Stealing Peaches
"Stealing Peaches", also variously translated as "The Peach Theft", "Theft of the Peach", "Stolen Peaches", and "Stealing a Peach", is a short story by Pu Songling, first published in Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. It is told in first person by Pu himself, and revolves around a magic trick similar to the Indian rope trick; Pu claims to have witnessed it personally as a child.
Plot
While in Jinan, Shandong, a young Pu Songling and his friends are partaking in Chinese New Year festivities at the town hall. A wandering magician and his son come by, and one of the mandarins present in the crowd requests that the magician produce a peach in the dead of the winter. Initially perplexed, the magician finally takes up the official's challenge, telling the crowd that he has to visit the Queen [Mother of the West] peach garden. He then retrieves a "coil of ropes that were about a hundred yards long" and hurls them skyward; the rope reaches the clouds, where it disappears from one's view, and is rigid. Citing his advanced age, the magician asks his son to help him steal the Queen Mother's peaches.Apprehensive at first, the son is eventually cajoled into doing the deed. He climbs up the rope and vanishes from sight, and then a peach "the size of a large bowl" is thrown down from the skies. A pleased magician presents the gigantic peach to the mandarins, who are unable to determine whether it is real or fake. Suddenly, the rope goes limp and falls back to the ground. Shortly afterwards, his son's head follows suit. The conjurer proclaims that his son has been punished for stealing heavenly peaches, and the rest of his son's dismembered body comes hurtling down. The magician emotionally stores all of his son's body parts into a bamboo chest, and begs the officials for some money to defray funeral costs. After the shocked mandarins make the payment, the magician taps on the chest, and his son emerges, all in one piece. Pu notes that members of the White Lotus Sect were adept at such tricks and speculates that the father and son may have been members of the secret society.