The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

Tian Haoli is a Litigation Master. Monkey visits Tian in his dreams and speaks to him in his head while he is awake. One day, Monkey tells him there is someone at the door. It is Li Xiaoyi, a shy woman who needs help. She mortgaged her land to a wealthy distant cousin of her late husband, Jie. She paid Jie back, but he claims she stopped making loan payments, and based on the contract they inked, her land is now his.

At court, Magistrate Yi hears their complaint. Tian claims to be Li’s cousin so he can represent her, saying that since all men are brothers according to Confucius, he and Li are related. The Magistrate curses Tian’s clever tongue. Urged on by the Monkey King, he changes the terms of the contract, adding a single stroke to a character that completely alters its meaning. The Magistrate convicts Jie and sends him to jail.

A week later, Li is back. Her brother, Xiaojing, is a wanted man now staying with her. He had been a servant of the scholar Xu Jun, accused of plotting against the emperor. The Blood Drops, the emperor’s “eyes and talons” (374) are chasing him. He is in possession of a dangerous book by Wang Xiuchu and wants Tian to save it. The book relates how, in 1646, the Manchu forces killed everyone in the town of Yangzhou. This book “will reveal their throne as built on a foundation of blood and skulls” (377). Tian struggles within himself: “[C]ould he allow the ghosts to continue to be silenced?” (377). He tells the fugitive he cannot help.

The Monkey King appears to Tian and begins a conversation about heroes, telling him that Wang Xiuchu was a hero, but then proclaiming that there are no heroes: “We’re all just ordinary men—well, I’m an ordinary demon—faced with extraordinary choices” (380). He tells Tian that he is now a witness and must choose what to do. Tian helps Lis and her brother get to Japan.

A few days later, Tian Haoli is arrested for giving comfort and aid to a traitor and reading a forbidden, false text. He says he read a book about sheepherding and pearl stringing and challenges the officials to prove that he’s lying. He counts on the fact that the official would not be able to say what is in the book. He says, “The book I read contained nothing that was false, which means that it can’t possibly be the book that has been banned” (383). The official sentences him to death.

The Blood Drops torture Tian. He turns to the Monkey King to distract him and is able to lie to the torturers and spit at them. They eventually give up and put him in a cell. There are children singing outside the jail cell, and he offers to teach them a song. It is nonsense, on the face of it, but holds deeper meaning.

The following day, the men tie Tian to a pole. Just before his death, the Monkey King asks if he regrets his choice, and Tian says no, and the Monkey King bows to him “the way you would bow to a great hero” (388).