Huang Tingjian, courtesy name is valley, born in Xiushui County, Jiangxi Province, his poems, calligraphy and paintings are known as the "three masterpieces". He was as famous as Su Dongpo at that time, and people called them "Su Huang". Huang Tingjian was not only famous for his literary talent, but also for his filial piety. He often washed the urinal for his mother himself. Even after he became an official, he did not change his filial piety. Because of his filial piety, he was selected as one of the Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars.
According to legend, after Huang Tingjian passed the imperial examination and became a Jinshi, he was appointed by the imperial court as Zhizhou (chief executive) of Wuhu area. He was only 26 years old when he took office.
One day, when he was taking a nap, he had a dream. He dreamed that he walked out of the gate of the county government and came to a village. He saw an old granny standing in front of an altar outside a door, holding incense and muttering something in her mouth, as if she was calling someone's name. Huang Tingjian rushed forward and saw a bowl of cooked celery noodles on the altar. The aroma was overflowing. Huang Tingjian picked it up and ate it unconsciously. After eating, he walked back to the government office. When he woke up, the dream was still very clear. What was particularly strange was that the aroma of celery was still in his mouth. Although he was puzzled, he didn't think much of it and just thought it was a dream.
When he took a nap the next day, his dream was exactly the same as the day before, and there was still the fragrance of celery in his mouth. Huang Tingjian couldn't help but feel very surprised. So, he got up and walked out of the yamen, following the road he remembered in his dream. To his surprise, the scenery along the way was exactly the same as in his dream. Finally, he arrived at a house, but the door was closed. Huang Tingjian went to knock on the door. A white-haired old granny came out to answer the door. Huang Tingjian asked her if anyone had been outside the door calling people for noodles in the past two days.
The old granny replied, "Yesterday was my daughter's death anniversary. She loved to eat celery noodles when she was alive, so every year on her death anniversary, I would offer a bowl of celery noodles and call her to eat it!"
Huang Tingjian asked: "How long has it been since your daughter died?"
The old granny replied: "It's been twenty-six years!" Huang Tingjian though, wasn't he also exactly twenty-six years old? And yesterday also happened to be his birthday, so he further asked the granny about various situations when her daughter was still alive.
The old granny said that she only had this one daughter. When daughter was alive, she loved to study, believed in Buddhism and was a vegetarian. She was very filial, but she just refused to get married. Later, at the age of 26, she fell ill and died. When she died, she told her that she would definitely come back to see her!
When Huang Tingjian entered the house, the old granny pointed to a large wooden cabinet and told him that all the books her daughter had read in her life were locked inside, but she didn't know where the key was, so it could not be opened.
Strangely, Huang Tingjian suddenly remembered where the key was placed, and he found the key according to his memory. When he opened the wooden cabinet, he found many manuscripts inside. After reading them carefully, Huang Tingjian was shocked. It turned out that all the essays he wrote for each exam were all in these manuscripts, verbatim.
At this point, Huang Tingjian had completely understood in his mind that this old granny was his mother in his previous life, so he brought the old granny back to the county government office and took care of her for the rest of her life.
Later, Huang Tingjian built a pavilion in the back garden of the prefectural government office. In the pavilion, there is a carved image of himself, and he inscribed a stone tablet praising the image: " Similar monk but with hair, similar layman but without dust, dreaming within dream, realizing body beyond body."
