The Reward of a Benevolent Life

On the banks of a river in the prefecture of Tingchow stood a city of about ten thousand people. Among them were a good number of comfortable families and perhaps half a dozen who could be called truly rich. One of the rich men, named Chung, was famous for his big heart and his kindness to anyone in trouble. A person in need had only to ask, and Chung would help at once, without any tiresome questions about whether the case deserved it. He was easygoing and good-natured, more inclined to think well of people than to judge their follies and crimes harshly, and his neighbors held him in affection.

Chung’s whole heart was wrapped up in his only son, Keng. When this story begins, Keng was growing into a young man of real ability; every time he had sat the examinations before the Literary Chancellor, his papers had been of very high quality.

The fame of Chung’s generosity had spread much farther than he ever imagined. Reports of his good deeds had reached the Immortals in the Western Heaven, who take a deep interest in human affairs, and they decided that Chung must not go unrewarded.

One day a fairy disguised as a Buddhist monk came to his door. Chung had always liked such monks; he admired their devotion and was moved that they gave up home and family to serve the gods and help mankind. So he welcomed his visitor with the greatest courtesy, and that very evening he gave a grand dinner for many distinguished guests, with feasting and merriment that lasted into the small hours.

The next day Chung said to his guest, “I suppose you have come to collect money for your temple. I will gladly give to anything that lifts up my fellow men. My gift is ready whenever you wish to take it.”

The monk smiled warmly and said that was not why he had come. “I have come to warn you about something far more important that concerns you and your family. Before long a great flood will strike this district and sweep everything away. It will come so suddenly that no one will have time to save life or property, for the rivers will pour down like the sea from those mountains you can see in the west. Begin building boats at once to carry you and your most precious things away. When you first hear that the water is rising, anchor them in the creek beside your house, and when the moment comes, do not wait an instant. Get aboard and flee for your lives.”

“But when will it happen?” Chung asked anxiously.

“I may not tell you the day or the hour,” said the monk. “But when the eyes of the stone lions in East Street weep tears of blood, hurry to the boats and leave this doomed place behind.”

“May I not warn the people?” asked Chung, whose tender heart ached at the thought of so many drowning.

“As you wish,” the monk replied, “but no one will believe you. The people here are wicked and corrupt, and your faith in my words will only make them mock you for a fool.”

“And will my family and I escape alive?”

“Yes, all of you will escape, and in time you will come home and prosper. But there is one thing you must take great care about. As the flood carries you downstream, rescue every living creature you find in trouble on the water. You will surely be rewarded, for the creatures you save will repay you a thousand times over. And one more solemn warning: you will come upon a man floating helplessly on the current. Have nothing to do with him. Leave him to his fate. If you save him, you will only bring sorrow on your house.”

As the monk was leaving, Chung tried to press a large sum of money into his hand, but he would not take it. He wanted no money, he said; the gods had heard of Chung’s great love for people and had sent him to warn Chung so that he might escape the doom awaiting his neighbors.

As soon as he had gone, Chung called in the boatbuilders whose yards lined the river and ordered ten large boats built as fast as possible. The news went around the town, and when people heard the boats were meant for a huge flood that would soon lay waste the whole region, everyone shrieked with laughter. Chung let them laugh. For weeks and months he sent an old man to East Street every day to see whether the stone lions’ eyes had overflowed with bloody tears.

One day two pig-butchers asked the old man why he came every day to stare into the lions’ eyes. He explained that Chung had sent him, because the gods had foretold that when the lions’ eyes ran with blood, the flood that would destroy the city would already be racing on its way. The two butchers decided to play a joke. The next day, before the old man arrived, they daubed the stone eyes with pig’s blood. As soon as Chung’s messenger saw it, he ran through the streets in terror to tell his master the dreadful news.

By now everything was ready, and Chung was only waiting for the sign. His most valuable goods were already packed in some of the boats. His wife, his son and his servants all hurried down to the water and went aboard, and remembering the monk’s warning not to delay, Chung ordered the anchors raised at once. The boatmen rowed as if their lives depended on it for the bigger river outside.

