Chen Qingbo, a successful candidate, was keeping a school at Shaoxing. One night he dreamt he was walking by the earth god’s shrine, and behind the shrine there were several beggars, fierce-looking creatures, gathered round a mud stove skinning a yellow dog and cooking it. The dog seemed to have been freshly beaten with a stick; the blood was still running from it, and Chen was sickened.
Then a man in cap and gown appeared at the gate and shouted at them: “That is my dog you are eating. I will report you to the authorities.”
Before he had finished speaking the beggars rose and beat him, and he fell down dead, and Chen woke.
Three days later he dreamt that a runner in black, carrying a warrant from the City God, showed it to him and said: “The dog’s owner was beaten to death by those villains, and his ghost has laid a plaint with the City God. Your name is entered on the writ as a witness, so I have come to fetch you.”
Chen looked at the warrant. There was his own name on it, and a date for the hearing. He woke in disgust. But he reflected that the matter had nothing to do with him — he was only going down to the offices of the dark for a while, to give evidence — so he gave up his place and went home, and told both dreams to a kinsman of his named Xu.
“When I die I am to come back,” he said to him. “I am very much afraid that with the roads of the living and the dead lying apart, my soul may lose its way for a moment. I beg you to buy a white rooster, write my name on it, and come to the City God’s temple at the hour, and call me, so that I do not go astray.”
Xu thought the whole thing a dream and nothing to rely on. He agreed, and laughed — and never believed a word of it.
On such and such a day of such and such a month Chen died, with no illness at all. His family wept and sent word to Xu.
Xu hurried out, bought a white rooster, wrote Chen’s name on it, and set off. As it happened a stage had been put up at the City God’s temple and a play was running; the crowds were jammed together, and it was not until the sun was going down that he could reach the foot of the god’s seat and call the soul at the top of his voice.
By the time he got home, in the thick heat of the sixth month, the body had already gone.
