One day, Ying went home after washing clothes by the river. There were two guests, a man and his wife were visiting her house. She politely nodded at them and entered the house to go to the backyard to cook for her family.
"Aye, your daughter indeed is lovely!" one of the guests said happily. "Lao Wu, then let's decide to wed our children five months from now!"
"Alright. It's decided this way!" Lao Wu and his wife agreed.
That night, Lao Wu called Ying and told her about the wedding proposal.
Ying firmly said, "I want to be a hero. I want to be an official or a king! I don't want to get married!"
Lao Wu was surprised and laughed. "Daughter, you don't even know what you're talking about! Alright, it's decided already! You will marry the village chief's nephew, five months from now!"
Ying said nothing and just lowered her head.
Not long after, a group of people came to Kuaiji Mountain. The king of Yue, Goujian, moved the capital to the Kuaiji Mountain area. The small village of a sudden changed into a city.
The man in charge of building the new capital was Fan Li. He was the minister who accompanied Goujian and his wife during the captive in Wu.
Fan Li resided in a big house not too far from the place where they're going to build the palace for Goujian. And since he lived there, many educated people came to his house to teach the local people and children.
One day, a businessman from Wey State came to visit Minister Fan Li in his new house in the Kuaiji area. This businessman was Zigong. Not only a businessman, but he's also a politician and a philosopher. He's a disciple of Confucius.
He heard of Fan Li's wisdom and came to visit Fan Li to discuss things with him, while also doing business. He gave a lecture at Fan Li's house courtyard, and many people came to Fan Li's house to hear his teaching.
Among the people who came to hear his teaching was Ying. She was the only young girl among the crowd. She was impressed to hear Zigong's teaching and wisdom. There, she also saw Fan Li for the second time.
Fan Li was a dashing man in his late twenties. A handsome, smart man.
Unlike the Yue men who had short hair and a tattoo on his face, Fan Li had long hair that was tied neatly and wore a beautiful long robe. Ying could not stop staring and admiring him. For a young village girl like her, Fan Li was like a deity statue in a temple.
Zigong taught poetry, rites, and also many things about politics, and how people should serve their ruler in proper ways.
Although Ying didn't understand the whole teachings all about, she listened to them all attentively. Until then, a group of teenagers saw her and started to tease her. One of the teenagers was the chief village's nephew - the one who would marry Ying a few months later.
"Look at the wolf girl!" the boy said. "My uncle proposed to her to marry me!"
Ying frowned but said nothing. She rose from her seat and walked away.
"She's not ugly for a wolf daughter!" one of the boys said. "My father was one of the hunters who were with Uncle Wu when he found her at the wolves' dent!"
The boys laughed and mocking at Ying, calling her wolf girl, wild girl, animal's daughter, and other things.
Ying lost her patience. She was already walking away, but she halted and turned her body and said, "Don't ever mock me! Since you know that I'm a wolf girl, then you also know that I could bite and kill!"
The boys laughed at her and kept on mocking her. She's only a girl, while there were four of them.
Who would have thought Ying was enraged. When she's enraged, her face turned red, and she's breathing like an enraged bull.
"Hey, look at her! Don't you think that she looks like a wolf?" one of the boys said.
Just after he finished her word, Ying had already attacked him and beat him. She used to go hunting with her father. She was not weak compared to the girls of her age. But right now she's dealing with boys older and bigger than her.
She was lucky that it was not too long that Zigong and some older men saw the fighting and separated them.
"How come you boys fight a girl? That's now how a gentleman would behave!" Zigong said.
"That wolf girl started to attack me first!" the boy said.
"No one should ever insult me!" Ying said. She got some blood stains on her face, but she didn't look scared at all.
Zigong laughed and said, "Aye, girl! You're so brave. But a gentleman should use his mouth and not his fist. He insulted you, you should argue with him instead of beating him!"
Ying looked at the man straight to the eyes. She was confused.
Zigong saw the girl was brave. Meanwhile, his wife came out to find out what happened.
The woman saw that the girl was around twelve years old. And from her clothing, she should be a farmer's daughter. She wore a dress a bit too short and too tight for her. Her skirt was a hand-span above her ankle and revealed her barefoot. There's a jade bracelet on her left foot. She sighed. She knew the boys should have mocked and teased the girl to take advantage of her. She smiled and took Ying's hand and said, "Come inside with me! Auntie has something for you! Let the man deal with the man!"
Ying followed the woman who wiped her face with a handkerchief to remove bloodstain from her face.
"You are a beautiful girl!" said the woman. "You should not fight with the boys! Remember, you're a big girl now!"
"They mocked me!"
"A gentleman uses his mouth to argue, and not use his fist!" the woman said.
"I don't understand!"
The woman smiled and said, "Don't degrade yourself fighting with those boys!"
"Why not?"
