Of course, the father never receives his son’s letter; on the contrary, the next scene shows him dying of hunger. His faithful daughter-in-law watches over him to the last. For three years Tsai-yung has been absent without so much as sending a letter; therefore the father asks his daughter-in-law to marry again as soon as he has died. Wu-niang replies with a Chinese proverb, “No one can serve two masters”, and affirms her resolve to remain faithful to her husband. He is so grateful to her that he hopes, according to Buddhist beliefs, to be her daughter-in-law in his next life while she is to be his father-in-law. He curses the day he asked his son to leave home and gives to his friend Chang the injunction: “I leave you my cane. When this ungrateful and disobedient son of mine returns home, beat him for me with my stick and chase him out of the house.” With these fatherly words he breathes his last. In order to earn the money for her father-in-law’s funeral Wu-niang cuts her hair and tries to sell it in the street. Her bald head gives her the appearance of a nun, although she feels scarcely worthy of becoming one. In the anguish of her poverty she runs through the streets, imploring people not to bargain with a wretched woman in her position, but to help her by buying the very last thing of value she possesses. The faithful Chang meets her in the street, and, on learning her story, promises to send to her house enough money to enable her to bury her father-in-law properly according to the rites. She in return gives him her hair, asking him to sell it. He accepts it, but not in order to sell it; far from that, he is going to keep it until Tsai-yung’s return, in order to prove to him the full extent of Wu-niang’s filial piety. This piety is so great that when Wu-niang goes to the cemetery to erect a monument over the grave of the deceased, a genie, touched by her devotion, comes to her aid by calling the white monkey of the south and the black tiger of the north to help him erect this tomb with the well-known speed and skill that genii possess. He also advises Wu-niang through the medium of a dream to assume the garb of a nun and to search for her husband in the capital. Wu-niang decides to follow this advice. She plans to earn her subsistence by taking with her Tsai-yung’s lute, in order to sing in the villages songs in praise of filial piety. In order to be able to accord the spirits of her parents-in-law their proper worship she paints their portraits and carries them with her. The Octogenarian Chang totters with Wu-niang to the edge of the village and bids her godspeed on her long journey.