A Promise is Worth A Thousand Gold, and thoughts on crying

This is a mid-level essay about learning to be honest. If you’ve read some of my other essay translations, you will start to see a pattern emerge in school essay writing. They usually include an all-too-tidy life lesson in morality, and usually an instance of tears welling up in the author’s eyes.
Easy Simplified Chinese Reading Passage Texts - Intermediate LevelWhen I was in Chinese class in college in China, my friends and I used to joke about this – how almost every essay we were assigned to read involved the author being moved to tears. We found this pattern especially strange because the Chinese people are not prone to crying in public – and if you do cry in front of a Chinese person you don’t know well, the polite thing for them to do is pretend not to notice and look the other way. Though that may seem heartless to a culture wher the polite thing to do is get involved and try to comfort the crying person, the Chinese help a crying person save face by giving them the opportunity to pull themselves together and make the whole situation go away without comment.
However, during funerals it is entirely acceptable to hire professional mourners, who fake-cry and sing sad songs while fake-sobbing and crawling on their knees in fake despair. Later during the funeral, the mourners will perform happy dances to lighten the mood – it’s almost like they guide the Chinese through the process of mourning and healing during the funeral. Though everyone there is aware the tears are faked for the benefit of performance, the Chinese find this very moving, wheras I think I would find it offensive if a stranger made a show of fake-crying at a funeral.
Perhaps to a Chinese person, who knows that crying in front of others is, in most circumstances, too blatant a display of one’s secret inner self, the thought of someone being so upset that they lose control and cry in public shows just how upset they are, and is therefore moving. This is one thing I may never quite figure out.
Anyway, this article has a lot less to do with crying than I’m leading you to believe, and more to do with integrity. This is a little more accessible than most articles because it includes a trope that we’re all familiar with: a variation of the devil and and angel sitting on opposite shoulders routine. This essay doesn’t use the word “devil”, instead it uses the term “evil angel”. This confusion is probably due to the fact that Christianity doesn’t get a lot of play in China. The only thing most Chinese know is that Islam, Christianity and Judaism are major world religions, and involve going to church, but that’s often about it. But Chinese mythology does have good and evil spirits in it, so I imagine that’s wher the mixup comes in – well… if we’re going to get specific, technically Lucifer is an evil angel, but my point is that there is a Chinese word for “devil” (more like “a devil” than “the Devil”, though), 魔鬼, which does not appear here.
The Chinese title of this is 一诺千金.
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西塞罗- xī sāi luó – Cicero
坦白 – tǎn bái – forthright
寒假 – hán jià – winter vacation
吞吞吐吐 – tūn tūn tǔ tǔ – Stutter when speaking, hem and haw
天使 – tiān shǐ – angel
邪恶- xié è – Wicked, evil
脑海 – nǎo hǎi – The mind, the brain
奴隶 – nú lì – slave
此时此刻 – cǐ shí cǐ kè – At that very moment
诺 – nuò – promise
诚信是做人之本啊！有时候诚信就在于一个动作，一句语言，西塞罗曾经说过一句话: “坦白使人心地轻松的妙药”。这一句话我深有体会，今年寒假，我做了一个没有诚信的小孩子。
记得在一个忙碌的寒假日，我赶着做作业。突然，我发现作文本和摘录笔用完了，我急急忙忙的拿着钱下楼买本子去了。那个老人用善良的微笑对我问道: “小朋友，你要买什么啊？”我说: “我要买一本作文本和一本摘录本。”“一共5元钱”老人说。我想了想，我只有4元钱，怎么办呢？我吞吞吐吐地说: “我…我只有4元钱啊？”怎么办，我和店主商量说: “我住在你们楼上，我下次再拿钱给你吧，好吗？”“好。”他爽快地答应了。过了几天，我又再次去买东西，那个老人忘记那件事情了。我似乎也忘了那件事。
我付完了第二次买东西的钱后，我准备回家去了。突然，有一位善良的小天使和一位邪恶的小天使在我的脑海里出现了，它们在我的心中争吵。我听到了两种不同的语言。那位善良的小天使说: “你要把事实说出来啊！”那位邪恶的小天使说: “不要讲啊，如果讲出来要浪费一元钱呢。”那位善良的小天使说: “你不要做金钱的奴隶，要做诚信的主人啊！”那邪恶的小天使说:“干嘛要做有诚信的人啊，诚信又不能当饭吃啊！”他们不停地争吵，我心烦意乱的，这时我想起书上看到的这句子话；“坦白使人心地轻松的妙药”。
我鼓足了勇气，坦白地说出来。开始时，老人脸涨得红红的，好像很生气似的。过了一会儿，他对我说: “没关系了，我不会怪你的，你是一个知错就改的孩子啊！”此时此刻，泪水盈满了我的眼眶，我诚恳地对那个老人说: “对不起，爷爷。”
我从这件事，我明白了: 做人不能骗人，要做个有诚信的人啊！一诺千金是多么的重要啊！诚信是金，用多少钱都买不回来。
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Honesty is the root of integrity! Sometimes honesty is based in an action, a spoken word. Cicero said that: “Forthrightness is a wonderful medicine that puts the heart at ease.” This is something I understand deeply from personal experience. During this year’s winter vacation, I [did something bad that meant I] was not a very honest child.　
I remember on a busy winter break day, I was catching up on homework. Suddenly, I discovered that my essay book and my excerpt book had both been filled up [with writing], so carrying my money, I hurried downstairs to go buy notebooks. The old person [at the store] smiled kindly at me and asked: “Small friend, what do you want to buy?” I said: “I want to buy one essay book and one excerpt book.” “That will be a total of 5 yuan,” the old person said. I thought and thought, I only had 4 yuan, what should I do? Stuttering, I said, “I… I only have for yuan?” Talking over what to do with the shop owner, I said, “I live just above you, the next time I come down I’ll give you the rest of the money, OK?” “Ok,” he answered brightly. A few days passed, and again I went down to buy something, but the old person had forgotten the whole incident. I acted as if I had also forgotten.
After I’d finished paying after the second time I went to buy something, I was about to leave to go back to my house. Suddenly, a good little angel and an evil little angel appeared in my mind, and they began to fight with each other. I listened to their differing words. The good little angel said, “You should speak up about this incident!” The evil little angel said, “Don’t mention it, if you mention it then you’ll have wasted 1 yuan.” The good angel said, “Don’t be a slave to money, be a master of honesty!” The evil little angel said, “What do you want to be an honest person for, you can’t eat honesty [lit: honesty can't be food].” They fought incessantly, and I was torn and confused, but at that moment I remembered the phrase I had read in a book, “Forthrightness is a wonderful medicine that puts the heart at ease.”
I drummed up my courage, and forthrightly spoke up. At first, the old person’s face became red, and he seemed very angry. After a while, he said to me, “Don’t worry about it, I won’t blame you, you’re a child that corrects a mistake when he sees it!” At that very moment, tears welled up in my eyes, and I sincerely said to the old person, “I’m sorry, grandfather.” [not the author's real grandfather - this is a form of respect from a younger child to an older man.]
After this, I understood, having integrity means you can’t cheat people, and I want to be an honest person! [The phrase] “A promise is worth a thousand gold” is so very important! Honesty is gold, and you can’t buy it back with money.