Story: Strange Fate (Folk Tales)

During the Northern Song Dynasty, a scholar named Ye Qing in the south passed the jinshi examination. At that time, the northern frontier was often attacked by Liaojin, and there was an urgent need for unified military talents, so he resolutely threw himself into the rong and became a garrison of the border plug.

The desert outside the desert, desolate and lonely, made him often fall into unspeakable sorrow. At the end of the spring of this year, two swallows suddenly flew from the south and built a nest on the beam of Ye Qing's room. The local people had never seen the swallows from the south, thought it was not auspicious, and asked Ye Qing to get rid of them. Ye Qing told the people that they were a kind of beneficial bird, and the swallows survived.

After the swallows stayed, Ye Qing took good care of them like a guest, and when the swallows came out early and returned late, he opened the door to pick them up, and when he had time, he fed them water and teased them, and the two sides got along very harmoniously. One day, the pair of swallows got up early in the morning and kept dancing in front of his eyes, "chirping" in their mouths, as if they were saying something to him.

Ye Qing counted the days, tomorrow is the day of the autumn shrine to worship the land god, the weather is getting colder, the swallows should return to the south, they are saying goodbye to him. Ye Qing was very sentimental, and then thought that after the pair of swallows returned to the south, they might still live in people's homes or under the eaves, and since the swallows were in love with themselves, so affectionate and righteous, why didn't they write a letter and entrust the family there to continue to take care of them?

Ye Qing took a pen and paper, wrote down the words he wanted to say on the pieces of paper, and made a wax ball imitating the method of transmitting information from carrier pigeons, tied them to the soles of the swallows' feet, and sent them away.

In the blink of an eye, spring had arrived again, and the pair of swallows actually flew back again, and the soles of their feet were still tied with wax pills, but they were no longer the ones that Ye Qing had originally tied up. He hurriedly opened it, only to see the handwriting on the paper, and when he looked at it, he knew that it was from a young woman' hand.

The note was a response to Ye Qing's letter expressing his willingness to take care of the swallows. Ye Qing has been busy with meritorious names over the years, and the marriage event has not yet been settled, and he can't help but be thrilled to see this letter.

Day and night, when the swallow returned to the south, Ye Qing used the wax pill to let the swallow take what he wanted to say.

When the swallow turned around the next year, he learned that the other party was also unmarried, and he was immediately overjoyed.

After every year after the swallow flew away with the love letter, Ye Qing's heart also seemed to be taken away. In the face of weather changes, the swallows returned a few days later than expected, and Ye Qing could not eat well and sleep well, until he saw the swallows that were wide away, and then turned from worry to joy.

Three years have passed, although it is only a few words, the feelings between the two sides are deepening day by day. The swallow returned this spring, but to Ye Qing's disappointment, the swallow's foot pole was empty.

Only then did he react, because of the limited information they could convey, they made a big mistake, and they didn't even know each other's addresses. Now that he had lost contact with his sweetheart, he hated not being able to grow wings and fly over to look for it, but the south was so big, where did he go to find the sweetheart brought by this swallow as a red lady?

Just when he was in a hurry to catch fire, someone told him that this year's spring swallow was somewhat abnormal, and he didn't know what the sign was. Because of the kindness of the people, the number of swallows migrating here is getting more and more every year.

Ye Qing hurried out to check, it was really different from the past, many swallows had wax pills tied to their poles. Take it down and look at it, the contents of the paper wrapped in the wax pills are the same, and they all have the same address in Hangzhou.

Ye Qingru, seeing that there was nothing major at the border defense for the time being, sued his superiors for leave and hurried to Hangzhou. After all, the north and the south were thousands of miles apart, and the other party was no longer in that place when they arrived, but the landlord took out a letter left to him by the woman.

It turned out that half a year ago, the woman's family urged her to get married, and she told her parents about her love affair with Ye Qing. Of course, in order not to involve the swallows, it is said that they met before Ye Qing came out of the plug, and later passed on their thoughts through the station. Ye Qing was from Shaoxing, and the two families were not far apart.

Parents don't know which of their daughter's tendons is wrong, and they don't believe it at all when they say such nonsense.

Forced to be helpless, the woman had to take the opportunity to escape with the beard and came to the countryside. Seeing that it was late spring again, the swallows flew north, and they had the heart to go home to find the pair of passing swallows, and the parents looked closely, afraid of being caught, so they had to spend money to hire someone to catch the swallows nearby, and let these swallows carry letters to Ye Qing. Because I was worried that the information would not be available, I could catch as much as I could catch, and when I got to Ye Qing, the scene in front of me appeared.

