Chapter 361: Collecting Folk Airs

North of the Huai River, in Pei Commandery of Yu Province, Longkang County, near the main camp of the Red Eyebrows.

From the fall of his hometown to the Red Eyebrows last year until the second month of this year, Huan Tan had been stranded among the Red Eyebrow Army for nearly half a year.

Half a year ago, he was a refined scholar whose ten fingers had never touched spring water; even his wild eccentricity was merely an imitation of mad recluses. Now he was genuinely unkempt, dressed in filthy short work clothes, a bamboo hat hanging behind him, already skilled at cutting cattle grass and even riding on an ox's back.

What Huan Tan held in his hand was no longer a zither symbolizing lofty integrity, but a crudely made bamboo flute. He played it melodiously as the old ox carried him slowly forward.

Whenever this happened, Liu Penzi would follow closely behind with a flock of shepherd boys, and the Red Eyebrow soldiers at work would stop their tasks, leaning on their farm tools to listen to Huan Tan's tunes.

His songs were no longer the highbrow "Spring Snow" but had become the common "Xiali" and "Baren" that ordinary people found pleasing.

Back in the camp, Huan Tan no longer needed to be guarded like a prisoner. He had even managed to get a brush, made some ink from charcoal, and by his own hand or by coaxing Liu Penzi and the others to help, had whittled wooden tablets and bamboo slips that now filled the crude ox shed.

The great commanders of the Red Eyebrows had no need for, and even rejected, scholars, but that did not stop Huan Tan from amusing himself. He had Liu Penzi, who was practically his disciple, help grind ink, and he copied down the songs and ballads he had heard while out herding cattle and talking with people onto the slips and tablets.

As he copied, Huan Tan shook his head and said, "Had I known it would come to this, I should have shamelessly begged Yang Ziyun to teach me the study of regional dialects. Then I wouldn't be staring blankly at people who can't speak the standard tongue or the Liang-Chu dialect."

Huan Tan remembered clearly how his old friend Yang Xiong had been obsessed with dialect studies for a time, using the convenience of his position to converse with the Palace Gentlemen and scholars from various remote commanderies and counties.

Yang Xiong had spoken to him with conviction: "The ancients said, 'Hear their sounds and know their customs; examine their customs and know their aspirations; observe their aspirations and know their virtue.' In the Zhou dynasty, there were light-carriage envoys who collected the dialects of the feudal lords, and there were poem-collecting officers who struck bells in the countryside, gathering folk airs and presenting them to correct the court's hearing — thus came the 'Airs of the States' in the three hundred poems... It is only a pity that when the traces of the true kings vanished, the poems perished, and the collection of dialect rhymes and folk airs also ceased."

"Since the Han was founded, although Emperor Xiaowu established the Music Bureau to collect poems for night chanting, with the tunes of Zhao, Dai, Qin, and Chu, and Emperor Yuan and Emperor Ping often dispatched men to tour the realm and observe the transformation of customs, the collection of folk airs must be based on understanding rhyme. When the court's envoys reached each commandery, if they could not even understand the common people's dialects, how could they know the true meaning of their songs and ballads?"

Huan Tan could never forget Yang Xiong's words at that time: "Therefore, I am collecting dialects precisely to prepare for the Xin to resume collecting folk airs and to inaugurate the governance of a true king! Junshi, you are well-versed in music — will you accompany me then?"

Yes, at that time, Yang Xiong had still written "Denouncing Qin and Praising the Xin," holding boundless hope for Wang Mang's reforms.

It is no shame to admit that Huan Tan felt much the same back then. What scholar had not yearned for the restoration of the governance of the Three Dynasties? After the Xin Dynasty was established, Huan Tan had even served as Wang Mang's Director of Music, responsible for dispatching the folk-air collectors.

Yet this was merely hanging out a sheep's head and selling dog meat. The so-called collection of folk airs was nothing but gathering auspicious omens from various regions to gild the Mang court. Not a single true folk song or cry was brought back; only a heap of sycophantic flattery remained.

Huan Tan thought to himself, "Back then I failed in my duty, but now I must take up the brush, be patient, and listen to their songs. Ziyun, you completed the collection of dialect rhymes; as for collecting the folk airs, leave it to me, the former music officer..."

Yet when Liu Penzi asked him what he was doing, Huan Tan replied with utter disdain, "I found these rustic country ditties somewhat amusing, so I am jotting them down to pass the time..."

Before his words had faded, they were summoned by a shout from a Red Eyebrow attendant and called out to work again.

