Original Text
Du Xiaolei was a man from the western hills of Yidu County. His mother was blind in both eyes, and Du Xiaolei served her with great filial piety; though the family was poor, they never lacked for good food to offer her. One day, Du Xiaolei had to go out, so he bought some meat and gave it to his wife, instructing her to make soup cakes for his mother. His wife, being most unfilial and disrespectful to the elderly, deliberately mixed dung beetles into the meat while cutting it. The mother found the soup cakes foul-smelling and could not eat them, so she hid them away to show her son when he returned. When Du Xiaolei came home, he asked, "Were the soup cakes good?" His mother shook her head and brought out the cakes for him to see. He broke one open and discovered dung beetles inside, which enraged him greatly. Returning to the bedchamber, he intended to beat his wife but feared his mother might hear, so he lay on the bed brooding. His wife asked him what was wrong, but he remained silent. She grew disheartened and paced beneath the bed; after a long while, he heard gasping sounds from below. Du Xiaolei scolded her, "Why aren't you sleeping? Are you waiting for a beating?" Still there was no reply. He sat up, lit a lamp, and saw only a pig on the floor; looking closer, he noticed the pig's two feet were still human feet, and thus realized it was his wife transformed. When the county magistrate heard of this, he had the pig bound and paraded through the streets as a warning to the unfilial. Tan Weichen once witnessed this with his own eyes.
Commentary
This is a tale steeped in the discourse of karma, retribution, and heavy moral instruction. A similar legend is also recorded in the Yuan dynasty work "Continuation of the Records of the Strange and Unusual, First Collection." Apart from differences in location and characters, the daughter-in-law in that version feeds her blind mother-in-law "cakes stuffed with dung wrapped in dough," and the transformation is merely into a dog.
The story of Du Xiaolei's wife, who mixed dung beetles into the meat of the wontons she fed her mother-in-law and was consequently transformed into a pig, is both implausible in its plot and riddled with narrative inconsistencies. For instance, the act of mixing dung beetles into the meat could have been a mere accident, so why must it be deemed intentional? The mother-in-law's act of hiding the food to await her son reveals that the discord between her and her daughter-in-law was not of a single day's making, and that the mother-in-law was a woman of deep cunning. From the detail that the wife, consumed by guilt, paced restlessly beneath the bed, it is evident that she was not a fierce or wicked person; to punish her with transformation into a pig for a single meal is both unjust and absurd. As for the claim that Tan Weichen personally witnessed this event, it does nothing to substantiate its veracity.