At the canal docks during the Wanli reign, where filth flowed freely and gamblers and brothel girls were everywhere, the orphan Gou Sheng was kicked around by everyone and struggled to survive by scavenging food from cesspits. This kid was arguably the Ming Dynasty’s biggest good-for-nothing: illiterate and as good as blind, he wet himself every time he fought, loved money like a fly loved blood, and was only interested in the soles of brothel girls’ feet! His life motto was, “Starving to death is no big deal, but getting it for free is!” His catchphrase was, “Spare me, Master! I’ll lick your shoe soles!” A sour-faced scholar maliciously twisted his real name, Gou Sheng, into a homophone that meant “Dog Shit Auspicious,” and from that moment on, this heap of human garbage somehow stumbled into the most heaven-defying luck imaginable! He tugged at Yan Shifan’s waistband, used Zhang Juzheng’s memorials as toilet paper, pissed in Feng Bao’s fishpond, and let rip a royal fart in front of the Wanli Emperor… Every time he did something suicidal, some strange twist of fate kicked him into the spokes of history! Yan Song and Xu Jie treated him like a shit-stirrer; Hai Rui was so enraged by him that he gouged out his own eyes (not really); Qi Jiguang had his underpants stolen and used as a flag (for real); and Li Zhi exclaimed that the boy was a “mystery of chaos”! He became a temporary Eastern Depot lackey by licking hemorrhoids, rose to the rank of deputy commander in the Embroidered Uniform Guard by rolling mud pellets into a tribute, and eventually startled the dragon veins by having diarrhea in the Golden Throne Hall. The Wanli Emperor took it as an auspicious sign that he could “stabilize the realm with shit” and shoved him onto the throne of Grand Secretary! During his time as Grand Secretary, he decided memorials by shaking dice in a sieve! He tried to suppress Japanese pirates by sending Toyotomi Hideyoshi erotic pictures and begging for peace! He handled diplomacy by stuffing state letters into a chamber pot and making the Spanish envoy cry!
The court’s high officials were so overwhelmed by his stench that they lost their minds, and three or four hundred ruthless figures whose names went down in the history books all shared a “shit-stained” connection with him! Just as his antics stirred the Ming realm into a towering tide of filth, the man simply dusted off his backside and crawled back into a canal cesspit, hiding his achievements and his crap. As it turned out, the highest art of being a shit-stirrer was to drag the whole world into the muck and still make everyone praise it as delicious!
