Du joy’s nephew
Du joy and Li Deyu both served in the Central Secretariat. One day, Li Deyu said to Du joy, “There is a foreigner in your family, why don’t you invite him to let me meet him?” Du joy said, “No.” Li Deyu said, “Think about it again.” Du joy said, “Only my nephew, who came here from far away to seek an official position.” Li Deyu said, “That’s him.”
When he got back home, Du joy asked his nephew to pay a visit to Li Deyu. When Li Deyu asked him about his future, Du joy’s nephew said, “You have become a lieutenant, and you are in the highest rank, what else can you ask. Usually, people have a fixed score for the smallest things, let alone the big things like fame and fortune. Tomorrow at noon, a white beast came from the south and climbed over the house. A seven-year-old boy, dressed in purple and with a haircut like a ram’s horn, took a five-foot-long nine-section bamboo pole and drove the white beast away. The boy is not a member of your family. You wait and see if I am right?”
The next day at noon, there was a white cat climbing over the house from the south, and there was a child who tied his hair like two rams’ horns and chased the white cat. The white cat ran to the south again. Li Deyu called the child over and asked him, and he said, “I’m seven years old.” Counting the bamboo poles in the child’s hands, they were exactly five feet long and had nine sections in total. The child is the son of the officer Yuan Cong.
The nephew of Du joy said nothing wrong. It is true that everything is decided before, no matter how big or small it is.
(From “Wen Qi Lu”)
Three for the Assassins
Yang Wei, the assassin of Tang Dynasty, went to Yang Yuan to be the assassin of Yangzhou, and Chen Huofu, a monk, stayed in Zijiguan every time he came to Yangzhou. So the assassin said to the Taoist priests, “The next time you come, you must declare to him.”
One day Chen Huofu came again, and the Daoist priests immediately reported to Yang Wei. After a while, the soldiers and horses from the state escorted Yang Wei to the outside of the temple, and the assassin and the Taoist priests met and greeted each other with a salute. Yang Wei said, “I have heard of the great name of the Taoist priest for a long time, and I am honored to meet him today, please don’t feel too abrupt, please calculate my official fortune.” Chen Huofu invited Yang Wei into the view and said to him, “You will be the assassin three times, and there is nothing more to say.” Yang Wei was not happy, thinking that he had already been the assassins of two counties and was now in his third place. From then on he often made Yangzhou the place where he would end up, and later when his term expired, he had no illness, thinking that what Chen Huofu said was not allowed.
After a short time, the court reappointed him as the governor of this state, and after the expiration of his term, he was appointed again. This is the story of “three terms as the assassin”, which was told to me by Yang Wangbi, the youngest brother of Yang Wei.
(From “The Northern Dreams”)
Yang Dingfu
Yang Dingfu, a scholar, was praised for his ability to write poems and lyrics.
One year, he went to Qingcheng Mountain with others and crossed the Soap River with a boat of more than fifty people. When the boat reached the center of the river, it was suddenly blown off course by a strong wind and hit a huge rock. All the people on the boat sank to the bottom of the river and drowned, but Yang Dingfu seemed to have something to hold him to the shore, by which time he was exhausted.
Suddenly an old man came and pulled him to the shore with his cane and said to him with a smile, “Yuan is a man of the salt, not a thing of the water.” Yang Dingfu did not have time to thank the old man after he went ashore, but he suddenly disappeared, and he composed a poem as a memento.
When he returned to Chengdu, he told his friends about the experience, but no one understood the meaning of “the man in the salt”. Later, he became the official of the powerful minister An Siqian and helped to deal with the case of salt monopoly. One day, he suddenly became very ill and died. He was wrapped up with more than 100 pounds of coarse salt and transported to the outskirts of the city to be buried. At this point, the words of the “man in the salt” were verified.
Yang Dingfu’s poem “Remembering the Fall of the Soap River” was written at that time: “The Qingcheng Mountain was so cold that the Soap River was so cold that I wanted to cross it as if I were waiting. The boat was driven against the fierce wind to the near shore, and the boat met with strange rocks and broke the front bay. I was in a hurry with a weak staff in my hand, and my life came out of the torrent in a moment. I have no way to repay my deepest gratitude today, and I am ashamed to remember that the birds are holding rings.”
Note: Yang Dingfu’s poem “Remembering the Falling Water of Soap River” is recorded in Quan Tang Poems, Volume 760_13.
(From “The Northern Dream”)
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