Journey 010: Miracle Worker

The blind regains sight, and the dead rises. Is it a miracle … or a zombie apocalypse?

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Welcome to the Chinese Lore Podcast, where I retell classic Chinese stories in English. This is episode 10 of Journey to the West.

Last time, the Buddha sent the Bodhisattva Guanyin to the Tang kingdom in the East to find a worthy Buddhist monk and have him come West to fetch three collections of sacred Buddhist scriptures to bring back to the East to enlighten those barbarians in the Central Kingdom. Also, this way we don’t have to pay for shipping. So Guanyin went to the capital of the Tang kingdom, where the Tang emperor just so happened to be hosting a grand mass that brought together esteemed Buddhist monks from around his kingdom. The most esteemed of them all was the Master of Ceremonies, a monk named Chen (2) Xuanzang (2,4).

We then dove into the backstory of this Xuanzang. Turns out he was the son of a scholar, Chen Guangrui (1,3)  who had earned a plush provincial office by being really good at taking tests. But on his way to assuming his office, Chen Guangrui was murdered by an unscrupulous boatman, who then assumed his identity, took his wife, and took his post. His wife, Lady Yin (1), went along with it because she was pregnant. But once she gave birth, she sent her infant boy floating down the river on a plank. Better to leave him to heaven’s will than to keep him at home, where he was sure to be killed by the imposter who had killed his father.

The baby boy drifted with the currents until his makeshift raft washed up at the foot of Golden Mountain Monastery. The abbot of the monastery was a wise monk. That day, he was sitting in meditation when he suddenly heard the wails of an infant. He was moved to go out to the river bank to see what’s up. There, he found an infant strapped to a wooden plank. 

The abbot hurriedly rescued the boy. He saw a letter written in blood secured to the infant. The letter explained the boy’s origins and gave the names of his parents. The abbot now gave the boy a baby name, Jiangliu (1,2), which meant River Drifter. He found someone to take care of the boy, while he hid the letter from everyone. 

In the blink of an eye, 18 years had passed, and the abbot now had the young man tonsured and inducted into the order at the monastery. On this occasion, the young man received a Buddhist name, Xuanzang (2,4).

Then, one fine spring day, the monks of the monastery were gathered under a pine tree, discussing the finer points of Buddhist teachings. One feckless monk got shown up by Xuanzang, and this guy cursed the young monk, “You beast! You don’t even know your real name or your parents! Why the hell are you here stirring up trouble?!”

Feeling the sting of that insult, Xuanzang went to the abbot, kneeled, wept, and begged to know who his true parents were. He said to the abbot, “A human being born into the world receives his natural endowments from the forces of yin and yang and the five elements, but he is, in the end, raised by his parents. So how can one live in this world without parents?”

After much pleading, the abbot told him, “If you really want to find your parents, then follow me.”

So they went to the abbot’s quarters. The abbot fetched a small box from one of the cross beams in the rafters. Inside were the letter written in blood and the cloak that Xuanzang was wrapped in when he was sent drifting down the river as an infant. 

Xuanzang read the letter, which told him his parents’ names and the misfortune that was his origin story. When he was done reading, he fell to the floor and wept, “How can a human being allow his parents to go unavenged?! In my 18 years, I had never known my parents. Only today do I know who my mother was. And if not for you rescuing me, master, how could I have lived to see this day? Please allow me to go find my mother. And then I will offer prayers and rebuild this monastery to repay your immense kindness!”

“If you want to find your mother, then take this letter and this cloak with you,” the abbot said. “Travel under the guise of a monk seeking alms. Go to the prefect’s compound at Jiangzhou Prefecture. There you will find your mother.”

So Xuanzang set out as a monk traveling to collect alms, which was a common enough sight. He arrived at Jiangzhou Prefecture and went to the prefect’s compound. And as luck would have it, the imposter, Liu Hong (2), was away on business yet again. It seems like this guy was never home for these key moments.

The previous night, Xuanzang’s mother, Lady Yin, had a vision in her dreams where she saw an imperfect moon becoming round again. When she woke up, she thought to herself, “I have no news of my mother-in-law. My husband was murdered. I abandoned my child to the river. If someone did rescue him, he would be 18 years old by now. Could today be the day that heaven reunites us? Who can tell?”

