Three Visits to the Thatched Cottage

The master went out this morning.

That was all the boy at the gate said, and then he stood quietly beside the gate of woven bamboo. The visitor asked where his master had gone. Nowhere in particular, the boy said, so he could not tell which way. The visitor asked when he would be back. There was no fixed day for that either. Sometimes three or five days, sometimes more than ten.

And that was all. No promise of a meeting, no place to look, no way to leave word. Behind the boy stood a thatched cottage, its door half closed, as silent as if no one lived there.

The old book records that the visitor was named Liu Bei.

A moment earlier he had announced a string of titles so long that the boy honestly said he could not remember them. Liu Bei had troops and a name, and people called him the emperor's uncle. Even so, he had dismounted and knocked on that gate with his own hand.

The man he sought had never held office for a single day. A friend named Xu Shu had left him exactly one name: Zhuge Liang of Nanyang, whom people there called Wolong, the Sleeping Dragon.

All that way, only to hear that the master had gone out.

Zhang Fei, one of the two men Liu Bei called his younger brothers, spoke at once. If they could not see him, they should go home. Guan Yu, the other, was calmer. Go back first, he said, and send someone to find out. A few miles on, Liu Bei still reined in his horse to look back.

The second visit came in the depth of winter.

A scout reported that the Sleeping Dragon was home. Zhang Fei said the man was just a country fellow, and a messenger could simply call him in. Liu Bei scolded him in one sentence and mounted his horse.

A few miles on, the north wind rose and the snow came down thick. The mountains were white as jade, the forest white as silver. Hunched on his horse, Zhang Fei said that with the ground frozen like this, even armies put off their marches. Better to go back to Xinye. Liu Bei answered that he went precisely so the man would know his sincerity. Anyone afraid of the cold could go back first. Zhang Fei turned red. He was not even afraid of dying, he said, let alone the cold. He only feared his brother would wear himself out for nothing.

At the cottage, the boy said his master was inside, reading. Inside the cottage, someone sat hugging his knees by the stove, chanting verses. Liu Bei stepped up and bowed, and the man hurried to bow back. You are mistaken, he said. I am his younger brother, Zhuge Jun. A friend invited my brother out yesterday, and no one can guess where they went.

Twice. Twice standing before a house with people in it but no master.

Zhang Fei urged him to leave. Liu Bei asked for paper and a brush. The cold had frozen the brush stiff, and he had to breathe on it before he could write a few lines to leave behind.

At the gate, Liu Bei saw a man riding a donkey through the snow, chanting a poem. Thinking it was the Sleeping Dragon, he jumped from his horse and ran over to bow. But it was Huang Chengyan, the father-in-law of Zhuge Liang.

Then spring came.

For the third visit, Liu Bei did not set out at once. He chose a lucky day, fasted for three days, bathed and changed his clothes, and only then took the road. Guan Yu protested that two visits in person were already too much courtesy. Zhang Fei said that this time he would go himself. If the man would not come, he would tie him up with a hemp rope and bring him back. Liu Bei glared. Zhang Fei backed down and promised to behave.

Half a mile from the cottage, Liu Bei got down and walked.

At the gate, the boy knew his face now, and he said something new. Today his master was home, but he was taking an afternoon nap and had not woken yet.

And this is the best part of the story.

Liu Bei told the boy not to announce him. He asked his brothers to wait outside the gate and stepped very quietly into the yard alone. Inside, the man lay asleep on his back on a mat. Liu Bei folded his hands and stood below the steps.

A long while passed. The man slept on.

Impatient, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei came in and found their brother standing exactly where he had been. Zhang Fei flew into a temper. How arrogant could this fellow be? He would light a fire behind the house and see whether that woke him. It took Guan Yu several tries to hold him back.

Then the sleeper turned over as if to sit up. The boy started to go in. Liu Bei waved a hand, saying not to disturb him. The man faced the wall and slept on.

And Liu Bei stood for one more double hour.

A double hour, in the old way of counting, is two hours by the clock. Two hours standing still, never sitting, not even clearing his throat to let anyone know he was there. A man who had fasted three days before daring to come, standing with folded hands below the steps of someone far younger.

When that double hour was over, Zhuge Liang woke and recited four lines of verse: In the great dream, who wakes first? My own life, I know for myself. One spring sleep in a thatched cottage is enough. Outside the window, the day moves slowly still.

Only then did he ask whether anyone had come. Told that the emperor's uncle had been waiting a long time, he sprang up, asked why no one had told him, and went to change. Liu Bei waited a while longer by the steps, until the man came out with his robe and cap in order. He was eight feet tall by the old Chinese measure, a silk scarf on his head and a cloak of crane feathers on his shoulders. He moved as lightly as a cloud.

Zhuge Liang said he was only a farmer from Nanyang, who would not dare discuss the affairs of the realm. Only after Liu Bei spoke at length of the people's suffering did he open up.

He had a scroll brought out and hung in the middle of the room. It was a hand-drawn map of the 54 districts of Xichuan, in the west. Pointing at it, he laid out his plan. The north belonged to Cao Cao, whose moment had come, so leave it to him. The south was held by Sun Quan, with rugged land to protect him, so leave that too. And the share left for Liu Bei would be the hearts of the people. Three shares together would stand as steady as a pot stand on three legs.

The hearts of the people. The one share no map could show.

Liu Bei bowed. Those words, he said, had parted the clouds so he could see the blue sky. Then he asked Zhuge Liang to come down from the mountain. Zhuge Liang declined. He was used to the hoe, he said, and lazy about worldly affairs. Liu Bei burst into tears. If the master would not come, the common people would have no one to turn to. His tears soaked his sleeves. Seeing that this was real, Zhuge Liang agreed.

The next morning, before leaving, he told his younger brother that he owed a debt to a man who had come to his home three times, and could not refuse. Stay and farm, he said, and do not let the fields go to waste. When the work is done, I will come back.

This story comes from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a novel traditionally credited to Luo Guanzhong and dated to the 14th century. So it is a tale that was told, not a page of recorded history. A later poem about that day says Zhuge Liang was only 27.

In Vietnam, people still use the classical name for that day, tam cố thảo lư, three visits to the thatched cottage. Whenever someone has to invite a respected person again and again, and succeeds only the third time, people bring up those four words.

But the thing most worth remembering is not the map, or the plan to divide the land in three. It is the woven bamboo gate in front of the thatched cottage. Twice it opened onto a house without its master. The third time, it opened for a man carrying a zither and a stack of books, walking out toward the road the visitor had traveled three times to reach him.