Chapter 1

When my father was young, a flood swept through his hometown. He alone survived. He wandered, suffered, and lived like a beggar until he met my maternal grandfather.

Grandfather was an honest, plainspoken farmer. One day, he happened upon several beggars beating my father and stepped in to save him. When he learned how pitiful Father’s circumstances were, he took him in.

My father could not endure hard labor, but he had a gift for books. Grandfather could not bear to see that talent wasted, so he scraped together everything he had to pay for my father’s education.

My mother shouldered the burden early as well. To earn money for his paper, ink, and books, she rose before dawn each day to grind beans and make tofu for sale. She was eight when she began, and she kept at it for ten years.

My father lived up to their hopes. At seventeen, he passed the county-level imperial examination. Grandfather celebrated for days and held a feast for all the neighbors, beaming with pride as he told everyone again and again that my father would amount to something.

That same year, my parents married. In the second year of their marriage, Grandfather died of illness, and the entire weight of the household fell on my mother.

Every morning, she rose early to grind beans and make tofu. Then she carried two heavy baskets more than twenty li to hawk her wares.

At night, she washed clothes for other families to supplement their income. Only by doing this day after day could she earn enough to keep my father in school.

The strain turned her hair white at seventeen. Though she was two years younger than my father, she looked considerably older.

My mother suffered, but my father did not disappoint her. After three years of relentless study, he passed the provincial examination and earned the right to travel to the capital for the palace examination.

Mother could not bear to part with him. She gathered every coin the family had and insisted on accompanying him to the capital.

At first, Father refused. Then, for reasons no one knew, he changed his mind and agreed to take her.

Father distinguished himself in the palace examination, and the emperor personally named him its third-place laureate. That very day, however, Mother was found unconscious in a crowded street, her clothes disheveled. It was obvious that someone had violated her.

Everyone urged Father to divorce her and marry another woman before she ruined his reputation. Father refused with righteous indignation. Mother had supported his studies for years, he said. He would never repay her by becoming an ungrateful wretch.

His honor won universal praise. Even the emperor was moved when the story reached him. But His Majesty considered it a terrible shame for a newly distinguished scholar to have his name tarnished by a peasant wife, so he arranged for Father to marry Lady Wang, the legitimate daughter of the Marquis of Yongyang.

Father already had a wife. Though the emperor did not say so outright, this second marriage plainly meant that Mother was expected to yield her place and ask to be demoted.

People told her she should be grateful for what she had. Between the lines, they taunted her that a woman who had lost her chastity ought to hang herself. In the end, she gave them what they wanted and put a rope around her neck that very night.

Fortunately, a servant who rose in the night discovered her and saved her life.

It was then that a physician found Mother was pregnant. She had been utterly without hope, but the child seemed to give her a reason to live. She asked to become a concubine and moved into the rear courtyard. Three days later, Father married Lady Wang.

Father was learned and capable to begin with. With the Marquis of Yongyang’s help, he soon found his footing at court and handled several assignments so well that he delighted the emperor. In no more than three years, he rose meteorically to become Vice Minister of Revenue.