Reconstructing Truth through Fifteen Strings of Cash

RECONSTRUCTING TRUTH THROUGH FIFTEEN STRINGS OF CASH* Hung-nin Samuel Cheung University of California, Berkeley If a story is constructed for the purpose of transmitting and illustrating a didactic message, as is often believed to be the case in Chinese vernacular fiction, then the structure and the language through which it is constructed should bear prominently on the delivery of that message. The ordering of events in the narrative should highlight the inexorable onslaught of retribution after transgressions, and there should be no ambiguity in the narrative language regarding the veracity of the moral teaching. CUD zhan Cui Ning m!fTm$ [The wrong execution of Cui Ning], tale 33 of the 1627 Xingshi hengyan mitt JIEi § [Everlasting words to awaken the world] by Feng Menglong ~~~~~ (1574-1646), seems to be an example of such a story. 1 Often classified as a cautionary tale on folly and its consequences,2 the narrative begins with a plot summary that highlights the disastrous result of a seemingly trivial act: "~r.::rt~@~~~lI+rrF=r l P m~~~[l:f;.~+:k~-7 ~ "*~l-r.>.SJt. E3,nf! m8 s .J=¥!-I=iJL ·1lE!lf=r /\. ' /,,~{t=I Yf§0~~~ ' 8§~M~ 0 (XSHY,p. 21) He killed my husband, Liu Gui, but the prefect" who tried the case refused to make a thorough investigation, concluding it carelessly and sending Erjie and the man Cui Ning off to their deaths .... Today Heaven's will has prevailed and he has confessed everything. I beseech you, Your Honor, judge this case properly and right the wrong which has been done. (JLD, p.478) Again, it is her words that convince the judge to convict, this time Jingshan Dawang. In the first case, she fabricates truth; in the second case, she provides it. In both cases, truth evades the judges. However constructed or reconstructed, her stories kill regardless of innocence or moral rectitude. In the convoluted course of investigation, the fifteen strings of cash are the object of controversy. Lies are told about where they come from and speculations are concocted as to how they disappear. If Cuo zhan Cui Ning is a discourse on the ambivalent and perilous nature of truth, the fifteen strings serve as a discursive motif to signify that ambivalence. There are actually two different sets of fifteen strings of cash, and, to almost every party concerned, each set represents two different readings: the truth and the false interpretation. The first set comes as a loan from Liu Gui's father-in-law. When the ill-humored husband decides to playa trick on his concubine by claiming the money is the 92 Cheung Fifteen Strings of Cash proceeds from pawning her, he distorts the truth and gives it a new and false reading. The cruel joke threatens the young woman, who hurriedly leaves the house and, by mistake, forgets to secure the lock, thereby abetting the midnight burglar. As truth is turned into untruth, the tampering results in the jester's own death, a clear case of the dire consequences of folly. The executions of the two innocent people are of course the ripple effects of this foolish lie. Their deaths, however, are individually conditioned by their own patterns of distorting the truth. Unlike Liu Gui, who corrupts truth, both Erjie and Cui Ning profess truth. Whether alone or in public, they never steer away from truth, or at least what they believe to be the course of truth. When the fabricated excuse for the cash is conveyed to Erj ie, she takes the story to heart, dead seriously. The story Liu Gui tells of pawning her is the only truth of which she is aware, the truth she adamantly proclaims in her conversation with the neighbors and in her confession in court. Four times she repeats the story, but the voice of her truth is drowned out by those of the neighbors, Madam Wang and her father-in-law, and finally the judge. The group consort in naming the fifteen strings as evidence of her theft. The accusation imposes still another reading on the cash, an interpretation which steps further into the process of constructing truth. Erjie dies as a victim of this...