Original Text
A merchant, traveling one day through the Zhili region, was suddenly caught in a heavy downpour of rain and hail, so he crouched down in a field of crops to take shelter. There, he heard a voice from the sky saying, "This is Zhang Buliang's field; do not harm his crops." The merchant thought to himself, since this Zhang was called "Buliang" (meaning "not good"), why should heaven protect him instead? When the hail ceased, the merchant entered the village to seek out the man surnamed Zhang and inquire about the meaning of his name. It turned out that Zhang Buliang had always been wealthy and had stored up a great quantity of grain. Every spring, the poor would come to borrow from him, and when they returned the grain in autumn, Zhang never bothered to measure how much was given back; he accepted it all without using a bushel or peck to weigh it. Thus, people called him "Buliang" (meaning "not measuring"), not "Buliang" (meaning "not good"). They all hurried to the fields to look, and there they saw that the crops in other people's fields had been beaten into a tangled mess by the hail, but only Zhang's fields remained entirely unharmed.
Commentary
According to Wu Baoya, a contemporary of Pu Songling, recorded in his "Kuangyuan Magazine": "Monk Jishui of Huawu Temple said, 'In the eighteenth year of Shunzhi, a beggar in Qingzhou was commanded by a divine being to dispense hail. Those taking shelter from the hail heard a voice in the sky saying, 'Do not damage Zhang Buliang's fields.' When the sky cleared, the dikes of other fields were broken, but Zhang's fields alone remained unharmed. It was because Zhang allowed those who borrowed grain from him to measure it themselves and store it in their own granaries, never disputing the amount, and thus he was called 'Buliang' (the one who does not measure).' This incident is similar to that of Jiang Ziliang of the Southern Song. Jiang, a man of Hangzhou, had three sons: the eldest Chongren, the second Chongyi, and the third Chongxin. The brothers were of one virtue, setting up a public measure, and those who came to buy grain were allowed to measure it themselves, even in years of scarcity, and thus people called him 'Jiang Ziliang.' In the third year of Xianchun, an imperial decree enfeoffed the three Jiangs as Marquises of Guangfu, and to this day a temple is dedicated to them above Yanqiao.'" This shows that the story of Zhang Buliang was a legend of the time, and Wu Baoya's record is more detailed than Pu Songling's.
As a meteorological phenomenon, hailstorms are inherently uneven in their distribution, as the saying goes, "Sunshine in the east while rain falls in the west"—who can guarantee that such rumors are not man-made false news?