During the Kangxi period, there was a small official who worked under a certain Jiangnan prefect, he was loyal and sincere, and his management ability was excellent, and the prefect trusted him very much, and the money he gave was also rich. As a result, on a serious occasion when the prisoner was promoted to the court, this petty official came to help in tattered clothes, and the prefect was extremely dissatisfied with this: "I have always been kind to you, can't I afford to buy a new dress for you? Are you deliberately trying to embarrass me by deliberately wearing such tattered clothes?"
The junior official hurriedly explained: "The prefect is indeed kind to me, but his subordinates are really poor, and this set of rotten clothes is still the one you rewarded a few years ago." The prefect hurriedly asked, "Where did all your money go?" The petty official replied: "I have 36 sons to support in my family, and the expenses are too great, not to mention wearing new clothes, and it is difficult to even eat a full meal." ”
When the prefect heard this, he laughed: "36 sons, isn't it because you have too many wives?" The petty official replied bitterly: "Actually, I only have one wife, and all 36 sons are born to one wife." The prefect was very curious about this: "Do you see that this year is less than forty, have you started to give birth to sons since childhood?" The junior official replied honestly: "It's strange to say, I married my wife at the age of 18, and I have one child a year, and each time I have twins, and all of them are sons, and now I am 36 years old, and I have exactly 36 sons." "The prefect asked again: Are they all alive?
But the prefect still found it difficult to believe such a thing, so he asked the junior official to call all 36 sons, and soon he saw such a scene: the eldest child hugged the child, and the middle child carried the child, crowded together. The prefect himself first took out a hundred taels of silver from the treasury for the petty officials, and then reported the matter to the chief secretary and the governor's yamen in the form of official documents. There should be a follow-up to such a world anecdote, but unfortunately there are no more depictions in the miscellaneous collection of Chu Ren.