Home › Stories › Tai Sui › Ding-Hai
The Ding-Hai Tai Sui: General Feng Ji
A frontier general who held a city for seven days and seven nights with five hundred men.
- Guardian of
- People born in a Ding-Hai year, the Year of the Pig
- Born between
- Feb 18, 2007 – Feb 6, 2008
- Past life (legend)
- Feng Ji, a border fortress commander between the Qin and Han dynasties (folk legend)
- Symbol
- A black staff ringed with gold: a light that will not go out
If you were born between these dates, you were born in a Ding-Hai year, the Year of the Pig, and General Feng Ji watches over you.
(A new year starts on Lunar New Year’s Day.)
A candle in the deepest water
Ding is yin fire, a candle that keeps burning in the dark. Hai is the last Earthly Branch, the deepest hour of the night just before a new cycle begins. A candle that stays lit there is the most stubborn kind of light.
General Feng Ji guards this year. People born in Ding-Hai years often have a hidden toughness. In hard times they are the last to fall, and like a candle, the more you blow, the brighter they burn.
Fierce and unbending
He wears a dark green helmet with gold trim and a flame-shaped crest. His dark face is sharply lined, and his blazing eyes show no doubt at all.
He wears heavy colorful armor under a golden yellow cloak and grips a huge black staff circled with gold rings, gold shining in the dark.
Seven days on the walls
According to legend, he was Feng Ji, a powerful general who guarded a frontier fortress at the turn of the Qin and Han dynasties. He is remembered most for one siege.
A huge enemy army surrounded the fortress, and help could not come in time. With fewer than five hundred soldiers, Feng Ji held the city for seven days and seven nights. Twice the wall was breached, and twice he led his men with stones and bare hands to close the gap. He tied his wounds with strips of his own clothes and went back up.
"Is the city still there?"
On the seventh night, help arrived. As the gates opened, the pain finally hit him and he collapsed from the wall into his soldiers' arms. The first thing he asked was, "Is the city still there?" "Yes." "Good."
He recovered and never gave up a city again. Heaven named him the Tai Sui of the Ding-Hai year. A black and gold staff and a light that won't go out: that is his gift to everyone born in the Year of the Pig.
Questions people ask
Who is the Tai Sui for people born in 2007?
People born between Feb 18, 2007 and Feb 6, 2008 were born in a Ding-Hai year, the Year of the Pig. Their Tai Sui is General Feng Ji.
Who was General Feng Ji before becoming a Tai Sui?
Feng Ji, a border fortress commander between the Qin and Han dynasties (folk legend).
What does General Feng Ji hold?
A black staff ringed with gold: a light that will not go out.
Stay for the next story
A new fortune poem and the old story behind it, every day on YouTube.