Original Text
There was an instructor who was extremely deaf, but he was on good terms with a fox, which whispered in his ear so that he could hear. Whenever he went to see his superiors, he took the fox along, and thus no one knew of his deafness. After five or six years, the fox bid him farewell, and before leaving, advised him, saying, "You are like a puppet; without someone to manipulate you, your five senses are useless. Rather than offend your superiors due to your deafness, it would be better to resign your post early." But the instructor, coveting his salary, did not heed the fox's words, and often made mistakes when answering his superiors. The academic commissioner wanted to dismiss him, but he begged a senior official to intercede on his behalf. One day, the instructors were presiding over the provincial examination, and after calling the roll, the commissioner came down to sit with them. Each instructor took from his boot a list of candidates for whom he wished to plead, and presented it to the commissioner to curry favor. After a while, the commissioner laughed and asked him, "Why does this gentleman alone have nothing to say?" Not catching the commissioner's words, he looked bewildered. The man beside him nudged him with an elbow and gestured toward his boot. This instructor was selling marital aids on commission for a relative, which he kept in his boot, peddling them at every opportunity. Seeing the commissioner laugh and speak to him, he mistakenly thought the commissioner wanted that item, so he bowed and stood up, saying, "There is a kind that costs eight coppers, which is the best; your subordinate dares not present it." The instructors present all snickered. The commissioner shouted at him to leave, and thus he was dismissed from his post.
The Chronicler of the Strange remarks: In the later Han dynasty, Shi Bi, the Chancellor of Pingyuan, maintained his integrity when others reported political dissidents, refusing to inform against them. This instructor was like him, not seeking favor through connections in his pursuit of learning, and could be considered a pillar in the midst of turbulent times. The examiner actually demanded a tribute from his subordinate, and it was only fitting that he should be given that very thing. To be dismissed from office for this reason—how unjust it is!
Zhu Ziqing wrote in his work "Ear Records": "A man named Chi, a senior licentiate from Donglai, went to Yishui County to serve as a school official. By nature he was foolish and demented; whenever he gathered with colleagues, he would remain silent. After sitting for a while, Chi would involuntarily twitch all his facial features, then weep and laugh as if no one else were present, but if he heard someone else laughing, he would immediately stop. Every day Chi scrimped and saved, amassing over a hundred taels of silver, which he buried in his study himself, not even letting his wife know. One day, as he sat alone, his hands and feet suddenly began to move, and after a moment he said, 'I have done evil deeds, incurred enmity, endured hunger and cold, and with great difficulty accumulated this money; now it lies in the study. If someone were to find out, what would become of me?' He repeated these words several times. A gate attendant stood nearby, yet Chi was utterly unaware of him. The next day, when Chi went out, the gate attendant entered his study, dug up the silver, and stole it. After two or three days, Chi grew restless; when he opened the hiding place, he found it completely empty. He could not help but beat his breast and stamp his feet, sighing and regretting as if he were about to die." Truly, the affairs among school officials can be described as a myriad of strange forms.
Commentary
If one were to ask which social class or profession is most detested in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, the answer would assuredly be the yamen runners and the school instructors. Among officials, there are distinctions between the pure and honest and the foul as mud, but not a single yamen runner is of any worth; likewise, among educational commissioners, there are those who thirst for talent and those who merely go through the motions, yet all school instructors are uniformly greedy and base.
"Instruction" (Si Xun), though ostensibly depicting a particular instructor, actually portrays the entire cohort of instructors, presenting us with a gallery of their grotesque absurdities. The tale opens with the instructor's dealings with a fox spirit, showcasing the narrative style of "Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio" in its discourse on foxes and ghosts, and laying the groundwork for subsequent events. When the academic examiner demands bribes, the deaf instructor presents nothing less than "bedroom counterfeit devices"—though a jest, it lays bare the vile and filthy souls of this despicable group with unsparing clarity. The detail that "those costing eight coppers are best" reveals the prices of related adult products during the Ming and Qing dynasties, serving as valuable material for economic history.