Two brothers of Little Bridge Lane in Suzhou went out one spring day to the Canglang Pavilion. Passing by the office of the county education official, they saw the bixi under the inscribed stele, did not know what it was, took it for a common turtle, and took turns patting its head: “What heavy sin did you carry from a former life, that you should disgrace yourself before men like this?” And laughing, they went on their way.
Afterwards their mother had a birthday, and that night a company performed the play The Banquet at Hongmen with the guests all seated. Suddenly, onstage, Fan Kuai advanced with his cleaver raised, and host and guests alike lost colour.
He shouted: “I am the god Bixi. I am by birth a dragon’s son. Heaven pitied me for having courage but no letters, and posted me to carry stone at the academy, where I might perhaps pick up a little learning. Unfortunately I bear a dull and clumsy form, and slaves mistook me for a turtle and mocked me at their pleasure. You are a market-place good-for-nothing whose household has never kept decent order — a man who gets drunk on leftovers — you are precisely a case of likeness in spirit rather than in form. And you, unable to weigh yourself, turn round and say that I am the one disgracing myself before men. Today the hall is full of congratulatory guests: I shall try this case with you here.”
Having said this, he raised the cleaver to kill them. The two brothers grovelled and begged for their lives, and the guests pleaded on their behalf.
Then he threw down the cleaver and laughed: “Better to leave the bones in honour than to keep them alive dragging their tails in the mud. Let them go.”
He let the stage go, went back on, and continued the play as written; and he was simply Fan Kuai again. Asked about it, he had no idea.
All Suzhou talked of the matter, and the brothers were shut out of decent company. Afterwards they entered the Imperial College by purchase, and people still called them the Brocade-Clad Honoured Turtles.
— The author’s comment: many mouths are a fearsome thing; though really this is mockery carried to cruelty.
