The Wonderful Man

Macgowan sets this story in an unnamed southern Chinese prefectural city famed for its scholars.

The narrator describes its crowded streets. Its streets are narrow and its houses are squeezed tightly together. Every scrap of ground has been built on, and no space is left over for parks or open squares where people might breathe fresh air. Heat, stale air and crowding are simply part of life for the men and women who pack its streets and push past each other in the great struggle to make a living.

But there was one thing for which this city was rightly famous. It was known far and wide for its learning, as a home of scholars.

On the main streets, where people had learned through long practice to slip past one another without bumping, you could not miss the many students in their long gowns. Their gowns distinguished them from the farmers, craftspeople and porters walking beside them. And down the narrow alleys, where bad smells and foul air hung about all day, you could hear the high voices of younger students in cramped, unhealthy rooms, reciting the great Chinese classics aloud so that one day they could compete for the prizes the Empire offered its scholars in the examinations held every three years.

Love of learning filled the air. A traveler who lost his way in the maze of streets in the small hours of the morning would hear the deep silence broken by students chanting the writings of the great sages at the tops of their voices.

So the city was dear to the God of Literature, who has always been ready to fight for his scholars whenever anyone dares to interfere with their rights.

The narrator introduces a story about his protection. Once, when the scholars of five counties had gathered for the great examination, the Imperial Examiner, for some reason of his own, took a dislike to the students from this city and made up his mind that not one of them would pass. As their essays reached him, he laid each one carefully in a pile close beside him on the table. The God of Literature, sitting in his shrine at the far end of the hall, was outraged by the insult about to be done to his favorites. Under his breath he murmured some lines from the classics, vowing that as long as he had the power to stop it, such a wrong would never be done.

The examiner had just finished reading the last paper and placed it on top of the pile when, as suddenly as a flash of lightning, he was struck by a stroke and fell to the floor, senseless. The legend presents this collapse as the god’s answer to the examiner’s plan.

The examiner’s assistants were thrown into a panic. Thousands of students were waiting outside for the list of those who had passed, and the only man with the authority to draw it up lay helpless and unable to move. Something had to be done, and quickly. Looking through the papers on the table, they found the small pile the examiner had set aside for some purpose of his own. One of the officials suggested at once that these must be the essays of the men who had won their degrees. Everyone eagerly agreed. There was no need to wait any longer. The writers’ names were quickly copied out and pasted on the board in front of the Examination Hall.

To the astonishment of all the scholars gathered there, the only men who had passed were those from the god’s favorite city. That was the god’s second answer to the examiner who had tried to shut them out unfairly.

There was something else the people of this city were known for: the pleasure its leading citizens took in honoring anyone who showed outstanding goodness.

Outside one of the city’s four gates, well past the streets and houses that had spilled out beyond the walls, lay a wide stretch of open ground. Through the middle of it wound the main road, on its way to countless towns and villages beyond and at last to the distant capital, Peking, thousands of miles away in the far north. It was a busy road, and from early dawn until darkness drove people back into the city, the sound of footsteps and travelers’ voices never stopped.

What made this empty stretch of land along one side of the road so striking was a magnificent row of memorial arches, standing one after another for a long way. They were built of granite slabs. Some were very simple, while others were beautifully made by craftsmen who were plainly masters of their trade. All followed the same general plan, but some were carved with wonderfully rich decorations that were a delight to look at.

Each of these arches had been raised in memory of someone who had died, but whose goodness in life had been so remarkable that the people had decided it must never be forgotten. The arches would keep their memory sweet and give fine examples to the generations still to come.

Of all the virtues recorded on these granite slabs, the most common was devotion to one’s parents. One son, for instance, had been so devoted to his father and mother that he gave his very life in faithful service to them. His story was carved into the stone in words that would never fade, and the two sacred characters meaning “Holy Will” in the middle of the central arch showed that the Emperor himself had permitted this memorial to a virtue the whole Chinese nation admired.

