The God of the City

One evening long ago a fisherman moored his boat by the bank of a stream that flowed close to a great city, whose gray, rugged walls rose not far away. The sounds of life around him kept him from feeling lonely. Porters with bamboo carrying poles on their shoulders, worn out from the day’s heavy work, hurried past, anxious to get home before dark. Sedan-chair bearers who had carried their loads for many weary miles strode by at a quicker pace, shouting at people on foot to get out of the way so they could reach the city before the great gates were shut for the night.

By the time the afterglow had faded from the sky and the distant hills had vanished into the dark, the fisherman had cooked his supper. White rice steamed fragrantly in his wide pan, and a few of the tiny fish he had caught that day were fried brown and tempting. He was just sitting down to eat when he happened to glance around and saw a stranger sitting in the stern of the boat.

He was astonished and about to say so, but something about the visitor held him spellbound. The stranger had the refined look of a scholar from a good family, and a kind, gentle face that reassured the fisherman.

While the fisherman was wondering who he was and how he had got into the boat so mysteriously, the stranger spoke. “Allow me to explain who I am,” he said, “and to apologize for coming aboard without your permission. I am the spirit of a man who drowned two years ago not far from where your boat is anchored. Many times I have tried to lure others into the river, so that I might be free to leave this place, to which my wretched fate binds me until some other unhappy soul takes my place.”

In the belief used by this tale, the spirit of a drowned person must linger around the spot where he died until someone else drowns there, whether by accident or through the ghost’s tricks, and takes his place. Then the spirit is released and speeds like lightning to the Land of Shadows.

“I was so lonely this evening,” the stranger continued, “that I felt I had to come and talk with you a little. I hope you will not mind, and that you will let me sit in your boat until it is time for you to sleep.”

The fisherman, quite won over by his courteous guest, said he was delighted to have him, invited him to share his supper, and told him to make himself at home for as long as he liked. After that the lonely river spirit often came to spend an evening with the fisherman, and the two became real friends.

Then one evening the ghostly visitor arrived beaming, with a happy ring in his voice. As soon as he sat down he said, “This is the last evening I can spend with you. My long, weary wait is almost over. Tomorrow another victim of the river will set me free, and you will not see me anymore.”

Now, the fisherman was a deeply kind-hearted man, and he was eager to see who the unlucky person was who would drown the next day. Around noon, as he watched by the riverside, he saw a poor woman come rushing toward the water, weeping and sobbing. Her hair was disheveled, her eyes were red with crying, and cries of grief kept bursting from her lips. She ran straight as an arrow for the stream and was just about to throw herself in when the fisherman called out in a loud, commanding voice for her to stop.

He asked her what was wrong and why she wanted to drown herself. “I am a most unhappy woman,” she answered. “Just now, on my way home, a robber attacked me and took the money I was bringing to my husband. It was to pay a debt to a man who threatens us with the harshest penalties if he does not get it today. I would rather die than see the grief my husband would feel if I told him what happened.”

The fisherman asked how much had been stolen and gave her exactly that amount, and she went home with a light, happy step.

That evening the spirit, who had said goodbye forever the night before, came to the fisherman again. “What did you mean by robbing me of my one chance of freedom?” he asked.

“I could not bear to see that poor woman’s sorrow,” said the fisherman, “or to think of the tragedy in her home if she had died in the stream. So I saved her.” Then he spoke eloquently about the beauty of kindness and urged his guest to choose the nobler path of saving lives, even at the cost of his own happiness. In the end the spirit was so deeply moved that he promised he would not try to win his freedom through anyone else’s death, even if it meant long ages of misery in that fatal stream.

Years went by, and still no release came for the imprisoned spirit. People stopped drowning in the stream altogether, whether on purpose or by accident. Many who would have died were saved by mysterious warnings that rose from the dark water and frightened them away just as they were about to throw themselves in.

At last Kwan-yin, the Goddess of Mercy, was moved by this noble self-sacrifice made to save unhappy people who had grown weary of life, and she freed the spirit from his watery prison. She was sure, too, that such a man could safely be trusted with the fate of anyone brought before his court. So she made him a god and ordered that temples be built to him in every town and city of the empire, so that anyone suffering wrong or injustice could have it put right at the shrine of one who had shown such devotion and sympathy for others in trouble.

That is the story of the God of the City.

