The Young Man Jiaxuan

In the twenty-third year of the Shaoxing era, in Licheng, Jinan, fourteen-year-old Xin Qiji was burning with a high fever.

In his delirium, he saw an old man riding a blue ox. The old man took him on a whirlwind journey through his life...

He saw himself leading fifty cavalrymen to storm a Jin camp of fifty thousand, capturing a rebel commander alive and crossing south to return to the Song;

He saw himself write Ten Discourses on Meiqin and weep bitterly before the palace gates, only for the court to give him an idle post;

He saw himself farming for twenty years at Daihu and Piaoquan, writing more than six hundred poems;

He saw himself at sixty-eight, lying on his sickbed and crying, "Kill the enemy! Kill the enemy!" before dying.

The old man said, "You’ve seen it, but you can’t change it."

He woke, unsure whether it had been a dream or reality.

But he knew one thing:

He was a sword. The sharpest sword of all.

But this sword would never leave its scabbard.

It would be drawn, just long enough to flash and show the world how swift it was.

Then it would be put away again.

His whole life would be like that.

For forty-seven years, from the Tai’an Uprising in 1661 onward, he would be drawn, sheathed, drawn, sheathed.

He submitted Ten Discourses on Meiqin, but the court made no use of it.

He established the Flying Tiger Army, and the court charged him with an offense.

At sixty-eight, he was appointed once more and wrote, "Who would ask whether Lian Po is old, or still has the appetite to dine?" Soon afterward, he was impeached and stripped of office.

He remained in his scabbard until the day he died.

But while he was in that scabbard, he did one thing:

He paved the way.

Twenty years later, veterans of the Flying Tiger Army he had trained would follow Meng Gong to seize Caizhou;

His name was Xin Qiji, and his courtesy name was Jiaxuan.

Later generations called him the "Dragon of Poetry."

But he knew that wasn’t what he was.

He was a hero forced by his times to take up farming.