25 Moral Lessons from The Magic Sword

“The Magic Sword and the Magic Bag,” a story from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, tells the tale of how a polite and modest young man named Ning, rescued a ghost from the clutches of a demon residing in a temple. Ning later ends up marrying the ghost and having children with her. Ning is rewarded for his behavior when he rejects the ghostly Little Beauty’s sexual advances and refuses to take her gold. These offerings are later revealed to have been tricks Little Beauty used to capture prey for the demon, and only Ning’s righteousness saved him from that fate. Going a step further, Ning takes pity on Little Beauty and promises to give her bones a proper burial. He takes them back to his household, where Little Beauty charms his mother. Eventually, Ning’s first wife dies, and he marries Little Beauty.

Not only do Ning’s virtues grant him an escape from death and a beautiful wife, Little Beauty’s filial nature towards her husband and mother in law allow her to essentially escape a traditional definition of death. Despite being ostensibly dead, and having her remains buried just outside the house she resides in, she’s eventually able to eat and drink, and make herself useful around the house. Not only that, she’s additionally able to give Ning two human children who go on to become distinguished mandarins. Both Ning and Little Beauty exemplified Confucian virtue, and as a result they were each rewarded in their own way. Ning rejected material pleasures such as money and sex, and dutifully remarried after his wife passed, all things Confucious believed benefited society as a whole. Little Beauty, too, acted appropriately subservient and filial towards her husband and his family, and as such, was able to live a virtuous Confucian life even after her untimely death. She’s particularly gracious towards Ning’s mother after she takes on the role of Ning’s sister (before they’re married). Filial piety towards mothers in law is a common theme in many Confucian ghost stories we’ve read, and this tale is no exception.

Ning and Little Beauty both exemplify chastity which, while more directly praised as a female trait, was also considered an important Confucian value for both sexes. Ning refuses Little Beauty’s advances the first time they meet quite directly, and even acts out of concern for her reputation if gossip is spread. While Little Beauty explains she’s done “shameful” things with the many men captured to appease the demon, she escapes the moral judgment this would cast on her by explaining how she was forced against her will into those acts. As a young, beautiful, and modest woman, she’s practically the perfect bride for an upstanding moral man like Ning.

Ning and Little Beauty aren’t the only characters in the story. In fact, they’re only saved from the demon by the magical swordsman Yan, who gifts them a bag that later captures and defeats the demon after it tracks the then-married couple to their home. The magic sword of the title is also Yan’s, and it saves Ning and Yan from the demon’s attack when Little Beauty advises Ning to stay in Yan’s room for safety. In the film adaptation of this story (A Chinese Ghost Story), Yan is portrayed as a Daoist monk, although the original text contains no reference to this. Still, Yan’s magical abilities and altruistic mentality are squarely in keeping with stories about supernatural Daoists.

This depiction of a powerful Daoist-like character, contrasted with the use of a Buddhist yaksha-demon as the story’s main antagonist, paints a pretty clear picture of the author’s views on the Buddhist/Daoist religious conflict of the time. China was moving from Buddhism, a foreign religion, to a religious and ideological blend of Daoism and Confucianism, which upheld Chinese nationalism and a return to a simpler, more traditional China. This story, like many older Confucian works, contains straightforward themes of filial piety and cosmic reward, while also including more subtle arguments used to support the author’s political and religious beliefs. While this ideological conflict was central to the time period this story was written in, the same cannot be said for modern day, and the film adaptation tells a story with different morals and outcomes. Although the beginning of the story and film are fairly consistent, rather than Ning and Little Beauty ending up together, after Ning buries Hsiao Tsien’s remains, she’s able to reincarnate into the next life and he has to say goodbye to her. While themes like filial piety and chastity were the most important to portray in the original, the western influence of modern media has led to the prevailing moral lesson in supernatural stories that “death cannot be reversed.” Even if she did everything right, Hsiao Tsien couldn’t have simply gone on to live with Ning at the end of the film because that wouldn’t make sense to modern viewers. Interestingly, the movie makes use of Buddhist themes of reincarnation and Buddhist texts are also used to defeat the demon lord at the end of the film. With the Daoist/Buddhist contention a remnant of the past, both religions serve in the film to hearken back to the historic China the story is set in.

“The Magic Sword and the Magic Bag” is an entertaining story of the supernatural, but it’s not without its agenda. The author’s Confucian beliefs and respect for the Daoist arts are reflected in the outcomes each character experiences. Despite that, the modern film adaptation of the story is able to tell the tale in a way that primarily evokes themes more familiar to a modern, western audience, while keeping much of the original content intact. Ning and Little Beauty, despite the circumstances of their first encounter with each other, are able to persevere and build a relationship. What ultimately happens to them, however, is dependent on the message the storyteller wants to convey.

Bibliography

Pu, Songling 蒲松齡, “The Magic Bag and the Magic Sword,” in Liaozhai zhiyi 聊齋誌異 (Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio). Translated by John Minford. Penguin Classics, 2006. 168-179.