Zhong Asi (simplified: 钟阿四, traditional: 鍾阿四, pinyin: Zhōng Āsì, jyutping: zung1 aa3 sei3) is a vegetable farmer of Foshan in Jin Yong’s Side Story of the Flying Fox. Feng Tiannan, wanting his plot, has him jailed and tortured on a false charge; his younger son dies proving the charge false, and Feng later murders Zhong, his wife and his elder son. Hu Fei vows to avenge the family, and the vow drives his pursuit of Feng through the rest of the novel (SIDE ch. 5, 19).
Biography
The stolen goose
Zhong Asi is an honest farmer whose family of five lives off an inherited vegetable plot of two mu and a little more. Feng Tiannan, the local despot and zhangmen of the Wuhu School, wants the land for a new tower for his seventh concubine. Zhong refuses five taels, then ten, saying that even a hundred would run out while the plot will always feed them. The next day one of Feng’s geese goes missing and his servants accuse Zhong’s sons, Xiaoer and Xiaosan. When Feng asks the five-year-old Xiaosan what he ate that morning, the boy answers “Ate me, ate me!”, and Feng takes it for a confession. Feng lodges a complaint, and the local magistrate, bribed, has Zhong Asi beaten and squeezed in the ankle press until he can only mumble “Won’t sell, won’t sell! Didn’t steal, didn’t steal!” (SIDE ch. 5).
His wife, Zhong Sisao, takes Xiaosan and a kitchen knife to the Beidi Temple before the neighbours and cuts open the boy’s belly before the god. It holds only whole river snails, which the hungry boys had gathered and he had swallowed unchewed: he had been saying “ate snails”, not “ate me”. The child dies, and his mother loses her wits (SIDE ch. 5).
Hu Fei’s intervention
Hu Fei, passing through Foshan, hears the story and wrecks Feng’s businesses, carries off Feng’s son to the Beidi Temple, and beats Feng in a fight there. Feng has Zhong Asi released and offers five hundred taels. Limping in from jail, Zhong kowtows to Hu Fei, then makes Feng admit before the god that Xiaosan never ate the goose and that the whole affair was to seize his land. Hu Fei orders Feng to pay the silver and leave Foshan within three days (SIDE ch. 5).
Death
Before Hu Fei can settle the matter, three local toughs, paid by a croupier at Feng’s gambling hall, draw him off with taunts. He returns to find Zhong Asi, his wife and Xiaoer dead in the temple: Zhong’s skull smashed by Feng’s golden staff, the other two hacked to pieces. Hu Fei weeps, blames his own rashness, swears before the Beidi image to kill Feng Tiannan and his son, and buries the three in their own vegetable plot (SIDE ch. 5).
Hu Fei carries the vow to Beijing, where at Fuk’anggan’s residence he at last kills Feng Tiannan with a thrown dao, and reflects that Zhong Xiaoer and the rest will not live again for it (SIDE ch. 19).
Relationships
- Zhong Sisao (Wife): Proved her son’s innocence at the cost of his life, and was killed with her husband.
- Zhong Xiaoer and Zhong Xiaosan (Sons).
- Feng Tiannan: The despot who ruined and murdered the family.
- Hu Fei: Took up the family’s cause and later avenged them.