Horse-head Wall Reflects the Qing Dynasty

Chapter 32: The butterfly dream is Zhuang Zhou's way of saying that when the yellow millet is ripe, the green grave is covered with wormwood

"It's just tuition, so it's better to waive it."

"But sir..." Father Ruan hesitated, obviously not approving of Cheng Heng's approach, even though Cheng Heng made this exception for his son, "Sir, this is not appropriate."

"Several generations have accumulated wealth so that their descendants can become scholars and excel in society. We cannot cut off this path just because of doing good deeds."

"Perhaps my son is just not suited to this path..." Father Ruan didn't want to disappoint the kindness of the teacher in front of him, but kindhearted people are not always rewarded. He should take responsibility for his own actions and there was no need to involve the teacher in front of him for no reason.

"No one can say anything if tuition is waived, unless they also give away their wealth to charity."

Without waiting for Mr. Ruan to say anything else, Cheng Heng's words seemed to be enough to stop everyone's gossip: "If they don't have it, they shouldn't try to take advantage of it at this time."

Being an official makes people look up to him. Mr. Ruan does not ask for the money he lent to be returned, but only hopes that his children can have a better future - which parent is not like this?

"Thank you very much, sir."

"Just don't tell anyone." Cheng Heng could understand Father Ruan's worries. A good person would not only think about himself. "If anyone asks, just say that I have a crush on you and you are my treasure."

"No, no!" Father Ruan rejected Cheng Heng's proposal and was about to take his child away. "Wouldn't this bring shame on you, Master?"

A few clouds scattered outside the window, all of which disturbed Cheng Heng's heart. Sometimes it was a headache for the parents to be so easy to talk to - how to manage Yin when he was not around? As a teacher, she must have many ways to deal with it.

But Cheng Heng didn't know that the teacher-student relationship nowadays is not like that of his parents' generation, and it can't even be compared with that when they were children. How can it be compared with the teacher-student relationship hundreds of years ago?
"What's more..." Father Ruan hesitated to speak several times. In the final analysis, it was because the Ruan family had no confidence now. No one in the Ruan family became an official, nor was they wealthy, and they didn't even have any extra skills. The master had given his family a great help, so what could his family ever repay him?
"Besides, what treasures do I have at home now? I've already sold all the ones I should have."

Cheng Heng had forgotten about this. Given the behavior of Ruan's father and Ruan Bi, if the family still had some extra treasures, why wouldn't they use them to pay the tuition?
“What you like is your treasure, no matter how much it costs.”

"Thank you for your kindness, sir." Having said this, Father Ruan knew that if he did not accept it, he would be being tactless. So he accepted Cheng Heng's kindness and took his son to bow three times to the latter. When the latter did not say anything else, he quietly left this lonely courtyard.

After sitting down, Cheng Heng's heartbeat slowly calmed down.

Cheng Heng felt that this act of changing the known was a great move, as he took a brave step forward. It was gratifying to continue the path they wanted to choose, rather than watching them achieve "success" in the sense of others on a path they had to take because of the pressure of life.

Cheng Heng thought that if he had not continued on this artistic path due to his family conditions, but had chosen to be a so-called public-funded teacher training student - even if he had become a famous teacher, looking back, he would still be full of regrets about his youthful dreams.

When you are performing a drama with your students, do you think of the dreams you pursued as a child?
When talking about Cao Yu's plays, do you also wish to win the "Cao Yu Play Award", watch your own work shine in your hands, and receive good or bad reviews?

Putting himself in other people's shoes, Cheng Heng thought: If Ruan's father and Ruan Bi at that time were given a chance, perhaps Ruan Bi would not be the Huizhou merchant in later generations, but the honest official Ruan Bi.

"What's wrong with change?"

"A dream of a yellow millet, a dream of a yellow millet, who knows who I am dreaming about when I sleep?" Cheng Heng hummed to himself and used his handwriting, which looked a little better, to mark on the paper.

"A butterfly dreams of a butterfly, who knows Zhuang Zhou is Zhuang Zhou?" Perhaps it was originally a dream, the outside of the dream is a dream, the inside of the dream is reality. Since Zhuang Zhou can't tell himself from the butterfly, who is whose dream? Cheng Heng feels that the so-called known and changed, perhaps no one knows which appeared first.

“Maybe the next time traveler will change my approach again.”

"Moreover, if I hadn't traveled through time and thought of it all as a dream... couldn't there be some fairness within the scope of my control in the dream?"

Cheng Heng has his own understanding of fairness. Good is good, evil is evil, black is black, white is white, just like the pink wall and black tiles. No one wants to see a wall with two colors mixed together - that is not Huizhou ink painting, but a cement wall without any life.

"You finally want to change?"

Sometimes Cheng Heng really doubted that it was not that his inexplicable experience had no system. Guan Yin was clearly able to provide help while constantly trying to influence him with her own thinking.

"How do you know that change is not the way it was supposed to be?"

"This shouldn't have been like this in history." Having just come out of the emotions of Liu Jiaoan and the Liu family, Guan Yin couldn't think of why he had to see Cheng Heng at this time - was it because he would have dark circles under his eyes heavier than a panda's tomorrow morning?
“Is the history we see necessarily the truth?”

"Some of them are not..." Guan Yin said this, and was worried that Cheng Heng might have misunderstood it, so he took advantage of the latter's lack of time to think further and said, "There will always be the Spring and Autumn style of writing. You should have heard your teacher talk about it."

"Yes."

Cheng Heng was successfully led astray by Guan Yin. After a while, he looked at the slanting moon outside the window and finally came to his senses: "That's not what I meant."

"I mean, since I'm in a time when nothing has happened yet, why do we have to follow the so-called history? What if we don't have this memory? What if it's not a history?"

"What if this is not the path they want to take? What if..."

This time, Guan Yin just listened silently and said nothing.

"If we can't change anything, do you think this is their so-called fate?"

"If I had done everything and everything was back to the original starting point, I might feel that my choice was not perfect...but at least I had done it, right?"

The more Cheng Heng spoke, the more excited he became, as if he had found himself standing on the debate field when he was in college. At this moment, Cheng Heng was still fighting for the justice in his heart.

"So, everything is just an assumption. Life can't tolerate too many assumptions, right?"

Guan Yin opened his mouth with some teaching meaning, but Cheng Heng didn't like it very much: "Isn't life just a big dream, a play that neither of us can see the end? It's more important to act the way you like than to act the way the audience likes."

(End of this chapter)