Chinese Ghost Fables 1 Read Free Page A

acquired
them are keys for your final judgment.
05
LAY A FOUNDATION
    Mr. Wu believed that sensual pleasure was the best enjoyment in life. He often visited
brothels for entertainment. One day, he met a female fox spirit and had a relationship with
her. Although they lived together, he kept calling on prostitutes.
    "Why are you wasting money on those whores?" The female fox spirit was irritated and
complained, suggesting, "I can transfer myself to their appearances whenever you desire
and that wouldn't cost you a penny." He was delighted and agreed to stay home,
exclusively enjoying the otherworldly creature.
    After a few months, Mr. Wu sighed profoundly and remarked, "I really appreciate you for
your effort on satisfying my sexual fantasies. However, the appearances are make-believe.
It is not quite compatible with genuine...."
    "What's genuine?" She interrupted. "Whose appearance will last forever? Everything that
you see now will only exist for a very small proportion of time. After three or five years, the
fresh, young female teenagers, whom you are crazy about, will become mature ladies. The
mature ladies will become experienced women, and the experienced women will become
old maids. Appearances are ephemeral, controlled by time. It is like a flowing river. We
pass from one life stage to another: from baby, youth, to maturity, old, then, to senile and
dead. Time gradually leaves traces on us, carving wrinkles on our foreheads, loosening our
skin, slowing down our movement, deepening our tone of voice, retracting our hairline,
removing our teeth one by one and fading away our memory. In less than sixty years, most
of the people whom you known will have gone to graveyards and soon, they will become
ivory-like skeletons and bones. Neither white blossom or green grass nor yellow earth or
brown mountains will stand forever. We can document those changes by seconds, minutes,
hours, days, months, years, or centuries. But there always is an end for everything.
Youngness and beauty is mere a pleasant occurrence belongs to the incipient fraction of
the lifespan, and is transitory. Maturity and oldness are following. Don't waste time in
debauchery. By messing around with whores in the cream of your primetime, you are
undermining your own future, forging your own coffin nails for your later years. No matter
what stage you are in. You must always lay solid foundation for tomorrow. Otherwise, you
are wasting your priceless time and, consequently, will have a miserable future."
Mr. Wu contemplated this for a long while and comprehended it. After this insightful
conversation, he never visited a brothel again.
     
Your good deed or misbehavior will have consequences. It will eventually catch up with you.
It's up to you to plant a seed of hope or chaos.
     
06
TWO OLD TUTORS
    Mr. Jeh and Mr. Chan, who were two old tutors, were neighbors. One night, they took a
walk between the North and South Villages. In the route, there were a few deserted
graveyards. Strange noises came from afar. The crescent moon hid itself behind clouds
and wind blew sluggishly. The surrounding became murky and disturbing.
"I can sense something stressful. It's rather spooky," Unnerved and cautious, Mr. Chan
suggested, "I have an eerie feeling. Why don't we go home?"
     
"What does a ghost look like?"
    Coming down from the dark, an old man, holding a cane, accosted them and irritably
shouted, in a hollow bass tone, "Ridiculous! You are an embarrassment of the educated.
Living in such an advanced age, I never saw one single otherworldly creature in my whole
life and don't believe that kind of nonsense at all. You two are educated people don't have
any shame! You should be sophisticated enough to look down on that superstition. Why
have you still been influenced by ludicrous Buddhism? It's a superficial philosophy for the
illiterate. Be a humanitarian, you certainly know how to think and how to reach a rational
conclusion. Human beings are the only master of the whole