The Red Eyebrows now numbered three hundred thousand, roughly ten thousand to a camp, each managed by an Elder and an attendant. Each camp was stationed in a separate county, and their daily tasks were basically hunting and digging for wild vegetables, scouring every hill to fill their bellies, and then, like locusts, eating every place they stopped completely clean.

The Red Eyebrows had risen in the Haidai region, fought through Qingzhou, Yanzhou, and Mount Tai, and then moved here to the Huai North in Yu Province. Thus people from all five directions were mixed together, and to avoid starvation, men and women, young and old, all had to join the labor.

During breaks from work, Huan Tan found it convenient to inquire about the folk songs of various commanderies.

"Songs from my home?"

Today, when a flat-nosed man from Yanzhou was asked, he shot Huan Tan a glare: "With an empty stomach, who has the heart to sing?"

Yet others said that before joining the Red Eyebrows, this man had been famous for ten villages around for his fine voice, and there was no mountain song or rustic ballad he could not sing.

Huan Tan glanced at Liu Penzi, who followed him around all day. Liu Penzi could only grimace and hand over the food in his pouch. His elder brother did some accounting work in the Red Eyebrow Army and received a bit more rations each month, but he could not bear to eat it himself and gave most of it to his younger brother. Huan Tan, for his part, declared that all this was the "tuition" Liu Penzi owed as his disciple, and used it without the slightest scruple.

After a few mouthfuls of food, the Yanzhou man seemed to regain his spirit. He stood up, tightened his belt, cleared his throat, and sang: "Why be filial and fraternal? Wealth brings glory."

"Why be ritually proper and righteous? Write records and hold office."

"Why be cautious and prudent? Be fierce and bold to preside over officials."

When the song ended, he looked at Huan Tan with a cold sneer, turned his head, and walked away.

"Master, he was mocking you," said Liu Penzi. Although he had barely attended school and had not even changed his childhood lowly name before being abducted by the Red Eyebrows, both his brother and Huan Tan had taught him some learning, so he understood the meaning of the song.

Huan Tan glared at him: "You think I didn't catch that?"

The meaning of the song was that from the Former Han to the Xin under Wang Mang, the so-called search for the worthy, filial, and fraternal among the people had ultimately meant that those without righteousness but with wealth were prominent in the world — such as the great merchants whom Wang Mang had entrusted with the Five Equalizations and Six Monopolies, driving the people to misery; those who were deceitful but skilled with the brush were honored at court — such as the many great Confucians and public pests whom Diwu Lun had punished; and those who defied the Way and possessed only brute courage were ennobled as officials — such as the Kunyang war god Wang Yi, or men like Han Wei who died among the Xiongnu, brave indeed, but of no great use to the state.

Toiling in the fields is not as good as meeting a good year; excelling in office is not as good as meeting the right patron. The common people were already deeply dissatisfied with the Filial and Incorrupt system, which rarely selected a good official. That Yanzhou man had deliberately sung this song right in front of the cultured Huan Tan to slap him in the face!

"Just consider that food thrown to the dogs," Huan Tan grumbled, but in his heart he was quite pleased.

This was the true voice of the people. They sang of what they loved, sang of what they resented, without feigned lament or posturing, writing their hearts with their own mouths. This was what Huan Tan, after the bewilderment of the Xin Dynasty's collapse, was seeking.

Sometimes he wondered, if he had fulfilled his duty back then and laid these bloody truths before Wang Mang, perhaps...

But alas, there were no "perhaps."

At night in the ox shed, with no lamp and nothing to do, and certainly no women, Huan Tan, having nothing better to do, spoke his true thoughts while orally teaching Liu Penzi the three hundred poems.

"The Grand Historian said that the three hundred poems were largely the works of sages and worthies giving vent to their indignation. In truth, that is not so."

Huan Tan said: "The fifteen 'Airs of the States' and the 'Minor Odes' were mostly collected from among the people. The 'Eastern Hills' in the 'Airs of Bin' says, 'I went to the eastern hills, long, long without return.' It writes of a soldier campaigning for many years, returning home with mingled sorrow and joy, joy surpassing sorrow. 'The Seventh Month' in the 'Airs of Bin' follows the sequence of the seasons, from the start of the year to its end, from planting and sericulture to hunting and cutting ice. The entire poem is filled with the bitterness of the common people's labor — the hungry sing of their food, the laboring sing of their toil. It could not have been written without personal experience."

