Guan Yu and the Night Candle

A single candle. White wax, shorter than a hand span, standing on a small dish.

The candle sits in the palm of a very large man. He stands outside a closed door, in the dark corridor of a roadside post house. Behind that door are two women he is bound by duty to protect.

A draft runs down the corridor. The flame leans over, then stands straight again. Wax runs down and pools in streaks on the dish. He does not sit. He does not lean against the wall. The candle burns lower and lower until the sky turns pale, and no one sees him show any sign of tiredness.

This scene comes from the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which tradition says Luo Guanzhong wrote in the 14th century. The candle appears in chapter 25. The man holding it is Guan Yu, whom people in Vietnam call Quan Công. His courtesy name was Yunchang. He lived in the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries, but this is a scene from a novel, not from the history books.

To understand that candle, we have to go back a little earlier, to a small hill.

That day Guan Yu had led his men out of the city of Xiapi, and every road back was cut off. By evening he still could not return, so he took his soldiers up a low hill. The troops of the chancellor, Cao Cao, closed in all around its foot. In the distance, fire glowed red inside the city.

In the morning, a lone rider galloped up the hill. He had not come to fight. He laid down his blade, got off his horse, greeted Guan Yu properly, and sat down beside him. It was Zhang Liao, an old acquaintance. Zhang Liao brought news that the city had fallen. Yet not one soldier and not one townsperson had been harmed, and Liu Bei's household was under guard.

Then Zhang Liao said something that left Guan Yu silent for a long time. If Guan Yu fell here today, he said, he would take three faults with him. He had vowed to live and die with his sworn brother, and when that brother needed him one day, he would be gone. His brother had placed his whole household in Guan Yu's hands, and once he was gone, his two sisters-in-law would have no one to lean on. He was a fine fighter and a reader of books, yet he would be trading his whole life for one moment of courage.

Guan Yu bowed his head and thought. Then he looked up, and the whole story hangs on what he said next. You have set out three faults, so I have three conditions. If the chancellor agrees to all three, I will take off my armor. If even one is missing, I would rather carry all three faults.

First, I will submit only to the court of the Han, not to the chancellor himself. Second, my two sisters-in-law must be provided for with exactly my elder brother's share, and no one, high or low, may come near their door. Third, and this was the one he held most tightly. The moment I learn where my brother is, I will take my leave at once and go to him, even if a thousand li or ten thousand li lie between us.

The li here is a traditional Chinese measure of distance.

At the third condition, Cao Cao shook his head. If I agree to that, he said, there is no point in keeping Yunchang. But after thinking it over for a while, he agreed to all three. Guan Yu also asked him to pull his army back 10 li, so that he could go into the city and speak to his two sisters-in-law first. One of the advisers objected, fearing a trick. Cao Cao brushed the warning aside. Yunchang is a man of honor, he said, and once he gives his word, he does not break it. Then he truly pulled his army back.

The party set out for the capital, Xuchang. Guan Yu did not ride ahead on horseback. He kept close beside the carriage that carried his two sisters-in-law. That night they stopped at a post house, and the lodging set aside for them was just one room. One room, for all three of them.

No one argued. No one raised a voice. Guan Yu quietly picked up a candle, stepped outside, closed the door behind him, and stood there until daylight.

That is the candle from the beginning of this story. They tested him with a single room, and he answered with a night spent outside the door. When Cao Cao heard about it, he respected Guan Yu all the more.

In the capital, Guan Yu was given a whole mansion of his own. The first thing he did was divide it into two courtyards. He set 10 old soldiers to guard the door of the inner courtyard, and he lived in the outer one himself. The Han emperor gave him the rank of general. When the chancellor sent over silks, gold and silver, Guan Yu carried them straight inside to his two sisters-in-law.

But the real test came one day as a feast was ending.

Seeing his guest off at the gate of his own residence, Cao Cao asked why Guan Yu's horse was so thin. My body is too heavy, Guan Yu replied, and the horse cannot carry it. At once Cao Cao had another horse led out.

That horse was red like a burning coal, and unusually tall and large. Cao Cao pointed at it and asked whether Guan Yu recognized it. Guan Yu knew it at a glance. It was Red Hare, the horse that Lu Bu used to ride. It really was the same horse. Cao Cao gave him the saddle and bridle as well.

And Guan Yu bowed low twice in thanks.

Cao Cao was not pleased. He said it plainly. Many times he had given Guan Yu people, gold and silk, and never once had he seen him bow. Today he gave a horse, and Guan Yu was delighted and even bowed twice. He asked whether Guan Yu held people cheap and an animal dear.

Guan Yu answered with complete honesty. I know this horse can cover a thousand li in a single day. Now that I am lucky enough to have it, the moment I learn where my brother is, I can see his face within a single day. When Cao Cao heard this, he was stunned, and then he regretted the gift. Gold and silk could not bring Guan Yu one step closer to his brother. The horse could.

The story stops right there, in the courtyard of the mansion, beside the red horse. The three conditions he set that day on the hill still stand, every one of them, and no one has struck out a single one. Silks, gold and silver, feasts large and small, a whole spacious mansion: none of it has touched the third condition. It lies quietly in his heart, burning small and steady, just like the little flame on that candle long ago.

Many people know that face long before they hear this story. A red face, a long beard falling in strands, a green robe, and two attendants standing on either side. He sits in the temples people call chùa Ông, in assembly halls, in shrines, and on small altars set in a corner of many homes in southern Vietnam.

In Hoi An there is a shrine to him. People call it Chùa Ông, and its formal name is Trừng Hán cung. The Minh Hương community built it. A wooden board in front of the shrine carries a reign date that falls in the year 1653, and today the shrine is a national heritage site. The inscriptions inside do not praise his strength. They praise four quite different words: loyalty, trust, integrity and righteousness. Put together, they mean keeping your word.

The candle in that post house corridor burned out a very long time ago. But the promise of that night is still here, and it has lasted in a strange way: in a face that people light incense before, year after year, in a land very far from where it all happened.

What remains is simple. A very large man stands all night outside a closed door, holding a tiny flame, waiting for the dawn, only because it is the right thing to do. No one ordered him to stand there, and no one sat watching to see whether he did. He kept watch over himself, and the candle in his hand was his only witness.