Chapter 1384 - Education
Hao Yuan smiled. "Beyond this one Nanxiawa, there are millions of poor people under heaven. How could there be so many lucky stars?" He set the large bowl on the table. "Right now I have some income. Beyond feeding myself, there's surplus. Naturally, any bit I can help makes a difference. I saved your father's life and helped many people here. But outside Nanxiawa? Who knows how many more Nanxiawas exist, how many more poor suffering souls? Can we simply hope for more people to do good deeds and accumulate virtue?"
"When we poor folk encounter great troubles, what else can we count on besides kindness from others?" The girl sighed with a touch of helplessness. "Those with good fate meet a noble person like you to save them. Those with bad fate... well, what can they do? A life is gone just like that." As she spoke, she wiped her eyes. "I used to have an older brother. Loved me very much since we were small. Three years ago he became an apprentice at a carpentry shop. I even ran to the city and talked with him at the shop door. That night he was carried back—they said he'd gone out to deliver goods, got heatstroke on the way, and just... died. If only he'd had a packet of Plague Avoiding Powder on him. Blow it into the nose and it could have saved him. Plague Avoiding Powder only costs four wen. But he didn't even have four wen!"
By then, tears were rolling down her cheeks. Hao Yuan silently patted her head.
She wiped her tears. "Mr. Hao, in Nanxiawa, this kind of thing is nothing special. A person dying doesn't even make a sound. Roll them in a reed mat, bury them in the charity graveyard behind us, and that's the end. I don't know why I thought of him again today. But do you know—since you came here, how many fewer people have died? How many fewer have been taken away by traffickers?"
Hao Yuan nodded. "So you call me a lucky star—" He took out a handkerchief and handed it to the girl. "Wipe your tears. You're already a young woman—don't wipe your tears and snot on your sleeves anymore."
The girl took the handkerchief, glancing at him quietly. "I knew you came from a young master's background... Looking down on this poor girl."
Hao Yuan smiled. "Don't say such things again." His expression grew serious. "I'm no young master. And I didn't come here to be some noble philanthropist."
The girl blinked her bright eyes, seeming puzzled. She hesitated before asking: "Then what did you come here for?"
Hao Yuan didn't answer directly. His expression was both heavy and strangely cheerful at once. The girl was confused. Then suddenly she clapped her hands and laughed. "I know—Mr. Hao came here to help poor people."
Hao Yuan smiled and nodded. "Tell me—why are poor people so poor?"
"Bad fate. Didn't get born into a good family."
"So rich people just have good fate?"
"Well then, you tell me—why is their fate good?"
"Because... because..." The girl couldn't come up with an answer. "The masters in the temple say it comes from accumulating kindness and practicing virtue."
"But look at those rich people—how many of them actually accumulate kindness or practice virtue?" Hao Yuan asked. "Even if some do, are they the majority or the minority?"
"The minority—" The girl hesitated. "But the temple masters also say that merit from past lives is very important."
"Accumulating kindness in a past life, then doing evil in this one? Isn't that rather strange?"
The girl fell silent. Her eyes grew bewildered.
"Then you tell me—why is it like this?"
"Because this world belongs to them—to the rich people—not to us common poor folk." Hao Yuan said. "Your father carries his load out to do small business every day. The Shuigen family next door does day labor and grows vegetables. Grain and vegetables from the fields, the silk and cotton cloth we wear, the houses and tools we use—which of these wasn't made from the blood and sweat of common people? Your family makes dumplings and boils lotus root starch every day, yet you can't even afford to give me a bowl of lotus root starch dumplings. Where did all the things we worked so hard to make go?"
The girl looked confused. She had never thought about such things—she had only ever known her family was poor. As for why they were poor, she had never considered it.
Hao Yuan continued: "Because this world is theirs. With a single word, they can take away everything we've worked so hard to make."
"Doesn't this world belong to Emperor Zhu?"
"Emperor Zhu snatched the world from the Yuan Dynasty emperors. He was originally a poor monk who had to go out begging during famine just to avoid starving to death." Hao Yuan said. "Would you say his fate was good or bad? How could someone who was about to starve become emperor in the end?"
"Um..." This logic was rather difficult for a teenage girl to grasp. But it was as if a ray of light had suddenly projected into her once-blocked and darkened heart, instantly illuminating something.
Hao Yuan spoke firmly: "So there is no 'fate' in this world. And even if there were, we can change it."
"Really?" A look of both doubt and excitement appeared on the girl's face.
"Correct. If you feel that the fate assigned to you by Old Lord Heaven is unfair," Hao Yuan said, "then you can only rely on yourself to change it."
