Strange Tales from Liaozhai--Volume 1 by Pu SongLing

Author:Pu SongLing
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jain Publishing Company
Published: 2008-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

45. Chomping on Stones

In the city of Xin, the family of aged and respected Wang Qingwen had a young horse groom also named Wang, who, while still young, left to go to Laoshan to study the Dao. After a while, he no longer ate cooked food, but merely nibbled pine nuts and white stones, while hair began growing all over his body.

After he had already been there several years, he began to miss his elderly mother and returned to his home town, where he gradually resumed eating prepared food, while continuing to eat stones as before. As he held the stones to the sun and looked at them, he could tell whether they would taste sweet, bitter, sour, or salty, like the flavors of different root crops.

When his mother died, he went back once more to the mountain, and he’s been there now for seventeen or eighteen years.

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Qingwen: The coutesy name of Wang Yuchi, father of the Qing poet, Wang Yuyang (Brown 140).

Laoshan: Mt. Lao, near Qingdao, in Shandong province, is one of the sacred mountains of Daoist belief.

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