22 “The Magic Sword and the Magic Bag” and its Film Adaptations

Despite its relatively short length, Pu Songling’s ghost story “The Magic Sword and the Magic Bag” contains varied characters, forbidden romance, mysterious deaths, and sword fights with demons. These interesting story elements have caused the story to be adapted to film many times over the years, both in television and movie form. The two adaptations that I will be discussing here are the films The Enchanting Shadow (1960) and A Chinese Ghost Story (1987). Though both draw from the same source, their approaches to adapting it differ wildly. This essay will particularly consider the two adaptations’ treatment of the plot, characters, and tone of the story, and what their purposes for changing them may have been.

First, let us briefly discuss the original story. Its two main characters are the gentleman Ning Caichen and the ghost Little Beauty, with the two supporting characters Yan Chixia and Ning’s mother. The story follows Ning as he visits an abandoned temple, meets Yan and Little Beauty, avoids being killed by spirits, frees Little Beauty from servitude, introduces his mother to Little Beauty, and eventually lives happily ever after with her. The tone combines drama with romance, and the horror elements are fairly slight.

1960 gave us our first film adaptation of “The Magic Sword” with the romance/horror film The Enchanting Shadow. This film uses similar stylistic quirks as the plethora of gothic horror films that were released in the early-to-mid-60s worldwide (such as Viy (1967) or Horror of Dracula (1958)); it creates an eerie atmosphere by reveling in long shots of strange locations, which are occasionally dramatically lit by neon lights. The British studio Hammer Horror was well-known for its films in this style, so it makes sense that the Shaw Brothers Studio, which produced this film, would go on to work with Hammer in the mid-70s.

The Enchanting Shadow is also a relatively faithful adaptation of the first half of the Pu Songling story. It does begin slightly differently—two travelers are killed in the night by an unseen figure, who, like in the story, drains their blood through a small mark in their foot. We can assume that this scene was inserted in order to frighten the audience from the outset and set the tone of the film. From there, we move on to the start of “The Magic Sword,” with the introduction of our main character Ning Caichen. Interestingly, this film gives him the profession of rent collector, despite him not having a stated profession in the story. This is likely the reason that A Chinese Ghost Story made him a tax collector. He also tells Yan that he is not looking for fame and fortune, despite Yan in the story telling Ning that he is “a man destined for a great future in the world.”^[1] The reason he provides to explain why he is not looking for fame is that they are in the midst of war: this film sets the story during what seems to be the takeover of the Qing dynasty. Ning and Yan have a conversation about how China is in shambles, and how they believe it is the duty of all to serve and protect their country. Since the rest of the film’s dialogue draws heavily from the original story, this inserted sequence is especially noticeable. Often films that have a sudden divergence into monologues about the duty of citizens to go to war are a way for the directors to address a real-world event, but I don’t know enough about modern Chinese history to state definitively that this is the case for this film.

The other major divergence from the plot of the story is in the character of Little Beauty, or Xiaoqian. In the story, Little Beauty is stated to be a ghost under the possession of an evil spirit. She seduces men either to allow a yaksha-demon to kill them, or to kill them herself by cutting out their heart and liver with a spirit-bone. In the 1960 film, all of Little Beauty’s threat is removed. Rather than their first meeting being her trying to seduce Ning, the two peacefully create poetry together. In fact, he is accused of seducing her. Later, while explaining to Ning that she is a ghost, she calls herself a “good gui 鬼,” who is “not at all willing” to seduce men, but does it because she is a “weak soul.” She also does not do the killing herself—it is all done by her Granny (a character that the film inserts to take the place of the yaksha-demon). Assumably, this change was done to make her seem more docile and more of an appropriate romantic match for Ning, but doing so removes an interesting aspect of her character.

Both this film and A Chinese Ghost Story cut or significantly trim down the second half of “The Magic Sword.” The Enchanting Shadow ends with a sword fight between Yan and the monstrous Granny, and an image of Ning and Little Beauty in each other’s arms, implying a happy ending for the two. There is no mention of Ning’s mother, or of his sick wife.

If The Enchanting Shadow can be seen as a part of the 1960s gothic trend in horror, A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) definitely falls into the wacky, action-packed, body-horror-centric wave of horror movies from the 1980s and early 1990s, comparable to films like Hiruko the Goblin (1991) and The Evil Dead (1981). This can be seen in story additions like Yan’s Taoist rap sequence, the claymation demons in the temple, and the final storming-hell showdown.

It is fairly obvious that A Chinese Ghost Story is less of a direct adaptation of the story than The Enchanting Shadow. Additionally, it seems to have taken various elements from the earlier film rather than from the story, especially in its treatment of the characters. Its Ning is also a foolhardy tax collector, its Little Beauty is also given less agency, its Yan also is given a larger role in the story, and its Granny/matron characters are also the main antagonists.

The fact that both films change the evil jiangshi from a “little yaksha-demon” to a monstrous older woman is interesting, especially because the only older woman gui in the story appears for half a page to say four lines total. There are various possible reasons for this change. The first has already been mentioned—by giving Little Beauty’s “evil” traits to another character, she seems much less like a threat to the male characters, and so can be considered a safe romantic option for Ning. In addition to this, the matron/granny character is seen in both films to directly threaten Little Beauty if she does not perform her duties, whereas in the story, one just has to trust her word that she is an unwilling participant. Finally, from a production standpoint, it was likely easier to have the antagonist be a person than to design a stop-motion or puppet creature for the characters to fight.

As was mentioned, this film also cuts out the second half of “The Magic Sword.” It actually inserts an entirely new ending, wherein the characters do battle in the underworld before Ning buries Little Beauty’s bones, which frees her soul. It is not entirely surprising that both adaptations cut out the portion of the story in which Little Beauty proves herself to Ning’s mother. Though it makes sense in the original story—Ning must show filial piety to his mother by marrying someone who can respect and take care of her—to have the film end on an extended actionless drama sequence after a haunted-temple story would seem out of place in a horror film. Both also cut Ning’s sickly wife, likely to make the romance between Ning and Little Beauty seem less like he’s having an affair to the modern viewer.

I would be interested to see how other film adaptations of the story treat the narrative/characters. It is difficult to adapt a story that has already been adapted multiple times without taking those earlier adaptations into consideration, and so I wonder which parts of the film mythos have become ingrained aspects of the tale, and which have been cut. I do hope that at least one adaptation allows Little Beauty more agency in her story.

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.

Li, Han-hsiang, director. The Enchanting Shadow. Shaw Brothers Studio, 1960. 1 hr., 23 min.

Ching, Siu-tung, director. A Chinese Ghost Story. Film Workshop, 1987. 1 hr., 38 min.