Yang Yuanlong of Yujia Bridge, outside the Genshan Gate of Hangzhou, kept the accounts of a rice brokerage in the Hushu district. Hushu was five li from Yujia Bridge, and Yuanlong walked there in the morning and back at night as a matter of daily habit.
One day, the rice trade being brisk, he did not start home until past the first watch. At the Desheng Dam bridge he met Li Xiaoxian, an acquaintance, hurrying along with two strangers. Yuanlong hailed him.
“I don’t know what these two want,” Li answered. “They insist on dragging me to Suzhou.”
Yang asked the two men about it, but they only smiled and would not answer. Yuanlong clasped his hands and took his leave, and Li called after him: “When you pass the little stone bridge about a li past the Chaowang Temple — if anyone there asks your name, give them another surname. Do not say Yang. If you do say Yang, then give your full name as well. Remember — remember!”
Yuanlong wanted to ask why, but Xiaoxian was already hurrying away.
Yuanlong went on to the bridge, and sure enough, two men were sitting in the grass and asked his name. He had barely answered “Yang” when the two came straight at him and grappled him, saying: “We have waited for you a long time. Today we do not let you go.” Yuanlong fought them off with his hands, but their company grew, and they dragged him into the water — and only then did he understand they were ghosts, and remember the earlier words, and cry out at the top of his voice:
“I am Yang Yuanlong, and I have no quarrel with any of you!”
“A mistake,” said one of the ghosts. “Let him go.”
While the clamor was still going on, it chanced that a dumpling seller was crossing the bridge. Hearing the cries, he came over with his lamp, saw Yuanlong in the water, and pulled him out in haste. Yuanlong got up and looked — it was old Zhang from the neighborhood. He told him what had happened, and old Zhang saw Yuanlong home.
The next morning Yuanlong went to call on Xiaoxian, and found him being laid into his coffin. On asking, the family said: “He died of a stroke last night.”
So the moment Yang met Li was the very moment Li died. But what business was taking him to Suzhou — that, nobody knows.