The woman laughed. That woman was the wife of Zigong - one of the Confucius' students from Wey State, a more civilized country than Yue. She had never expected that the people of Yue were very backward.
The woman patiently taught Ying about the difference between man and woman, the relationship between man and woman, parents with children, ruler and the people, ethics, rituals, and many other things that Ying had never heard before.
Ying enjoyed learning and listening to Zigong and his wife's wisdom. Every day after she finished helping her parents in the field and did the housework, she would go to Fan Li's courtyard to hear their teachings.
Although Ying was just a village girl born from a poor peasant, she was brilliant and a quick learner. Zigong's wife liked Ying and treated her kindly. Unfortunately, she and Zigong only stayed in Yue for a month and had to leave.
"The next time I come here again here, the palace will be completed. And you may grow taller than me!" Zigong's wife said. "I hope to be able to see you become a woman of virtue! Don't pick up a fight again with any boy!" She smiled and caressed her hair.
Ying nodded her head, "I will listen to your advice and observe the teaching of Master Zigong and Great Master Kong (Confucius)."
"You're a beautiful girl!" She said. "Unfortunately, you come from a lowly background," she said in her mind.
While the poor man still had the chance to improve their life through study and work, there's no chance for women to improve their lives by all means. Women's lives depend on their husbands. And men from noble or aristocracy wouldn't take women from a lowly background to be their wives. Beautiful women, if they're from a humble background and are lucky enough, they might have a chance to be concubines or rich men. But if they're not fortunate and encounter hardship like wars and famine, many of them were sold as slaves, or even to brothels. Such cruelty was the life of women at that time.
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A month before Ying was supposed to get married, her father fell ill again. This time, there's no cure for him.
"My daughter, after I die, you will marry and live with your new family. I hope that sometime you will visit your mother!" Lao Wu said.
"She's my mother. I will take care of her!" Ying said.
"You're not free to take care of her! As long as you visit her once in a while, that is good enough!"
Ying shed her tears. She knew some neighbors who died. She knew what death meant. She kneeled and touched the ground with her forehead and said, "Father, thank you for everything. Although you're not my birth father, you have been so kind to me. I promise I will take care of mother. You don't have to worry about her!"
Lao Wu also shed his tears and said, "You're a good daughter. I wish you a better life!"
"Ying-er, I know that the chief village's nephew often mocks and teases you. Probably because he likes you and just wanted to get your attention! Although I want to see you marrying a better person, yet it's not easy. Many people in this village know about your background. It's not easy to get a husband for you! I won't let you be someone's concubine! You have to be a primary wife!"
Ying said nothing. She wished that she was a boy. She wanted to roam freely and study a lot of things, like Master Zigong, or like Minister Fan Li.
"The night before I found you in the forest, I had a dream. I dreamt that I found a stone that fell from the sky. When I examined the stone, an old man appeared and congratulated me. He said that I was lucky that I found that stone. So I asked, it's just a stone, why he called me lucky. And the man said that the stone was not an ordinary stone, but a precious jade! But just like another jade, the stone has to be polished! Then the man vanished!" Lao Wu coughed and continued his story, "And the next day, I found you!"
"Unfortunately, I'm not a precious stone like that in your dream, father!" Ying said.
"Aye, who knows about the future? Who knows that the chief village's nephew someday will become a useful man and can turn you into a polished jade?"
Ying said nothing. She wished that she could run away and roam freely. But how about her father and mother?
A few days later, Lao Wu died. His body was put on a bamboo raft and floated down to the river. After the raft floated, the chief village burned the hays on the raft to burn the raft and the body.
After Lao Wu died, Ying tried to pay more attention to her mother. But the more she tried to be kind to her, the more Madame Wu mistreated her.
The day was closer to her wedding day. The chief village came to her house to tell Madame Wu that he would pick up Ying to marry his nephew three days later.
Ying told her mother and the chief village that she wanted to mourn for her father for three years. She said that she's not willing to get married until she finishes her mourning period.
The chief village angrily left the house. And Madame Wu severely beat Ying with a broom.
"Mother, even if you kill me now, I'm still going to mourn for my father. I was supposed to die when I was a baby. And it was my father who brought me home and gave me this life. I just want to respect and mourn for my father, why don't you let me?"
Madame Wu angrily beat her and pulled her hair. The girl was also stubborn. She didn't even beg her mother to stop, nor cry or whimper. She just left her mother and went to the river.
By the river, Ying looked at her reflection on the water. Only after she's alone that she started to cry. She didn't understand why many people hated her and mocked her. In this world, only her father treated her kindly. And she could not repay him. She could only mourn for him for three years, and her mother didn't agree with the idea.
Ying was angry and grief-stricken. She didn't even know what to do. In her rage, she just took her knife.
When she returned home a few hours later, not only her mother but also the whole village were shocked to see that the young girl clean shaved her head.
Her marriage was canceled. Nobody wanted to marry a bald freak girl no matter how good looking she was.
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