Kwang-Jui and the God of the River

Kwang-Jui lived quietly in the country with his widowed mother. His father had died some years before, and the family’s hopes rested on him alone. He was a hard-working student with a fine mind, and he passed every level of the Imperial Examinations, even the last one in the capital, where the emperor himself was the examiner.

On the day the results were announced, a crowd packed the street outside the examination hall, everyone eager to learn which scholar from all the provinces had won first place. The great doors swung open, a palace official stepped out with his attendants, and in a clear voice he began to read. The first name on the list was Kwang-Jui.

At that very moment, as Kwang-Jui stood there overcome, a soft round ball wrapped in embroidered red silk sailed out of an upper window across the street and struck him on the shoulder. He stared at it, amused and curious, for he knew perfectly well what it meant. In Macgowan’s telling, a young woman could signal a choice of husband by throwing such a ball. She made it of something soft and wrapped it in red silk, embroidering the silk with her own hands with figures standing for the love that binds husband and wife forever. The man it struck was believed to be the husband Heaven had picked for her. The narrator presents the choice as one parents would accept as Heaven’s will.

A messenger came politely to fetch him, and Kwang-Jui found himself in the house of the Prime Minister, who welcomed him warmly and, after a long talk, agreed to accept the will of the gods and make him his son-in-law. Kwang-Jui was overjoyed; he hoped the day was a sign that fate meant to shower good fortune on him. The daughter was delighted that Heaven had sent her such a brilliant husband, and since there was no reason to wait, her parents gave her to him in marriage. There were days of celebration, and when Kwang-Jui compared his new life with the quiet, obscure years behind him, he felt as if he were living in fairyland. In a single day Kwang-Jui had gone from an unknown student to the empire’s top scholar and the son-in-law of its greatest official. Before long, with the emperor’s blessing, he was appointed Prefect of an important district in the middle of China.

He took his bride home first to meet his mother, who had been waiting anxiously to welcome her famous son. The old lady felt rather nervous about meeting her new daughter-in-law, who came from a family far grander than any in her own clan. A few days later the three of them set out together on the long road to his new post. They had covered most of the distance when, at an inn in a little market town, his mother fell seriously ill. The doctor said she must rest for two or three months. But the emperor’s order named the exact date by which Kwang-Jui must take up his office, and disobeying it was unthinkable. In the end his mother herself suggested that he and his wife go on ahead; once he had settled in, he could hand his duties to his deputies for a while and come back for her. Very unwillingly, he agreed. He hired servants to look after her and left her plenty of money.

Wanting to give her a treat before he left, he went to the market to buy a kind of fish she loved. Just outside the inn yard he met a fisherman carrying a fine one. As they haggled, Kwang-Jui noticed something strange: the fish’s eyes were fixed on him with an almost human look, as if begging for help. “Fisherman,” he said, “I will pay what you ask, on one condition. Take this fish back to the river where you caught it and let it go. If you fail, great sorrow will fall on you and your home.” Neither man guessed that the fish was the God of the River himself, who had taken that form for reasons of his own and been caught in the net.

A few hours later Kwang-Jui and his wife reached a large river and hired a big boat for the rest of the journey. The boatman was a wicked man. Once a scholar from an established family, he had fled to another province and become a boatman. His occupation did not reveal the crimes he was prepared to commit. The sight of Kwang-Jui’s luggage stirred his greed, and as the boat ran before the wind he made his plans.

A little after midnight, while the boat lay at anchor, he crept up on the sleeping Kwang-Jui, killed him, and threw his body into the rushing river. He warned the young wife that if she made a sound, he would kill her too and send her after her husband to the Land of Shadows. Frozen with terror, she could not speak; only a choked sob now and then escaped her. She thought at first of throwing herself into the water, but she held back: if she died, no one would ever avenge her husband. The boatman had bigger plans than robbery. He looked very much like Kwang-Jui, so he put on the dead man’s official robes, presented the emperor’s papers at the Prefect’s office, and was installed as Prefect. He believed the widow kept quiet out of fear. In truth she was waiting, determined to see justice done.

Meanwhile, the river patrol sent out by the God of the River to keep order in his waters found Kwang-Jui’s body and carried it to the god. The god stared at it and cried out, “This is the very man who saved my life only yesterday, when I was about to die a cruel death! Now I can repay him. Take him to the Crystal Grotto, where only those who have served the State with honor may lie. I will care for him tenderly until the web of fate is spun, Heaven has punished his murderer, and he can return to his wife.”

Months later the widow gave birth to a son who was the image of his father. That night a voice no one could trace said clearly, “Take the child out of this house before the Prefect returns, or his life will be in danger.” The next day she wrapped the baby warmly and tucked inside his clothes a paper telling his story and warning of the powerful enemy who threatened him. So that she could know him again someday, she cut away the last joint of the little finger on his left hand. Then, weeping, she let a trusted servant woman carry him out by winding back ways and lay him on the riverbank. The servant took one last look to be sure no danger was near, then hurried back toward the city with the baby’s faint cries still in her ears.

Within minutes the abbot of a monastery on a nearby hill came along the river path, heard the baby crying, and took him home. He was a deeply kind man, and no one better could have been found to care for the child. His love for the little foundling grew with the years until the boy was like a son to him, and so that they need never be parted, he taught him the temple duties and made him a priest.

Eighteen years went by. One morning the young man, whose name was Sam-Choang, came to the abbot looking restless and asked who his father and mother were. The abbot decided it was time. He brought out the paper found on the baby and read it aloud. Together they talked long and carefully about how to bring the false Prefect to justice and free the young man’s mother.

