Liu Fanghua was a man of Baoding. His wealth was the greatest in the district. He was generous and loved guests, and there were often a hundred at his table. He ran to help anyone in trouble and did not grudge a thousand taels1. Guests and friends who borrowed from him often never paid it back. Only one guest, Gong Mengbi, a man of Shaanxi, never once asked him for anything. Whenever he came, he stayed a year. His talk was clear and free, and Liu spent more time with him than with anyone, even sharing his rooms. Liu’s son, named He, was then a little boy with his hair in two tufts, and called Gong “Uncle.” Gong, too, liked to play with Liu He. Whenever the boy came home from school, Gong would prise up the floor bricks with him and bury pebbles, pretending to bury gold, for a joke. The house had five bays, and they dug and buried under nearly all of them. Everyone laughed at Gong for behaving like a child, but Liu He loved him, and was closer to him than to any other guest.

Ten-odd years later the household’s wealth was running down, and Liu could no longer meet the demands of so many guests, so they came less often. Still, a dozen or so talking and feasting all night long was nothing unusual. In his old age, as things went further downhill, he was still selling off his land field by field to pay for chicken and millet for his guests. Liu He spent freely too, making friends of his own among the young as his father had, and Liu did not stop him. Before long Liu fell ill and died, and there was not even the means to pay for a coffin. Gong took money from his own purse and saw to Liu’s funeral. Liu He was all the more grateful, and left everything, large or small, to Uncle Gong. Whenever Gong came in from outside, he always had broken tiles and pebbles in his sleeve, and when he reached the rooms he tossed them into dark corners. No one could make out what he meant by it. Liu He often fretted to Gong about being poor. Gong said, “You don’t know how hard it is to earn by toil. Never mind having no money: if I gave you a thousand taels, you would run through it at once. A man should worry about not standing on his own feet. Why worry about being poor?”

One day Gong took his leave, saying he was going home. Liu He wept and begged him to come back soon. Gong promised, and left. Liu He was too poor to support himself, and bit by bit everything went to the pawnshop. Every day he looked for Gong to come and set his affairs in order, but Gong had vanished without a trace, gone like the yellow crane2. Some time before, while Liu was alive, he had arranged a match for his son with the Huang family of Wuji, who were rich though they held no office. Later, hearing that Liu had grown poor, Huang secretly regretted it. When Liu died and word was sent to him, Huang did not even come to mourn; they still excused him on account of the distance. When Liu He came out of mourning3, his mother sent him in person to his future father-in-law to fix the wedding day, hoping Huang would take pity on him. When he arrived, Huang heard that his clothes and shoes were worn through and told the gatekeeper not to let him in. He sent out a message: “Go home and raise a hundred taels, then you may come again. Otherwise, let us end it here.” Hearing this, Liu He wept bitterly. Granny Liu4, who lived across the road, took pity on him. She brought him in and fed him, gave him three hundred cash, comforted him, and sent him home. His mother, too, grieved and raged but could see nothing to be done. Then she thought that eight or nine of every ten of their old guests owed them money, and told him to pick out the rich and well-placed ones and ask them for help. Liu He said, “The people who befriended me before did it for my money. If I drove a carriage and four, borrowing a thousand taels would be easy. Looking like this, who will remember old kindness or old friendship? Besides, when Father gave people money there was never a contract or a guarantor. It would be hard to prove any debt.” His mother insisted, and he did as he was told. In more than twenty days he could not raise a single coin. Only Li Si, an actor, who had once been helped by them, heard what had happened and out of decency gave them one tael. Mother and son wept bitterly, and from then on gave up hope.