"People today think the poems are all elegant only because times have changed, and the folk customs and rustic sayings of that age have become the refined language of today."

"As for 'Chopping Sandalwood,' 'Large Rats,' 'Looking at Rats,' 'Southern Mountain,' 'Zhulin,' and the like, their language is simple and plain, either satirizing the nobility for reaping without sowing, or exposing the feudal lords' insatiable greed."

Huan Tan's interpretation differed greatly from the past practice of always linking the poems to politics and allegory. It was so blunt that Liu Penzi shifted uneasily: "My family were marquises in the past, with vast estates and over a hundred slaves. Were we also reaping without sowing, insatiably greedy?"

Huan Tan never considered his disciple's feelings: "At least that is what the Red Eyebrows think. Otherwise, why would they hate you so, hate the Liu imperial clan?"

These words silenced Liu Penzi. That kind-hearted child would probably be sad all night.

Indeed, the Han dynasty's feudal lords and princely marquises could well be compared to the dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts, barons, and ministers of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods.

It was just that the commoners of Yin and Zhou only dared to resist in their songs, whereas the Red Eyebrows of today had directly risen in revolt, smashing the fortified manors across the Huai North plain as if cracking open the skulls of nobles.

But what came after? Had they, the Red Eyebrow Army, truly reached a promised land?

The next day, Huan Tan and the others awoke amid a clamor. Outside came a man whose features somewhat resembled Liu Penzi, his forehead smeared with red eyebrow paint, but wearing a Confucian robe so often washed in the stream that it was somewhat tattered. It was Liu Penzi's elder brother, Liu Gong.

By now, although the Red Eyebrows still despised educated men, they needed a few who could keep accounts and read. Liu Gong served at the beck and call of the camp's attendant.

Finding Liu Penzi, he immediately handed over the things in his arms — some food and clothing, all the scarcest items among the Red Eyebrows, which Liu Gong had saved bit by bit: "My brother, I must leave."

Liu Penzi was somewhat alarmed. They had stayed in Huai North so long that he had almost thought the Red Eyebrows would settle here permanently: "Where is elder brother going?"

Liu Gong said: "The giant Fan is assembling the Elders of all thirty camps and has mustered at least half of the able-bodied men to march west. I have been named by the attendant and must accompany the army."

The Red Eyebrows' three hundred thousand included the old, weak, women, and children who followed the army, but their proportion was not large, because those too frail had either died in their hometowns or died on the road. There were at least two hundred thousand males; to draw half... that meant at least a hundred thousand men!

Huan Tan sensed something keenly. The last few times Liu Gong had come to see Liu Penzi, he had been rather excited, saying that the Red Eyebrows intended to negotiate peace with the Gengshi Emperor in Nanyang, and that if they were successfully granted amnesty and recruited, the Han Son of Heaven would surely ransom back the Liu clan descendants whom the Red Eyebrows were holding.

At the time, Huan Tan had sneered: "You are not of the Chongling Liu but the Chengyang Liu, as distant as can be. To Liu Xuan, you are mere strangers. Do you expect him to call you 'Imperial Uncle'?"

Back then, Liu Gong had argued back with a reddened neck, but now there were tears in his eyes. It seemed this westward march was most likely not a surrender, but the Red Eyebrows preparing to fight the Greenwood!

Liu Gong bowed deeply to Huan Tan: "I entrust my younger brother to Lord Huan's care!"

"What kind of talk is that?" Huan Tan said gruffly. "This past half year, it is clearly he who has been looking after this old man."

Liu Gong bowed long and took his leave. Liu Penzi watched him go with tears in his eyes, then turned his head and asked Huan Tan, "Master, will the Red Eyebrows win?"

Huan Tan's face was grim. "Win or lose, either is a good thing."

"If they win, the two hundred thousand who remain can go to Nanyang for food, and won't have to starve to death here."

Huaibei had nearly been gnawed bare by the Red Eyebrows. Though they had finally remembered to plant crops after spring began, the seeds they scattered would not yield a harvest until autumn — who could hold out that long? Besides, the soil of Haidai was nothing like Huaibei's. A Red Eyebrow soldier who had been a fine farmer back home might not manage to grow much grain at all in his first year here.

"And if they lose…"

Huan Tan said, low and distant, "Your shackles will be broken too. Wouldn't that also be good?"

Liu Penzi wept. "Things are fine enough now. Herding cattle isn't hard labor. I would rather be a herder forever, if only the Red Eyebrows could win and my elder brother could stay safe."

