Taiping Dao at the end of the Han Dynasty

Chapter 2 The Great Teacher
"Whoosh! Whoosh!~"

A large yellow banner, inscribed with the words "Peaceful Order," fluttered in the front square of the Tianqi Temple. Three hundred recovered young and strong believers, dressed in tattered clothes and straw sandals, with red talismans drawn on their foreheads, knelt on straw mats in the square. Their faces were full of piety as they listened to the Taoist priest preaching before the altar, kneeling upon hearing the incantations and weeping upon hearing the scriptures.

"Heaven above, you have granted me your noble mandate. Now I proclaim my faith, and together we shall return to peace!..."

The Taoist priest before the altar, about fifty years old, dressed in a yellow hemp robe, carrying a nine-section bamboo staff, and with a yellow turban wrapped around his forehead, stood at the head of the Tianqi Altar. He was of slightly tall stature, with a dark complexion, and the years of wind and sun exposure from walking in the countryside had etched two deep lines on his forehead, like rivers running horizontally. He did not grow a long beard, only a short stubble like frosty grass. His face did not possess the beauty of an otherworldly immortal, but rather a solemn and dignified air that seemed capable of bearing the burdens of human suffering.

If you were to meet him in a rural market on ordinary days, you might just think of him as an old, hardworking, and weathered herbalist. But once he stands before the altar to preach, it's as if the heavens and earth stand in solemn silence, causing everyone to bow down in heartfelt respect, thus transforming him into the leader of the Way of Peace, the true "Great and Virtuous Teacher"!
"Ring the bell, summoning pure energy! Burning incense, writing talismans, reciting the Great Peace Decree!"

"Ring ring!"

Upon hearing the proclamation of the Great Teacher Zhang Jiao, the six disciples of the Way of Great Peace standing on either side shook their copper bells to draw in the pure energy of heaven and earth. Zhang Jiao personally lit incense sticks and offered them on the altar of the "Yellow Heaven." Then, he took out a talisman brush and wrote a small talisman called the "Yellow Heaven Decree," which he threw into the brazier before the altar. The seven disciples then lit a corner of a yellow paper together, bowed their heads, and walked once among the believers, reciting the "True Decree of Great Peace."

"The suffering of countless ages has accumulated in the human realm. Heaven above bestows upon you pure air. With this pure air, peace will return, and harmony will prevail. Now I submit to Heaven, abandoning the old ways… Drink my talismanic water, and I pray for the removal of the three calamities!…"

A deep chanting of scriptures rose, and the entire square fell silent. Zhang Chengfu, dressed in the yellow robes of a disciple and holding a burning talisman, walked among the three hundred newly initiated believers. He paused slightly and saw a strong, muscular figure kneeling devoutly—it was Liu Gong, who had recovered completely.

In recent days, not only have disaster victims and plague victims from Julu County come with their families, but also poor people from Ganling (Qinghe) in the east and Wei County in the south have traveled hundreds of miles to come after hearing the reputation of the "Great Teacher".

These people numbered in the thousands, like moths drawn to a flame, struggling on their journey, most of them penniless and afflicted with disease. They had no other way to survive, only to find the "Great and Wise Teacher," to beg for a bowl of exorcising talisman water, a bowl of life-saving wheat porridge, and a glimmer of hope to live.

During the two months of relief work outside Tianqi Temple, Zhang Chengfu spent most of his time chanting sutras and offering comfort to the dying. Many elderly and weak people succumbed to the plague, drinking the final comforting talisman water, and, with beautiful fantasies of the afterlife, closing their eyes to go to the Yellow Heaven. The disciples of Taiping Dao would bury them collectively and then hold funeral rites to guide their souls back to their rightful place, both for the deceased and for the survivors.

In these limited treatments, those who survived were mostly healthy young men. Under the guidance of a "Great Teacher" or "Great Physician," they would undergo an initiation ceremony, becoming the most steadfast followers of the Way of Peace, and donning a "yellow turban," just like at this very moment.

"The Azure Heaven is dead, the Yellow Heaven shall rise! Heaven and Earth have long borne the sins, and evil plagues and calamities have broken out everywhere! Only the Yellow Heaven descends to earth, protecting humanity with its pure energy... This is the only way for all people to survive! The world has lost its virtue, and the people of this world, who have fallen into depravity, you and I have no other way to go but to look up to the Yellow Heaven and beg for life!..."

After the disciples finished burning the talismans and reciting the scriptures, Zhang Jiao, the Great Teacher on the altar, looked on with compassion and gazed calmly at all the newly initiated believers, recounting the most simple yet most awe-inspiring "Way of the Yellow Heaven." Then, he struck his nine-section staff three times and solemnly proclaimed.

