Original Text
A young man named Cui from Linqing, whose family was poor and could not afford to repair the broken wall of his courtyard, would rise each morning to find a horse lying in the dew-laden grass—a black beast with white patches, its tail uneven as if singed by fire. He drove it away, but it returned each night, and he knew not whence it came. Cui had a close friend serving as an official in Shanxi, and wishing to visit him but lacking a mount, he seized the horse, saddled and bridled it, and set out for Shanxi. Before leaving, he instructed his family, saying, "If anyone comes seeking this horse, let them know in Shanxi."
Once on the road, the horse galloped forth, covering over a hundred li in the blink of an eye. During the night, it scarcely touched its fodder, and Scholar Cui feared it had fallen ill. The next day, he reined it in tightly, forbidding it to race, but the horse pawed the ground, snorted foam, and neighed without cease, as vigorous as the day before. Cui let the reins go slack, and by noon he had reached Shanxi. As he rode through the main thoroughfare, all who beheld the horse praised it without end. The Prince of Jin, hearing of this steed, offered a high price to purchase it. Cui, fearing that its true owner might come seeking it, dared not sell. After half a year, with no word of any owner searching for the horse, Cui finally sold it to the Prince of Jin's household for eight hundred taels of silver, then bought a sturdy mule and rode back home.
Later, the Prince of Jin, due to urgent affairs, dispatched an officer on horseback to rush to Linqing. The horse bolted, and the officer pursued it to the eastern neighbor of Cui Sheng. Entering the gate, the horse vanished, so he demanded it from the householder. The householder, surnamed Zeng, insisted he had seen no horse. Upon entering the room, the officer noticed a painting by Zhao Ziang hanging on the wall, depicting horses, one of which bore a coat color strikingly similar to the lost steed, its tail singed by incense fire. Thus he realized the horse was a phantom from the painting. Unable to account for the loss to the Prince of Jin, the officer reported Zeng. By then, Cui Sheng, having used the money from selling the horse as capital, had amassed a fortune of tens of thousands of silver taels. He voluntarily lent Zeng the funds to compensate for the horse's value, allowing the officer to depart. Zeng was deeply grateful to Cui Sheng, unaware that Cui was the very man who had sold the horse.
Commentary
Zhao Mengfu, the renowned calligrapher and painter of the Yuan Dynasty, had a great fondness for painting horses. In the inscription on his painting "Man Riding a Horse," he wrote: "Painting is difficult, but appreciating painting is even more so. I love to paint horses, for this talent was bestowed upon me by heaven, and thus I can fully exert my skill. As for this painting, I dare say it is not inferior to the works of the Tang masters. If there be a discerning eye in the world, let it judge me." He also inscribed: "Since my youth, I have loved painting horses. Recently, I obtained three scrolls of Han Gan's authentic works, and only then did I grasp their true essence." Among the paintings of Zhao Mengfu that have been passed down, those with horses as subjects are the most numerous. The extant works mainly include: "Man and Horse" (housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), "Man Riding a Horse," "Horses Drinking in the Autumn Fields," "Bathing Horses" (all housed in the Palace Museum, Beijing), and "A Fine Horse" (housed in the National Palace Museum, Taipei). In 2006, the painting "Rolling in the Dust Horse" auctioned by Xiling Seal Society became the top lot among ancient works that day. Because Zhao Mengfu's horses were so lifelike, many legends about his horse painting arose. The Ming Dynasty writer and calligrapher Wang Zhideng once said: "Zhao Mengfu once imitated the posture of a horse while lying on a couch. Lady Guan, peeping through the window, saw exactly a horse." In the autumn of 1760, the twenty-fifth year of Emperor Qianlong's reign, when the emperor was viewing "Bathing Horses," he recalled the story of Zhao Mengfu imitating a horse on a couch and inscribed a poem on it: "The clear blue waves are so transparent that one can see the bottom; fourteen flying dragons bathe within. The grooms have nothing to do and leave the upper orchids; the black and yellow, the male and female, are all distinguished by their appearance. The scholar who gathered talents painted horses, his body becoming a horse; peeping through the window, there is no distinction between truth and falsehood." This tale is likely adapted from the folk legend that the horses painted by Zhao Mengfu turned into real horses. However, Pu Songling's brilliant pen and Zhao Mengfu's vivid horse paintings truly complement each other, leaving readers lost in boundless reverie after reading.