Fishing at the Wei River

I n the west, the lord of Zhou kept faith with a throne that did not deserve it. While the King of Shang built towers to torture men for sport, King Wen built a single terrace, the Spirit Terrace, and built it cheap — he would not let the work grind his people to raw hands, and paid them in good cloth besides. When the diggers turned up a heap of old bones in the foundation pit, he ordered them gathered and buried properly, on the reasoning that he was lord of the dead in his land no less than the living. The whole western country loved him for things like that. They did not yet know that the next bone the earth would give him was a man. King Wen kept his integrity and gave a subject's full loyalty; he practiced benevolence and virtue while raising a great work. He would not let the people's strength be worn to callused, broken hands, and for their labor he often granted them brocade bound in red. When the Spirit Terrace was being dug and a pond opened, the workers uncovered a pile of dry bones; King Wen ordered them buried, saying that as lord he was sovereign of the dead as well as the living. The people honored him for it.

That night the king dreamed. From the southeast came a tiger with a white-marked brow, and from its flanks grew a pair of wings; it sprang straight at his tent. He woke at the third watch to a roar of firelight climbing the sky behind the terrace, and called his counselor San Yisheng to read the thing. A winged tiger out of the southeast, San Yisheng told him, is the oldest of good omens. Long ago a Shang king dreamed of a flying bear and woke to find the minister who would carry his reign. Your dream is the same dream. Somewhere in the wilds there is a great sage, and he is meant for you. Go and find him. That night, at the third watch, King Wen had a strange dream: he saw a fierce tiger with a white brow and wings growing from its flanks come springing toward his tent from the southeast. He woke startled, and heard a blaze of fire climbing to the sky behind the terrace. He summoned San Yisheng to interpret it. San Yisheng said this was a great and auspicious sign — like the ancient King Gaozong of Shang, who dreamed of a flying bear and so obtained the sage minister Fu Yue. It foretold that the king would gain a pillar-and-beam minister, a great sage hidden among the wilds.

The sage was already there, and had been for some time. His name was Jiang Shang, styled Ziya, and his Daoist title was Flying Bear; he was eighty years old and had failed at everything a man can fail at in the ordinary world. He sat each day at Pan Stream, under a hanging willow, and let his line drift on the green water. A woodcutter named Wu Ji, passing with his load, looked at the line and laughed out loud. The hook was no hook at all — a straight needle, tied to the cord and held three feet clear of the surface, with no bait on it. Old man, the woodcutter said, you will not catch a single fish in a hundred years like that. Wisdom does not come with age, he added, nettled; a man can talk a hundred years and still plan like a fool. The sage was Jiang Shang, styled Ziya, Daoist title Flying Bear, a man of Xu prefecture by the Eastern Sea, now eighty years old. He sat alone beneath a hanging willow at Pan Stream and let his fishing rod float upon the green waves. The woodcutter Wu Ji, seeing the line ended not in a bent hook but a straight needle, with no bait, laughed without stopping and said, mocking, that wisdom does not lie in great age — a man without strategy speaks in vain though he live a hundred years — and that with such a method he would never take a fish.

“A short pole, a long line, and a straight needle held above the green water — he was not fishing for fish. He was fishing for a king, and he was prepared to wait.”

Ziya was unbothered. I would rather take what comes by the straight way than fish for it by the bent one, he said. I set no trap for the bright-scaled fish. I am angling for kings and lords. There was a verse he sang to himself, and the woodcutter caught it: A short pole, a long line, and the watch kept at Pan Stream — who understands the trick of it? I am only fishing for the sovereign and his minister; when did I ever care for the fish in the water. Then, looking the woodcutter over, he told him something that had nothing to do with fishing. Your left eye is green and your right eye red. Today you will go into the city and kill a man. Ziya answered, I would rather take in the straight than seek in the crooked; I do not set my line for the brocade-scaled fish, but angle only for kings and lords. The verse ran: a short pole, a long line, I keep watch at Pan Stream — who knows the secret of this device? I fish only for the reigning sovereign and his chief minister; when was my meaning ever on the fish in the water? Then, reading the woodcutter's face, he said: your left eye is green, your right eye red — today you will go into the city and strike a man dead.

The woodcutter went into the city, and in the crowded street his carrying-pole swung loose and struck a gate-guard named Wang Xiang in the skull, and the man died. So the straight-needle prophecy came true on the same afternoon it was spoken. Wu Ji was thrown in prison to pay with his life in autumn, by the law of the country. But San Yisheng learned the man had an old mother past seventy with no one to keep her, and pleaded his case; King Wen let the woodcutter go home to lay in a coffin and grave-clothes for the mother first, and come back in the fall to die. When the old woman heard how exactly the needle-fisher had foreseen it all, she sent her son back to Pan Stream — not to thank the old man, but to beg him to find a way out of his own prophecy. Wu Ji went into the city to sell firewood, and in the press his pole struck the gate-guard Wang Xiang and killed him; he was imprisoned to answer with his life. San Yisheng, learning that the man had a mother over seventy with none to support her, petitioned King Wen, who released him to go home and prepare a coffin and burial clothes, and to return after autumn to pay the penalty. When the mother heard how precisely Ziya had foreseen the killing, she urged her son to go back to Pan Stream and beg the sage to save him.

