In the Water Margin
Sun Erniang keeps a roadside inn with her husband Zhang Qing at Crossroads Slope, on the road to Mengzhou. It is the most dangerous place to stop for a meal in the whole novel. Travellers who look worth robbing are served drugged wine, and what happens to them afterward is hinted at by the rumours about the inn's meat buns. She is loud, sharp-tongued and physically formidable, which earns her the nickname "Female Yaksha", after a fierce demon of Buddhist lore.
Her husband claims they follow rules about who must never be harmed, among them monks, entertainers and exiled convicts, but Sun Erniang is not always careful about them. That carelessness is what brings Wu Song to her table, and the friendship that follows eventually leads the couple to Mount Erlong and then to Liangshan, where they run one of the band's taverns that watch the roads. She is ranked one hundred and third of the 108.
Key episodes
Wu Song at Crossroads Slope. Wu Song, an exiled convict under escort, stops at the inn and immediately suspects the buns. He pretends to collapse from the drugged wine, and when Sun Erniang comes to haul him off, he pins her to the floor. Zhang Qing returns just in time to beg for her life, and the three end up as sworn friends.
The monk's disguise. After his bloody revenge at the Mandarin Duck Tower, Wu Song is a wanted man. Sun Erniang dresses him in the robe, headband and travel papers of a wandering ascetic, belongings left behind by a former guest, and lets his hair fall over the tattoo on his face. It is how Wu Song becomes "the Pilgrim" for the rest of the book.
Lu Zhishen's near miss. The couple tell Wu Song that the monk Lu Zhishen was once drugged at the same inn, and only Zhang Qing's timely return kept him from the kitchen.
