The Golden Canister

Under the Tang emperors a count kept his headquarters in the garrison town of Ludschou. Among his household was an enslaved young woman with two remarkable skills. She played the lute beautifully, and she could read and write so well that the count trusted her to draft his most private letters.

One day the camp held a great feast. While the music sounded, the girl tilted her head and listened. “The big kettledrum has a mournful voice today,” she said. “Something terrible must have happened to the man who beats it.”

The count had the drummer brought in and asked what was wrong. “My wife has died,” the man confessed, “but I did not dare to beg for leave. Grief got into my drumsticks, and I could not stop it.” The count sent him home at once.

In those years the counts who held the lands along the Yellow River were forever quarreling and envying one another. Hoping to bind them into one family, the emperor arranged marriages among their houses, and so the Count of Ludschou’s daughter became the wife of the son of the old Count of Webo. The match did little good. The old Count of Webo suffered from a weak chest that grew worse each summer, and he used to sigh, “If only Ludschou were mine! The air is cooler there. I would surely be healthier.”

At last he raised three thousand fighting men on generous wages, asked the oracle to name a lucky day, and made ready to seize Ludschou by force.

News of this reached the Count of Ludschou. He fretted from morning to night and could find no way out. One night, after the water-clock had been set for the night watches and the camp gate had been barred, he paced the courtyard with his staff. Only the slave-girl walked behind him.

“My lord,” she said, “for more than a month you have neither slept nor eaten properly. You keep to yourself and brood. If I am not mistaken, Webo is the cause.”

“This is a question of life and death,” the count replied. “You women know nothing of such affairs.”

“I am only a slave-girl,” she answered, “yet I guessed what was troubling you.”

The count heard the sense in her words. “You truly are no ordinary girl,” he admitted. “Yes, I have been searching in silence for some means of escape.”

“Then leave it to me, master, and put it out of your mind,” she said. “I will go to Webo and see how matters stand there. The first night watch has just begun. If I set out now, I will be home again by the fifth.”

“And if you fail,” said the count, “you will only bring ruin down on me sooner.”

“I will not fail,” she said.

She went to her room to make ready. She combed out her glossy black hair, twisted it into a knot on the crown of her head, and pinned it with gold. She dressed in a short jacket stitched with purple and slipped on shoes of dark woven silk. In the fold of her robe she hid a dagger engraved with dragons, and on her forehead she wrote the name of the Great God. Then she bowed to the count and was gone.

The count sat pouring wine for himself, waiting. When the horn sounded for dawn, the girl drifted down in front of him, as weightless as a falling leaf.

“Did it go well?” he asked.

“I have not shamed my errand,” she replied.

“Did you have to kill anyone?”

“No, there was no need for that. But I brought back the golden canister that stood by Webo’s pillow, as a token.”

The count asked her to tell him everything, and she did.

“I left when the drums beat the first round of the night, and I came to Webo three hours before midnight. Inside the gate the guards were asleep in their huts, snoring like a thunderstorm. The sentries were walking their rounds, and I slipped past them through the left-hand doorway into your kinsman’s bedroom. He lay on his back behind the bed curtain, deep in sleep. A fine sword stuck out from under his pillow, and next to it stood a golden canister with its lid open. Inside were slips of writing. One gave his age and birthday; another bore the name of the god of the Great Bear. Incense grains and pearls had been sprinkled over them. The candles were burning low and the incense in the burners had nearly turned to ash. His maids lay curled up asleep all around the room. I could have taken the pins from their hair without waking them. Your kinsman’s life was in my hands, but I could not bring myself to take it. So I picked up the golden canister and came home. The water-clock showed the third hour when I had finished my journey. Now you must have your fastest horse saddled and send a rider to return the canister to Webo. Then the lord of Webo will come to his senses and drop his plan of conquest.”

