Horse Market Survival Story

In the eighteenth year of Yongle's reign, there was a severe drought in Henan. Fifteen-year-old Shen Shi, whose family was ruined, walked thousands of miles alone with a woodcutter in his pocket, and fled to Kaiyuan Horse Market in Liaodong. Here, three thousand horses neighed like thunder, Mongolian, Jurchen, Han, and Korean merchants gathered together, and the smell of horse manure, copper coins, and blood was mixed. He was accepted as an apprentice by the lame old tooth Ji Chen Laizi. He started out as a horse boy, learned the skills of looking at horses, pinching numbers on his sleeves, and even learned to identify people and situations in the shady border market. He saw through the "sick horse case" and rescued the tribal horse of the Jurchen girl Naya; he united with low-level horse dealers to overthrow corrupt inspections; he mediated between the Mongols, Jurchens, and Han people and reestablished the rules of the horse market. From Yongle to Chongzhen, from Kaiyuan to Liaoxi, Shen Shi spent thirty years growing from a young man running away with nothing to becoming the backbone of border trade connecting three ethnic groups. He experienced the Tumubao Incident, the Three Great Conquests of Wanli, and the Battle of Sarhu, and witnessed the collapse of the Ming Dynasty and the resilience of the frontier civilization. When the flames of war engulfed everything, he led his disciples to rebuild a "mobile horse market" on the ruins, so that people of different ethnic groups could sit down, talk business, and survive. Before his death, he wrote what he had learned throughout his life into the "Kaiyuan Horse Sutra" and left it to future generations. This is the story of how a person survives in a desperate situation, and also the story of how an era leaves a fire in the midst of collapse.