After escorting the prime minister to his carriage Ying Zheng bowed and stepped back.
Seeing this the prime minister smiled and asked "Are you not coming to meet the King?"
Ying Zheng looked puzzled and surprised. This was amongst one of the few times he could not guess someone's intentions before hand.
Ying Zheng bowed slightly to the prime minister and said "It would be my honor sir."
Ying Zheng then got into the carriage with a puzzled face while someone closed the door after him.
The prime minister smiled seeing Ying Zheng's puzzled face and said "Hahahaha commander Ying why are you so surprised? I was amazed how ingenious your formations are. You put infantry in the back and front and sides. Lined archers crossbowmen with all the infantry and a small division of cavalrymen in the distance. but most importantly your men are arranged in a neat and easy way for them to retreat attack and pass messages from the higher-ups. I believe the king will like you."
Hearing the praise from the prime minister Ying Zheng knew he could not refute that would make the prime minister look bad and he could not take that would make him look bad conceited and arrogant so Ying Zheng chose the middle path to thank the prime minister say it was luck then praise the prime minister.
"Hahaha you are too kind prime minister and I can not dare to refute your wisdom with my lousy and small wisdom but if I had to say I believe I would attribute it to the heavens our ancestors soldiers and the great men behind us supporting us. of course prime minister I believe you would do much better than me In battle and strategy."
Hearing how Ying Zheng solved the problem he threw at him the prime minister was impressed and wary of him but he also wanted to invite him into his side of imperial court of course no one would refuse for a young and upcoming general to join their side.
"You over praise me that aside I really appreciate you and I believe you will be going places but how about I introduce you to one of my beautiful daughters I believe you must have a lot in common."
The position of women in everyday life was not fun. Since the civilization was strictly male dominance, there was not much that women could do, regarding themselves. The women were forced to stay home to care for children and do household chores while men were out working on farms and in markets. Women didn't have any choice in marriage, or anything else for that matter. Anything regarding their spouse, their household, their land, or their farms, the women didn't get a single word in it. When girls began growing up, their feet were broken and bandaged multiple times over a long period of time, reducing the size of their feet. This was an extremely painful process that took a long time, but was considered mandatory and normal thing for women.
Women's low standing was not because they were women it was more of their bad reputations scheming behaviour evil nature just to name a few. Men always tried to keep women out of politics and business since they always caused disasters and ruined kingdoms the Shàng dynasty and the Zhou Dynasty was just one of the few not to mention the later generations. A nations downfall was guaranteed when the emperor brings in a beautiful concubines and does not go to meet with his ministers and generals or takes her with him.
In China from very early times, men have been seen as the core of the family. The ancestors to whom a Shang or Zhou dynasty king made sacrifices were his patrilineal ancestors, that is, his ancestors linked exclusively through men (his father's father, his father's father's father, and so on). When women enter the early historical record, it is often because they caused men problems. Some women schemed to advance their own sons when their husband had sons by several women. Women's loyalties were often in question.
In 697 BCE, for instance, the daughter of one of the most powerful ministers in the state of Zheng learned from her husband that the ruler had ordered him to kill her father. After her mother advised her that "All men are potential husbands, but you have only one father," she told her father of the plot, and he promptly killed her husband. The ruler of Zheng placed the blame on the husband for foolishly confiding in his wife. Taken together, accounts of these sorts present a mixed picture of women and the problems they presented for men in the nobility. The women in their lives were capable of loyalty, courage, and devotion, but also of intrigue, manipulation, and selfishness.
Confucius probably took for granted these sorts of attitudes toward women, common in his society. He greatly esteemed ancestral rites and related family virtues such as filial piety. He hoped that through the practice of ritual everyone, male and female, high and low, old and young, would learn to fulfill the duties of their roles. Women's roles were primarily kinship roles: daughter, sister, wife, daughter-in-law, mother, and mother-in-law. In all these roles, it was incumbent on women to accord with the wishes and needs of closely-related men: their fathers when young, their husbands when married, their sons when widowed. Confucius's follower Mencius declared that the worst of unfilial acts was a failure to have descendants (Mencius 4A.26). In later centuries this emphasis on the necessity of sons led many to be disappointed at the birth of a daughter.
In the centuries after Confucius, it became common for writers to discuss gender in terms of yin and yang. Women were yin, men were yang. Yin was soft, yielding, receptive, passive, reflective, and tranquil, whereas yang was hard, active, assertive, and dominating. Day and night, winter and summer, birth and death, indeed all natural processes occur though processes of interaction of yin and yang. Conceptualizing the differences between men and women in terms of yin and yang stresses that these differences are part of the natural order of the universe, not part of the social institutions artificially created by human beings. In yin yang theory the two forces complement each other but not in strictly equal ways. The natural relationship between yin and yang is the reason that men lead and women follow. If yin unnaturally gains the upper hand, order at both the cosmic and social level are endangered.
Maintaining a physical separation between the worlds of men and the worlds of women was viewed as an important first step toward assuring that yin would not dominate yang. The Confucian classic the Book of Rites stressed the value of segregation even within the home; houses should be divided into an inner and an outer section, with the women staying in the inner part. One poem in the Book of Poetry concluded: "Women should not take part in public affairs; they should devote themselves to tending silkworms and weaving." A similar sentiment was expressed in the Book of Documents in proverbial form: "When the hen announces the dawn, it signals the demise of the family."
Seeing that Ying Zheng was still thinking about it the prime minister frowned and said "If you do not want to marry one of my daughters that is alright."
Hearing this Ying Zheng wanted to hit his head into a brick wall for taking a long time to think about it and said "No! No! No! prime minister you misunderstand I was merely surprised that you would ask a brute and unrefined soldier like me to marry one of your beautiful and noble daughters but it would be my honour."
Hearing Ying Zheng say that the prime minister was ecstatic and said " hahahaha from now on you can call me father in law."
Ying Zheng had never been so surprised in his life or zoned out during a conversation but today this old geezer made him break records.
For the rest of the journey Ying Zheng and the prime minister discussed about politics philosophy and everything in between.
***
End of chapter
Thank you very much for reading
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