Almost as many arches honored widows who had refused to marry again after their husbands died. One of them had been left in great hardship and had to fight against poverty and every kind of want. She could have escaped all of it if she had accepted the offers of marriage that came to her. But nothing could make her forget the loyalty she felt she still owed to the man who had first won her heart, or make her neglect her duty to their children. She could never let them pass into the hands of another man, who might look down on them and treat them badly, and whom she feared might not support their education. So she struggled on, bearing terrible hardships to provide for her sons as they grew. In the end, thanks to all she had suffered so bravely, every one of them passed his examinations with honor and entered the Emperor’s service. When she died, her story was sent to the capital, and the Emperor was so moved that he allowed an arch to be built in her memory, so that for ages to come the crowds passing beneath it every day could read of her self-sacrifice and learn how her admiring neighbors had raised this lasting monument to her goodness as a wife and mother.

But among all the arches spanning the road, there was one that drew more attention than any other in the long row.

This was not because the person it honored had shown greater virtues than all the rest, so great that people had to stop and think about such a heroic life. Quite the opposite: it mentioned no virtues at all. On the central arch, cut into the granite in large characters, were the words “The Wonderful Man,” and nothing more. There was not a word to explain who this wonderful man was, and not a hint of his story.

Scholars walking along the dusty road would glance up at this short, puzzling inscription and at once begin to wonder what such an odd, mysterious phrase, so unlike the language of the classics, could possibly mean. They would walk around to the other side of the arch to see whether there was any explanation there. But no, the same few cold, secretive words were simply repeated, and on they went, no wiser than before.

Farmers came trotting by in their usual way, with the vegetables they had grown hanging from stout bamboo poles across their shoulders, and they would stare at the words “The Wonderful Man” with puzzled faces. They were not great scholars, for they had been too poor to stay in school long enough to master the ancient characters of the Chinese written language, but they knew enough to read simple words like these. Yet what did the words mean? They would laugh and joke about them as they hurried along, and many a clever guess was cheerfully tossed out to explain the mystery.

The real story behind the strange inscription was both romantic and deeply sad.

Many years before, in a village beyond the hills at the edge of the plain where the city stood, there lived a family of three: a man, his wife and their little son. It was a wonderfully happy home. Husband and wife loved each other dearly, and they cherished their son, whom they expected to carry on his father’s name and make offerings at his grave, according to the beliefs described in the tale.

The one great sorrow in that home was poverty. There was no doubt that they were very poor. Every morning when the sun came up, they felt they were standing right at the edge of hunger, even starvation.

The family’s poverty leaves little room to recover from illness or a failed crop.

All this family had to live on were a few tiny fields. Even in the best of years they could grow just enough sweet potatoes to keep themselves alive, and a few vegetables to flavor them. If the rains failed and the burning sun scorched the potato vines in their rows, the husband had to look for some other way of earning enough to buy the bare necessities for his family.

Sometimes he hired himself out as a porter, carrying the crops of the bigger farmers to the busy market town ten miles away. But even then he earned only enough to feed his family on the plainest food for a week or two at most. At other times he found better-paid work carrying a sedan chair to some faraway place, which kept him away from home for several days. He would come back with good strings of coins, and his wife’s eyes would shine as she thought of at least another month of better meals for them all. But it was money dearly earned. The man had never been trained as a chair-bearer, and he had not learned the trick of handling the crossbars on his shoulders so that the heavy load hurt less. So every time he came home from one of these trips, he was so worn out that he had to lie in bed for days without working.

As time went on, the hard strain of his work, the poor food he lived on and the steady wearing down of a body that had never been strong took their toll on the overworked father. Little by little he became an invalid who could not do even the lightest work on his small farm. The shadow of coming trouble grew darker every day. Husband and wife began to lose hope, and they could almost hear the footsteps of cruel Fate coming closer and closer. Still, those two brave souls never complained, and they showed no sign of heartbreak, except that now and then the wife’s eyes filled with tears, which she wiped away quickly so that her husband would not see them and be upset.

One night a gale was blowing from the northeast, and the wind howled and moaned around the cottage in such eerie, mournful tones that it seemed as if some troubled spirit had been set loose to wail a funeral song over a soul about to depart.

