At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, there was a young man named Guan Ning in Zhuhu County, Beihai County, who was close friends with Bing Yuan and Hua Xin. The three of them are very talented, and they encourage each other with their poor and honest integrity. The world enviously calls them a dragon.
Hua Xin is 21 years old, called the dragon head, Bing Yuan is 20 years old, followed by the dragon's belly, and Guan Ning is 18 years old and young, is the dragon's tail. Among the 3 people, Guan Ning has the most indifferent ethics and backbone.
One day, Guan Ning helped Hua Xin hoe grass in his family's vegetable garden, and at this moment, he listened to the "rattling" of the hoe in Hua Xin's hand, creating a small piece of gold from the soil! Hua Xin's eyes lit up with joy, and he hurriedly bent down to pick up the small gold nugget, turned his head and called Guan Ning and said, "Come and see, I cut out a piece of gold, and now I can get rich hahaha!" ”
Hua Xin smiled and laughed, and suddenly the smile froze on his face, he saw that Guan Ning was still bending over and hoeing grass, and he didn't even react to the sudden windfall!
Hua Xin took the hand of gold and stayed there. It took a long time before he felt uneasy, and his heart fluctuated fiercely: "In contrast, he felt a little ashamed of his behavior of seeing wealth and ecstasy, and his heart was lost. Didn't he encourage Guan Ning to stay poor and indifferent to fame and fortune on weekdays? Why is it that when you happen to see a small piece of gold, it is better for people to treat it indifferently?
So, Hua Xin poured the piece of gold into his right hand with his left hand, and his right hand on his left hand, looked and looked, and finally threw it away with pain.
Another time, Guan Ning and Hua Xin sat on a straw mat and read. Suddenly, there was the sound of gongs opening the road outside the window, and it was obvious that a luxury horse convoy of dignitaries passed by here.
Hua Xin immediately threw down the book, jumped up, hurriedly probed out the window, his face showed envy, and muttered in his mouth: "Gee, look at that honor guard, look at that carriage, it's so beautiful!" ”
Guan Ning looked at Hua Xin, drew a sharp knife from his waist, silently cut the straw mat he was sitting with Hua Xin from the middle, looked directly at Hua Xin with a solemn face and said: "My friendship with you has been severed from today, sit separately!" This is the story of the allusion to "cutting the table and sitting separately".
Guan Ning was a descendant of Guan Zhong, the name of the Qi state during the Spring and Autumn Period, he was eight feet tall and had a beautiful beard and eyebrows. However, by his generation, the family had long been destitute. He died his father when he was 16 years old, and his relatives and friends pity his orphan and widow, and Guan Ning did not accept it, and sent his father to death according to his own financial resources.
Guan Ning studied diligently in poverty, and when he was young, he went out to study, and soon became famous and became a well-known talent in China.
At this time, the Yellow Turban Uprising broke out at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and the war spread to his hometown, and Guan Ning had to take his old mother and weak wife and young son to leave the smoke-filled Central Plains and take refuge in the relatively stable Liaodong.
At that time, the rise of the heroes and the famous intellectuals had only two paths to take: one was to join the warlords, and the so-called "good birds choose trees to live, and virtuous people choose the master." However, intellectuals who "choose the master and do things" have to act according to the eyes of their masters, and some people have become prominent high-ranking officials, but there are also some people who are often blamed and even harm their wealth. The other way is to be indifferent to fame and wealth, stay away from politics, and become a hermit who plows the countryside and supports himself.
Intellectuals who followed this path were unwilling to venture out in the dangerous officialdom, so they sent their feelings to the landscape, laughed at the wind and the moon, and sought the fame of Qinggao and the peace of the first life, and famous men in the Three Kingdoms era such as Sima Hui, Zhuge Jun, Shi Guangyuan, Meng Gongwei, and so on were such people.
Guan Ning is an intellectual between these two paths. He had a poor ethic and did not covet fame, although he was a hermit far from officialdom. However, during his hermit career, he was enthusiastic about moralization and education, and made many contributions beneficial to society, and was loved by the people and praised by future generations, so he was not a pure hermit.
Liaodong during the Three Kingdoms period, which included the northern half of present-day Liaoning, Andong, and Korea, administered Pyongyang and Seoul, was a fairly vast land.
At this time, after the Eastern Han Dynasty survived in name only, the Central Plains was in chaos, and the Liaodong Taishou Gongsun Du did not have the strength to win the Central Plains due to his remote location, maintaining a relatively independent and stable situation.
When Gongsun Du heard the news that Guan Ning had taken refuge in Liaodong, he was very happy, so he renovated the hotel in Xiangping City, the capital of Liaodong, and prepared to receive Guan Ning.
