[Day 3] A Beard That Reached the Chest
January · *Stars Gather* | about 3 min read
At a wine-stall in the annex of Zhang Fei’s small manor, in the early evening after a night had passed, Liu Bei and Zhang Fei sat around a low table. A cup of wine was placed between them; beyond the window, a willow branch stirred quietly.
The sound of a cart’s wheel came from the front of the door. A man pushed a small cart across the threshold. A red face. A long beard reached all the way to his chest. His height was nine chi. His two eyes were narrow and long like the eyes of a phoenix; his eyebrows lay like silkworms at rest.
As soon as he sat, the man lifted a hand toward the keeper of the stall.
“Master of the house. Pour me a cup of wine, quickly. I am about to enter the town and offer myself to the righteous militia (義兵).”
At that one line, Liu Bei quietly set down his own cup. Zhang Fei trimmed the tip of his beard. The air inside that small wine-stall had shifted a little at the grain of that single line.
Liu Bei rose from his seat. He walked to the seat in front of that man and sat down quietly, without bringing out a word.
“Elder brother. You spoke just now of joining the righteous militia.”
The man lifted his gaze to Liu Bei. Those two eyes were the eyes of one who had for very long looked toward a far place. Yet in the moment they saw Liu Bei’s face for the first time, those far-looking eyes came back a grain closer.
“So it is. For five years I have hidden along the rivers and lakes (江湖). I could hide no longer. On the road I saw a posting calling for volunteers in this town, and for some reason my foot turned this way first. Not another way — this way. The cause, even I do not yet know well.”
“May I ask your name?”
“…My surname is Guan (關). My given name, Yu (羽). My style was at first Shouchang (壽長); now I write Yunchang (雲長). I am of Jieliang (解良) in the commandery of Hedong (河東).”
Guan Yu. That one name settled quietly in the center of Liu Bei’s chest, without any special weight.
“You say you have hidden for five years — the cause?”
Guan Yu drew a short breath. Then he stroked, slowly, the tip of the long beard that came down to his chest.
“There was in my home country a man of power. Trusting in his own power, he trampled freely upon those beneath him. One day, before my very eyes, he dragged off a woman. The voice of that woman calling for her mother passed into my ears. After that single sound, I struck that man. He did not rise from that seat. And I left. I have never regretted that thing. Yet since then, for five years, I have not been called by my own name.”
Liu Bei and Zhang Fei brought out no line for a long while. Only the small lamp in a corner of the wine-stall shook lightly in the wind.
“When I changed the name from Shouchang to Yunchang — I was sorry toward myself. The name my parents gave me, I had concealed with my own hand.”
Guan Yu’s line was as quiet as the grain of snow falling slowly. Yet inside the ground upon which that snow was gathering, a fire that had not been put out remained. That this fire was the kind not easily put out, Liu Bei already knew within that short moment.
Liu Bei spoke his own name. He brought out again the tale of two pairs of straw sandals unsold. At that, the tip of the long beard that came down to Guan Yu’s chest rose quietly, then came down. A smile that had not left his mouth for five years lay folded into the tip of that beard.
“If your name, elder brother, stands before the posting, my beard and this younger brother’s voice will back you from behind.”
Liu Bei bowed his head deeply. Zhang Fei’s rough voice and Guan Yu’s long beard lay side by side upon the two ends of a low table.
The third evening of Book 1 deepened quietly upon the low table in the wine-stall of Zhang Fei’s small manor. The three characters Hyungeukyeom (胸臆髯, the long beard that comes down to the chest) were being planted quietly as a seed — weaving a grain together with the posture of Guan Yu’s red face. A breath before the posting (Day 2) and a smile at the tip of a beard (Day 3) were gathering at the center of a single seat.
—
📌 Knowing Apart — History (正史) vs Romance (演義)
🟢 The Records of the Three Kingdoms (Shu Shu, Biography of Guan Yu 關羽傳) records plainly that Guan Yu (關羽, style Yunchang 雲長, original style Shouchang 壽長) was a man of Jieliang (解良) in the commandery of Hedong (河東), that he left his home country and took refuge in Zhuo Commandery (涿郡), and that upon meeting Liu Bei (劉備) there he bound himself in the grain of brotherhood. 🟢 The line about Guan Yu’s long beard and his change of style from Shouchang to Yunchang has remained in the Biography of Guan Yu and in the citations of Pei Songzhi. 🟡 The specific cause of Guan Yu’s exile — the tradition that he struck a man of power in order to save a woman — is not recorded in the histories, and survives only as a fragment in a side-text cited by Pei Songzhi (裴松之). 🟠 The specific composition of the three men’s meeting at a wine-stall is an adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms chapter 1. 🟠 The posture of Guan Yu pushing a small cart across the threshold is likewise an adaptation of Romance chapter 1. 🔴 The three-character creation Hyungeukyeom (胸臆髯) and the mirror reading by which the tip of a beard that had not smiled for five years rises quietly are reconstructions of this commentary. The character-creation line has reached, today, its third seat.
“✒️ A Word from the Commentator — Dr. Yeon Samheum
There is a long beard of a man who has not, for five years, been called by his own name. At the seat where the tip of that beard rises quietly, the five-year grain unbraids itself. Upon your own seat this evening, is there perhaps a name that has long gone unsaid? Is there perhaps a beard whose tip rises quietly when that name is heard again? Might you look, once more and quietly, into the weave of that rising?
🌍 That Year, on the Other Side of the Earth…
In the early spring of 169 CE, upon an evening at Rome’s Marcus Aurelius‘ camp by the Danube, it is said that an exile from a foreign land (exul) sat before a low table and stroked, quietly, the long beard that came down to his chest. The emperor is said to have looked long upon the grain of that long beard. The Latin phrase barba ad pectus (a beard reaching the chest) was, it is said, inscribed at the end of that evening’s record of the camp. On the evening when, at the eastern edge, the long beard of Guan Yu with his red face rose quietly and came down upon the low table of the wine-stall in Zhuo Commandery, at the western edge the exile’s beard, too, was unbraiding a grain in the same manner.
📅 Tomorrow, Day 4: Three Cups in the Peach Garden
“The seat of the three moved to the peach orchard behind Zhang Fei’s manor. The blossoms of spring had just begun to open. An altar was raised; three cups of wine were held in the hands of three men.” — Sam H. Yeon, Ph.D.
Commentary — Yeon Samheum, the Commentator · Sam H. Yeon, Ph.D. · 延三欽博士
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