章 222: Little Truths

クリエイターの想い

Queeniecat

(1) Marble as a construction material was recorded as far back as the Qin Dynasty, with some parts of the Great Wall being constructed out of it. Along with jade, it became rare as a construction material due to its prized nature.

(2) Lin Daiyu: A principal character of the Chinese classic ‘Dream of a Red Chamber’ (Cao Xueqin, 1791), famous for her physical frailty.

(3) A day as a teacher is a lifetime as a father: a saying first attributed to the ‘Taigong Household Teachings’, which is a collection of sayings governing moral principles. Due to the direct nature of its prose, it was often regarded in ancient times as being too ‘unpolished’ for scholars and hence remained largely unrecorded in written text until the late Qing Dynasty where it was compiled into writing in 1899.

(4) The boy can be taught: an idiom with a story dating to the Western Han Dynasty (202BC to 8BC). The story is set during the Warring States Era. Zhang Liang, a prince of the defeated Han Kingdom, failed to assassinate Qin Shihuang (the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty) and fled for his life. As he was crossing a bridge, he saw an old man whose shoe had fallen into the water. The old man asked him to retrieve the shoe. Zhang Liang was offended but seeing the old man’s age, he assisted him. The old man then asked him to help put the shoe on his foot. Zhang Liang was unhappy but figured that since he had already retrieved the shoe, there was no point in picking a fight now and helped the old man wear his shoe respectfully. The old man deemed him worthy of teaching and put him through a series of trials after that tested his patience and his perseverance. On successfully passing the test, the old man handed him a teaching manual that would later assist him in becoming an important advisor of the founder of the Han Dynasty.

(5) Provide a flight of stairs: an idiom that means to give someone an out

A/N: Thank you very much for reading and for all the lovely reviews, gifts, comments, golden tickets and power stones! Apologies for the late release, I had received second round interviews earlier than expected (they were early this year!) and also had to cover shifts for colleagues that had interviews of their own. Hence, no weekend and almost no evenings free the whole of last week...