In the city of Shouchun, there lived a man named Jiang Qi who made his living by hosting traveling merchants, buying their goods at low prices, and selling them at a high markup. One day, a guest overheard strange sobbing sounds from the backyard and asked Jiang Qi, "What's that weeping?" Jiang Qi replied dismissively, "It's just a pig—nothing to worry about." But the guest pressed further, and Jiang Qi admitted, "That pig is my reincarnated mother." Shocked, the guest exclaimed, "Your mother? Then why don't you set her free?" Jiang Qi answered coldly, "Business is business—I can't afford to lose money." The guest then confronted the pig, which spoke in a human voice, "I was greedy in my past life and cheated others, so I was reborn as a pig to repay my debts. Now my son sells me for profit—it's my just punishment." When the guest relayed this to Jiang Qi, he scoffed, "I've heard this story a hundred times—it's just a pig, nothing more." The next day, Jiang Qi suddenly fell ill and died, proving that those who refuse to repent are beyond saving. This tale warns that greed and denial can lead to ruin, reminding us to heed the lessons of karma.
One spring, Jiang Qi often heard mournful sobbing coming from his backyard, but when he searched carefully, he could find nothing at all.
Two months later, Jiang Qi hosted five traveling merchants from the south who had come to trade medicinal herbs, settling them into the same room. In the dead of night, the five merchants also heard a mournful weeping. Puzzled, they peered through the crack in the door into the back garden and discovered the sound seemed to come from the pigsty.
Five merchants approached the pigsty and saw that the crying sound was coming from a sow. Even more puzzled, they shouted, "Beast, why are you crying and making a fuss?"
The sow then spoke in human language, saying, "I was originally Jiang Qi's grandmother. In life, I raised sows for a living, selling their piglets to others, often hundreds a year, and thus built my family fortune. After death, I was punished by being reborn as a pig. Now I truly regret it, but it's too late..."
The next morning, the five merchants told Jiang Qi what they had seen and heard the night before, urging him to care for the sow. But Jiang Qi scoffed, angrily retorting, "How can you believe the words of a beast? I discovered this two months ago and have long since grown used to it. Why make such a fuss? Even if she really were my grandmother, so what? Let her be!"
Seeing that Jiang Qi did not take the matter seriously, the five traveling merchants tried to reason with him. But Jiang Qi refused to listen to a single word and instead got into a heated argument with one of them, and the two parties parted on bad terms.
Two days later, Jiang Qi suddenly fell gravely ill. Suspecting the sow was haunting him, he called a butcher to slaughter and sell the pig for money.
From then on, Jiang Qi's illness grew worse by the day until he finally died. In his final moments, he let out agonizing screams like a pig being slaughtered, a truly harrowing sight.
Later, people used the idiom "No Surprise at the Strange" to describe staying calm and not making a fuss when seeing unusual things or phenomena.
Source: Hong Mai (Song Dynasty), *Yijian Zhi*
Meaning of the Idiom: Later, the Chinese idiom "见怪不怪" came to describe staying calm and not making a fuss when seeing unusual things or phenomena.