Just then, she heard someone outside reciting scripture and chanting a request for alms. So she went out and asked the monk where he was from. He told her that he was a disciple of the abbot on Golden Mountain Monastery, and she invited him in for alms in the form of a vegetarian meal.

As the young monk ate, Lady Yin studied his features, and found them strikingly similar to those of her late husband. She now dismissed the maid in attendance so that she could be alone with the monk. She then asked him, “Did you become a monk when you were little, or when you were grown? What’s your name? Do you have parents?”

Xuanzang replied, “I was neither young nor grown when I became a monk. My backstory is one of grave injustice! My father was murdered, and his killer then forced himself on my mother. My master, the abbot, instructed me to come here to seek my mother.”

“What’s your mother’s name?” Lady Yin asked.

“My mother is Lady Yin, and my father was Chen Guangrui (1,3). My infant name was River Drifter, and my Buddhist name is Xuanzang.”

“I am none other than Lady Yin!” his mother exclaimed. “But do you have proof of your identity?”

Hearing this, Xuanzang fell to his knees and wailed, “Mother, if you don’t believe me, then see this blood letter and this cloak!”

Lady Yin saw that those were indeed the objects she had left with the infant she sent down the river. Mother and son now embraced each other and cried. But in between sobs, she told Xuanzang, “My son, you must leave at once!”

“I had never known my parents in my 18 years until today! Why are you sending me away already?!”

“You must leave at once! If that murderer comes back, he will surely kill you!” Lady Yin said. “Tomorrow, I’ll pretend to be sick and say that in the past I had prayed and offered to donate a hundred pairs of monk’s shoes, and that I must go to your monastery to fulfill that promise. At that time, I will have more to tell you.”

So Xuanzang hastily took his leave. Lady Yin, meanwhile, was both ecstatic and worried after this surprise reunion. One day soon thereafter, she started claiming to be sick and refused to eat or drink anything and just lied in bed. When Liu Hong came home and saw this, he asked what was wrong.

“When I was young, I once made a promise as part of a prayer,” she told him. “I promised to donate 100 pairs of monk’s shoes. Five days ago, in my dreams, I saw a monk holding a sharp knife and demanding those shoes, and then I started to feel sick.”

So the Buddha apparently does NOT mess around when it comes to collecting on promises. But Liu Hong was not worried. “That’s no problem at all; why didn’t you say something earlier?”

He then summoned two of his aides and told them to issue a decree that every civilian family in the city must provide a pair of monk’s shoes within five days. The civilians snapped to, and the monk’s shoes were all ready by the deadline. 

Lady Yin then asked Liu Hong, “Now that the shoes are ready, is there a monastery nearby where I can donate them to make good on my promise?”

“In this Prefecture, there are a Golden Mountain Monastery and a Scorched Mountain Monastery,” he said. “You can pick which one you want to go to.”

So, first of all, I guess the Scorched Mountain Monastery drew the short straw when it came to names? And secondly, of course Lady Yin already knew where she wanted to go. 

“I’ve long heard that Golden Mountain Monastery is a good place; I’ll go there,” she said. So Liu Hong’s aides prepared a boat, and Lady Yin and a confidant set off for Golden Mountain Monastery. 

Meanwhile, Xuanzang had already informed the abbot of what transpired on his visit to Jiangzhou Prefecture, so the abbot was ready. When Lady Yin arrived, she sent her maid on ahead to announce her coming. All the monks went out to welcome her. She entered the monastery, prayed to the statue of the bodhisattva, arranged for a vegetarian feast for the monks, and told her maid to present the 100 pairs of monk’s shoes on platters.

Then, she made her way to the lecture hall, where she offered incense. After that, she told the abbot to distribute the gifts to the other monks. Once the other monks had dispersed and no one else was in the hall, Xuanzang approached and kneeled to his mother. She asked him to take off his left shoe and sock, and sure enough, his left foot was missing a small toe, the one that she had bitten off all those years ago when she set him afloat down the river.

Mother and son now embraced and wept again. They then bowed to the abbot to thank him for raising Xuanzang. He told them, “Even though you two have reunited, I worry that the criminal might find out. Your ladyship must return home soon so as to avoid calamity.”

