The Taoist and the Pear Tree

The pears were stacked in layers on the cart, every one of them golden, tight and glossy, its stalk still fresh.

The street seller's pears really were sweet, and they really were fragrant. Anyone passing slowed down for the sugary smell drifting off the pile. The only trouble was his price. It was so high that people clicked their tongues, put back the pear they had just picked up, and walked on.

Just when the market was at its busiest, a Taoist priest stopped beside the cart.

His robe was patched over and over, worn thin here and torn there. On his back he carried a small hoe. He did not bargain and he did not ask the price. He only pressed his palms together and asked for one pear.

The pear seller waved him away.

The Taoist stayed where he was. So the seller began to scold him. He scolded loudly and at length, loud enough for a whole stretch of the market to hear. Even the shoppers at the next stall turned around to see what the fuss was about.

The Taoist waited until the scolding had stopped completely. Then he spoke, as calmly as if he were discussing someone else's affairs.

"There are a few hundred pears on this cart. I am asking for only one. Lose one pear out of a few hundred, and the pile would not look any smaller. So why be so angry?"

Some of the onlookers thought that was fair, and they chimed in. Just pick the smallest, ugliest one, they said, even a bruised one will do. Give it to him and let him go, and be done with it.

The pear seller flatly refused.

The crowd grew thicker by the minute. Its chatter drowned out the cries of the stalls all around. At last a man who looked after the market came over. He saw the crowd gathering, far too many people and far too much noise. So he did the quickest thing he could to end the matter. He took out some money, bought a pear, and handed it to the Taoist.

The Taoist received the pear in both hands and bowed his head slightly in thanks. Then he turned to the crowd and said something very softly, as if he were talking to himself.

"People like me who follow the Way have left our homes and given up everything dearest to us. So I truly cannot understand why anyone would begrudge another person a single pear. Well, I have some fine pears of my own, and I would like to offer them to the whole market."

Someone in the crowd asked at once why, if he already had good pears, he had needed to beg for one.

The Taoist answered briefly. "Because I need a seed from this pear to plant."

With that he ate it. He ate the whole pear, slowly and with relish, in front of a crowd that stood watching open-mouthed. When he had finished, he opened his hand. In his palm lay a single seed.

He took the hoe off his back and dug a hole in the market ground, a few knuckles deep. He set the seed at the bottom of the hole. Then he filled the earth back in and smoothed it flat, as carefully as a gardener planting for real.

When that was done, he looked up and asked for a little hot water for the seed.

The market went quiet for a moment. Someone in the crowd who loved a bit of fun ran straight to the stall next door. He begged a dipper of water at a rolling boil and carried it back to the Taoist. Boiling water poured on a pear seed would kill it outright. Everyone knew that. So everyone stayed to see how the Taoist would talk his way out of it.

The Taoist poured the whole dipper onto the freshly filled earth.

A thin wisp of steam rose from the ground.

Then the earth cracked.

From the crack a green shoot pushed up. The shoot did not stay still. It grew. It rose higher and higher, under all those watching eyes, until it was a young tree. The young tree reached out branches. The branches were dotted with leaves, sparse and tender. Then flowers opened on those sparse branches. And after the flowers came the fruit.

Pears. Real pears, big ones with taut skins and a rich scent, hanging in clusters all over the tree, so many that the branches bent under them.

People in old China told this story exactly that way, as a clever trick played in the middle of a market, for everyone to watch for free.

The Taoist reached up and picked. Every pear he picked, he handed straight to whoever stood nearest. That person passed it on to the next. Children squeezed to the front, each holding a pear bigger than their own face. He picked and picked again, sharing them out until not one pear was left on the tree.

Then he did something nobody expected. He took out his hoe again, and he chopped down the tree.

It took a very long time. Not fast, not clean, just steady blow after blow at the trunk, while the whole market watched the tree that had just fed them pears slowly topple. When it was down, he hoisted the whole tree onto his shoulder, its leaves still on the branches, and strolled away. He did not run. He did not look back. He walked like a man who had just finished a job in his own garden.

Now comes the best part.

From beginning to end, the pear seller had been standing in that same crowd. He had pushed his way in and craned his neck, his eyes never leaving the tree. He had completely forgotten that he had a cart of goods out there.

Only when the Taoist had gone did the pear seller turn to look at his cart.

The cart was empty. Not a single pear was left.

He stood frozen. Then he looked more closely, and he saw that the cart was missing one of its shafts. The wooden shaft had been cut off, and the cut was fresh, the grain inside still white.

The pear seller, shaking with rage, left his cart and ran after the Taoist. He rounded the corner of the street. And there, at the foot of a wall, he saw his own cart shaft lying on the ground. It was the very pear tree the Taoist had just chopped down and carried off.

As for the Taoist, there was no trace of him anywhere.

This story was written down more than 300 years ago by a man named Pu Songling. He put it in a collection known in English as Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. He was very poor, so poor that he could not pay anyone to carve printing blocks. So for many years his stories were only copied by hand, from one reader to the next. In that collection, this story's title is just two characters, Zhong Li, which means planting pears.

The market in the story is the kind of market people in Vietnam still go to. There is the same cart pushed on two wooden shafts, and the same stall next door with a pot of water on the boil. There are the same people so busy watching someone else's business that they forget their own goods. And there is still someone standing empty-handed to ask, and someone who quietly pays for one pear on his behalf. Vietnamese grandmothers sum that up in a very short saying: the good leaf wraps the torn leaf.

At a country market, everyone who carries goods out to sell hopes to get a good price, and nobody holds that against them. But on that day, out of a whole cart of several hundred pears, the seller could not part with a single one.

As the market day ended, the laughter still had not quite died away. In the middle of it all, a man stood beside an empty cart, holding his own wooden shaft in both hands, turning it over and over to look at the cut, still fresh and white.