In the supernatural explanation the narrator gives the storm, hostile spirits fill the air. These evil spirits gather around a home when disaster is about to strike it. Invisible, they stand peering into the dark room where someone lies dying, and they let out their wicked joy in sounds that fill the watchers with terror.

The wife was so anxious about her husband that she could not sleep. Her heart ached terribly, and now and then a stifled sob showed how much she was suffering. That dreadful night she began to understand that her husband was very ill and would probably die. The storm raging outside, with its furious gusts and strange noises in the air, had frightened her and set her nerves on edge.

That very day she had gone to the nearest temple, and the god had promised her that her husband would recover. But he had grown weaker and weaker, and now the storm had broken her courage and filled her with a dread she could not put into words. What an uproar there was outside! Whose were the horrible voices shrieking around the house? Whose were the hands tearing at the doors and windows until they shook and rattled?

At last she could bear it no longer. She felt she had to get up and see whether the wild, raging spirits that had so clearly gathered around the house would turn out to be true prophets of doom.

The room was dark, so she lit the tiny wick floating in a saucer of oil, and she looked with all her heart into her husband’s sunken face. He seemed to know her, because a faint, pale smile flickered on his lips and then faded away. She gazed at him with a heart close to breaking, for something told her that the grayness of his face and the sudden whiteness of his lips meant that death was near. A long sigh, a sob or two, and the person she loved most in all the world was gone from her forever.

The funeral used up everything she owned. She even had to sell the fields to pay for it, so afterward she was left with almost nothing. But she was a woman of very strong character, and she understood that she had to decide at once what to do. Everyone thought her only choice was to marry again, but she was determined never to do that. Her husband’s memory was too precious to her, and besides, it was her duty to raise her little son to manhood so that he could take his place among the scholars and thinkers of the Empire.

Soon a plan, as bold as it was unusual, took shape in her mind. No one must ever find out what it was. It would be the secret of her life, locked away in her own heart, and if she could possibly help it, not even her son would ever know.

She sold her cottage and moved to a quiet neighborhood outside the great city that was so famous for its learning. Then she put away her women’s clothes and dressed as a man. There was no other way she could support herself and her child, because the work available to her as a woman in this story’s setting would not support the household. As a man, she knew she could hold her own at any of the unskilled jobs she was able to do. And so it proved. She could carry loads as heavy as any of the men she worked alongside, and she was so polite, so well-mannered and so free of rough language that employers, who had no idea she was a woman, would choose her ahead of the others who came looking for work.

The years went by, and her little boy grew into a fine young man. His mother had made up her mind that he would be a scholar. It was the one ambition of her life, and for it she slaved and toiled and went without almost everything a person needs.

Twenty years passed after that stormy night. In the nearby city the great examinations had just ended, and there was tremendous excitement among the thousands of students crowding around the Examination Hall to see the names of those who had passed.

After a while the son came home, walking on air, his eyes sparkling with joy. He was so excited that he could hardly get the words out clearly as they came tumbling from his lips.

“Father,” he cried, “today we have been given what your heart and mine have longed for! I have passed, and with honors too, because my name is right at the top of the list of successful candidates. Now, my dear father, you will never have to work hard again. Soon my name will be known all over the province. It will be posted in every Confucian hall, and scholars everywhere will speak with admiration of my success. My fortune is made, and I owe it all to you: to your self-denial, and to all the suffering and hardship you have been willing to bear through all these long years. Thanks to you I have come into my kingdom at last, and I will never have to be a laborer earning a few coins a day, as you have been willing to be, my dear father, out of love for me.”

All the while her son was speaking, the mother’s face glowed with happiness. The hopes and dreams of a lifetime had come true in one rush of joy that almost overwhelmed her.

“Ah, if only my husband could be here with us now,” she thought, “to share the great happiness of this moment!” Her mind went to that terrible night, the darkest of her whole life, and in her ears she heard the roar of the storm thundering around their poor little hut and the wailing of the evil spirits that had chilled her blood, as clearly as if it had all happened only yesterday.