Lady Yin now told her son, “I will give you an incense ring. Go to Hongzhou (2,1) Prefecture in the northwest, about 500 miles from here. There’s a Ten Thousand Flowers Inn there. We left your paternal grandmother there. I will also write a letter that you can take to the capital. Go to the residence of Prime Minister Yin, which is to the left of the imperial palace. He is my father. Give him this letter and ask him to inform the emperor and to lead an army to come capture and execute the criminals, so as to avenge your father. Only then can you rescue me. I dare not linger, or that criminal will think I’ve stayed too long.”

She then hurriedly departed the monastery. Xuanzang returned to the monastery with tears in his eyes, informed his abbot of her instructions, and then set off for Hongzhou Prefecture. When he arrived at the inn, he asked the innkeeper, “Some years past, an Official Chen left his mother at your inn. How is she?”

So it’s been 18 years, and Chen is a pretty common name. But the innkeeper immediately knew whom he was referring to. “She was staying here,” he told Xuanzang. “But then she went blind, and she didn’t pay any rent for about four years. She’s now staying in a dilapidated hovel by the south gate. She panhandles on the streets every day to get by. That official never sent word after he left here, for some reason.”

Xuanzang immediately headed to the hovel the innkeeper mentioned, and there, he found his grandmother, Madam Zhang, and spoke to her.

“You sound like my son Chen Guangrui,” she said.

“I’m not him, but I’m his son,” Xuanzang replied. “Lady Yin is my mother.”

“Why did your parents not come?” she asked.

“My father was murdered by an outlaw, who then forced my mother to be his wife.”

“But how did you know to find me here?”

“My mother sent me here to find you. She sent me with a letter and an incense ring.”

As she received those objects from him, Madam Zhang started to weep aloud. “My son came here in his pursuit of title and fame. I thought he had forgotten me. But who knew that he was murdered! Thank heaven for taking pity and ensuring that his line was not broken. And now, my grandson has found me!”

“Grandma, how did you go blind?” Xuanzang asked.

“I was thinking about your father every day, and when he didn’t show, I cried until both my eyes went blind.”

Xuanzang now kneeled and prayed to heaven, “In my 18 years, I have not been able to avenge the injustice against my father and mother. Today, I have come to find my grandmother on my mother’s instructions. Please. on account of my sincerity, help me restore sight to her eyes!”

After he prayed, he started licking his grandmother’s eyes with his tongue. It’s a good thing she WAS blind, or she would probably be freaked out and grossed out by this newfound grandson of hers. But with moments, she opened her eyes and her vision had returned.

“You really ARE my grandson! You look just like my son!” she exclaimed with a mixture of joy and sadness when she laid eyes on Xuanzang.

They now left the hovel and went back to the Ten Thousand Flowers Inn. There, Xuanzang paid for a room for his grandmother, gave her some spending money, and told her, “I’ll be back in a month or so.”

So first of all, really? You’re return customers for a place that kicked out an old blind woman? And secondly, if I were Madam Zhang, there was no way in hell I would let my grandson out of my sight. The last time someone told her “I’ll be back to get you soon,” that ended up being 18 years. But Madam Zhang let Xuanzang go, and he continued on the second leg of his mission.

Xuanzang now headed to the capital Chang’an. There, he found Prime Minister Yin’s residence and told the doorman that he was a relative of the prime minister. When this was relayed to the master of the house, he was puzzled.

“I have no familial connections with any monks,” he said.

But his wife told him, “Last night I dreamed that our daughter came home. Could this be a message from our son-in-law?”

So the prime minister invited Xuanzang in. When Xuanzang saw him and his wife, he fell to his knees and wept as he kowtowed to them. He then showed them the letter from his mother. The prime minister read the letter and immediately began to wail as well.

“Husband, what’s wrong?” his wife asked.

“This monk is our grandson,” he told her. “Our son-in-law Chen Guangrui was murdered by a criminal who has forced our daughter to be his wife.”

And now, she began to wail as well. But then Prime Minister Yin said, “Don’t worry. Tomorrow I will report this to the emperor and then personally lead an army to avenge our son-in-law.”

So the next day, Prime Minister Yin went to court and presented a petition to the Tang emperor, which said, 

“My son-in-law, the top-ranking scholar Chen Guangrui, was on his way to assume his post in Jiangzhou Prefecture when he was murdered by the boatman Liu Hong, who then took my daughter as his wife and posed as my son-in-law. He has usurped the post for many years. This is a shocking and tragic incident. I beg your highness to immediately dispatch an army to exterminate this criminal.”