Although she and Ya Gui tried their best to hide, but after a long time, it was inevitable to expose their tracks, and finally they were found and arrested by their parents, fortunately, she had prepared in advance and left a letter to Ye Qing in advance.

Ye Qing's sweetheart is called Qianqian, surnamed Mu, and the Mu family is a solid family in Hangzhou. Ye Qing thought that he had never met Qian Qiansu, and he didn't recognize her personal servant, how could he get in touch with her?

The next day, Ye Qing asked the kite shoppers to tie him several swallow-shaped kites, find a group of small children, and instruct them to fly near MuFu.

The sky was clear, and the kite began to fly very high and fluttering. After a while, the kite line crackled and broke, and the kite in the sky suddenly became like a drunken man, dangling and slowly planting, and fell into the courtyard of mu mansion without bias. Of course, all this was secretly manipulated by Ye Qing.

Ye Qing's eyes looked at the gate of mu mansion with a golden lion's head, and his eyes were sour, and finally a squirrel came out with a kite and gave it to the child waiting next to the door pier. The child took the broken kite to Ye Qing for examination, and he found a small note in the gap between the bamboo bone and the sticker, on which was her familiar handwriting, and asked him to meet him at Guangji Temple in the west of the city tomorrow afternoon.

The next day, Ye Qing came to Guangji Temple early, and when it came to the agreed time, a group of female relatives came. As they passed by him, one of the charming ladies glanced at him, and the moment their eyes collided, Ye Qing's heart seemed to jump out of his chest at any moment, and a red cloud rose on the woman's face.

After the female relatives returned from the incense, a young lady fell behind and shouted at him. She told Ye Qing that the person who had just seen him was her lady, and the young lady told him to quickly find someone to propose to him.

Ye Qing returned to his hometown in Shaoxing and told his parents about Miss Mufu, who was overjoyed and immediately arranged for it. A few days later, the matchmaker entered the Mu Mansion, but Qianqian's parents felt that the process of their daughter and Ye Qing meeting and falling in love was too incredible, and there were several other son-in-law candidates who were right at home, so they did not agree at all. After Ye Qing personally went to the door to meet him, although they felt that Ye Qing was talented and had a good feeling for him, after all, they did not know the roots and still did not agree to the marriage between the two, ye Qing had to run to Mu Mansion every day to try to persuade the second elder.

On this day, Ye Qing met the father of another candidate son-in-law in Mu Mansion unexpectedly, and just when Ye Qing thought that there would be a conflict between them, things took a dramatic turn. This person was working as an errand boy in Hangzhou Province, and he knew Ye Qing's feat of throwing pens from Rong, and he admired it at that time, and he praised Ye Qing and expressed his willingness to persuade his son to quit in order to become an adult.

After he said this, Qianqian's parents looked at Ye Qing with surprise and finally agreed to marry the two families.

Ye Qing saw Qianqian as she wished, and under her guidance, she met their red lady for the first time. The home of the swallows in the south was built on the cloister of the courtyard where Qianqian lived.

In order to wait for this special matchmaker, the two sides agreed to complete the marriage in late autumn. On the day of the wedding ceremony, the door of mufu was wide open, and the two swallows seemed to have senses, only playing and playing in the courtyard, as if they were waiting for that beautiful moment like the guests.

The bride and groom were about to visit the church, and they flew over to join in the fun, one on one side, pecking here, touching there, and vigorously grabbing the bride's big red hijab with their little claws, as if they knew the groom's thoughts, and couldn't wait to unveil it for him.

The guests attending the wedding heard about the marriage of the bride and groom and said that they were a pair of gods and immortals. After Ye Qing and Qianqian got married, QinSe got along and lived a happy life. A few years later, two swallows died one after another in the nest of Mu Province, and they also built a bird mound for them in the back garden, and every Qingming, the first day of the tenth month of the lunar calendar, and the Chinese New Year's Eve they would worship their deceased relatives as if they were dead.

The descendants of the two swallows also nested in the northern residences of Mu Fu and Ye Qing, got along well with the children of Ye Qing and Qianqian, and multiplied and grew up with their descendants, and the two families became more and more prosperous, and continued for many years.