Adrian and the Autumn of Han Qiu Chapter 15

So when I see those students expressing their dreams openly, I envy their frankness. Even if they make sentences like "It would be great if my feet were whiter", "It would be great if I could eat Chinese food cooked by Teacher Kong", "It would be great if studying in the United States was as cheap as studying in China", I still think they are lovely. I think the ones who should be laughed at are ourselves. When all the students finished their oral exams and I was the only one left in the empty classroom, I couldn't help but express myself: Oh, it would be great if I were still a student.

Luohua Rock

When I read the Korea Travel Guide published by the Korea Tourism Organization, there is a passage about Buyeo Mountain in the ancient capital of Baekje: "Walking slowly down the slope from the top of the cliff to the bank of the Baekma Lake, you will pass a pavilion called Baihua Pavilion. It is said that 3,000 Baekje palace maids were chased by the Tang-Sola coalition and had nowhere to go, so they threw themselves into the river here. At that time, the silhouettes of the palace maids throwing themselves into the river were like azaleas withering and falling, so this place was called Luohua Rock." Most books such as travel guides are boring, full of grammatical errors, and full of bragging, hypocrisy and misleading. But these few sentences left a deep impression on me, or made me respect them. Unfortunately, I have never had the opportunity to visit Buyeo because it is not very important from the perspective of the whole of Korea. Buyeo, a city that has been the capital for more than 120 years, now has only 100,000 people. There are no highways or railways there. I am afraid that it is much quieter than the city of Buyeo in Jilin Province, China with the same name.

However, one day when I was reading ancient Korean texts, I came across this Luohua Rock again. At the end of the Goryeo Dynasty, there was a scholar named Yi Gu, who passed the imperial examination in the Yuan Dynasty and became an official after returning to Goryeo. He wrote an article "Boat Travel Notes" about his trip to Buyeo with friends. In the article, it says: "...Tomorrow we will arrive at the foot of Luohua Rock in Buyeo City. In the past, the Tang Dynasty sent General Su to attack the former Baekje, and Buyeo was actually its former capital. At that time, the siege was very urgent, and the king and his ministers abandoned the palace maids and fled, not wanting to be contaminated by the soldiers. When they arrived at this rock, they fell into the water and died, so they named it this way..."

In ancient Korea, there was a period of three kingdoms, Silla, Baekje and Goguryeo. Although Baekje and Goguryeo were also deeply influenced by Chinese culture, they had some ambiguous relations with the Japanese at that time. Silla clearly introduced the cultural system of the Tang Dynasty and rejected the Japanese. Therefore, the Tang Dynasty was more emotionally inclined to Silla. When Silla was invaded by Goguryeo, Silla asked the Tang Dynasty to send out the royal army. So the Tang-Silla coalition (Koreans must call it the Luo-Tang coalition) fought side by side and successively destroyed Goguryeo and Baekje. And the Tang army in the battle of Baigang severely damaged the Japanese army with fierce firearms. This was the first large-scale confrontation in the history of the Sino-Japanese War, which ended with the Tang army's complete victory and the expulsion of the Japanese army from the Korean Peninsula. Therefore, later Goryeo, Joseon and today's South Korea all regard Silla culture as orthodox. The tablets of saints and sages enshrined in Korean rural schools, before Goryeo, only the two sages of Silla were not included in Goguryeo and Baekje. However, this passage of Li Gu's text clearly sympathized with and praised the Baekje palace maids. The phrase "abandoning the maids and running away" shows criticism of the Baekje monarch and his ministers. The phrase "righteousness is not to be tainted by soldiers" fully elevates the death of these maids to the great principle of "righteousness". This position is undoubtedly fair. The metaphor in the travel guide that "like azaleas withering and falling" further expresses the sad beauty of the maids' death in the river.