The Gui-Hai Tai Sui: General Yu Cheng

The last chapter

Gui is the last of the Heavenly Stems, and Hai is the last of the Earthly Branches. This is the final year of the sixty-year cycle: two kinds of the purest water meeting at the very end, clear and deep, quietly carrying the seed of the next beginning.

General Yu Cheng guards this year, and also guards the whole cycle as it turns back to the start. People born in Gui-Hai years often have a mellow, deep kind of wisdom. They do not rush or grab, and they can see a new start inside every ending.

Seen it all, still kind

He wears a green hat with a gold mark. His round face is calm, and his bright, deep eyes are gentle, the kindness of someone who has watched an entire cycle and still loves life.

He wears a forest-green robe and a red cloak like the last warm light of sunset. His finger points ahead: "This round is done. The new start is that way. I'll see you through."

Three times rebuilt

According to legend, he was Yu Cheng, a respected old scholar who lived past seventy at the end of the Eastern Han dynasty and watched the dynasty decline. He was not a hero or an advisor, just an old teacher who kept a school open so homeless children could still learn and grieving people still had someone to talk to.

War destroyed his school three times. Three times he rebuilt it. Each time he said only, "Knowledge can't be burned. As long as someone is still teaching and someone is still learning, it's still here."

Asked how he stayed so calm, he said, "I've seen so much. Everything passes, this war included, and me too. While I'm here, I do what I can. The rest I leave to heaven."

Under the parasol tree

In his last days he sat in the yard of the school he had rebuilt for the third time, looking at a parasol tree he had planted himself, and passed away peacefully while students inside were reading aloud.

Heaven named him the Tai Sui of the Gui-Hai year. A hand pointing to new beginnings and a deep, gentle wisdom: that is his gift to everyone born in the Year of the Pig.