The girl with sea-green eyes

MASTER Pu Songling’s story of the demon with painted skin has scared the living daylight out of me, and I departed from Laoshan as fast as I could before it got really dark (I don’t like the idea of meeting unfriendly night critters). When I came back to my hotel in Ningxia Road in downtown Qingdao, I was surprised to see an old acquaintance from Singapore waiting at the reception counter.

His name is Lee Chia Chuan, and he now lives in Shanghai, working as a full-time artist painting watercolour abstracts that look meaningless to me, but which he sometimes manages to sell for a small fortune apiece to witless China business tycoons and party officials.

“What a surprise to see you here, Lee!” I exclaimed. “How do you know I’m in Qingdao?”

“Well, you sent me an e-mail saying you’re visiting Qingdao this week and you even told me the name of this hotel, remember?”

Lee said he was on his way to Taishan, a magnificent mountain that has been designated a United Nations Heritage Site. The location is about five hours coach ride from Qingdao. Lee wanted to climb to the summit to absorb Taishan’s “spiritual vibes” and express it in his paintings. He was staying overnight in Qingdao because he wanted to tour the city before moving on to Taishan.

I told him there was nothing of artistic value about Qingdao except for a giant red sculpture that looks like a tornado. “I’m just back from Laoshan park,” I said, “but I would like to go there again tomorrow to meet a friend who tells interesting stories. Why don’t you follow me there instead, and do some sketching of the ancient temples, trees and scenic spots of the vicinity?”

He agreed with my suggestion and so early the next day both of us set off in a taxi to Laoshan. Unlike most Singaporeans who went to English schools and grew up in a Western-themed culture, Lee's education was in Chinese. He is thoroughly familiar with the Chinese language and tradition, and he speaks Mandarin fluently (particularly with pretty China women). When he retired from active employment at the Singapore container port a decade ago, he divorced his wife, sold his house and migrated to China to be a full-time artist. Laoshan’s Taoist shrines and temples and its natural beauty would be attractive enough to sketch.

When we arrived at the park, we went to a vegetarian restaurant within the main temple compound for a quick brunch. Immediately after the meal Lee said he couldn’t wait to explore the place, so he left while I sat there to enjoy a leisurely cup of tea brewed from leaves that were plucked from the hillside plantation behind the restaurant. We agreed to meet again at the restaurant in the late afternoon for our return journey to the city.

I stood up, rubbing my belly in contentment. The Taoist-style vegetarian meal was good and the tea even better. I would look for Master Pu who was probably at the same pavilion where I left him the day before. I wanted to hear the ending of his tale of Mr Wang and his pretty girlfriend who turned out to be a demon under a painted skin.

On the way out of the restaurant, I passed the doorway to the kitchen where some women were washing, drying and stacking plates, bowls and other utensils. They looked aged with coppery, wrinkled skin, except for one person who appeared young and slender. I couldn’t resist retracing my steps to the doorway to have another long look at this beauty. She must have sensed the intensity of my gaze for she looked up from her washing and turned her head towards me, giving a half-smile. Her hair was raven-black, tied up in a messy knot, her nose was straight and her lips were full. Her oval face and cheeks were flushed with a glow that seemed to reveal some secret of nature. But it was her eyes that struck me: they were not the usual dull brown-black of most Chinese, but blue-green, like the luminous reflection of the deep sea.

For a moment of eternity I stood and stared. Suddenly recovering my composure, I gave her a sheepish grin and hurried out of the building. At the pavilion where we met the previous day, Master Pu greeted me warmly. “Ah! I know your curiosity will drive you back here,” he said with a hearty laugh.

“So, what happened to Mr Wang, the dirty old man?’

“Dirty young man,” Master Pu corrected me. “When Wang saw the green-faced demon in his bedroom being transformed back to his pretty darling, his legs turned into tofu from sheer fright. For several minutes he leaned against the wall by the window, unable to move. But with superhuman willpower, he managed finally to waken his legs and back away from the window without making a sound.

“Once out of the compound he raced back to the market square to find the Taoist priest who that morning had warned him that he was being bewitched. Falling on his knees in front of the priest, he blabbed out all that he had seen. The priest told him there was nothing to worry about, and gave him some slips of yellow paper with magical characters written on them. These were charms that would protect Mr Wang if the demon should attack him.”

Here, I interrupted. I told Master Pu that last night in the hotel I had used my laptop computer to search the Web for his story which was entitled “Painted Skin”. It was part of the Master’s Liaozhai Anthology of Strange Tales. I downloaded the entire story, read it and felt I had to meet the Master again to discuss its ending which was not at all satisfactory to me.

“According to what I’ve read, you wrote that the magical charms were unable to protect the young man. The demon killed him but he was eventually brought back to life through the effort of his wife. She swallowed a lump of yucky phlegm from some crazy beggar in some deserted temple. She then returned home, vomited the lump into the gaping wound on her dead husband’s chest. Immediately the corpse started to breathe, opened his eyes and became alive! Bah! This description is not only complicated and clumsy but nonsensical.”

Before he could say anything, I continued: “You also wrote that the demon was finally caught by the priest, and that everything turned up well. I suspected this ending is not the real story!”

“You’re right,” he sighed. “The ending in the book is unnecessarily complicated as it was made up by the book sub-editor who knew nothing of the art of story-writing. In reality I’m not too sure what actually took place. But don’t blame me – the publisher needed a happy ending or nobody would buy the book.”

