God created Liu Ling.
He adopted WINE as his name.
For one swallow he emptied a gallon.
To sober up he added five more ladlesful.
As for his wife’s pleading—
Take no heed of it.

After praying, Liu Ling began drinking the wine and eating the meat.  Before long he was dead drunk again.

Liu Ling had no intention of giving up drink.  He was always drunk.  Whenever he was drunk he became completely uninhibited and forgot all manners.  Sometimes he took off his clothes and stood in his room stark naked.  Seeing him in that condition, some of his friends criticized his wanton behavior.  But Liu Ling responded, “Heaven and Earth are my house.  My jacket and my pants are merely rooms in my house.  Gentlemen, what business do you have entering my pants?”

A Pair of Magic Candles

Long ago in China there lived a poor farmer and his wife.  They worked laboriously, tilling the soil from morning to night.   One spring they managed to save a few copper coins and buy a piglet to raise.  A year passed, but for no obvious reason the piglet weighed no more than it had when they bought it—except that it had grown longer.  The pig was just a layer of skin.  It looked like a paper cutout.  The only thing that got bigger about the pig was its “oink, oink.”  The farmer and his wife were terribly annoyed.  They complained day and night that luck was against them.  God was unfair.  How could they sell a pig as thin as paper?  Who would want to buy this pig except someone who was particularly fond of pigskin?  Their only solace was that they did not have to waste any feed on the pig.  It roamed the countryside.  They left it very much alone.

One day a stranger happened to pass by.  When he saw the pig he was both surprised and overjoyed.  He asked the farmer, “Will you sell your pig?”

The question shook the farmer like an earthquake.  “How strange,” he thought.  “Someone wants to buy my pig.  Is he joking?  Maybe God is merciful after all.”  The farmer, however, took care not to show his excitement.  “If the price is right, I’ll sell it,” he answered, and went on mending his hoe.