The Xin-Mao Tai Sui: General Fan Ning

Jade in the spring light

Xin is yin metal, the purest pearl or jade, polished until nothing false is left. Mao is the rabbit in a spring garden, walking gently and finding the truest flower. The more carefully jade is polished, the deeper it glows.

General Fan Ning guards this year. People born in Xin-Mao years often have refined taste, dislike anything fake or sloppy, and often surprise people with their talent for art, words or ideas.

A sword like a writing brush

He wears a golden crown. His face is dark and serious under thick black brows, the kind of face that makes nonsense hard to say out loud.

He wears colorful armor and a yellow cloak and holds a long sword pointing straight up to the sky. In his hands it feels as much like a writing brush as a weapon.

Against empty talk

Fan Ning was a real scholar of the Eastern Jin dynasty, famous for his work on the Spring and Autumn Annals. In his day, many high officials loved "pure talk," elegant debates about mystical ideas, and thought it was beneath them to deal with practical government.

Fan Ning thought this was dangerous. He wrote sharply that this fashion was harming the country, and in one famous essay he even compared the damage done by its leading thinkers to the crimes of the worst tyrants of old. It caused a storm.

As governor of Yuzhang, he did not just criticize. He opened schools and made sure teachers actually taught. His commentary on the Guliang Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals is still read today.

Learning that makes life real

He is said to have believed that learning that does not help people live more truly is a kind of pretending. Heaven named him the Tai Sui of the Xin-Mao year.

A sword pointed high and a refined, honest mind: that is his gift to everyone born in the Year of the Rabbit.