In the second year of Yuanhe in the Tang Dynasty, a scholar named Wei Gu went to Qinghe to visit a friend.
On the way, he stayed at the Nandian Inn in Songcheng County, Songzhou.
A Mr. Zhang staying at the same inn heard that Wei Gu was unmarried and wanted to introduce him to the daughter of Pan Fang, the former governor of Qinghe.
They agreed to meet in front of Longxing Temple the next morning.
At the fourth watch of the next day, Wei Gu got up and hurried to Longxing Temple.
He saw an old man sitting on the steps, leaning against a cloth bag and reading a book by the moonlight.
Wei Gu couldn’t recognize the words in the book, and the old man said it was a marriage register for men and women in the world.
The cloth bag contained red threads used to tie the feet of a husband and wife.
A boy and a girl were tied by red threads at birth and would become a couple in the future.
The old man said Wei Gu’s wife was the daughter of Chen Po, a vegetable vendor north of the Nandian Inn in Songcheng.
Wei Gu didn’t believe it and wanted to see his future wife.
The old man led him to the market and pointed to a little girl being held by a one-eyed woman, saying she was Wei Gu’s wife.
Wei Gu got angry and said he would kill the little girl, but the old man said the red thread had already been tied and couldn’t be reversed.
Wei Gu asked his servant to kill the little girl, but the servant only stabbed her between the eyebrows.
More than ten years later, Wei Gu worked as a military officer under Wang Tai, the governor of Xiangzhou, and Wang Tai married his daughter to him.
The bride, Wang Shi, was eighteen years old and very beautiful, and Wei Gu was very satisfied.
Wang Shi always had a colored paper flower stuck between her eyebrows and never took it off at night.
Wang Shi said she had been stabbed by a bandit when she was young and stuck the paper flower to cover the scar.
Wei Gu remembered the old man he met in front of Longxing Temple and believed he was the god of marriage.
This story was recorded in the book “Continued Records of Mysterious Tales” and passed down through generations.
“The old man under the moon” or “Yue Lao” became synonymous with a matchmaker.