My father was an incorruptible official all his life, and in the end he froze to death outside the palace gates. The students he had promoted shut their doors to him. The colleagues he had saved said they had to consider the bigger picture. Only the treacherous chancellor he had impeached for twenty years came with a coffin. The old man squatted in the snow, wiping my father's face as he cursed, "I told you to take bribes, and you refused. I told you to run, and you refused that too. Get up, then, and write another impeachment against me!" Later, the chancellor took me into the palace. The emperor asked him why he had brought troops into the hall. He shielded me behind his back. "Your Majesty, the last colleague I had who was willing to reason with me was frozen to death by you." On the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, five