Filled with this new joy that had suddenly changed his life, the son went on to talk about the plans he had been making. There would be no shortage of money now, he said, because work would come to him from every side. Rich men in the city would invite him to teach their sons. He was a famous scholar now, and wealthy people would compete to have him. Soon, too, he was sure to receive a government post that would bring riches into the house. Then his father would be a gentleman, living with him in his official residence and treated by everyone with honor and respect. So, with a glowing face and shining eyes, the young man talked on with all the eagerness of youth as visions of the future rose before him, and his mother watched him with admiring eyes.

Suddenly he stopped. The laughter left his face, and he said gravely and solemnly, “Father, I want you to tell me where my mother is buried. I must go to her grave and make the proper offerings to her spirit, and tell her how well her son has done and how grateful he is to her. That is my duty as a loving son, and I must not put it off.”

The young man did not notice the deathly paleness that spread over his parent’s face as he spoke. He did not know that his words filled his mother with despair, for she felt that her life had reached its end. She feared condemnation if people learned that she had lived and worked among men. The restrictive expectations described by the narrator overwhelmed her with shame, and she came to believe, tragically, that she had no way forward.

The next morning at sunrise, when the son went into his father’s room as he did every day, he found his parent lying on the bed, no longer living, and, to his amazement, dressed in a woman’s clothes. One look was enough to show that this death was no accident. She had made herself ready as if for a funeral. Her clothes, her hair and every small detail of preparing a body for burial had all been seen to, so that no stranger’s hands would need to touch her and no curious or unkind eyes would pry too deeply into the secret of her life.

The story raced from the suburbs into the city, and it was talked about in every home, high and low. The city’s response, as the narrator describes it, was to praise her devotion and courage and turn her death into a public example of sacrifice. The mandarins and scholars asked the Emperor to issue a decree allowing an arch to be built, so that the memory of such a noble woman would live forever.

Their request was granted, and it was decided that the inscription to be carved on the arch would be just these words: “THE WONDERFUL MAN.”

Where this tale comes from

“The Wonderful Man” is chapter VII of Chinese Folk-Lore Tales by the Rev. J. Macgowan (London: Macmillan, 1910). Macgowan sets it in a southern city famous for its scholars and opens with the city’s legend of the God of Literature and its long row of granite memorial arches, before revealing the story behind the most puzzling arch of all.

The ending describes a death by suicide following fear of social disgrace. This retelling gives no method and does not endorse that death as a duty or a noble solution. It also removes broad claims about Chinese people and appearance-based distinctions between scholars and workers from Macgowan’s historical narration.

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

For older readers: poverty, a parent’s death, restrictive gender expectations and suicide without method details. The mother’s years of work deserve recognition; her death should not be treated as the price of devotion or an inevitable answer to shame.

Reading the story closely

The title records a public misunderstanding. For years, the son’s education is made possible by a woman whom employers and her own child take for a man; after her death, the memorial still calls her ‘The Wonderful Man.’ Compare what the son knows during his joyful speech with what the reader knows. His request to honor his supposedly dead mother inadvertently makes concealment seem impossible to the living one.

The opening describes a city skilled at rewarding scholarship and commemorating sacrifice. The ending exposes a limit of that praise: a monument arrives after years of hardship and the mother’s fatal despair. Contrast the help that might have supported her while alive with the honor granted after death. The scholar’s success depends on manual labor that his speech hopes to leave behind; that labor, rather than the memorial alone, is the evidence of her contribution.

Talk about it

• Why did the mother decide to dress and work as a man?
• Why do you think the arch says only “The Wonderful Man”?
• The mother believed she had broken the rules for women. Do you think those rules were fair? Why or why not?

Related stories

• The Widow Ho — a very different widow in another Macgowan tale
• The Tragedy of the Yin Family — another Macgowan tale about ambition for scholarly honors
• The Two Scholars — a Wilhelm tale of two scholars who lose seventy years among the fairies