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Checks and Balances

Si Er

Wei Boyu was the Minister of the Chancellery. He saw Le Guang talking with famous scholars in the imperial court. He was surprised and said, "Since the death of these scholars, I have always been afraid that their opinions would be lost. Now I hear such opinions from you again!" He ordered his sons and daughters to find him and said, "This man is a mirror among people. Seeing him is like seeing the blue sky through the clouds and mist."

Goodbye Financial Street

　　When Fan Xuan was eight years old, he was picking vegetables in the back garden and accidentally injured his finger and started crying loudly. Someone asked, "Are you in pain?" He replied, "It's not pain, I just dare not damage my body or hair, that's why I'm crying!" Xuan Jie was a frugal person, so when Han Yuzhang gave him a hundred pieces of silk, he refused to accept them. He reduced the amount by fifty pieces, but still refused to accept it. In this way, he reduced it by half, until it reached one horse, but he never accepted it again. The Queen of Han was riding in the same carriage with Fan. The Queen cut two feet of flesh in the carriage and gave it to Fan, saying, "Would anyone rather let his wife be without a scarf?" Fan laughed and accepted it.

Where the warm sun failed you

With Qingge

Only when the emperor mourns, people of different surnames cry. Duke Ai of Lu mourned Confucius, saying: "Heaven does not spare the old, and no one will give me a position. Alas, my father!" When a large county was destroyed, the dukes, ministers, officials, and scholars all wore their caps and cried in the great temple for three days, but the king did not raise the flag. Some said: The king raised the flag and cried in front of Hou Tu. Confucius hated people crying in the wild. Those who have not yet taken office dare not tax people; if they tax people, they should follow the orders of their fathers and brothers. Scholars should prepare themselves and dance morning and evening. They should wear mourning clothes for auspicious occasions, and they should mourn in the same month and move to the next month for music. The king has a gift of cloth to scholars.

Destined in previous life

The Duke said, “Why don’t gentlemen today practice this?” Confucius said, “Gentlemen today are insatiable in their love of goods, untiring in their indulgence of virtue, idle and arrogant, and are sure to destroy the people. They use the people at noon to attack those who have the Way; they seek what they want, not what they should. In the past, people were used from the front, but now people are used from the back. Gentlemen today do not practice etiquette.”