The next day a young shaven-headed priest in a gray robe came to the Prefect’s residence asking for gifts for the monastery. The Prefect was away, so the priest was shown in to see the Prefect’s wife, who had always given generously to the Goddess of Mercy. As soon as she saw him, her heart leaped; and when she noticed that his left little finger was missing its last joint, she trembled. He slipped into her hand the very paper she had written eighteen years earlier. She looked at her own handwriting, then at his face, so like the man she had once struck with the embroidered ball, and she knew him for her son. Her joy was mirrored in the young man’s shining eyes and glowing face.

She gave him a letter for her father, the Prime Minister, still living in the capital, and some bars of gold for the journey. He was to travel as a priest collecting alms so that the Prefect would suspect nothing, and he was to stop at the inn where his grandmother had been left and find out what had happened to her.

At the inn there was a new landlord who had never heard of her. Asking around, Sam-Choang learned with horror that when her money had run out and no word came from her son, the innkeeper had turned her out, and she had been wandering the roads ever since, living on scraps from kind strangers and lodging in the beggars’ camp. He found her in a miserable hut, took her to the best inn in town, and left her plenty of money until they could meet again.

In the capital, his grandfather read the letter in great agitation. When the emperor heard the case, he ordered the harshest punishment for a man who had not only committed murder but had dared to seize an office that only the emperor could grant. The Prime Minister was sent with a large body of troops. They marched hard so that no warning could get there before them, and reached the city just before dawn. They waited silently outside the walls, listening for the early gun that announces dawn and sends the gates swinging open. As soon as the gates opened, the soldiers ran to the Prefect’s residence and arrested him. Without any trial, the Prime Minister simply announced that he was acting on the emperor’s orders, and the Prefect was hauled through crowds of astonished onlookers who poured from their doors to watch. The long impersonation had ended, though the arrest was followed by punishment without a trial.

They did not take him to the usual execution ground. Instead they forced him down the main streets, where crowds had so often bowed as he swept past with his proud attendants, and marched him out through the city gate to the bank of the river where the murder had been done. There, in front of Heaven and within sound of the water that had seen his crime, the Prime Minister had him put to death. Then a statement of his crimes was read aloud, appealing to Heaven and the God of the River to give peace to the spirit of the man he had killed. The paper was burned, and its ashes were thrown into the river along with the murderer’s heart, handing the case over to the god.

The river patrol gathered them up and carried them to the god’s palace, where the statement was filed as evidence for the judge of the dead. “So the murderer has received part of what he deserves,” said the god. “Now it is time to wake the sleeping husband.” He went into the Crystal Grotto, touched Kwang-Jui gently, and said, “Friend, arise! Your wife is waiting, and others who have long mourned you. Many happy years lie ahead, and your sovereign will honor you among the famous men of the State. Arise, and take your place among the living.”

The Prime Minister was sitting with his daughter, hearing the story of her long years of suffering, when the door opened silently and her lost husband walked in. At first they were terrified, thinking it was a ghost that would vanish. But it was truly Kwang-Jui. Husband and wife were reunited, and in the long, contented years that followed, their old sorrows slowly faded. All their lives they felt deep gratitude to the God of the River, who had kept Kwang-Jui alive for eighteen years and brought him home to his wife.

About this story

This tale is the second chapter of Chinese Folk-Lore Tales by the Rev. J. Macgowan (London: Macmillan, 1910). Macgowan opens it with a long reflection on the hardships of ordinary Chinese life and on Tien-Li, “Divine Righteousness,” the standard by which, he says, all actions are judged. He presents the story as evidence for his broad claims about Chinese faith. Those claims are the author’s interpretation, not proof that all people shared one outlook.

The son is named Sam-Choang; the same book later features a priest called Sam-Chaong (chapter five) and a pilgrim called Sam-Chung (chapter ten), though Macgowan never says outright that they are one person. The book describes the embroidered-ball custom within the tale; this does not establish that it was universal. This page shortens Macgowan’s execution scene, but retains the death and the heart sent into the river as part of the supernatural judgment.

Read the original: J. Macgowan, Chinese Folk-Lore Tales (Project Gutenberg)

For older readers: murder, coercive captivity, suicidal thoughts, intentional injury to an infant, abandonment, prolonged deprivation and execution without trial. The return to life is a supernatural resolution.

Reading the story closely

Official clothing and papers let the murderer impersonate Kwang-Jui, while the mother’s hidden letter later defeats that impersonation. The same system that accepts outward credentials needs a concealed personal account to expose its mistake. Her recognition uses several signs together—appearance, injury and handwriting—rather than a single miraculous proof.

Track the work done while Kwang-Jui is unconscious: his wife preserves evidence, the servant carries the child, the abbot raises him, and the son finds both his mother and his neglected grandmother. These actions complicate an account centered only on the river god’s gratitude. Compare the spectacular final reunion with the grandmother’s years of need; the ending cannot give back the time those living people lost.

Questions to ask

• Why does Kwang-Jui set the fish free, and how does that kindness come back to him?
• Which pieces of evidence establish the son’s identity, and why is the mother’s written account so important?
• What does the son find when he goes looking for his grandmother?

More stories like this

• Sam-Chung and the Water Demon — another Macgowan tale featuring a priest with a similar name
• The Fairy Bonze — another Macgowan tale of a wandering priest
• The God of the City — a drowned man’s spirit whose mercy makes him a god