The emperor was irate when he read the petition, and immediately mobilized 60,000 imperial troops to follow Prime Minister Yin to Jiangzhou Prefecture. The prime minister collected the troops and set out right away. After some days on the road, they arrived at Jiangzhou and pitched camp on the north bank of the river. Prime Minister Yin then summoned the local subprefect and county judge and filled them in on the whole story, gaining their cooperation. 

Before dawn broke the next morning, the troops crossed the river and surrounded the prefect’s residence. The murderer Liu Hong was still sound asleep when he was startled awake by the sound of an explosive and the beating of drums and gongs. The troops stormed into the residence, catching Liu Hong off guard and arresting him on the spot. 

The prime minister ordered that Liu Hong be taken to the execution grounds and sent the army back to their camp. He then sat down in the main parlor of the residence and asked Lady Yin to come out. But word came that she was trying to hang herself. So Xuanzang rushed into her room, kneeled, and pleaded, “Mother, my grandfather and I have led an army here to avenge my father. We have captured the criminal, so why are you trying to commit suicide? If you die, how can I go on living?”

The prime minister now also came in to try to dissuade her. She told them, “I have heard that women should follow only one man. It was painful enough that my husband was murdered; how could I have acquiesced to that murderer? It was only because I was pregnant that I went on living in shame. Now, my son has grown, and my father has raised an army to avenge my husband. How can I face you, as ashamed as I am? I can only kill myself to repay my husband!”

But Prime Minister Yin said, “This wasn’t your fault; you had no choice. There is no shame in this!”

He and his daughter then embraced and wept, and Xuanzang cried as well. Wiping away his tears, Prime Minister Yin told them, “Don’t feel sad. I have captured the murderer. Let’s go deal with him.”

And so they set off for the execution grounds. Just then, the subprefect also arrived with another prisoner — the other boatman who had been an accomplice in Chen Guangrui’s murder all those years ago. The prime minister was delighted, and handed down their sentences.

First, both Liu Hong and his accomplice each received a caning of 100 strokes, which prompted them to confess their crimes. Then, the accomplice was nailed to a wooden donkey, paraded to the city market, and executed via the gruesome death by a thousand cuts, after which his head was hung up for all to see.

Liu Hong was taken to the river crossing where he had murdered Chen Guangrui. There, the prime minister, Lady Yin, and Xuanzang offered a sacrifice to Cheng Guangrui. As part of the ceremony, Liu Hong’s heart and other organs were cut out and presented as sacrificial items to appease the dead. They then burned an eulogy as part of the sacrifice.

Having avenged their loved one, the three family members wept as they looked out on the river. As she mourned her husband, Lady Yin again tried to kill herself, this time by jumping into the water. But Xuanzang quickly pulled her back. While they were struggling, they suddenly saw something floating toward them atop the waves. As it drew closer, they saw that it was a dead body. And when it washed up onto the bank, Lady Yin recognized it. It was the corpse of her husband, Chen Guangrui! 

As she wailed again, others crowded around to check out the dead body. But suddenly, this corpse started to move. Within moments he rose to his feet and then sat down. He opened his eyes, saw his wife, his father-in-law, and a young monk around him, weeping.

“How did you all come to be here?” he asked.

So at this point, any logical person would be totally freaked out. But we’re also in a novel where a talking monkey could tramp through towns and villages wearing human clothes asking hey do you know where I can find the secret to immortality and no one apparently batted an eye. 

So instead of freaking out about a possible zombie apocalypse, Lady Yin now brought her not-so-dead-anymore husband up to speed, and then she asked him the obvious question:Umm … how are you not dead and decomposed? And he was like, so, it’s a funny story really.

As we mentioned in the last episode, before he left his mother at the inn on the way to Jiangzhou, Chen Guangrui had bought a golden carp from a fisherman with the intent of cooking it for his mother. But then he thought there was something special about the carp, so he released it instead. Well, turns out he was right. That carp was actually the dragon king in charge of the Hong River. I guess he was much less powerful than the dragon kings of the seas, because somehow he allowed himself to get hooked by a fisherman. Fortunately for him, Chen Guangrui’s act of mercy allowed him to escape back to his palace at the bottom of the river.

A couple days after his escape, one of his patrolmen rushed in to tell him, umm, someone apparently killed a scholar, and the guy’s dead body sank to the bottom of the river, which is, you know, our backyard. What do you want me to do with it?

