双鬼侍母
This is a classic Chinese fairy tale. It was said that there is a kind of poisonous grass that causes people to die after eating it. People said that people who died of eating this grass would become ghosts. They could reincarnate(转世) only by finding a person who had also died by eating the poisonous grass. A young man, named Zhu Sheng, went to visit his friend. It was the middle of summer and he was very thirsty. He still had half of his journey ahead of him.Then he spotted a tea house along the road and stopped in for a cup of tea. He eagerly drank the tea that the teahouse owner Ms. Kou brought for him. As soon as he got home he felt a pain in his stomach. He realized that Ms. Kou had given him a cup of tea made with the poisonous grass to benefit her reincarnation. The young man hated her and vowed to get revenge. After his death, he took Ms. Kou back to the nether world(阴间,地狱) . There the two of them got married in the nether world. The young man's mother cried all day long because she missed her son very much. One day, the young man heard the crying of his mother and persuaded his wife to go back to the human world to take care of his mother. The couple worked hard and was comforted and helped the old woman. Though their life was getting better and better, the old woman still did not feel at ease because she knew that her son and daughter-in-law were ghosts. So she pleaded with them to find their replacements. But the young man said:"I won't do things offensive to God and reason. My only hope is to take good care of you and let you live a happy life." So the couple did their best for the old woman until she died. God was moved by the couple's deeds and then God sent a fairy cart to bring them to heaven. They finally became immortals. |