The count sent an officer galloping to Webo without delay. He rode all day and half the night before he arrived. He found the whole camp in an uproar over the missing canister; soldiers were searching every corner. The messenger rapped on the gate with his whip and demanded to see the lord. Because he had come at such a strange hour, the Count of Webo guessed he carried something important and came out of his chamber to meet him. The rider handed over a letter: “Last night a stranger came to us from Webo. He told us that he had taken a golden canister from beside your bed with his own hands. I did not think it right to keep it, so I am returning it to you by this messenger.”

When the lord of Webo saw his golden canister, he was badly shaken. He led the messenger into his own rooms, set a splendid meal before him, and rewarded him richly. The next day he sent him home with thirty thousand bales of silk and a team of four horses as a gift for his master, together with a letter of his own:

“My life was in your hand, and you spared it. I thank you, I am sorry for what I meant to do, and I will mend my ways. From now on peace and friendship will always join our houses, and I will not let any other thought enter my mind. The men I gathered I will use only to guard against bandits. I have already taken back their weapons and sent them home to till their fields.”

From that time on the warmest friendship joined the two kinsmen north and south of the Yellow River.

One day the slave-girl came to her master to say goodbye.

“In my last life,” she told him, “I was a man, a doctor who cared for the sick. Once, by mistake, I gave a small child poison instead of medicine, and the child died. For that the Lord of Death punished me by sending me back to earth as a slave-girl. But I remembered my earlier life, I tried to live rightly in my new one, and I even found an uncommon master who taught me the art of the sword. I have served you for nineteen years now. I went to Webo to repay your kindness, and I managed things so that you and your kinsman live in peace again, which has saved thousands of lives. Saving those lives is a service I hope can make amends for my old fault. Now I mean to leave the world and live among the quiet hills, working toward holiness with a pure heart. Perhaps that way I can win back my former state. So I ask you to let me go.”

The count understood that it would be wrong to hold her back. He gave a great farewell banquet and invited many guests, and many famous knights sat at the table. Each of them honored her with toasts and verses.

At last the count could not hide his feelings any longer, and the girl bowed low before him and wept as well. Then she quietly slipped out of the hall, and no one ever learned where she had gone.

Where this story comes from

“The Golden Canister” is chapter LXVII of Richard Wilhelm’s The Chinese Fairy Book, translated by Frederick H. Martens (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1921). It belongs to the section Wilhelm called “Historic Legends” and is set under the Tang dynasty, among the quarreling counts of the Yellow River country.

Wilhelm’s note says the figure of the clever slave-girl also turns up in the story of the Three Kingdoms. He explains that the Great God whose name she writes on her forehead is Tai I, “the Great One,” and that the god named in the canister is the god of the Great Bear constellation. He also points out that the two counts’ letters say as much between the lines as they do in words.

Read the original: The Chinese Fairy Book (Project Gutenberg)

Best for ages 9–12 with adult discussion: enslavement, a threatened invasion, a child’s accidental poisoning and a character’s belief in punishment through rebirth. No one deserves enslavement, and being a woman is not a punishment or a lesser state.

Reading the story closely

The heroine first recognizes grief in the drummer’s playing, then recognizes fear in the count’s behavior. His claim that women know nothing of state affairs is contradicted by the person standing beside him. Her final account retains the old tale’s hierarchy of sex and servitude; it should be read as the character’s explanation, not a judgment of women’s worth or a justification for slavery.

Write out the two messages conveyed by returning the canister: the polite words in the letter and the unspoken warning carried by the object. The count conceals the woman’s identity behind an unnamed stranger, while Webo acknowledges that his life could have been taken. Peace depends on restraint, but also on a credible threat; that tension makes this more complex than a victory achieved by courtesy alone. Her departure finally gives her a purpose beyond serving the count.

Talk about it

• How does the slave-girl know that something is wrong with the drummer?
• Why is returning the golden canister more frightening to the Count of Webo than an army would have been?
• Why does the girl believe her journey to Webo has made up for her old mistake?

Related stories

• Old Dragonbeard — another Tang-era Wilhelm legend of a mysterious sword-wielder
• How Three Heroes Came by Their Deaths Because of Two Peaches — a court maneuver with fatal consequences for three warriors
• Dschang Liang — a historic legend of hidden skill and loyal service