"Disciples, heed my command: Burn the talisman, wear the yellow turban! Drink the talisman water, and enter the gates of my Taiping Dao!..."

"Yes, sir! As you command, wise teacher!..."

Zhang Chengfu lowered his head and agreed along with his other disciples. Then, they picked up the burning ceramic brazier and walked to each of the newly joined Yellow Turban believers. These illiterate believers took out their vows, marked with their handprints, and devoutly threw them into the brazier, symbolizing the surrender of their "life."

"May Heaven bear witness! Today I met Master Zhang, who taught me the Taiping Jing (Scripture of Great Peace). He bestowed upon me the Pure Talisman Water, saving my life... From this day forward, I, Liu Gong, will not believe in the old Heaven, but only in the Yellow Heaven, and will listen to the words of my masters. The yellow turban on my head is my life, and the talisman on my chest is my root. Heaven is watching, Earth is listening, I will walk the righteous path of Taiping and receive the pure Qi to protect my body... May Heaven bear witness, I, Liu Gong, never forget!"

The yellow paper used for the oath burned in the brazier, the talismans and fingerprints turning into wisps of smoke that rose into the ethereal "Yellow Heaven." After all three hundred able-bodied believers had burned their vows, the six braziers were returned to the altar, along with the "main brazier" in front of Zhang Jiao, arranged in the orientation of the Big Dipper. The ashes from the talismans in the braziers were poured into boiling water, gathering to form "talisman water," which was then distributed again.

Soon, Zhang Chengfu, carrying talismanic water and yellow cloth, descended from the altar and approached the believers under his care. He personally tied a yellow cloth around the forehead of Liu Gong, who was kneeling respectfully. Then, he shook the copper bell in his hand, fed Liu Gong a mouthful of talismanic water, touched his forehead three times, and solemnly chanted.

"Peace protects your life, and evil will retreat on its own. From this day forward, you are a disciple of the Way of Peace!..."

"Yes! Thank you, Master Zhang! Thank you, great and virtuous teacher!..."

Liu Gong touched his forehead to the ground in a devout bow. Zhang Chengfu nodded slightly and moved on to the next person. Only after everyone had formally "entered the path" did the Great Teacher on the altar raise his nine-section staff once more and utter his final admonition.

"Wearing this yellow turban, Heaven and Earth will remember! Born as people of pure spirit, you will die in a land of peace. Your bodies and lives are no longer the property of the old Heaven… If you break this oath today, may the Yellow Heaven sever your souls and your lives!…"

"Yes! Heaven above, peace in our hearts!..."

The disciples and believers all returned the salute to the Great Master at the head of the altar. With this blessing, the initiation ceremony for the Taiping believers was thus completed. In the more than ten years of missionary practice of the Taiping Dao, this solemn oath-taking initiation ceremony was essential. Only by performing such a ceremony and making a vow to one's soul could the believer truly feel a sense of belonging and thus receive a "new life" from the Yellow Heaven.

"May Heaven protect you! Disperse! Remember the ways of Heaven, and await the time of celestial change..."

After the ceremony, Zhang Jiao, the Great Teacher of Virtue, appeared visibly tired, and the deep lines on his forehead seemed even more pronounced. He gave a few instructions to his six disciples in the temple before returning to the house behind the temple to continue his research on improved remedies for the plague.

As a great and virtuous teacher, he was first and foremost a "great physician," and only secondarily a "leader." His two brothers, Zhang Bao and Zhang Liang, were also "great physicians" of the Way of Peace, currently using talismans to treat epidemics in other counties of Ji Province. Without these three "great physicians" and their astonishing medical skills, the Way of Peace could not have grown so rapidly in just ten years, expanding across provinces and counties to its current scale.

"Yes, sir! As you command, wise teacher!..."

"Let's go! The summer wheat will be harvested soon, and we should all return to our hometowns."

These new followers of the Way of Peace wouldn't stay at the Tianqi Temple for long. They would return to their villages to farm. From then on, they would have an additional identity as followers of the Way of Peace, a bond that would unite them through faith. After all, the Way of Peace was a folk sect, without government support, relying entirely on self-reliance and donations from wealthy followers. Even Zhang Chengfu, a disciple of Zhang Jiao, had to cultivate the land, practice medicine, and collect grain himself. Ordinary followers of the Way of Peace were almost entirely impoverished people from the lower classes, unable to escape agricultural production. In recent years, with widespread disasters and plagues, the Great Master and his disciples had traveled extensively for relief and charity, leaving them with little savings to support disciples who did not engage in productive labor—truly a life of impoverished preaching.

