Sima Qian recorded the story of Shi Fen's family known for their filial piety in the "Historical Records", and the last sentence of the article is very interesting and intriguing.
Shi Fen, at the age of fifteen, became the office secretary of Liu Bang, the king of the Han Dynasty, in charge of sanitation and document issuance. Shi Fen has a sister who was recruited by Liu Bang to be a beauty in the harem. Beauty is one of the titles of concubines.
Shi Fen has no culture, but he is very respectful to his superiors and very cautious in doing things, and this is also the case at home, for example, when the emperor gives food to his home, he must bow his head and bend down to eat, as if the emperor is in front of him. In addition, my sister is the emperor's wife, so Shi Fen naturally rose to the top.
Shi Fen has four sons, the eldest is called Shi Jian, the second and third Shi lost his name, and the fourth is called Shi Qing. Shi Fen ruled the family with loyalty and filial piety, and his courtesy set an example for his children and grandchildren, and was deeply respected by the emperor, so his descendants all practiced the way of loyalty and filial piety, and were respectful in work and etiquette. The eldest son Shi Jian did the best in filial piety, and the "Historical Records" recorded that Shi Fen was old, and Shi Jian often asked the servants to take Shi Fen's underwear and wash it himself, but he didn't let Shi Fen know.
If any of the descendants did something wrong and violated etiquette, Shi Fen was very angry, but he did not scold, but sat alone in a side room and did not eat. Once, Shi Qing went home drunk, didn't get out of the car when he got to the inner door, and took the car until he got to the door. Shi Fen was very angry and didn't eat. The three elder brothers all criticized Shi Qing. Shi Qing knelt naked in front of Shi Fen, and asked the clan elders to intercede and promise not to make an example, so Shi Fen forgave and ate.
Shi Fen's family's rigor in filial piety is well-known, and even the imperial court knows it. It is precisely because of this that every time an official is elected to be a virtuous person, he often thinks of the people of Shi Fen's family, and Shi Fen's family has produced many officials. Shi Fen and his four sons are all officials to 2,000 stones, so Shi Fen is called "Wan Shijun". Later, when Shi Qing became the prime minister, there were thirteen people who were officials of the descendants and made 2,000 stones.
However, although there are so many big officials in Shi Fen's family, they have no skills or specialties. In other words, Shi Fen's family became a big official, in addition to being related to Shi Fen's sister at the beginning, the main reason for this was that he did a good job in loyalty and filial piety. This is easy to understand, because the Han Dynasty was originally governed by filial piety, and the emperors after Liu Bang, the ancestor of the Han Dynasty, all had the word "filial piety" in their nicknames, such as Emperor Xiaowen and Emperor Xiaojing.
Sima Qian's account of Shi Fen's family seems to praise his "filial piety", and the front gives people the feeling that he has always written history seriously, but at the end of the article, a sentence suddenly came, giving people a sense of sudden change of pen:
"After the death of Heqing, a little sin is gone, and filial piety is also declining. ”
It means that after the death of Shi Qing, who was the prime minister, the children and grandchildren of other officials gradually lost their officials because of crimes, and the whole family gradually did not do well in terms of filial piety.
Although this sentence is also true, it still gives people a sense of humor. In this sentence, do you say it looks like a knife?Isn't it a knife to the bone?In the era of "filial piety and honesty", filial piety has become a means.
True filial piety should come from the heart, manifested as a kind of affection and behavior that is not mixed with any distracting thoughts. The "any distractions" here even include gratitude, that is, parents are not kind to their children and filial piety, just like Shun did to his father.