A teacher is like old bamboo supporting new shoots, like a burning candle illuminating the night.

Zhengguan and Yunci had long since reached the age for their initiation into learning. Pei Shaohuai had been putting it off all this time, precisely because he hoped it would give the tutor something to look forward to — something to help him endure the end of winter and live to see the next spring.

Tonight, when Tutor Duan asked Shaohuai to light the remaining candle and made arrangements for the initiation ceremony without delay, it was because the tutor wished to tell Shaohuai that he felt his days were numbered.

“Shaohuai…” The tutor called out to him. As in the years when the three of them were young — not yet given their styled names — and the tutor called their names in the classroom.

Two streams of tears slid down without his noticing, wetting his collar. Pei Shaohuai wiped away the tearstains with the wide sleeve of his robe and, though his eyes were still red, forced his face into a smile.

He responded and walked over, bending half into a crouch before the tutor’s bed.

The tutor’s hand trembled as he reached out and gently touched Pei Shaohuai’s crown of hair — jet-black and glossy, in the full prime of life. The tutor said: “At what hour a person is born, and into what family — none of this can be chosen or refused. And it is the same principle when, after several decades, the moment of death arrives: it cannot be stopped, cannot be refused.”

Unlike the green mountains that never grow old, unlike the great river that never runs dry — a person is born with only a brief span of time.

“And so — let it come as it will, and let it go as it will.” The tutor smiled, coaxing Pei Shaohuai as one might coax a young boy. “You are a grown man now — you absolutely must not weep and wail. Shaohuai, you must do as your teacher says.”

Pei Shaohuai’s throat was trembling uncontrollably. Choked with emotion and unable to speak, he could only nod with reddened eyes.

“Light what remains of that half-stub of candle, and sit with me at the writing desk for one last reading.” The tutor made his request once more.

The candle wick was lit; the white wax melted like teardrops.

The writing desk was spotless, the scrolls and volumes arranged in neat order.

Pei Shaohuai lifted the tutor and carried him to the chair, folded and straightened the layers of his clothing, then brought a basin of warm water and washed the tutor’s hands — only then did he begin to open the scroll and read.

The tutor pointed to an old yellowed thread-bound volume and said: “Shaohuai, read from that one.”

Pei Shaohuai drew it out and looked — written across the cover in neat and upright characters were the words Collection of Peaches and Plums, in the tutor’s own hand, dated several years prior.

In the candlelight, he turned the pages. Tutor Duan followed the characters with his fingertip, reading along word by word, his eyes smiling, as though finding his way back through the years from between the lines on the page.

Pei Shaohuai read along with him. The somewhat rigid and unformed brushstrokes, the sentences that here and there came out awkward and not quite right — once again they blurred his vision.

What this Collection of Peaches and Plums had preserved were their original drafts from their years as students.

Sheet after sheet of classroom compositions had been bound by the tutor into a “literary collection.”

For a drifting moment, it was as though he were back in the classroom — the tutor with ruler in hand, keeping a stern face as he asked them: “Why was yesterday’s assignment done so carelessly?” — and the three boys pushing and pointing at one another, hemming and hawing, not daring to say that it was “because they had been too busy playing.”

“Even in your younger years, you thought more carefully and saw further than others — steady and mature well beyond your age,” the tutor said, turning to one of Pei Shaohuai’s essays from his youth. “Look here — Shaojin and Yancheng were still writing about ‘Two Children Debating the Sun,’ while your thoughts had already drifted out to the stars and the universe… You were unlike anyone else.”

The tutor gazed at the candle flame, his eyes filled entirely with light. He said: “Word has it that only once in three hundred years does someone born with innate knowledge come into the world. Your teacher does not know if this is true or not. What your teacher is grateful for is having met a kindred spirit as a friend, and taking on several gifted students — to have accompanied you for a stretch of the journey, making up for something that was lacking in your teacher’s own life.”

“Though I am your teacher, what I was able to impart to you was not much.” Tutor Duan understood clearly that the extraordinary student before him had not become who he was because he had taken the tutor as his master. He said: “What your teacher is truly grateful for is that you chose me to be your tutor.” In his students, he had seen the beauty he had always envisioned in a person of noble character.

The tutor’s words drew Pei Shaohuai into deep reflection.

In this lifetime, Pei Shaohuai had truly and genuinely encountered many people. Each one had their own aspirations, joys, and sorrows — making him feel that he was truly and authentically living in this world, until he had gradually forgotten that this world had originally been a book.

He was no longer confined to the plot of the original story and had tried to make the lives of those around him more full and complete.

The wisdom of living that he saw in his mother, the mid-life awakening of his father, his younger brother Shaojin’s remarkable talent and unrestrained brilliance, his wife and sisters’ thirst for knowledge, their daring and boldness, their refusal to be constrained by trivial concerns… and the Emperor’s majesty as a wise ruler, Yan Chengzhao’s warmth beneath a cold exterior, Elder Nanju’s pure and untainted idealism, the tutor’s scholar’s integrity and the pride of a man of refined character.