Because he is thought of as the representative of the dreaded ruler of the Land of Shadows, his temple is built much like the court of a mandarin. Its main entrance is large and imposing, with great gates like those of a high official’s headquarters. Inside lies a huge courtyard paved with granite slabs, and along each side stand six life-size statues of the god’s “runners,” or constables, ready to carry out his sentences and to hunt down and capture, by invisible and mysterious means, those he has found guilty. Their faces are twisted with fury, and they stand in poses like men seizing some notorious criminal on the orders of Yam-lo, the judge of the dead. At the far end of the courtyard is the god’s shrine, but he is hidden behind a yellow curtain so that no one can glimpse his image. Before him stand statues of his two secretaries, holding huge brushes, ready day and night to write down the petitions and accusations brought by people in sorrow or suffering wrong.

One afternoon the peace of such a temple was suddenly broken by a noisy commotion outside and the sound of hurrying feet, as if a crowd were rushing through the main gates. Two young men strode in excitedly, straight past the demon constables at the door, who seemed to scowl even more fiercely at the people they would soon be dealing with. Both men were a little over twenty, and behind them came a straggle of idlers, loafers, and street urchins, the sort who seem to spring up from nowhere whenever anything unusual happens.

One of the young men was slightly ahead of the crowd. His face was flushed, his black eyes sparkled with excitement, and in his left hand he carried a large white rooster. He was the accuser, and he had come to ask the god to clear his name. He took his place before the idol, and the secretaries with their brushes seemed to strain to listen as he unrolled a sheet of paper and began to read the statement he had written. His statement was long, but the main facts were clear.

The two young men were assistants in a shop in the city. Some time before, the shopkeeper had secretly hidden a hundred dollars to pay for goods he had bought. The day before, when the bill came and he went to get the money, he found to his horror that it was gone. He had told no one about it, not even his wife, so he was convinced that one of his two assistants must have found the hiding place. For some reason his suspicion had fallen on the young man now reading out his complaint, who was asking the god to use all his tremendous powers both to proclaim his innocence and to punish the real thief.

The scene was strange and gripping, and it grew more and more intense as the young man reached the end of his appeal. He called on the god to hurl every pain and penalty in his unseen armory at the person who had really stolen the money. “Let his life be one long torment!” he cried, raising his hands. “May every plan he makes end in disaster; may his father and mother die and leave him alone; may an incurable disease take hold of him; may misfortune hound him in every shape; may he become a beggar with sores on his legs, sitting by the road in sun and storm, pleading with passers-by for a few coins to keep himself alive; may he never have a son to carry on his name or make offerings to his spirit in the Land of Shadows; may madness seize him so that his reason flies and he becomes a terror to everyone; and at last may a dreadful death cut his life short, just as I now end the life of this white rooster I have brought with me!”

As he spoke those last words, he seized a chopper and with one swift stroke killed the rooster. Then he took his petition, stepped up close to the secretaries, who for a moment seemed to look down on him with sympathy, and burned it to ashes. The petitioner believed that burning it delivered it to the god and set his appeal in motion.

The crowd’s sympathy was with the young man who had solemnly sworn his innocence. The other young man, who had said almost nothing the whole time, was believed to be the real thief, but there was no proof to convict him. Those present believed the god knew and would punish the wrongdoer. In a few minutes the temple returned to normal. Once the two young men had gone, the idlers drifted away, each loudly giving his opinion on the case. To a casual observer it might have seemed that nothing more would come of it. The god’s face was as calm as ever, untouched by the ever-changing tide of human life that flowed past him from morning till night, and the grim constables stood frozen in their snarling poses by the gate.

A week or two after the appeal, those who were following the case, watching for some sign that the god was at work against the man everyone suspected, were shocked by a heartbreaking disaster. The suspected man had a sister, just growing into womanhood, who was the light of her home. Her merry laughter rang through the house all day, so that sadness could not stay there long, and her bright face matched her sunny smile and cheered everyone who saw it.

One morning she went down to the riverbank with several neighbors to do the family washing. The current was strong and fast in the middle of the stream, but the spot they had chosen was out of the current and had always been considered perfectly safe; no accident had ever happened there. They had finished their work and were climbing the bank to go home when they heard a terrible cry. Turning quickly, they saw that the girl had stumbled and fallen into the river. They were so horrified that they lost their wits, and the rushing water caught her and pulled her into the current. By the time help arrived, her body could just be seen floating on the rough water, and before a boat could be launched it had disappeared among the waves of the sea that churned and roared about a quarter of a mile downstream.

