 Despite being literate , giving him a chance to become a scholar , young Yue Fei chose the military path because there had never been any tradition of full @-@ fledged Confucian civil service in his family history . He would stay up all night reading military strategy books and idolized such great historical heroes as Guan Yu . However , the Yue family was much too poor to afford military lessons for their son , so , Yao <unk> , the boy 's maternal grandfather , hired Chen <unk> ( <unk> ) to teach the eleven @-@ year @-@ old how to wield the Chinese spear . Yao was very surprised when his grandson quickly mastered the spear by the age of thirteen . Zhou was then brought in to continue Yue 's military training in archery . Dr. Kaplan describes Zhou as the " most important " of the two teachers . 
