Ga'ai-shi. A Cabbage Merchant Remembers.
This autobiography by Ga'ai-shi is interesting for a number of reasons: he lived through the end of the Hundred Years' War, witnessing from a commoner's point of view the changes occurring at that time; he lived in Ba Sing Se at the end of that war, always a city of interest for historians of that time; and his sudden changes in fortune have caused his name to become a household word. More importantly for our purposes, he details several encounters with Avatar Aang, who was his contemporary.
Among the descriptions of his travels and toils in the Earth Kingdom he records a number of encounters with Avatar Aang, a quick description of which would not be out of place here. He records that while he was trying to sell his cabbages in Omashu, a certain group of children—one of who turned out to be a young Avatar Aang—fell from the sky onto his cart and "utterly demolished it, leaving not so much as a single atom of it intact". They were taken before Bumi I—then King of Omashu—and paradoxically "sentenced" to a feast, to Ga'ai-shi's horror. His anger at this sentence is evidenced by the subsequent ten-page polemic on "crazy kings" and "cities of idiots". However strange and improbable the situation seems, however, it is verified by the official record of the time. In one of the many scrolls written by the court scribes of the period we find it recorded that a group of children, accused of the malicious destruction of cabbages, was sentenced to dine with the king. Ga'ai-shi's claim that this occurred a second time a day or two later, with King Bumi I himself falling onto the cart, seems to be unsubstantiated.
A second encounter with the Avatar occurred in an unnamed port. Ga'ai-shi cites this as the time he became "absolutely sure that this miscreant was none other than the Avatar himself". It appears that the Avatar and his friends were being pursued; Avatar Aang most ungraciously Airbended the cabbage cart into their pursuers to delay their advance, and this act was what informed the merchant of this child's identity. There appears to be no other evidence for this occurrence.
After these encounters he moved to Ba Sing Se, where he seemed to have no trouble from the Avatar except during the tumultuous creation of the then-new Ba Sing Se zoo, when a rabbiroo apparently released by Avatar Aang started eating his cabbages. Unsurprisingly, by this time Ga'ai-shi holds an extreme hatred for the Avatar, even calling for his death.
He continued to sell cabbages during the Fire Nation occupation of Ba Sing Se. His fortunes increased in the years following the end of the Hundred Years' War, causing him to move to Gaoling and opening what is generally accepted as the first supermarket there. The concept caught on, and his wealth was propelled to great heights. Unfortunately, a freak accident involving a great earthquake and the subsequent insanity of a Water Tribe man who happened to be in Gaoling at the time led to the destruction of both Ga'ai-shi's house and supermarket. The account breaks off here, though it is known that he resumed the trade of cabbage merchant later in his life.
A Cabbage Merchant Remembers sold tolerably well upon its release; it was never very popular, and relatively few copies remain today. Nevertheless the book is well known for its angry, hostile tone, and its style has been parodied many times. Nowadays it may be found mostly in old bookshops and libraries.