"How? How do you change it?" the girl pressed. "Sir, you must know the way. I've wanted to change my fate for so long—or even just change my father's and mother's fate. I'm not asking to eat fish and meat or wear silk and satin—just to eat a few meals of proper grain, to have some decent clothes."
Hao Yuan was amused by her words. "I'm not a fortune teller—how would I know how to change your fate pattern? Anyone who claims they can is a fraud. They don't understand the Great Dao truth; they're just playing metaphysical tricks. That's not the right path."
The girl was confused. "Then what is the Great Dao truth?"
Hao Yuan didn't continue. Instead, he asked: "Do you want to know?"
"Yes!"
"Have you ever studied books?"
"Of course not..." The girl shook her head.
"To understand the Great Dao, you must first learn to read. Otherwise, being someone who has eyes but is still blind to words—the rich will bully you even more." Hao Yuan said. "I teach children to recognize characters here every night. You should come too." He glanced at the oil lamp. "It's late. Go home and sleep. You have to get up early tomorrow."
"All right!" The girl agreed and stood up. Then she added: "Mr. Hao, don't blame me for speaking out of turn. The two who visited today didn't look like good people. The one with the scarred face looked exactly like a river-and-lake bandit."
Hao Yuan nodded. "They are indeed not good people. But their badness hasn't reached the root..."
"If river-and-lake bandits who kill and burn haven't reached the root of badness, what has?"
"River-and-lake bandits kill and burn for wealth. But one person's strength, or even a few people's, is limited. At most they can take a few lives and seize some wealth for themselves. But once word leaks out—caught by the government, or intercepted by militia during a robbery—death is inevitable. Living by licking blood off the knife's edge, whether they live well or poorly, they rarely meet good ends.
"The truly great villains and evildoers are all those hypocrites who look dignified, whom people usually address as 'Master.' When famine strikes, they might even take out money and rice to relieve the masses. But when they do evil? How many families are broken, how many lives destroyed because of them—and no one even knows it's their doing. Not only do people not know, but after these villains snatch everything from the common folk, they turn around and hand out some scraps in charity, and the common folk weep with gratitude. That truly is killing invisibly, destroying households without anyone the wiser."
"Ah! There are such bad people?!" The girl said indignantly. Then she grew worried. "So doesn't that mean no one can do anything about them?"
"Exactly—because this world is their world. We common people are deceived by them; we can't see clearly who the real villains are. We mistake a few river-and-lake bandits for the worst of the worst." Hao Yuan said. "But as long as more and more people see their true faces clearly, they can no longer deceive and bully as they please. And not only that—we will also take back what originally belonged to us—"
Here, Hao Yuan felt he had said too much. The other party was just a young girl, after all; she might not fully understand. Pouring too much in at once could cause indigestion.
"I understand." The girl said. "To change everyone's fate of poverty, we must first understand the Great Dao truth. Once we know the Great Dao truth, those bad people can no longer deceive us."
"Right—you're very clever." Hao Yuan nodded with a smile. "Now go home and sleep."
"Uncle Hao, be careful..."
"It doesn't matter." Hao Yuan said. "I am here, together with everyone. There's no one to be afraid of."
After seeing off the girl, Hao Yuan checked the straw mat blocking the translucent shell window and adjusted the straw mat serving as a door, pressing bricks on its corners to prevent light from leaking out.
Once finished, he picked the oil lamp wick brighter, added two more wicks, and sat before the wooden board that served as his desk. He spread out several sheets of thin white paper and began drafting a placard. Beside him lay a tattered essay collection on the imperial examinations and a half-smudged practice scroll.
If anyone suddenly walked in, they would see only a poor scholar studying hard.
As he ground ink, Hao Yuan considered the placard's content. The goal was to expose Zhao Yingong's collusion with officials and his manipulation of silk prices. He had been pondering for several days how to make it both easy to understand and as concise as possible.
Placards would be printed in large quantities. If the text was too long and complex, carving the printing blocks would take too long—and time was pressing.
Hao Yuan wrote on thin paper while thinking. His calligraphy was standard Yan style—nothing beautiful, but powerful.
When he finished the placard, he corrected it once and copied it out cleanly. While waiting for the ink to dry, he carefully placed the draft in a bamboo tube and stuffed it into a hole in the wall in the corner. Then he took out a letter that had arrived that day via the Qiwei Private Letter Bureau, pulled out the letter paper inside, and carefully held it over the lamp flame.
In the blank spaces of the letter paper, brown handwriting gradually emerged under the heat. Hao Yuan read it carefully several times. Then he held both the letter and the placard draft to the lamp flame, igniting them, watching them burn to ash.
When all was done, he washed his hands, poured himself a bowl of cold boiled water, and sat at the table—eating a bite of coarse grain cake, drinking a mouthful of cold water.
(End of this chapter)