This ancient Chinese story today which is about Duke Mu of the Zhou Dynasty. This time I will be translating it myself.

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Duke Mu of Qin once went out and lost his swiftest horse, and went to look for it himself. He saw that some people killed the horse, and were eating the meat. Duke Mu said to them, “That was my swiftest horse!” Then the men got frightened and immediately stood up. Duke Mu then said, “I have heard that if one eats the meat of a fast horse without having some ale will kill them,” and then Duke Mu gave the men some ale one by one. Those who killed the horse drank the ale and then left ashamed. 3 years after this incident, The State of Jin attacked the state of Qin and Duke Mu was under siege. Those who in the past ate the horse meat said to each other, “We can go and die and repay the the grace of drinking ale with our horse meat.” The siege then had ended. Duke Mu in the end through this way overcame his challenges and was able to triumph over Jin. He Captured Duke Hui of Jin and then returned to his home. This is a situation where kindness was applied and good fortune was returned from it.

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Now in this ancient Chinese story we see the result of kindness pays off in the long run. I won’t lie I might not have done the same if I saw my best horse being eaten. Now, when I was translating the story, I didn’t see anything that would give an exact number of how many people were eating the horse but the main point of the story is that is better to be kind than malevolent. I have to say though this story is much nicer to read than hearing that old honey and fly cliche. I use the term ale for the Chinese character for 酒, not wine because wine came into existence late on in Chinese History, the first form of alcoholic drink was some sort of ale like or beer substance made from wheat in the northern areas of China, so I feel ale is more appropriate. This is probably the best ancient story you can find to show why being kind is better than being cold-hearted not only in ancient Chinese times, but for any time in the world.

This is a picture of Xi An with me in it. I took it in summer 2007 outside of the terracotta soldier archaeological site.