The Ji-You Tai Sui: General Cheng Bao

Good soil and a punctual rooster

Ji is rich soil that quietly gives everything it has. You is the rooster, crowing clear and on time to put the day in order. Not just plenty, but plenty used in the right way.

General Cheng Bao guards this year. People born in Ji-You years are often generous and good at finding resources, the person who "always has a way," and they know how to use what they have where it counts.

Easy to approach

He wears a black official hat with two small red points on top, like a rooster's comb. His round face is calm, with a natural smile that has seen a lot and accepts a lot.

He wears a light blue robe with wide sleeves and a heavy red cloak, one hand resting on his year tablet. He never makes you feel pressured. You just know he is there.

Three drafts of one book

According to legend, he was Cheng Bao, a Song dynasty county official born into a farming family. As a child he watched his parents lose whole harvests to drought and flood, and he decided to change that with knowledge.

Every spring he tested new methods on the public fields: better seeds, better irrigation, ways to keep the soil rich year after year. Then he wrote what worked into a simple farming guide and gave it away free.

He wrote it three times. The first draft used too many technical words. The second added pictures and was a little better. For the third, he asked ten farmers to show him every part they did not understand and fixed each one, until every word made sense to them.

Three generations of harvests

His book was used in that county for three generations and raised harvests by more than a fifth.

Heaven named him the Tai Sui of the Ji-You year. A calm heart and plenty, wisely shared: that is his gift to everyone born in the Year of the Rooster.