a supernatural departure from the body; its political and religious episodes are presented as legend.

Reading the story closely

Dschang Liang first tries to change history by a sudden blow and fails because he attacks the wrong carriage. On the bridge, he succeeds through repeated restraint and attention. Yet his later withdrawal from a ruler who kills loyal servants keeps patience from becoming mere obedience to authority.

Follow the yellow objects: robe, meeting-place stone and stone in the tomb. What does each let a reader recognize? Compare that chain of clues with the two identical carriages, where appearance produces a fatal mistake instead of recognition.

Questions to ask

• Why does the attack on the emperor fail?
• What does the old man on the bridge test in Dschang Liang, and how many times?
• What is found in Dschang Liang’s tomb, and why is that a clue?

Related stories

• Laotsze — the old master Dschang Liang wanders with at the end
• Old Dragonbeard — another Wilhelm legend about the rise of a dynasty
• King Mu of Dschou — a ruler who meets the Queen Mother of the West