What a good child, Huan Tan thought. His heart softened a little in that moment. He stopped speaking in veiled barbs and simply said, "Rest easy. The Red Eyebrows are certain to win. From all the reports this old man has heard, that Greenwood Gengshi Emperor, Liu Xuan…"

As if recalling someone he had once misjudged and underestimated, Huan Tan stroked Liu Penzi's bound hair. A faint smile touched the corner of his mouth. "He is nothing more than a village rustic, that's all!"

…

On the twentieth day of the second month, the Red Eyebrow army set out.

Huan Tan brought Liu Penzi to watch from a distance as these Red Eyebrow soldiers marched off to war — men torn from their homes, their clothes ragged and tattered, the only spot of brightness the smear of red clay and blood upon their foreheads.

Huan Tan recalled that the county they were in was called Longkang. The Book of Changes says: Top Nine, the arrogant dragon will have cause to repent. The Top Nine position is the zenith of overbearing yang — great and at its extreme peak, hence called the arrogant dragon. This is the image of nature itself.

Though Huan Tan had never met Fan Chong, the Fan Giant who commanded the Red Eyebrows, he could tell that the man and the troops under him truly possessed a fierce, overbearing yang spirit.

The wives, children, elderly, and infirm who accompanied the Red Eyebrow army's camps did not follow them on this westward march, but they all gathered to see them off. In a camp of ten thousand, those left behind made up nearly half. There were children held in their mothers' arms, suckling at withered breasts, and old folk with hair streaked white. Once the able-bodied men were gone, they too would have to bend their backs to search for wild greens and scraps of food.

Yet as these women watched their fathers, brothers, and sons depart, they did not weep and wail. It was just as the old tales described the Qin armies marching out in ancient times — they urged one another on, prepared food for the men, and even stripped the clothes from their own bodies to drape over their young men's shoulders.

And their sons and brothers pushed the offerings back, refusing them, and said, "Once we take a city, we'll seize all the food and clothing we need."

What forced Fan Chong to fight was not only Liu Xuan's arrogance — it was survival itself.

Of course, there were also locals who had not fled. They stood farther away, watching this horde of outsiders who had seized their homeland with unfriendly eyes. Among them were not just remnants of powerful landowning families, but ordinary farmers too. The Red Eyebrows believed they were doing righteous work, but in the eyes of the Huaibei people, the Red Eyebrows were a swarm of locusts — uninvited intruders, destroyers of homes, a calamity they prayed would leave as soon as possible.

The Red Eyebrows mostly marched on foot, their clothing a motley patchwork. They had no proper banner — only a great sheet of cloth covered in patches of every kind, with not a single character written upon it.

Beneath that banner, the Red Eyebrow soldiers strode forward and began to sing a song — one that Huan Tan would remember for the rest of his life, the very wind of the Red Eyebrows.

"Out the eastern gate, with no thought of return."

"Back inside the gate, despair and sorrow churn."

"Not a dipper of grain stored in the jar — turn and see no coat hanging on the rack."

No grain left in the jar, and turning back, no coat on the rack to ward off the cold — how could one not despair?

A husband, a father, facing such a scene of utter destitution, hearing his children's hungry cries — he wrenches his head away, stamps his foot, draws his sword, and heads out the eastern gate!

Yet inside the house, his wife clutches the hem of his robe and sobs, begging him not to leave: "Other families may long for wealth and rank, but your lowly wife is willing to share thin gruel with you."

What is more, above us there is the high blue heaven, below us the little children — I beg you, do not go!

The husband did not look back, just as not a single Red Eyebrow soldier marching away turned his head. He only threw down a single sentence, hard as stone striking earth.

"I've already left too late! White hairs come fast — how can we endure this life much longer?"

In this broken, rotten world, we cannot even share thin gruel together. Why should we live such bitter, miserable days? Must we endure until our hair turns white and we die of old age? We should have risen in revolt long ago!

This was why they had joined the Red Eyebrows. But to survive, they had to seize the right to survive from others. Those who lived on sometimes suffered for it too. When would this endless campaigning ever end?

But this time, after the fall of the Xin dynasty, Fan Chong had at last found a new enemy! Striking at those Nanyang magnates, striking at those self-debased Greenwood kings — that sat far better in his heart.

The men went out the eastern gate. A hundred thousand Red Eyebrows marched west!

Only the fading echo of a song lingered, drifting across the land of Huaibei.

"Tch! March!"