All of this had long since shattered whatever traces of arrogance he had carried when he first arrived, and caused him to view himself anew.

Pei Shaohuai could not even say when he had changed and grown.

“Tutor, there is no such thing as a person born with innate knowledge,” Pei Shaohuai replied. “Even if such a person truly existed, they could not make their way through this present world relying on ‘innate knowledge’ alone. Every kind of ‘knowing’ can only truly be called ‘knowing’ after it has been lived through.” No matter who one is, there is no learning or awareness that comes for free, without experience.

If not for the tutor as his teacher, if not for Shaojin and Yancheng as his fellow students, if he had not traveled south and encountered Elder Zou and his wife — how terribly alone Pei Shaohuai’s journey would have been.

If not for those who had gone before him, paving the road, if not for his companions along the way, no matter how loudly he called out “all under heaven as one,” he would only have been regarded as a peculiar and deranged outcast.

And if not for his third elder sister and fourth elder sister putting it into practice, how would the world ever come to believe that women need not be locked inside their boudoirs?

It was not that Pei Shaohuai had changed the people around him — it was that he and all his dear teachers and friends had changed one another.

Without the slightest doubt, the tutor was a light on the road he traveled forward. Pei Shaohuai said: “The tutor has taught your student so very much. Without the tutor, there would never have been the Shaohuai of today.”

The remaining candle was nearly spent; its light dimmed little by little. Tutor Duan closed the collection of essays and replied, with tears in his eyes: “To hear these words from you, your teacher is deeply honored.”

……

That very night, the Pei and Xu households were lit throughout the night, bustling with preparations for the many matters involved in the initiation ceremony.

Victory cakes, brush-shaped glutinous rice treats, scholar’s zongzi rice dumplings, and freshly ground cinnabar — not a single item could be absent.

On one side, the “cakes and zongzi” had just been set to steam; on the other, it was already time to start heating the water with pine and cypress branches.

It was not that the initiation ceremony itself was so important — it was that having Tutor Duan officiate the initiation for the children that made it important.

Just as dawn was breaking, Zhengguan, Zhengxu, and Yunci — having bathed and scrubbed themselves clean with the pine-and-cypress-scented “scholar’s water” — put on their blue-grey scholar’s robes and were ready. The entire Pei household, from the eldest to the youngest, boarded the carriages and made their way to the Xu household.

It was a clear day, sunlight spreading warmly across the eaves and roof tiles, shining upon the white porcelain inkstone-washing vat. The Xu household servants had risen early, gradually pouring warm water over the thick layer of ice that had formed inside the inkstone-washing vat to melt it away. In the winter, a white vat exhaling wisps of water vapor presented an especially ethereal and otherworldly appearance.

Old Aduo pushed the tutor out, and the initiation ceremony began.

A sash concealed beneath layers of clothing was wrapped firmly around the tutor, securing him to the back of the chair so he could sit bolt upright.

Tutor Duan’s face bore a touch of rosy color, and he was smiling, clearly very happy. He pressed a cinnabar mark on the forehead of Xu Yancheng’s two children, then of Zhengguan, Zhengxu, and Yunci in turn, leading them to recite aloud: “Is it not a pleasure to study and to practice what one has learned?”

The clear voices of the young echoed back and forth with the white hair of old age.

Afterward, the tutor asked each of them in turn: “What is the aspiration you set for yourself?”

In ordinary households, it would be nothing more than adults teaching the children to say “to achieve success in studies, to pass the imperial examinations and become a top graduate.” But the Pei and Xu households left the children entirely free to answer for themselves.

Xiao Nan and Xiao Feng were nearly seven years of age and had been greatly influenced by their father.

Xiao Feng recalled her father’s conversation with her — he had said that it was not difficult to become a learned and talented woman; what was difficult was for women of all under heaven to be able to do so as they wished, to take the imperial examinations with their heads held high. And so she replied: “In answer to Great-Tutor, Yunci sets her aspiration on reading books and walking the road that others have not yet walked, until the day women are no longer constrained by the judgment of convention.”

Even when her father grew old, and she grew old herself, and their hair turned white — she would persist without ceasing.

This might well be a road that neither of them would travel to its end in a single lifetime.

Xiao Nan was by nature quiet, and his resolve was equally lofty. What he had learned from his father was a different aspiration. He said: “In answer to Great-Tutor, your student hopes that once the people of all under heaven have eaten their fill and dressed warmly, they will be able to walk out from a single plot of farmland, walk out from their homes and villages. Your student hopes that those of the same generation may all achieve their wishes and read books, and learn to read characters and study the written word. Your student does not yet know what he will be able to do, and so sets his aspiration upon this wish.”

“Excellent — enrich the people and then educate them,” the tutor said.

Only when the common people are no longer mired in the struggle for three meals a day and can walk out from the muddy fields — only then is that the true starting point for literacy and the opening of the people’s minds.

