Friday, July 29, 2011

"Jealousy"


Author Unknown

Summary: Wu Hung was a bachelor who taught school in his own quarters. He needed a wife. He was approached by a matchmaker who told him about a beautiful young woman who would make him a good wife. Her name was Yonia. She played the flute and was quite talented. The matchmaker, for some reason, was sopping wet.

At first, the marriage went well. But there were certain signs that Yonia was clairvoyant, who seemed to know Wu’s wishes before he ever expressed them. Then another matchmaker told Wu about her daughter. Too late, said Wu. He was already married. When she asked to whom and he told her, she warned him that it was not a good match, but would say no more.

Well, it turns out that his first wife had been thrown out of her employer’s home for becoming angry and throwing another girl to her death. Not only that, but she had committed suicide with her unborn baby, In short, she was a ghost and the matchmaker had also been drowned, which explains the fact that she had been soaking wet. It also turned out that the second matchmaker and Yonia and her daughter were rival ghosts who taunted and attacked each other, and they did so regularly.

Wu decided that he needed to live somewhere else, away from the mayhem perpetrated by the rival ghosts.

Famous Chinese Short Stories. Re-told by Lin Yutang. New York: The Pocket Library. 1954.

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