Master Pu surmised that after killing Wang by taking out his heart, the demon wouldn’t be stupid enough to be hanging around the neighbourhood to wait for the priest to capture her. She would have escaped to some big city and disappeared into the crowd.

“You’re telling me that this demon is still on the loose, walking freely about the streets today in the guise of a sweet young girl!” I cried in alarm, and then suddenly remembered the beauty with the luminous sea-green eyes in the kitchen. Master Pu shrugged his shoulders. “Never mind about this Painted Skin demon... Let me tell you about other demons from Hell, and a Buddhist monk who was punished for his dreadful misdeeds.”

As someone who holds Buddhist monks in high regard, I was piqued by what he said. And like the previous day, much against my will, I sat on the stone bench and listened…

“We all know that when a person died, Oxhead and Horseface, two sheriffs from the Underworld, would come to escort his soul to face judgment and punishment at the court of Yama, king of Hell. A man named Zhang lost consciousness and immediately the two demons pounced on his soul and dragged him down into the presence of Yama. But when His Infernal Majesty checked his registers he realised the officers – who are usually meticulous in their work – had brought in the wrong fellow! Zhang’s life on Earth was not due to end yet, so Yama instructed Oxhead and Horseface to take him back to the world above immediately.

“As they left, Zhang quietly asked the two demons to let him have a quick tour of the place. To make amends for their wrongful arrest, they agreed, and led him through the Mountain of Knives, the Frozen Lake, the Forest of Swords, and all the other courts where terrifying punishments were being meted out to different categories of wrongdoers: adulterers and pimps, people who abandoned their old parents, exam cheats, tax dodgers, bankers and money launderers, rapists and sex predators, murderers, sly lawyers and lying politicians, and so on."

“Hold it,” I said, “would Donald Trump, George Bush, Tony Blair and other lying politicians be facing punishment too when their turn comes to enter the Underworld?”

“Oh no, Yama’s Hell is reserved for Chinese only. Westerners don’t understand Chinese legalistic mumbo-jumbo, and Yama doesn’t hire interpreters, so he cannot pass judgment on non-Chinese. They would have to go to some other Hell of their own making. As the Sutras say, each of us creates our own hell by our action and perception.

“To cut a long story short, Zhang and his escorts were about to end their tour when they heard a shriek, more piercing than all the other screams resounding in Hell. The group rushed to where the sound came from. It was a small room where a Buddhist monk was hanging upside down, suspended by a rope through a hole in his leg. He was screaming in agony. As Zhang came nearer, he saw the man was none other than his own brother! He asked the guards in the room the reason for the punishment, and they said the monk had been condemned to this torment for having collected donations on behalf of his monastery but lost the cash on gambling, drinks and visiting prostitutes. His punishment would not stop until he repents of his misdeeds and devotes himself to living a holy life, they added.

“Zhang regained consciousness, his body drenched in sweat. He hurried to the Xingfu Monastery where his brother was stationed. As he entered he heard someone screaming. When he reached his brother’s room, Zhang found him upside down, just as he had seen him in Hell, with his legs tied up above him to the wall. There was an abscess oozing blood and pus between his thighs. In between his wailing, his brother told him that he was in terrible pain and that this was the only position in which the pain was bearable.

“Zhang told his brother what he had seen in the Underworld. The monk became so terrified that he at once gave up his gambling, drinking and eating meat, and other evil deeds, and from then onwards put all his waking hours into reading the Sutras, reciting mantras, practising the precepts of the Holy Dharma, and sticking to a vegetarian diet. In a fortnight his pain disappeared, and he recovered. He continued his good practice so strenuously that he soon gained the reputation of being a most exemplary monk.”

I THANKED the Master for this hair-raising but salutary tale and mentally told myself I must be more resolute in my own practice (I’ve been nodding off lately in my Vipassana meditation).

It was now time to meet my friend Lee, so I went back to the restaurant. There was no one except the caretaker who was closing the place. When I told him I was from Singapore and was to meet a friend there, the caretaker handed me a note. It was from Lee, informing me he had to leave much earlier and that I should not look for him. He explained that he met a young girl with such enchanting eyes that he simply must make friends with her (translation: make love to her). With his years of experience talking and trying to seduce young females, he was able to persuade the girl to accompany him as his “tour guide”. In fact, he said in his note, he would be  leaving for Taishan with his pretty companion that very evening. He ended by saying he would not see me any time soon in China but would contact me when he returned to Singapore.

I’m back in crappy ol’ Singapore with its cement-gray sky, traffic-clogged roads and handkerchief-sized parks. It has been almost a year, but I’ve still not heard anything from Lee.

Painted Skin Part 1 | Contents Page


Biographical note: Pu Songling (1640-1715)  was the author of Painted Skin 畫皮 and more than 500 other Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio 《聊齋誌異》。Master Pu lived in Laoshan for many years, and drew inspiration for his stories from the surrounding forest and hills that were said to be populated with Taoist immortals, deities, fox spirits (in the guise of beautiful women), green-skinned demons and other supernatural beings. An English translation of Strange Tales (also known as the Liaozhai) by John Minford (2006) is available at Amazon.com

SCARY TALES AFTER DARK Part 2
Her blue-green eyes were as luminous as the deep sea.