honour is the subject of my story...
31_days Feb 23rd prompt: "Honour is purchas'd by the deeds we do"
-Once upon a time, there was a small country called Yue. And in those days before our glorious democracy and the government of the people by the people for the people, it was ruled by a king. His name was Gou Jian. Pay attention to this name, children, because he was a great and honourable man. He was great because he sacrificed and endured a great deal in order to succeed, and honourable because he followed the Will of Heaven. On the other hand, his lifelong enemy, the king of a bigger and more powerful country called Wu, who forced Gou Jian to sacrifice and endure so much, was not great and honourable at all - his name was Fu Chai, and he was a Very Bad king. But let us get back to Gou Jian.
- When Gou Jian was a young and new king, he was fed up with Wu always bullying Yue - yes, I know, dear, that is the way of bigger countries, but that is what made Gou Jian great - and so led an army to fight Wu. He won at first and killed the old king of Wu, Fu Chai’s father, so Fu Chai in revenge (which is not a good thing, children) raised a bigger army to conquer Yue and then forced Gou Jian, his wife and many officials into slavery in Wu.
-Why didn’t he kill Gou Jian if he wanted to avenge his father, you ask? Well, I suppose it was because he wanted to thoroughly humiliate his enemy. And Fu Chai was not an honourable man, since he would not let a defeated king die an honourable death. So Gou Jian and his people were subjected to all kinds of demeaning work, like having to groom the king’s horses and do menial work in gardens and quarries. Better than being executed, you say - I agree, but - what’s that? What happened to the people of Yue? Well, nothing much - they had to pay tribute to Wu, but they were secretly building up an army and reserves and so eventually conquered - but you are making me tell the story the wrong way round!
- To get back to Gou Jian’s slavery in Wu - he became so respectful of Fu Chai that he offered his back as a step to mount the horse, and so devoted that he even tasted Fu Chai’s excrement - don’t laugh, and I will not have that sort of language in my class - in order to diagnose his illness, so despite the warnings of his ministers Fu Chai eventually allowed Gou Jian to return to Yue, where he started to plan his rev - er, I mean, to make his country strong again. And in this he had the help of many capable officials who offered strategies to lull the king of Wu into a false sense of security and draw his attention away from Yue. There were nine in all, but the ones that worked were: making Wu spend time and money on seeking power in the north, rather than on improving the lot of the people like our leaders are doing; deceiving the king into executing his loyal officials who advocated killing Gou Jian and incorporating Yue into Wu; and sending beautiful women (I’m sure you’ve heard of Xi Shi - no, she was not the first “femme fatale”, but I’ll tell you more about that later) to mesmerize Fu Chai and distract him from official business. Don’t snigger, boys - this “stratagem of beauty” has always been highly effective, though you’ll only realize this when you grow up. And later on, when there was a famine in Wu, Yue sent over cooked grain which would not produce a harvest -
- What? These strategies don’t sound very honourable? But you see, there were no other ways that a weak country could manage to get the better of its more powerful neighbour, and besides, the people of Yue had been suffering all these years, so it was only right. And its king, Gou Jian, he suffered right along with them - he slept on brushwood in a stable, prickly and uncomfortable, for years, and tasted bitter gall, to remind himself of his and his people’s suffering and bitterness in the years of his captivity. He voluntarily underwent so much pain for twenty years for a higher purpose - no, I don’t think the term “masochism” was invented then. Where do you kids learn these things at your age? Well, I think television is a corrupting influence on juvenile minds.
- Anyway, after so many years, Gou Jian finally conquered the kingdom of Wu, and achieved honour for his ancestors and his country - how did he do it, if Wu had a bigger army, you say? Well, he was supposed to have led his army through Wu to aid Fu Chai in seeking rulership over the other countries, but he arrived after Fu Chai had left and besieged the capital city of Wu for years, until Fu Chai eventually surrendered to him and Wu was made part of Yue. No, I suppose that doesn’t look very honourable now, but Gou Jian was following the Way of Heaven - since Heaven had allowed him to triumph over his enemy, it would have been dishonouring Heaven’s will not to seize the opportunity with both hands. And you also see what a foolish and dishonourable king Fu Chai was, that not only did he neglect to avenge his parent, wallow in sinful pleasures, and get tricked by the clever strategies of Gou Jian, but he also went against the will of Heaven by humiliating a fellow sovereign, and failing to strengthen his own country when given the chance.
-And now that you know the story of the great and honourable man who “slept on brushwood and tasted gall”, children, and the rewards that patience and endurance brings, your assignment is to write a short essay on how you would apply the moral of this tale. However, in view of what some of your seniors have done in previous years, I feel it is only fair to mention that anyone who writes about revenging so-called humiliation from teachers will have ten marks deducted from their grade. Class dismissed!