Original Text
In the twenty-first year of the Kangxi reign, a drought struck Shandong, lasting from spring through summer, leaving the land barren and devoid of any vegetation. On the thirteenth day of the sixth month, a light rain fell, allowing some to plant millet. On the eighteenth day of the same month, a heavy downpour sufficiently soaked the ground, enabling the planting of beans. One day, an old man from Shimen Village, seeing two bulls locking horns on a mountain at dusk, warned the villagers, 'A great flood is coming!' He then moved his family away, but the villagers only scoffed at him. Soon after, a sudden torrential rain poured down relentlessly through the night, flooding the flatlands to a depth of several feet and submerging all the houses. At that time, a farmer abandoned his two children and, with his wife, supported his aged mother as they fled to a high ridge for refuge. Looking down, they saw the village had become a watery expanse and could only resign themselves to the loss of their children. When the floodwaters receded and they returned home, they found the entire village reduced to ruins. Yet upon entering their own courtyard, they discovered a single house still standing, with their two children sitting side by side on the bed, playing and laughing, completely unharmed. People all said this was a reward for the couple's filial piety. This occurred on the twenty-second day of the sixth month.
In the twenty-fourth year of the Kangxi reign, an earthquake struck Pingyang, killing seven or eight out of every ten of the populace. Within and without the city walls, all was reduced to rubble, save for one solitary house that remained standing—the home of a certain filial son. Amidst the vast and indiscriminate calamity, only the descendants of a dutiful household emerged unscathed; who dares claim that Heaven's justice is blind to right and wrong?
Commentary
Although this piece is titled "Flood," it actually records two separate events. They differ in time, place, and the nature of the calamity, yet are linked and threaded together by the marvel of filial piety moving heaven and earth.
In the face of disaster, Eastern and Western cultures have different customary conventions regarding the order of rescue. In the West, the sequence prioritizes women and children first; in the East, particularly in China, emphasis is placed on seniority and hierarchy, with parents and the elderly given foremost precedence, a principle known as 'filial piety.' The question of which cultural approach to rescue order is superior or inferior is a complex and difficult proposition to judge. The extraordinary events in this tale may indeed have occurred, but attributing them to Heaven's reward for filial conduct is a typical expression of Eastern cultural propaganda.
Although the length of "The Flood" is short, its ideological color is very strong. From the "bitter drought" to the "light rain," then to the "heavy rain," and finally to the "violent downpour," even to the point where "the water on the flat ground was several feet deep, and all the houses were submerged," the process of the flood is interspersed with descriptions of crops, written in a rich and delicate manner, orderly and methodical, setting off the truthfulness of "the filial piety of the husband and wife being rewarded."