The boats had barely begun to move when clouds covered the blazing sun. Soon a wind as fierce as a hurricane tore across the land. Then came heavy drops of rain, the first of the deluge, and before long it seemed as though the great fountains of the sky had burst, for the water poured down in one endless torrent. The mountainsides ran with ten thousand rivulets that joined lower down into roaring waterfalls and thundered down onto the plain. Within a few hours every stream had burst its banks, rampaged through the villages and surged like a sea against the city. Nothing could hold back such an enemy, and before nightfall huge numbers of people had drowned in the churning water.

Meanwhile, swept along by the swollen current, Chung’s little fleet raced safely downstream, farther and farther from the doomed city. The river had risen many feet. As they passed a high peak whose base had been eaten away by the pounding water, the boats were thrown into great danger by the swirling, foaming river. Just as they escaped being swamped, they saw a little monkey struggling in the water, and they pulled it aboard. Farther on they passed a big tree branch carrying a crow’s nest with a single chick in it, and remembering the monk’s solemn instructions, they carefully lifted it aboard too.

As they rushed on down the muddy, swollen river, everyone was suddenly startled to see something struggling in the boiling water. As they drew closer, they saw that it was a man in great danger of drowning. Chung’s tender heart filled with pity, and he ordered the boatmen to rescue him. But his wife reminded him of the monk’s warning not to save any man on the river, since he would surely turn out to be an enemy who would one day do his rescuer great harm.

Chung answered that when a human being is about to drown, one must not think about one’s own interests at all. He had faithfully obeyed the monk by saving animals, and could not exclude this person from his compassion. “Whatever happens,” he said, “I cannot let this man drown before my eyes.” Just then the boat came alongside the swimmer, and he was hauled aboard and saved.

A few days later, when the storm had passed and the river had sunk back to its usual level, Chung went home with his family. To his amazement he found his house completely undamaged. The gods who had saved his life had used their powers to protect even his property from the ruin that had fallen on the city and the plain around it.

Soon after they had settled in again, Chung asked Lo-yung, the man he had rescued, whether he would like to go home to his family. “I have no family left,” Lo-yung said sadly. “All of them drowned in the flood you saved me from, and what little we owned was washed away when the streams swept over our farm. Let me stay with you, and let me spend my life serving you, so that I can repay you a little for saving me.” Tears ran down his face as he spoke, and he seemed deeply moved.

Chung, always full of pity, was touched by Lo-yung’s weeping and quickly told him not to worry about his future. “It is true you have lost all your relatives,” he said, “but from today I will treat you as my son. I adopt you into my family and give you my name.”

Six months later the city was covered with notices from its chief mandarin. He announced that he had received an urgent edict from the Emperor: an official seal used constantly in important state business had mysteriously disappeared and could not be found. Whoever told His Majesty where the seal was, so that it could be recovered, would receive a large reward and be made a high mandarin in the Emperor’s palace.

That very night a fairy appeared to Chung in a dream. “The gods have sent me,” he said, “to give you one more proof of how highly they regard you for your devotion to your fellow men. The Emperor has lost a precious seal and has promised generous rewards to whoever shows him where it is. I will tell you. It lies at the bottom of the crystal well in the gardens behind the palace. The Empress-Dowager dropped it there by accident and has forgotten all about it, but she will remember the moment she is reminded. I want you to send your own son to the capital to claim the reward by telling where the seal is.”

In the morning Chung told his wife his wonderful dream and began preparing to send his son off to the capital at once to win the promised honors. But his wife could not bear to part with her son and opposed the plan firmly. “Why are you so set on the honors of this world that you will send away your only child, whom we may never see again?” she asked through her tears. “You are rich, the gods love you, and you have everything money can buy in this flowery kingdom. Why not be content, and stop longing for titles the state can give but which can never make you truly happy?”

Just then Lo-yung came in. When he heard the wonderful story and saw the mother’s distress, he offered to go to the capital in Keng’s place. “I have never yet had a chance to show my gratitude to my benefactor for saving my life and for all his kindness to me,” he said. “I will gladly make this journey. I will see His Majesty and tell him where the seal is hidden, and then I will insist that every honor he wishes to give me be handed over to your son, to whom they truly belong.”

So it was settled that Lo-yung would go instead of Chung’s son, and preparations were made at once. As they said goodbye, Chung whispered in his ear, “If you succeed and the Emperor makes you one of his officers, never let ingratitude creep into your heart and tempt you to forget us here, who will be thinking of you the whole time you are gone.”

“That could never happen!” cried Lo-yung. “My gratitude to you is rooted too deep in my heart ever to be torn out.”

When he reached the capital, he asked at once to see the Prime Minister, who, hearing that someone wanted to speak to him on urgent state business, admitted him straight away. Lo-yung explained that he had come to reveal where the lost seal lay. “I am quite ready to tell everything I know,” he said, “but if possible I would rather tell the Emperor himself.”

“That can soon be arranged,” the Prime Minister answered eagerly, “for His Majesty is so anxious about the seal that he will see anyone who can ease his mind about it, at any hour of the day or night.”

Within minutes a palace eunuch came with orders for the Prime Minister to come at once to the Audience Hall, bringing the man with the important message for the throne. There they found not only the Emperor but the Empress-Dowager waiting for them. Commanded to speak, Lo-yung told in a few words where the seal was and how it had come to be there. As he went on, the Empress-Dowager’s face lit up with wonder, and a pleased smile spread across it as she recognized that he was telling the truth.

“But tell me,” said the Emperor, “where do you get your information, and how do you know so much about what goes on in my palace?”

Then Lo-yung described how the Immortals in the Western Heaven, deeply moved by Chung’s loving nature and wishing to reward him and honor his family, had sent a fairy to reveal the secret of the seal in a dream.

“Your home must truly be famous for kind and loving deeds,” said the Emperor, “if even the fairies come down from distant Heaven to show their approval. As I promised, I now appoint you to a high office that will make you rich for life. I believe it will be good for my kingdom to have a man from a home that the gods delight to honor helping me manage the affairs of state.”

From the moment the Emperor’s favor fell on him, every scrap of gratitude and every kind memory of Chung seemed to vanish from Lo-yung’s heart. He cut himself off from the home he had left only days before as completely as if it had never existed.

Weeks and months went by without a word from him. Chung’s heart was wrung with anguish, for he knew that such unnatural behavior would bring punishment on Lo-yung in the end. At last he decided to send his son Keng to the capital to find out what had become of him.

With one of the household servants, Keng reached the capital in a few days. When he asked at his inn about Lo-yung, he was told that Lo-yung was a highly distinguished mandarin in the city, a favorite of the Emperor and under his special protection. Delighted at the news, Keng hurried with his servant to Lo-yung’s residence, and by luck he met him riding out on horseback from his splendid official mansion with a long train of officers and attendants.

Keng ran up beside the horse and called out joyfully, “Ah, my brother! What a joy to see you again! How glad I am!”

To his astonishment Lo-yung scowled and shouted angrily, “You common lout, how dare you call me brother? I have no brother. You are an impostor, and you must be severely punished for daring to claim to be my kin.”

He called some of the guards in his train and ordered them to beat Keng, throw him into prison, and tell the jailer to treat him as a dangerous criminal. Bruised, bleeding and exhausted from the cruel beating, poor Keng was dragged to the prison and thrown into the deepest cell, to recover from the shock as best he could.

His plight was pitiful. Everyone who could have helped or comforted him was far away. He could hope for no kindness from the jailer, who had strict orders from the great mandarin to treat this prisoner as a danger to society. Even if the jailer had felt like being merciful, he would not have dared to disobey. The prison food was barely enough to keep Keng alive, and he had no money to bribe the jailer for more, nor anyone to promise that extra costs would ever be repaid.

Then a miracle happened, and the fairies stepped in once more, this time to save the only son of the man whose compassion was famous even in the distant Western Heaven. One morning, as Keng lay weary and half-starved on the blackened heap of straw that served as his bed, a monkey climbed up and clung to the narrow bars that let light into his cell. In one hand it held a piece of pork, which it kept holding out to him. Astonished, Keng got up to take it, and to his joy he saw that it was the very monkey his father had pulled from the water on the day of the great flood.

The same thing happened several days running. When the jailer asked what this strange business meant, Keng told him the whole story: the fairies’ warning and the family’s escape, the rescue of the monkey, and the rescue of Lo-yung, now the great mandarin who was keeping him locked up. “Ah,” the jailer muttered under his breath, “the animals know how to be grateful, but men do not.”

A few days later another messenger of the gods came to help. A flock of crows gathered on a roof overlooking the narrow slits through which Keng could glimpse the blue sky. One of them flew down onto the ledge outside, and Keng recognized it immediately: it was the chick rescued from the floating branch in the muddy river. Overjoyed, he begged the jailer to let him write a letter to his father describing his miserable state. The jailer agreed, the letter was tied to the crow’s leg, and the bird flew off on its long journey to Chung with the urgent news.

Chung was terribly upset by the letter his son had written in prison, and he traveled to the capital as fast as he could. There he tried repeatedly to see Lo-yung, but always in vain. The mandarin had too little sense to see that the threads of fate were slowly tightening around him and would soon bring about his ruin. Very reluctantly, because he still loved Lo-yung and would have saved him if he could, Chung brought a charge against him in the court of Fau-Kung, the famous criminal judge.

The investigation ended with Lo-yung condemned and soon put to death, while Keng was promoted to the very post once held by the man who had tried to destroy him.

Where this tale comes from

“The Reward of a Benevolent Life” is the eleventh and last chapter of Chinese Folk-Lore Tales by the Rev. J. Macgowan (London: Macmillan, 1910). It is set in a river city of the prefecture of Tingchow, and its villain is finally brought before Fau-Kung, whom Macgowan’s storyteller calls the famous criminal judge.

The warning sign of the stone lions’ bloody eyes, the rescued animals and the ungrateful rescued man also appear in “The Great Flood” in Richard Wilhelm’s The Chinese Fairy Book, offering a comparison between two versions of the same plot pattern; their resemblance alone does not establish how one version reached the other. In Macgowan’s telling the jailer sums up its lesson: animals know how to be grateful, but men often do not.

Read the original: Macgowan’s Chinese Folk-Lore Tales (Project Gutenberg)

For older readers: mass drowning, betrayal by an adopted family member, a severe beating, starvation in prison and execution. The flood is interpreted as divine punishment within the story; surviving a disaster is not evidence of greater moral worth.

Reading the story closely

Chung’s most revealing choice is to rescue Lo-yung against the warning. He accepts a foreseeable cost rather than let a person die. Later he still hesitates to prosecute the man who has harmed Keng. Compare those decisions: compassion motivates both, but protecting his son finally requires action against someone he also loves. Kindness here need not mean leaving an abuser’s power intact.

The rewards also depend on information getting through. A prank produces the blood-red eyes that start the escape; a dream locates the seal; the crow carries Keng’s prison letter. For each message, identify its sender, intended receiver and practical effect. The animal rescues are specific—food from the monkey and communication through the crow—while the jailer and Chung must still act before Keng can be freed. Their help complicates the jailer’s sweeping claim that only animals are grateful.

Talk about it

• Chung was warned not to save the drowning man, but he did anyway. Was he right?
• Why do you think success makes Lo-yung forget everything Chung did for him?
• How do the monkey and the crow repay the family for saving them?

Related stories

• The Great Flood — Wilhelm’s telling of a family warned by stone lions’ bloody eyes
• The Fairy Bonze — another Macgowan tale of a fairy monk who rewards a kind man
• The Heartless Husband — a man who forgets the people who made him great