"Brother Tang Zhou, Brother Wu Deng sent me to fetch some more stored wheat to help the disaster victims and believers gathered outside the temple. Ideally, we could also get some medicinal herbs for making decoctions, especially ephedra and cinnamon twigs for inducing sweating and relieving exterior symptoms. Simply dissolving talismans in water isn't enough to save many patients who could have been saved otherwise..."

"Hmm? Get some more stored wheat? Thank you, Junior Brother. I remember we already allocated ten days' worth of grain six days ago, didn't we?"

"We've run out of supplies. These past few days, the number of disaster victims gathering outside the temple has only increased. Even after sending back the recovered believers, there are still at least four thousand left. They've come from all over the counties and prefectures, not only to ask the wise master for talismanic water to ward off the plague, but also to escape famine and disaster. They have almost no food left. Without wheat porridge for breakfast and dinner, they probably won't survive for more than a few days..."

"More than four thousand people, two meals a day?"

Inside the temple, the second senior brother, Tang Zhou, frowned and put down his brush. He pondered for a moment, looked at his junior brother Zhang Chengfu who was begging for grain, and sighed helplessly.

"Hey! Chengfu, come with me to the warehouse and see for yourself! It's not that I don't want to give you and Junior Brother Wu some... it's just that there's only this much wheat left in the warehouse! We can't let us all starve to death for the sake of relief, can we?"

"I advised Master long ago that distributing talismanic water to cure illnesses is acceptable, but we cannot give wheat porridge to disaster victims. Even the government isn't concerned; how can we interfere? We don't have the ability, understand?... This year, another drought has struck, and the summer harvest will be minimal. Poor families are desperately short of food; even selling their children is futile, they can only sit and wait to die..."

"Heaven bears witness! Once the news spreads that there is food here, all the impoverished villagers in the entire county who can't survive will flock here, and we simply can't support them! Isn't that the situation right now? More and more disaster victims are gathering, all saying that there's a way to survive at Tianqi Temple... But as the one in charge of coordinating the relief efforts, where am I supposed to conjure up food out of thin air?..."

Second Senior Brother Tang Zhou opened the granary. The storeroom, converted from the main hall, was mostly empty bamboo baskets, which were large bamboo baskets used to hold wheat grains. Zhang Chengfu opened his eyes wide and counted carefully for a while before finally finding more than a hundred bamboo baskets full of wheat grains on one side against the corner of the wall.

"One bushel...ten bushels...one hundred and sixty-two bushels?...This...is only enough for eight days?..."

These bamboo baskets all had a capacity of "one hu" (斛), the standard for the Han Dynasty, which was equivalent to "ten dou" (斗) or "one hundred sheng" (升) at that time, roughly equivalent to 20 liters in later times. A "hu" filled with wheat weighed approximately 100 jin (斤) in the Han Dynasty, or about 50-70 jin (斤) in later times. By today's standards, a strong adult male would consume "2-3 sheng" (升) per day. A "hu" of wheat would be enough to feed about 40-50 strong adults for a day, meaning each adult male would consume about 1.5 jin (斤) of wheat porridge per day.

Right now, the focus is on disaster relief. The Taiping Dao (a local religious organization) is cooking wheat porridge, providing men with one-third of the rations, while women, children, the elderly, and the infirm receive half that amount – just enough to keep them alive. Assuming men and women, children, the elderly, and the infirm each make up half the population, "one hu" (a unit of dry measure) of wheat (sixty catties) can barely feed 200 disaster victims twice a day. That's an average of just over one liang (a unit of weight) of wheat porridge per person per meal – a pittance. Yet, outside the Tianqi Temple, over 4000 disaster victims have gathered, meaning the daily food consumption alone must be at least 20 hu!
Based on this calculation, the remaining 160-odd bushels of wheat, though seemingly a large amount, would only be enough to feed the disaster victims outside the temple for eight days. And if no new grain arrived within those eight days, the entire Taiping Daoist shrine at Tianqi Temple would be without food. As the person in charge of coordinating supplies, Second Senior Brother Tang Zhou certainly couldn't allow the Great Teacher, the disciples and core members of the Taiping Dao, to go hungry. So how to choose? The answer seemed obvious.

“Chengfu, you’ve always been good at math, almost as good as I am. If we continue to let the four thousand disaster victims eat as much as they want, they definitely won’t last ten days! I’ve already told my junior brothers Wudeng and Daonu, who are in charge of the distribution, that they need to learn to ‘choose’ and ‘choose’!”

