They appointed Bao-gun as an official. His older brother’s wife heard about this and thought: “He’s too young to sit in the pit and decide things.” And the daughter-in-law decided to test Bao-gun.
She boiled a hard-boiled egg, ordered the maid Chun-xiang to eat it, and then said to Bao-gun:
“I left an egg in the room this morning, but someone ate it.” How to find out who did it, but not to offend a person in vain!
Bao-kung began to think in his mind: only maids go to the eldest daughter-in-law’s room; surely one of them stole the egg. How do you know which one? There are several of them!
Bao-kung brought a bench and a table into the courtyard, put two cups on the table: one with water, the other without water, sat down next to him, called the maids, lined them up in a row in front of the table, ordered each to take a sip from the cup, rinse his mouth, and spit the water into the empty cup. The girls did just that. All of them have clean water, but only Chun-Xiang has yellow grains floating around.
Here Bao-kung took a brush and wrote: “Since it has been established that Chun-xiang stole the egg, punishment should be applied to her. But since the crime was committed for the first time, it is necessary to show mercy and forgive the criminal. The rest of the maids are not involved in the matter, just like other people.”
Then the daughter-in-law realized that Bao-kung was fair, that he knew how to separate truth from lies, she calmed down and let him go to serve in Yamen.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru