My fourth elder brother is a lawyer. In ancient times, professions that stood in court and “picked words, raised suits,” much like lawyers today, were called songshi, pettifoggers. The term lawyer, by contrast, referred specifically to a certain class among ritual masters. In modern times the meaning of lawyer replaced that of songshi, while its original sense gradually sank from sight.
Before my fourth brother became a lawyer, he worked at a district procuratorate in Harbor City. One winter year, a major corruption case broke out in the procuratorial system of Lu Province, and dozens of prosecutors were arrested. From top to bottom the judicial apparatus across the province launched a self-inspection campaign, and teams from the Supreme Procuratorate were dispatched to local offices everywhere.
A working team also entered the district procuratorate where my brother served. It was said they were unfamiliar judges who had crossed provincial lines from Zhili. On the left breast of their robes they did not wear the national emblem, but an iron-colored xiezhi. After arriving, they made contact with no one. They merely took several rooms in the procuratorate dormitory building. Each day, apart from eating in the canteen, there was no sign of what they were doing. After more than ten days of apparent idleness, the younger prosecutors, unable to hold their tongues, mocked them as men who had come not to work but to sample Lu cuisine.
Then one day the working team abruptly began requiring all prosecutors and staff to undergo inspection one by one. Those summoned were invited into a small private room in the canteen. Strangely, no matter how different their rank, the time each spent inside was about the same: they went in and came out again almost at once. Everyone who emerged looked bewildered. Two division chiefs came out gray-faced and were escorted directly by bailiffs into another room to be confined.
When it was my brother’s turn, he was told to wash his face and hands before entering. The windows in the room had been covered with bamboo slips painted in intricate designs, and incense smoke curled up from one corner. On the table in the center stood two objects. One was a square vessel made of green bamboo, filled with steaming rice. The other was a round bronze vessel with four ears, filled with clear water. The members of the inspection team sat around the table in legal robes and told my brother to choose one of the two, lift it, and either eat a bite or drink a mouthful. He hesitated for a moment, then recognized them both. The bamboo one was called a fu; the bronze one a gui. Both were ancient ritual vessels used to hold food offerings. Back in his home village in Lu, similar vessels were used in the spring sacrifice. So he followed the sacrificial etiquette he knew from home: first he lifted the fu with one hand, flicked away several grains of rice with his fingertips, and set it down; then he raised the gui in both hands and lightly sprinkled out a little water. The judge sitting opposite suddenly had eyes that seemed to brighten. He stared at my brother for a long while, then looked down again at the fu and gui. After conferring among themselves, they waved him away.
After coming out, my brother called to ask me about it. I asked in return whether the fu and gui he had touched had changed in any way. He thought for a moment and said no. In truth, this brief rite was called “fu gui bu chi.” In antiquity, when the xiezhi was absent, it was a legal array used to measure whether an official was incorruptible. In the Book of Han, in the biography of Jia Yi, there is a short description of it: in ancient times, when high ministers were removed from office for corruption, one did not say directly that they were corrupt, but said instead, “their fu and gui were not in order.” Whenever a dishonest official touched the fu and gui, the vessels themselves would certainly change, either darkening in color or showing cracks, while the food placed within them would rot and mildew the moment it entered the mouth. Out of respect for the scholar-official class, judges would not accuse a gentry criminal directly, but only raise the euphemism of “not in order.” I told my brother that the members of the working team were certainly no ordinary men. They might be true “lawyers” in the ancient sense.
That very day, the working team’s inspection of the district procuratorate came to an end. In all they identified five officials connected to the major case, yet no one understood how they had discovered them. Some suspected lie detectors or some other advanced device. Before withdrawing, the team did indeed summon my brother for another talk and asked whether he would be willing to join them in service at a certain court. Only much later did my brother learn that the spring sacrifice rituals in his village happened, by dark coincidence, to match the pattern of the great legal rites.
My fourth brother is now a lawyer. Unlike the pettifoggers of old, he is a true lawyer in the ancient sense. The court where he serves enshrines an iron-colored xiezhi and never handles ordinary cases. Not even I know where their offices are.