"This grain should only be given to healthy men, to the able-bodied young men who can survive the plague, and to the useful disciples of the Way of Peace! As for the women, children, the elderly, and the weak who are unlikely to survive, just give them a sip of talismanic water. To put it bluntly, giving them food is mostly a waste! And when these villagers know there is no food, they will disperse on their own and will not gather in larger numbers..."

“I’ve explained all these reasons clearly to my fellow disciples who are distributing porridge! But Wu Deng and Gao Daonu, those two stubborn fellows, never listen to my advice and always want the old and weak to have a bite to eat… Now that the food is gone, they know to come to me, but how am I supposed to conjure up food? I have to leave enough food for Master and the disciples… Unless new grain comes into the storehouse, I really can’t provide any more!”

Hearing his second senior brother Tang Zhou's explicit refusal, Zhang Chengfu stood silently in the granary. Both men wore yellow turbans on their foreheads and the same Taoist robes, standing silently face to face. After a long while, Zhang Chengfu lowered his head, clasped his right fist with his left hand, and performed a deep bow, speaking in a solemn voice.

"Heaven bears witness! Senior brother... lives are at stake, please send down some food first. Senior Brother Wu has decided to change the relief from two meals a day to one meal a day. Those who are seriously ill will only be given talisman water, and no more food will be given on ordinary days, except for a bowl of porridge before they die... If there is not a single grain of wheat, the two senior brothers will definitely have no way to help, and will have to ask Master for some..."

"Furthermore, Senior Brother Yuanyi has been away for two months, gathering grain and medicinal herbs in other prefectures. Senior Brother Mao'an, the third senior brother, is also taking 'top-quality talismanic medicines' that can cure illnesses to visit various aristocratic families and powerful clans in this prefecture, requesting a share of 'Huang Tian Shan Dao's almsgiving'... As long as we wait until they return, there will definitely be new grain in the granary! It won't be long; judging from the way these two senior brothers usually act, they will definitely return with the grain as soon as possible!..."

Seeing his junior brother bowing deeply, Tang Zhou's eyes flickered. After weighing the situation for a while, he finally sighed and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Chengfu, I know you lost both your parents at a young age and suffered greatly from the plague, even losing your spirit for two years. Now, seeing these sick people, it's inevitable that you feel their pain and can't bear it... Your master brought you back to the sect and carefully nurtured you, probably because he values ​​your pure and devoted heart…”

"Alright, alright! With the world at peace, I'll give you another sixty-two bushels of wheat! This isn't because of Wooden and Dao Nu's influence, it's entirely for your sake... As for the last hundred bushels of grain, that's absolutely untouchable! If you come looking for me again, don't say I disregarded our brotherhood and didn't give you a single drop..."

"Yes! May peace prevail! I thank you, Senior Brother! May there be peace!..."

In the somber hall, the statue of the Eastern Peak Emperor, wearing a crown adorned with dangling beads, silently gazed upon the two figures within. Zhang Chengye faced Tang Zhou, bowing solemnly once more, his deep emotions hidden within. His yellow turban hung low, his face impeccably composed, making him appear almost like a clay sculpture.

"May the world be at peace! May there be peace!..."

Seeing his solemn junior brother, Tang Zhou gave a wry smile and returned the salute respectfully. This youngest junior brother his master had taken in was truly an anomaly. His words and actions were nothing like those of a fourteen or fifteen-year-old boy, much less that of an orphan from a farming family! The loss of his soul, the possession of another's soul—it was all rather mysterious and difficult to fathom.
As the sun rose and set over Julu, several more burial mounds appeared behind the hills surrounding Tianqi Temple, yet the number of disaster victims in front of the temple continued to grow. Four days later, just before the relief supplies were about to run out, a large oxcart procession finally appeared from the eastern end of the country road.

Eight hundred able-bodied young disciples of the Way of Peace, all carrying staffs and knives, and wearing conspicuous yellow turbans, were the most reliable backbone of the Way of Peace. They escorted over a hundred oxcarts fully loaded with grain from Anping Kingdom in the northeast of Julu County, traveling day and night back to Julu, back to the Way of Peace in Pingxiang County!

"Peace and prosperity reign! Senior Brother Yuanyi is back!"

"Ah! Senior Brother Yuanyi has returned with the grain! The disaster victims are saved!..."

After being away for two whole months, the team led by Ma Yuanyi, the chief disciple of the Taiping Dao, finally returned in time with much-needed food and medicine!
(End of this chapter)