The Xin-Hai Tai Sui: General Ye Jian

A blade tempered in deep water

Xin is yin metal, the purest edge with nothing false in it. Hai is the deep water at the end of the cycle, quiet and holding the seed of a new beginning. A blade tempered again and again in deep water only gets harder.

General Ye Jian guards this year. People born in Xin-Hai years are often strong-willed and hard to talk out of their beliefs. Hard times tend to make them clearer about who they are and where they are going.

Ready for anything

He wears a patterned battle helmet with red trim. His square face has the steady look of someone tested many times who never gave up.

He wears many layers of colorful armor and a red cloak, holding something firmly in each hand, ready for whatever comes.

Forty-seven days

According to legend, he was Ye Jian, commander of a small city at the end of the Northern Song dynasty, when invading armies were sweeping south and city after city was falling. His city had no strategic value and no help was coming. It mattered for one reason: tens of thousands of people inside still needed time to get out.

If he surrendered now, they would not have that time. So he held. With far fewer soldiers than the enemy and every clever defense he could think of, he made the city survive one more day, forty-seven times, until the people had escaped.

On the forty-seventh day the walls fell. Before the end he said, "I did everything I could. So did you."

One word on a stone

The people of that city later put up a stone for him. It lists no victories. It carries a single word: Jian, "steadfast."

Heaven named him the Tai Sui of the Xin-Hai year. Armor that holds and a will that won't break: that is his gift to everyone born in the Year of the Pig.