Gu Yanwu, a great Confucian in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, was known for his "strangeness".
The first is that his appearance is different from that of ordinary people. Because he suffered from smallpox when he was a child, his eyes underwent a strange mutation, and the middle white edge was black, and the history books recorded that he was "extremely ugly".
The second is to recite books without death. He usually rode a lame donkey and carried a few boxes full of books on two skinny horses. He memorized the book as he walked, but he did not recite it aloud like Zhu Maichen of the Western Han Dynasty, but recited it silently in his heart. Because he was too fascinated by reading, he often fell off a cliff.
The third is to be good at financial management, but not to get rich. Due to the drastic changes in the situation, he left Jiangnan and came to the north alone. In Shandong, he cultivated the fields for self-sufficiency, and then discarded everything here without hesitation, let the doormen manage the fields, and turned around and went to other places. Everywhere he went, he bought a few concubines and bought a large house and property. In this way, he successively traveled to many provinces until his later years settled in Huayin, Shaanxi, and set up dozens of acres of land to retire.
Fourth, only borrow debts, not collect debts. Two young officials, who were also his nephews, borrowed money from him many times, accumulating thousands of taels of silver, and he did not ask for this money until his death.
The fifth is nocturnal travel. During his stay in Beijing, two officials graciously invited him to dinner in the evening and sent him back with lanterns... When he heard this, his face was difficult to see, and he said categorically: "In the world, only fornication and bribery are all at night." Is there a righteous gentleman who walks in the night? ”
Sixth, love rats more than book manuscripts. When he wrote the Five Books of Phonology, the second volume of the Poetry of Sound was repeatedly bitten by rats, and he copied it again and again, never with the slightest impatience. Some people advised him to plug the loopholes in the house and cure the rat infestation, but he said: "The rat bites my manuscript, in fact, it is to encourage me, otherwise how can a good article be revised many times?" ”
Seventh, the more he reaches his old age, the more he says that he is inferior to others in everything, or even useless. He said: "I am not as good as Wang Xixuan, who is well versed in the Zhou Li, the Rites of Rites, and the Book of Rites, and who has become a generation of masters of scripture, I am inferior to Zhang Erqi; I am not tempted by external objects, and my learning has reached the realm of reaching the pinnacle of perfection, and I am not as good as Fu Shan..." Such a top master, humble to such an extent, is really admirable.
Gu Yanwu is indeed a "strange" person, but he is really "weird" and really simple, "weird" cute, "weird" high standard, "weird" out of the Chinese intellectual's Gengjie nature.
Interesting, informative, with depth
The author | Ma Jun
Source| Hundred Tribunes magazine