Early Years
Though he was a man of Silla, Jang Bogo's origins are unknown. One of the few sources on his life is the 12th century Samguk Sagi ("A History of the Three Kingdoms"), which contains a brief biography of Jang compiled three centuries after his death. The biography relates that Jang Bogo was adept in martial arts and that Jang's companion Jeong Yeon (정년, 鄭年) could swim five li (about 2.5 km) underwater without taking a breath. The history further records that as young men the two companions, Jang Bogo and Jeong Yeon, traveled to Tang China and their skills in horsemanship and the handling of spears soon won them military office. They were both named Junior Generals of Wuning District (武寧軍小將) (in what is today Jiangsu province).
Read more about this topic: Jang Bogo
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the child’s life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of play—that embryonic notion of kindergarten.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“The expansive nature of truth comes to our succor, elastic, not to be surrounded. Man helps himself by larger generalizations. The lesson of life is practically to generalize; to believe what the years and the centuries say against the hours; to resist the usurpation of particulars; to penetrate to their catholic sense.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)