While other men sought fortune on the Silk Road or glory as swordsmen, Gao tended to the unloved dead. He washed the bones of bandits, buried stillborn children in silk scraps, and every evening, he lit paper lanterns for ghosts who had no family to pray for them.
"Hand him over, gravekeeper, or we will bury you ." tang dynasty good man
The captain stared. He could not risk it. He spat on the ground and left. While other men sought fortune on the Silk
The soldier refused, but Gao closed the man’s fist around the jade. "I have no family," Gao said. "My grave will be dug by strangers. But if you live one honest day because of this token, then I will have left a mark deeper than any tombstone." He could not risk it
In the twilight of the Tang Dynasty, under a sky smeared with the color of old blood, there lived a man the villagers called "Foolish Gao." His real name was Gao Renshi, and he was a gravekeeper.
Gao poured the porridge. "In the Analects of the Tang , there is no law against kindness. Eat."
They carved no grand epitaph. They simply placed a single stone at his head, upon which someone had scratched four small characters: