There is a saying in our country called "the wife of the chaff does not go to the church", and many people often chant it, but they do not know the source of this word. In fact, this sentence comes from the Book of later Han, when Emperor Guangwu wanted to marry his widowed sister Princess Huyang to the talented son Song Hong, but Song Hong had already become a family, and Emperor Guangwu advised him: "It is easy to be rich and easy to marry." So Song Hong said: "The courtiers must not forget the friends of the poor and the lowly, and the wives of the chaff do not go to the church", and the Guangwu Emperor could only give up, and since then this sentence has been passed down to this day.
What I want to share with you in this issue is also a Yuan Dynasty literati who does not abandon his chaff wife, this person is named Wei Chu. Wei Chu was a minister of the Yuan Dynasty, and in his early years he traveled around, and his beloved wife also followed him around, and it was not until his old age that he settled down. Many people are developed and will be in the twilight, but he loves his wife as before. On the birthday of his beloved wife, he even wrote this birthday wish, the whole text has no strange words but the paper is short and long, and it has touched many people in the past 700 years. Let's take a look:
"The Full Moon of Man, For the Life of the Little Jun"
Yuan. Wei Chu
Cold clouds and frozen snow slope the road, and the mud is slippery like ascending to the sky. Years have come again, Wu head Chu tail, wind and rain river boats.
But to teach health, to live in the heart, there is no money. From now on, only look forward to the marriage of children and daughters, chicken dog Yamada.
When Wei Chu wrote this article, he was already serving as an envoy to Jiangxi, and he was also a considerable official at that time. The "Xiaojun" in the title is his wife, and there is no record of his life in the history books. This is a meta-song, perhaps because the wife is not a talented woman, and the song is almost entirely in colloquial language. So if you look at the work itself, compared with Wei Chu's other works, this is the worst article in his life.
The song begins with a memory, and the author remembers his wife's experience of accompanying him along the way. She accompanied herself in the snow and braved the cold on the ancient road. At that time, the ground was wet and slippery, and each step forward was as difficult as ascending to the sky. In this way, they went through the wind and rain, crossed the river by boat, and it took a year to reach their destination. In this recollection, the author only intercepted a simple picture of his peers, and wrote the deep feelings of the two people's suffering and sharing. At the same time, these two sentences are also a pun, cold clouds, frozen snow, slippery mud, wind and rain refer to both their encounters on the road and their own ups and downs in the official field. Compared with the wind and rain in front of them, the sinister nature of the court was actually a test for the husband and wife, and they all came one by one.
The second half is the author's good wishes to his wife. Both of them were now old, and he only hoped that the other could be as healthy as before, let go of all the unfair things in his heart, and no longer had to worry about running out of money. And he himself had no other requirements, only hoping that from now on, after the children and daughters were married, they would be able to live a life of raising chickens and dogs in the mountains and forests. Through these few exhortations and blessings, it is conceivable that when they were young, they were indeed not less angry, nor less poor. Now, he doesn't want his wife to worry about it anymore, but he wants to grow old with her.
Reading through this song, we see the image of a husband who is as gentle as jade and knows how to be grateful; we also read the image of a wife who is obsessed and virtuous. Although in terms of the article itself, it is not very well written. But every time this very simple sentence is read, it makes people feel warm in their hearts. I believe that this birthday star will also sigh in his heart when he reads this article: If there is a husband like this, it is worth it to be bitter!