Then it was young Zhengxu’s turn. He was considerably younger than his elder brother and sisters, and his learning was naturally not as advanced as theirs. He scratched the back of his head and said brightly: “Your student wishes to do things for the country and for the people, like Uncle and Father.”

The initiation ceremony concluded. Tutor Duan looked at the inkstone-washing vat beside the stone pavilion.

This white porcelain vat had moved with him from place to place and had never been abandoned. It had accompanied three generations of his students — dipping water to practice writing. Now the time had come to pass it into the hands of a new generation.

The tutor said: “From this day forth, you shall practice your writing by dipping from the inkstone-washing vat, as your elders before you have done.” Thinking of the aspirations the young ones had just declared, he said with deep feeling: “The same inkstone-washing vat, the same clear water — yet in your hands, it will one day write an entirely different essay.”

“Your students reverently keep Great-Tutor’s teaching to heart.”

The ceremony concluded, and the young ones withdrew.

The rosy color on Tutor Duan’s face faded away, little by little. He grasped Shaohuai’s hand and said: “Shaohuai, because of this cold ailment, I have been confined to my bed. It has been many years since I was able to go out and see the winter scenery — see the snow-covered pine trees. Will you take me out for a walk?”

Everyone around them had already begun to redden their eyes.

Tutor Duan then looked toward Grand Secretary Xu and asked with a smile: “Old schoolmate — may Shaohuai take me out for a walk?”

Grand Secretary Xu nodded. Though he was weeping, he still managed a smile. He said: “Of course. Of course.” For this dear old friend’s final wish — how could he not allow it?

Tutor Duan stopped Shaojin, Yancheng, and Yangui from following along. He said: “Your teacher will come back.”

Pei Shaohuai wrapped his own large overcoat around the tutor, pushed the tutor out through the main gate, passed through the lane, and found a patch of winter scenery nearby.

The fields were covered in white snow. Not far away, several trees stood on a low hill, evergreen as always — only the snow pines remained full of green, the lingering snow on the pine boughs making them appear all the more vivid.

Tutor Duan was deeply content.

“Shaohuai, will you manage my funeral affairs for me?” the tutor said. “I have already imposed on Brother Xu for so many years — for these final trivial matters, let us not impose on him any further.”

Pei Shaohuai held the tutor’s hand tightly. The tears in his eyes flowed unceasingly; he nodded.

“Foolish child — do not cry.” The tutor no longer had the strength to wipe his tears away and could only continue to give his last instructions. Tutor Duan said: “The world says that after a person dies, they should return to their origins — to the place they were born. I am no different from any other in this.”

Pei Shaohuai understood that the place the tutor spoke of returning to was not his ancestral hometown, and so he listened quietly.

“The place I speak of is not my hometown. After I became disabled and useless, I had no more connection whatsoever to Duan Family Village. I have no wish to be buried in the village tomb merely so that they could use my spirit tablet to claim credit from you and ask for favors.”

“Your teacher’s point of origin is on the hill behind the White Deer Grotto Academy — that is the place where this broken body of mine was truly reborn.”

“That year, if it had not been for Brother Xu climbing the mountain at night to rescue me, I should long ago have perished then and there. And how could there have been all the extraordinary and remarkable experiences that followed afterward?”

“So bury me there. No need for a tombstone, no need for a name, no need for incense offerings.”

Pei Shaohuai was so distressed he did not know what to do with his hands or feet. Tear tracks streaked his face; not a trace remained of his usual composure. In a voice thick with weeping, he replied: “Very well. Everything shall be as the tutor wishes.”

At the very least — the tutor had said that the experiences that followed afterward had been extraordinary and remarkable.

Having finished giving his last instructions, the tutor looked one final time at the snow pines on the hill, and said with reluctance to part: “Shaohuai, let us go back. I… am feeling a little sleepy.”

Pei Shaohuai caught himself — and dared not be thrown into panic again.

He wrapped the great overcoat around the tutor, lifted the tutor from the wheelchair and into his arms, holding him tight, and walked back at a steady, quick pace without stopping, saying all along the way: “Tutor, we are almost home…”

Left behind was the wheelchair, worn smooth from long use, standing alone facing the snow-covered fields, the clear sky, and the green pines.

……

When they returned to the Xu household, everyone saw that Pei Shaohuai’s face was streaked with tears and his steps hurried, and they knew that the tutor was in his final moments.

The tutor lay on his bed, his gaze sweeping over each student he had taught, as though silently calling their names and styled names, one by one.

Xu Wang, styled Chengmu. Xu Zhan, styled Qianli. Xu Yancheng, styled Ziheng. Pei Shaohuai, styled Boyuan. Pei Shaojin, styled Zhongya. Xu Yangui, styled Yuanxing.

Though he had not given them their names, he had given them all their styled names.

Tutor Duan smiled with deep contentment, and with the last of his strength said: “You are all here. With that, I have nothing to fear.”