Why does Gongsun Du value Guan Ning so much? First, Guan Ning's reputation in the Central Plains is very high; Second, Gongsun Du saw that the Eastern Han Dynasty was on the verge of collapse, and he had the intention to call Wang Liaodong, and he needed talented intellectuals to help him do things in order to improve his prestige.
Guan Ning had a long figure and a beautiful beard, and Gongsun Du saw him dignified, and his heart was happy, and he talked about political affairs with him, but Guan Ning only said some things about learning, and avoided talking about the martial arts of Wen Zhi. Gongsun Du wanted him to stay by his side to participate in political affairs, but Guan Ning declined it.
Guan Ning took refuge in Liaodong and did not want to become an official, so he did not live in Xiangping City. Instead, I chose a place north of the city surrounded by mountains and rivers. He built three huts in the countryside to recruit displaced children and open schools.
As a result, the common people who had taken refuge in Liaodong from the Central Plains helped the old and the young to come and live, and within a few months, a city with a prevalent learning style was formed.
In this city, where displaced people live in three passes and five roads, due to the different living habits and regional customs of the displaced people, disputes and discord between people are constantly occurring, resulting in chaos in the order of life.
To this end, Guan Ning is committed to promoting the etiquette of the Central Plains poetry book, setting up temples and bean sacrifices, guiding the people to show courtesy and shame, so that the sound of reciting string songs is endlessly outside the region, and the wind of happiness and peace prevails among the people. Therefore, the displaced people all had a heart of respect for Guan Ning, and Gongsun Du also said that Guan Ning had the virtue of loving the people, and within a few years, the city was ruled greatly.
Initially, Guan Ning's hut had a well next to it, and the displaced people fought every day over the way to draw water from the well. Guan Ning bought some buckets at his own expense, and hired someone to discharge the buckets filled with well water in advance for people to use.
After a few days, the people who fought over the water brawl knew that Guan Ning spent money for everyone's sake, and they were very ashamed, so they went to Guan Ning to blame themselves, and since then, there has been no fight over drawing water.
Once, Guan Ning's neighbor fed a cow, and the neighbor's owner often released his cow to eat the crops in Guan Ning's field. Whenever Guan Ning encountered this situation, he led the cow from the scorching sun to the shade of the tree, cut the grass, and drew clean water to feed it, and the owner of the cow felt guilty for this.
After word spread, the villagers built pens to take care of the livestock they were feeding, and the destruction of other people's crops by livestock completely disappeared.
As the so-called Tao Li is speechless, the next is its own, because of Guan Ning's personal practice in moralization education, so that in the place where he is located, there is no sound of litigation in the streets, the family has the joy of living in peace, and the indoctrination of etiquette and righteousness was quickly promoted in the semi-civilized Liaodong at that time.
During Guan Ning's years of refuge in eastern Liaoning, by this time, Cao Cao had pacified northern China.
At this time, although Liaodong maintained its military and political independence, it was a vassal region under the Eastern Han government under Cao Cao's control. When Cao Cao heard that Guan Ning was a man with both ability and integrity, he sent a letter in the name of Emperor Xian of Han to Gongsun Kang, the son of Gongsun Du, who had died, asking him to send Guan Ning back to the central government to do things.
Gongsun Kang, like his father, also had ambitions to call him Wang Liaodong, and he was unwilling to give up talents like Guan Ning to Cao Cao, so he hid the documents sent by Emperor Xian of Han and ignored Cao Cao's recruitment of Guan Ning.
After Cao Cao's death, Cao Pi declared himself emperor of the Han dynasty, and Hua Xin, who had been good friends with Guan Ning, was a high-ranking official of the newly established Wei Dynasty, and he recommended Guan Ning to the Wei emperor Cao Pi, so Cao Pi again recruited Guan Ning to return to the Central Plains as an official.
Guan Ning was already old at this time, and he had the idea of the fox dying and the leaves returning to his roots, so he refused Gongsun Yuan (Gongsun Du's grandson) to keep him repeatedly, returned the gift given to him by the three generations of Gongsun Yuan's ancestors and grandchildren, returned it in its original package, and crossed the sea to return to his native Qingzhou, Shandong.
After Guan Ning returned to his hometown, the Wei court sent him a letter of appointment from Taizhong, but he refused to accept it. After Cao Ying succeeded to the throne, Hua Xin wanted to cede his position as imperial lieutenant to Guan Ning, and Sikong Chen Qun also strongly recommended him, but Guan Ning Wanxie did not take office.
He clothed and fed vegetables in his hometown, personally ploughed the fields and planted vegetables, washed his feet in the stream in the summer, studied in the red stove in the winter, and abided by the integrity of intellectuals, and lived until he died of illness at the age of 84.