Lu Zhishen Uproots the Willow

On the edge of the capital city of Dongjing stood the Suanzao Gate, the Sour Jujube Gate. Just outside it, the Daxiangguo Temple kept a vegetable garden. On the temple's whole list of duties, minding that garden was the lowest post. Each day the keeper had to send ten loads of vegetables to the temple, and only the surplus was his own. The man just handed that lowest post was an unusually big monk named Lu Zhishen. He had recently come down from Mount Wutai with a letter from his teacher asking for work. At first he was put out, but he took it. He had heard that a good garden keeper rose in turn to keeper of the pagoda, then keeper of the bathhouse, and only then to temple supervisor. It seemed a decent path after all.

Our story begins there, in that vegetable garden, one morning.

That day Lu Zhishen went out to the garden early, hands clasped behind his back. He strolled along the rows of vegetables still wet with dew, judging which would soon be ready to cut. Then he heard footsteps.

Some twenty or thirty men came in, carrying boxes of gifts and jars of wine, their faces beaming. At their head walked two men named Zhang San and Li Si. The whole neighborhood knew them by nicknames that already sounded sly: Rat Crossing the Street and Green Grass Snake. Hearing that a new master now kept the garden, they said, they had come as neighbors to wish him well.

But they did not come any closer. The crowd stood stock still at the edge of the pit at the far end of the garden, where manure was kept to feed the vegetables. It was deep, and anyone could tell from a few steps away that it was best avoided.

The monk took one look and understood. They invited him over, yet their feet would not move, and they all crowded on one side of the pit. They must mean to wait until he walked right up, then tip him in. So someone had come to stroke the tiger's whiskers today, he thought. Very well. He would walk over and let them see what his arms and legs could do.

Zhang San and Li Si dropped to the ground in a bow and stayed there, flat on their faces, refusing to rise. All they wanted was for the monk to bend down and help them up, so they could grab his legs. Lu Zhishen strode straight up. Four hands had barely shot out when his right foot neatly flicked Li Si into the pit. Zhang San turned to run, but up came the left foot, and now there were two men in the pit.

The twenty or thirty others froze, ready to bolt. The monk barked out a warning. One runs and one goes in, two run and two go in. Nobody dared move after that.

Down in the pit, two heads bobbed up, whimpering and begging the master to spare them.

And this is the best part of the story. He did not strike anyone again. He forgave them at once. He told the others to pull those two out quickly, and he would forgive the whole gang. The crowd rushed in to haul the pair out and helped them over to the gourd trellis, though nobody could bear to stand close. The monk roared with laughter. He told the two to go and wash in the garden pond, then come back up and talk. The pair scrubbed a long while, and the others took off their own shirts for them to wear. From start to finish, nobody got so much as a scratch. Two men were simply cleaner than they had been that morning.

Inside the house, the monk sat in the middle and looked around. Then he asked straight out what sort of men would play such a trick on him.

They all knelt and owned up. Their families had lived here since their grandfathers' day. They made their living from gambling alone, and this vegetable garden was their rice bowl. They wondered where the master had come from, to be so mighty. From now on, they said, they wished to follow and serve him.

The next day they pooled their money to buy ten jars of wine, led along a pig as well, and laid on a feast for the monk in the garden lodge. He sat in the middle, with twenty or thirty men seated on either side. It was their good fortune, they said, to have the master here to watch over them.

Just as the feast was at its liveliest, a crow cawed outside the gate, loud and hoarse. Several men quickly clicked their teeth and chanted a familiar saying together: red mouth up to heaven, white tongue down to earth. The monk asked what the fuss was about. They said that when a crow caws, they fear a quarrel is coming.

A garden hand laughed and pointed to the corner of the wall. Up in the green willow there, a crow had just built a new nest, and it cawed noisily every day until dark.

The whole crowd clamored. Put up a ladder, tear down the nest, and be done with it. Li Si thumped his chest. He would climb up, he said, no ladder needed.

Lu Zhishen stepped out into the yard. The willow stood there, its trunk rough, its branches drooping, the crow's nest high above. He looked the tree over once, unhurried, from root to crown.

Then he did something nobody expected. He did not climb. Nor did he chop.

The old book records every movement, as if afraid later readers would doubt it. He threw off his outer robe and went right up to the base of the tree. His right hand pressed down low, his whole body leaned back, and his left hand gripped the upper part of the willow trunk. Then he gave one heave of his back.

The willow burst out of the ground, roots and all.

Earth still clung thickly to the freshly torn roots. The crow's nest tumbled into the grass. The crows circled overhead, cawing. And the twenty or thirty men who the day before had planned to tip him into the pit all fell to their knees. The master was no ordinary man, they cried. He was truly an arhat in the flesh. Arhats are disciples of the Buddha who reached enlightenment. Without the strength of ten million catties, they said, nobody could have pulled that tree up.

The monk dusted off his hands, laughed, and said there was nothing to make such a fuss about.

This tale comes from an old Chinese novel called Water Margin, whose author is recorded as Shi Nai'an. In the book, the chapter's title begins: The Flowery Monk Pulls Up the Weeping Willow. The Flowery Monk is the nickname of Lu Zhishen. In Vietnam, Water Margin was translated as early as 1906 into the national script, chữ quốc ngữ. So the big monk has lived in the Vietnamese language for more than a hundred years, under the name Lỗ Trí Thâm. Many readers there have probably met him somewhere in a picture book, his arms wrapped around the foot of a willow.

They gave him the lowest job on the list, minding a vegetable garden, and after a moment of grumbling, he took it. A few days later, in the middle of that small garden, a willow lay full length on the grass, its roots still holding earth. Beside it, a monk was calmly putting his robe back on. Around him stood his new friends, who only yesterday had laid the trap.