The Gui-Wei Tai Sui: General Wei Ren

Gentle rain on a summer meadow

Gui is the softest water, a fine drizzle you can barely hear that the land has been waiting for. Wei is the late summer meadow where the goats graze calmly. Every drop is gently taken in by the earth.

General Wei Ren guards this year. People born in Gui-Wei years are often kind and caring, especially toward people who are struggling. They prefer peace, but their gentleness has real strength inside.

Like a white lotus in the rain

Her hair is tied in an elegant knot with a dark jade ring. Her face is fine and pale, calm and bright, like a white lotus in a summer drizzle. She wears a pale blue-green robe with wide sleeves and a yellow cloak.

In her left hand she holds a short blade as lightly as a flower. Being kind has never meant having no strength.

A month of nights over old books

According to legend, she was Wei Ren, a talented woman in the Southern dynasties who worked as an official in charge of records, something very rare for a woman at the time. She ignored the stares and simply did every task well.

One year a drought hit, and farmers were selling everything they owned. While sorting old records, she found ledgers from an earlier official that were such a mess nobody had ever counted them. She spent a month of nights untangling them and found more than ten thousand jin of grain still in storage.

Her boss hesitated because the books had errors. She said, "The grain is in the barn and the people are starving. If anything goes wrong, I will take the blame alone."

Nobody went hungry

The grain went out. That year, even with the drought, no one in the county died of hunger.

Heaven named her the Tai Sui of the Gui-Wei year. Quiet grace and a warm, giving heart: that is her gift to everyone born in the Year of the Goat.