The people following the accusation interpreted this terrible loss as the god’s work. People spoke in hushed voices of the tragic end of the lovely girl who had won everyone’s heart, and, within the narrator’s religious explanation, regarded it as a punishment rather than an accident. No evidence connected the girl herself with the theft.

About a month later the monsoon rains began. Clouds piled up thickly on the nearby hills and poured down such heavy rain that the mountain streams became roaring torrents rushing to the sea with unstoppable force. One of these streams, which ran beside the ancestral land of the suspected man’s family, burst its banks and swept their fields away so completely that when the rains stopped there was no trace of them, only sand and gravel from which no crop could ever grow again. The family was utterly ruined. To everyone who knew about the stolen money, this second disaster was clear proof that the god was still punishing the wrongdoer, especially since other farms had come through the flood unharmed.

From that time, too, the young man who really was the thief began to be troubled by the calamities that had struck his family. His sister’s drowning and the destruction of his family’s land by a flood that had harmed no other farmer seemed to him signs that his fellow assistant’s curses were coming true. A dread of what was still to come took hold of him and preyed on his mind until he began to lose his reason. He went about muttering to himself and saying he saw devils. His distress grew severe. His family restrained him, fearing for his safety and theirs; at other times he was quiet and subdued. Then he would talk to himself endlessly, lamenting that the dreaded God of the City was sending evil spirits to torment him because he had stolen his master’s hundred dollars.

In time these rambling confessions caught the attention of his heartbroken father, who sat watching at his bedside. They came so often and in such detail, even describing where the money was hidden, that at last the father decided to look into it. A search was made, and the whole sum was found in the very place the young man had named in his delirium. It was returned to the shopkeeper at once.

Since the money had been given back, and since the old father and mother depended on their only son to support them in their old age, the young man who had brought the accusation was begged to go to the temple and withdraw his charge. Only in this formal, legal way could the god officially know that the wrong had been put right; otherwise he would go on sending sorrow after sorrow until the whole family was ruined or dead.

Out of pity for the old couple, the falsely accused young man agreed. He presented a petition to the god saying that he wished to withdraw his accusation against a certain man who had been suspected of theft, that the stolen money had been returned to its owner, and that he begged the god to halt all further proceedings and forgive the culprit for the wrong he had done.

The narrator presents his recovery after the petition as a sign that it was granted. But he had learned a lesson he did not forget, and for the rest of his life he never committed another crime like the theft that had brought such terrible consequences on himself and his family.

About this story

“The God of the City” is chapter eight of the Rev. J. Macgowan’s Chinese Folk-Lore Tales, issued by Macmillan in London in 1910. It has two parts: the legend of how a drowned man’s spirit, freed by Kwan-yin, the Goddess of Mercy, became the god who hears complaints of injustice in every city, and an account of an appeal made at one of his temples.

Macgowan describes the temple itself in detail, with its demon constables, curtained shrine, and two secretaries, and presents the misfortunes of the thief’s family as the god’s punishment for breaking the Righteousness of Heaven.

Read the original: The God of the City in Macgowan’s Chinese Folk-Lore Tales on Project Gutenberg

For older readers: suicidal distress, drowning, animal sacrifice, collective punishment, severe mental distress and restraint. The supernatural explanations belong to this historical story; illness or misfortune is not evidence of guilt.

Reading the story closely

The two halves pull in different moral directions. The spirit wins release because he stops seeking a substitute victim and protects strangers at cost to himself. In the temple episode, a sister unconnected with the theft dies and her parents lose their livelihood. Compare those losses with the fisherman’s argument that one person’s freedom should not require another person’s death. The story’s language of justice does not resolve this contradiction.

Separate evidence from interpretation in the theft case. A public curse persuades the crowd, and later disasters strengthen their suspicion, but the money is actually located only after the young man describes its hiding place. Mark the point where each kind of evidence appears. The final request for mercy spares further suffering within the narrative; it cannot bring back the sister or restore the washed-away land.

Think about it

• Why does the fisherman save the woman, even though it means his ghostly friend stays trapped?
• How does the spirit’s refusal to sacrifice a stranger compare with the innocent sister’s death in the second half?
• Was it fair that the thief’s sister and parents suffered too? What do you think the storyteller believed?

Related stories

• The Ghost Who Was Foiled — another restless spirit seeking someone to take its place
• The Fairy Bonze — another Macgowan tale in which heaven rewards true kindness
• Kwang-Jui and the God of the River — a kind deed for a river god is repaid