Dou Yanshan, formerly known as Dou Yujun, was named Dou Yanshan because he lived in Yanshan (Beijing).

Dou Yanshan was born into a wealthy merchant family and his family was prosperous. He was originally a man with a bad heart. He dedicated himself to fighting big, selling small names, and went to great lengths to deceive and oppress others. The poor people hated him for being rich and unkind, but he had no strength to preside over justice. Dou Yanshan's act of ignorance of conscience and destruction of the laws of heaven angered the heavens, and he was thirty years old and still had no children.

One night, he had a dream. He dreamed that his deceased father had said to him, "Your mental skills are not good. Your character is bad, and your notoriety has been known by the Emperor of Heaven. In the future, you will have no children and will have a short life. You must quickly repent and do good deeds, accumulate yin virtue, and be widely convenient for the toiling masses, so that you can restore God's will and change Chengxiang." Dou Yanshan woke up, and he remembered it clearly, so he decided to be a new person.

One year on New Year's Day, Dou Yujun went to Yanqing Temple to worship Buddha. Next to the prayer mat in the Daxiong Temple in the temple, he found 200 taels of silver and 30 taels of gold. He thought it must be the lost property of the worshippers, so he waited for the owner of the temple. After waiting a long time, he saw a person who was crying and talking to himself. Dou Yujun asked him why he was crying, and the man said, "My father was kidnapped by the kidnappers and will be executed. I finally borrowed from my relatives and friends, and got 200 taels of silver and 30 taels of gold to redeem my father's death. Who knew that when I touched the money bag, the gold and silver were gone, so my father would inevitably die. I just came here to worship Buddha with incense, but I don't know if it was lost in the temple." Yu Jun knew that the man was the owner, so he returned the gold and silver in full, and also gave him a sum of travel expenses, and the owner happily thanked him.

A servant stole a lot of money from him, so he wrote a contract to sell his daughter, tied it to the back of the young daughter, and said, "Sell this daughter forever to repay the money you stole." Then he ran away. Duke Dou took pity on him, burned the contract, raised the girl, and chose a son-in-law for her to marry when she grew up.

There were many poor people in his hometown who couldn't afford to marry a daughter-in-law, and his daughter couldn't marry because she didn't have the money to buy a dowry, so Dou Yanshan gave them his silver taels to help them. If there were relatives who couldn't do funerals, he would pay to help with funerals; if there was no money to marry a daughter, he would pay to help marry a daughter. A year's income is used to help others except for daily expenses.

At the same time, Dou Yanshan also set up a school in his hometown, collected thousands of volumes of books, and invited learned teachers to teach classes. He recruited nearby children who could not go to school due to poverty to go to school for free. His family was frugal and simple, with no gold and jade jewelry, and no gorgeous clothes. Dou Yanshan was so poor and self-respecting, so he accumulated great yin virtue.

One night later, Dou Yanshan dreamed of his father again. The old man told him, "You are now so powerful and famous that the Emperor of Heaven already knows about it. In the future, you will have five sons, all of whom will be able to be named on the gold list, and you will live until you are eight or ninety years old." When he woke up, he found that it was also a dream. But from then on, he became more self-cultivated, did good deeds widely, and did not neglect.

Later, he really had five sons. Due to its emphasis on etiquette, good virtue, and good parenting and family harmony, the Dou family finally developed. His eldest son, Mingyi, was a scholar in the later Jin Dynasty, and entered the Song Dynasty. He was an official of the Ministry of Rites and a scholar of Hanlin. He was a famous minister in the early Song Dynasty. After his death, Emperor Zhao Kuangyin sighed sadly: "How can the sky take the speed of my Dou Yi!" The second son's name was Yan, who was also a scholar in the later Jin Dynasty. Li Shihan, Zhou, and served as a waiter in the Ministry of Rites in the early Song Dynasty. The third son's name is Kan, who was a scholar in the later Han Dynasty, and used to be a doctor in the Song Dynasty. The fourth son's name is Dou, who was a scholar in the later Han Dynasty, and joined the Song Dynasty to advise the doctor. Dou Xi was a scholar in the later Zhou Dynasty, and used to be a doctor in the Song Dynasty. When his five sons were all named on the gold list, the waiter Feng Dao presented him with a poem: "Dou Yanshan Jiro, teach your son to be righteous. Lingchun is an old plant, Dan Gui Wuzhi Fang." Dou Yujun also has eight grandchildren, all of whom are also very expensive. Finally, Dou Yujun achieved the official position of a doctor who advised him at the age of 82. Before his death, he talked and laughed happily, bid farewell to relatives and friends, bathed and changed clothes, and died without illness.

In the "Three Character Classic", the sentence "Dou Yanshan, there is a righteous prescription, teach the five sons, and all their names will rise" praises this matter, and forms the idiom of "five sons to study", pinning the ideal that ordinary people expect their children to be like the five sons of the Dou family, to jointly obtain fame and have a rich and prosperous future.