In the spring, King Wen rode out south of the city. His officers laid out a hunting ground for him, and he refused it. Grain is enough to keep a man alive and rich food enough to please his mouth, he said; spring is the season when everything is being born, and it is wrong to go killing in it. So they rode through the country taking nothing, and as they went the king heard fishermen and woodcutters singing — strange songs for laborers, full of fallen kingdoms and washed ears. One line ran, I wash my ears so as not to hear the music of a ruined state. These are not your songs, the king said to the singers. Where did you learn them. From an old man at Pan Stream, they told him, who fishes and sings all day and gives the songs away. In spring King Wen went out south of the city for the season's pleasure. When his officers prepared a hunting park, he declined, saying that the five grains suffice to nourish life and rich flavors to please the mouth, and that it was wrong to kill creatures in spring, the season of birth. Riding on, he heard fishermen and woodcutters singing songs of fallen kingdoms — one line saying, I wash my ears rather than hear the music of a ruined state. He asked where such songs came from, and was told they came from an old man at Pan Stream who fished and sang there every day.

Then San Yisheng saw a face he knew among the singers — Wu Ji, the woodcutter who was supposed to be dead, alive and untroubled under the pines. Wu Ji explained it plainly. He had gone to Pan Stream. The old man had told him to dig a pit in the earth and lie down in it through the night, with grass laid over and lamps burning at his head and his feet; Jiang Ziya had worked the rites above him until morning. When Wu Ji rose out of the earth the next day, the accounting had been settled — by some Daoist arithmetic he was no longer on the ledger of the living who owed a death. San Yisheng heard all this and heard something else: the old man's title. Flying Bear. The king turned the title over and matched it against his dream, and the dream against the diviner's word, and the word against the stream the songs kept naming, and understood that the sage he had been told to find had been three days' easy ride from his gate the whole time. He did not send for him. He went home, fasted and purified himself for three days, and then rode out to the water in person, the way a man goes to ask for something he is not owed. San Yisheng then recognized Wu Ji among the singers — the woodcutter thought dead — and questioned him. Wu Ji told them: he had gone to Jiang Shang at Pan Stream. Jiang Shang had him dig a pit in the earth, lie down in it through the night, with grass laid over, lamps burning at his head and feet; Jiang Shang performed the rites above him. When morning came, Wu Ji rose — by this means Jiang Shang had preserved his life. The title Flying Bear matched King Wen's dream exactly. Understanding at last that this was the sage of the omen, the king did not summon him by messenger. He returned, fasted and purified himself for three days, and then went out to Pan Stream himself, with his officers, to seek the old man.

He found the old man sitting under the willow, the rod floating on the green water, exactly as the songs had promised. Are you well, worthy one, the king asked. The old man rose. Your subject did not know the royal carriage was coming and failed to meet it; forgive the offense. They talked by the river a long time — about the ruin of the Shang, about the ordering of a state, about the campaign that would have to come — and everything the eighty-year-old failure said came out weighed, exact, and far-seeing, the talk of a man who had been waiting so long he had thought of everything. The story tells it that the king would not let him walk, and that he himself put a hand to the old man's cart and pulled it some hundreds of paces along the road — and that every pace was a year, and so bought the house of Zhou its eight hundred years. King Wen found Ziya seated alone beneath the hanging willow, his rod drifting on the green waves. The king greeted him: are you content, worthy man? Ziya rose and said, your humble subject did not know the royal carriage had come and failed to receive you; may the worthy king forgive my fault. They spoke at length of the times and the governance of the realm, and all Ziya said was deep and far-sighted. By the tradition, King Wen drew the old man's cart himself for some hundreds of paces, and Zhou enjoyed eight hundred years and more of peace thereafter.

So the man who had caught nothing for eighty years caught a king in an afternoon, with a straight needle and no bait. King Wen made him Prime Minister of the Right of the Spirit Terrace and carried him home, and from that day the strategist who would one day stand at the end of the war and hand out the titles of every god began, quietly, with maps and grain counts and the names of generals, to build the machine that would pull down the Shang. He was eighty. He had time for none of it, by any reasonable count. He did all of it anyway, which is its own kind of omen — that heaven keeps its sages in the wild until exactly the hour it means to spend them. King Wen appointed Jiang Ziya Prime Minister of the Right of the Spirit Terrace and brought him back to the capital. From that time the old sage began to order the affairs of state and to lay the groundwork for the campaign against Shang. Though eighty years old, he took up the whole work of the rising house of Zhou.