Original Text
A certain Grand Secretary was a prime minister during the previous Ming dynasty. He had once surrendered to the roving bandits, and all the world criticized and reviled him. After he retired to his native place, when the ancestral hall he had built was completed, he sent several people to sleep inside it. At daybreak, they saw a horizontal tablet hanging in the hall, inscribed with the words "Three-Dynasty Elder Statesman." The couplet read: "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven; Filial piety, brotherly respect, loyalty, trust, propriety, righteousness, integrity." No one knew when it had been hung there. People found it very strange and could not fathom its meaning. Some speculated and said: "The first line implies 'lacking the eighth' (meaning 'lacking shame'), and the second line implies 'lacking shame' (as the eighth virtue is shame)."
After Grand Secretary Hong Chengchou returned in triumph from his southern campaign, he arrived at Jinling to offer sacrifices to the fallen soldiers. At that time, a former subordinate came to pay his respects, and after the formal greetings, presented a written composition. Hong Chengchou had long grown weary of literary matters and declined, pleading that his aged eyes were dim and he could not read. The visitor said, "Please be seated and listen; allow me to recite it for you." Then, drawing a scroll from his sleeve, he read aloud in a resonant voice. It was the eulogy composed by the Ming Emperor Chongzhen upon hearing the news that Hong Chengchou had died a martyr's death in the great battle at Songshan against the Qing forces. After finishing the recitation, the man wept bitterly and departed.
Commentary
Pu Songling was born during the tumultuous transition between the Ming and Qing dynasties, and though he endured bitter experiences of upheaval in his childhood, by the time he wrote "Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio," the rule of the Qing dynasty had already stabilized. He likely did not possess the consciousness of the fall of the state and the fall of civilization as Gu Yanwu did; the demise of the Ming dynasty was merely a memory for him. This piece's vehement denunciation of Hong Chengchou does not stem from a nationalistic stance but rather from a critique grounded in traditional morality. In terms of recording anecdotes and old tales from the previous dynasty, this story does not differ greatly from "The Male Childbirth" or "General Huang"; they all serve to "cast the affairs of rise and fall into idle talk under the moon and breeze."