Su Shi took a look and wrote: "Plaintiff Wu Xiaoyi sued Zhang Er for not paying back the money." He asked Wu Xiaoyi, "What does Zhang Er owe you?"
Wu Xiaoyi replied, "He borrowed 2, yuan from the villain's silk last spring, and the IOU stated that it would be returned within three months. So far, it has been one year, and nothing has been returned. Please ask the" xianggong "to take charge of it."
Su Shi ordered the officers to send Zhang Er for interrogation at once. A little while, Zhang Er brought it.
at first glance, su Shi turned out to be an old man with a thin face and ragged clothes, and he felt pity. He asked kindly, "Wu Xiaoyi sued you for owing him 2, yuan for silk. Is this the case?"
Zhang Er respectfully replied, "It's true that I owe him 2 thousand."
Su Shi asked again, "Since it is true, why has it been overdue for a long time?"
Zhang Er looked sad and replied in a low voice, "I didn't mean to default, but I was insolvent."
Su Shi then asked, "Why borrow money when you know you can't repay it?"
Zhang er said, "I lent him silk money for the fan business. Who knows that the fan is well made, but it was rainy and cold this spring, and it was impossible to sell it for a while, so it is in arrears. "
when su Shi saw that he was honest and pitiful, he became more and more sympathetic. He said kindly, "since there are fans as collateral, you can go home and get some fans at once. I can help you pay your debts."
Zhang Er was both happy and puzzled when he heard that the governor had a way to help him pay his debts. Happily, the general sentence is the official of the imperial court, and there is no joke, and the debt is bound to be expected; What is puzzling is that it is difficult to sell cold fans today. Wu Xiaoyi will never agree to pay off debts with a fan. How to settle this case?
for a moment, without thinking about it carefully, he hurried home, took a basket of the best fans, carried it on his shoulders, and panted back to court.
Su Shi asked the officers to open the hall, and chose forty white silk fans to put on the table. Then he raised the marker and wrote and painted one by one. Shortly after he came to Hangzhou, when he visited the West Lake, he wrote a famous poem "Rain after Drinking Chu Qing on the Lake": "The water is bright and sunny, and the mountains are empty and rainy. If you want to compare the West Lake to the West Lake, it is always appropriate to make up lightly. "
at this time, he copied the poem on some fans. Some write cursive characters, others use running script. Another fan, or draw a few dead trees, or draw a bamboo stone. Each fan has a signature of "Mei Zhou Su Shi". He keeps waving his pen, just like running water.
in a short time, all forty white-ball silk fans were finished. He threw the verdict, then stood up and told Zhang Erdao, "Take it to sell quickly and pay back Wu Xiaoyi's silk money."
only then did Zhang Er understand how Su Shi helped him pay his debts. He was so overjoyed that he quickly knelt down and kowtowed. He picked up forty fans from the table and left with a thousand thanks. When Wu Xiaoyi saw that the official was in charge, he went home and waited for Zhang Er to pay back the money.
Zhang Er came home with a fan in his arms, which coincided with the long rain in Chu Qing, and the warm days drove away the cold, so it was appropriate to sell fans. He will open the door at once. Su Shi was a great writer and poet known all over the world at that time. He was also a great calligrapher with the same fame as Cai Xiang, Huang Tingjian and Mi Fei, and his paintings were also very famous. Therefore, Zhang Er's silk fan has just been put out, and those who heard that Su Shi was sentenced to write a fan news came to buy fans one after another. In an instant, he sold 39 handles, leaving only the last one at home as a family heirloom, in order to help Sue's adult. Those who came late didn't buy a silk fan with Su Shi's signature, and they all left in chagrin.
Zhang Er sold fans and got 39, yuan at a time. Besides paying off Wu Xiaoyi's debts, he made many fans to sell the remaining 19, yuan. He scowled and beamed with joy, and praised Su Shi's virtue of passing sentence to help everyone.
The news that Su Shi wrote a fan to pay off debts on behalf of others soon spread all over Hang Cheng, and people praised Su Shi as a good official who cared about people's feelings and resolved cases fairly.
Paying off Su Shi's debts