The dragon king had the body brought in, and he immediately recognized it as the man who had released him.

“This man was my savior,” he said. “How did he end up getting murdered? As the saying goes, you must repay kindness with kindness. I must save his life to repay him.”

As you might guess, saving the life of a dead man requires some paperwork. The dragon king wrote an official dispatch, which he sent a lackey to deliver to the municipal earth spirit, asking for the soul of the scholar. The municipal earth spirit summoned a little demon to fetch the requisitioned soul and handed it over to the messenger, who brought it back to the dragon king. 

The dragon king now asked the soul of Chen Guangrui for his name and how he ended up dead. After Chen Guangrui told his story, the dragon king introduced himself as the fish that he had released a day earlier.

“You’re my savior, and since you are now in trouble, how can I not save you?” the dragon king told him.

So the dragon king kept the dead body in his palace and put a magic pearl in the dead man’s mouth to keep the corpse from decomposing, so that it may be rejoined with his soul at a later date when the time was ripe for revenge. As for the soul of Chen Guangrui, he stayed on as an official in the dragon king’s service.

Of course, this raises the questions of why didn’t the dragon king just rejoin his soul and body right then and there and return him to the mortal realm immediately so he could set everything right instead of waiting 18 years? And the answer is, well, destiny, aka plot convenience. 

In any case, 18 years later, the dragon king’s patrolmen reported that hey, there are three people on the river bank making a whole lot of racket with their wailing over some dead scholar. Oh and they burned this eulogy as a sacrifice. The dragon king read the eulogy and immediately invited Chen Guangrui’s soul to join him.

“Sir, congratulations!” the dragon king said. “Your wife, son, and father-in-law are mourning you by the river bank. Let me return your soul to your body, and give you a pearl of wish fulfillment, two rolling-pan pearls, 10 bolts of mermaid silk, and a jade belt with lustrous pearls as gifts. You can reunite with your wife and son today!”

Chen Guangrui’s soul thanked him time and again. Then, the dragon king ordered his lackeys to transport the body back to the surface of the river and rejoined flesh and soul, gave him a push toward the bank, and let the waves do the rest.

Once Chen Guangrui finished recounting this fantastic tale, everyone rejoiced. All the local officials came to congratulate their real boss. The prime minister treated them all to a feast. The next day, he led his army back toward the capital. On the way, he stopped at the inn where Cheng Guangrui’s mother was staying. 

Madam Zhang was just thinking that her grandson might be back soon, as she had a most auspicious dream the night before where she saw a withered tree come into bloom, and that morning the magpies were chirping nonstop. But when her visitors dropped by, she was shocked to see not just her grandson, but her supposedly dead son. They embraced, wept, and brought each other up to speed. They then paid the innkeeper and headed to the capital together. There, the entire family celebrated this most unlikely reunion.

The next morning, Prime Minister Yin went to court, reported to the emperor about his expedition, and recommended that Chen Guangrui be appointed to a key position. The emperor agreed, and promoted Chen Guangrui to Subchanellor of the Grand Secretariat, a role in which he would accompany the court and carry out its policies. So hey, the guy who was literally dead weight for 18 years got a promotion. Good for him.

As for Chen Guangrui’s son, the monk Xuanzang, he was determined to continue his monastic life, so he was sent to the esteemed Temple of Infinite Blessing. So all’s well that ends well. Oh and Lady Yin ended up killing herself after all. 

Wait what? Yeah, she did. But the novel just kind of drops that bombshell on you in one sentence at the very end of the chapter about Xuanzang’s backstory, and nothing more is said about it ever again. So I guess we’ll just move on as well. As you may have guessed, we didn’t spend the better part of two episodes detailing Xuanzang’s backstory for nothing. To see the role he will play in the Journey to the West, tune in to the next episode of the Chinese Lore Podcast. Thanks for listening!

Music in This Episode

• “Luỹ Tre Xanh Ngát Đầu Làng (Guzheng) – Vietnam BGM” by VPRODMUSIC_Asia_BGM
• “Watercolor Lillies” by Aaron Kenny (from YouTube audio library) 
• “Ravines” by Elphnt (from YouTube audio library)
• “Dark Toys” by SYBS (from YouTube audio library)
• “A Lost Story of the Wind” by Harumachi Music
• “Think About Yesterday” by Harumachi Music