Lu Xun Complete Works/en/Huagaiji xubian

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华盖集续编

华盖集续编 (华盖集续编)

von Lu Xun (鲁迅, 1881-1936)

Uebersetzt aus dem Chinesischen.

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Section 1

Not even a full year has passed, yet the volume of my miscellaneous jottings already equals that of all of last year. Since autumn I have been living by the sea, with nothing before my eyes but clouds and water, hearing mostly the sound of wind and waves, almost completely cut off from society. If circumstances do not change, I probably will not have much more idle talk this year. With nothing to do by lamplight, I have compiled these old manuscripts and am preparing them for publication, to supply those patrons who wish to read my miscellaneous musings.

What is discussed here still contains no cosmic mysteries or truths of human existence. It is merely what I have encountered, thought about, and wished to say — however shallow, however extreme — sometimes written down with my pen. To put it boastfully, it is like the involuntary cry at moments of grief or joy, which of course has nothing to do with people's fate or the rise and fall of the world. But since there is still time, I have assembled them nonetheless, as a small record of my own existence.

I

I have heard that starting this year, Professor Chen Yuan (alias Xi Ying) intends to stop meddling in other people's affairs; this prophecy appeared in the "Idle Talk" column of issue fifty-six of Modern Review. I am ashamed to say I did not read that issue, and so I do not know the details. If it is true, then apart from the customary polite expression of "what a pity," I am genuinely astonished at my own obtuseness: at my age, I still did not know that the transition from December thirty-first to January first could produce such a great transformation in other people. Lately I have become rather numb to the turning of the year, and feel nothing at all. In truth, if one wished to feel something, there would be no end to the feeling. Everyone hangs up five-colored flags, triumphal arches are erected in the main streets, with four characters in the middle reading "Universal Celebration" — this, they say, is the New Year. Everyone shuts their doors, pastes up the door gods, and firecrackers go off with a bang — this too, they say, is the New Year. If words and deeds truly shifted with each New Year, one would be unable to shift fast enough and would end up going in circles. Therefore, while numbness to the year's turning carries the risk of falling behind, every disadvantage has its advantage, and one does gain a small benefit from it.

But there are some things I still cannot think through: for instance, the notion that there are "idle affairs" in the world, and people who "meddle in idle affairs." I now feel that there are, in fact, no such things as idle affairs in the world; once someone takes them up, they all become connected to oneself — even love of humanity is because one is oneself human. If we learned that Zhang Long and Zhao Hu were fighting on Mars, and then made a great fuss, hosting banquets and convening meetings to support Zhang Long or denounce Zhao Hu, that would indeed be rather close to meddling in idle affairs. But if we can "learn of" affairs on Mars, then at the very least communication must already be possible, and the connection is already close.

Section 3

Although they say Beijing is like a vast desert, young people still flock here; the old don't much leave either — even if some take a trip elsewhere, they soon come back, as if Beijing still held something worth clinging to. The world-weary poet who laments existence truly "sighs with deep emotion," yet he goes on living; even the philosopher Schopenhauer, who professed to follow the Buddha, could not help secretly taking some medicine for some ailment, unwilling to easily "enter nirvana." The vulgar saying goes: "A bad life is better than a good death" — this is naturally nothing but the vulgar view of vulgar people, yet scholars and men of letters are no different. The only distinction is that they always have a banner of stern righteousness, and an escape route even more righteously stern.

Indeed, if it were not so, life would truly be unbearably tedious, with nothing to say.

Beijing grows more expensive by the day; my own "humble clerkship" was dismissed by Mr. Zhang Shizhao because of my "reckless opinions." What I have encountered all along — to borrow Andreyev's words — has been "no flowers, no poetry," only rising prices. And yet I still hold my "reckless opinions," unable to turn back. If I had a younger sister, like the family affairs of the "Idle Talk gentleman" so admiringly described in the Morning Post supplement, who would call out "Brother!" — her voice "like a silver bell ringing in a secluded valley" — imploring me, "Won't you please stop writing articles that offend people?" — then perhaps I could use this as a pretext to rein in my horse and retreat to a villa to study the Han dynasty commentaries on the "Four Books." But alas, I have no such fine sister.

Section 4

From the supplement of the Capital Gazette I learned of a periodical called National Spirit, which had published an article stating that while Zhang Shizhao was certainly no good, the "academic bandits" who opposed Zhang Shizhao should also be struck down. I am not sure whether this is truly the gist of it. But it makes no difference, for it merely prompted me to think of a topic that has nothing to do with the original text. The idea is this: according to old Chinese belief, a person has three souls and six spirits, or some say seven spirits.

The national spirit should be the same. Of these three souls, it seems one is the "official's soul," one is the "bandit's soul," and the third — what might that be? Perhaps the "people's soul," though I cannot quite decide. And because my knowledge is narrow and biased, I dare not point to all of Chinese society, and must shrink the scope to "the academic world."

The Chinese addiction to officialdom runs truly deep. The Han dynasty valued filial piety, which produced the burying of sons and the carving of wooden effigies; the Song dynasty valued Neo-Confucian philosophy, which produced tall hats and broken boots; the Qing dynasty valued examination essays, which produced nothing but "moreover" and "therefore." In short: the soul resides in being an official — wielding official power, adopting the official manner, speaking official language. With an emperor propped up as a puppet, to offend an official was to offend the emperor, and so those people earned the elegant epithet of "bandits." The academic world's speaking of official language began last year; all who opposed Zhang Shizhao earned the titles of "local bandit," "academic bandit," and "academic rogue," though it was still unknown from whose mouth these epithets came, so they remained merely a form of "rumor."

But this alone shows how bad the academic world was last year — to have produced, for the first time in history, academic bandits. To draw a comparison with larger national affairs: in times of great peace and prosperity, there are no bandits; but when brigands multiply like hair, if one consults the old histories, it is invariably because maternal relatives, eunuchs, treacherous ministers, and petty men have taken charge of the state — and even if one speaks volumes of official language, the result is still "alas and alack."

Section 5

I recall that when the vernacular language was first advocated, it suffered much slander and calumny. But when the vernacular ultimately did not fall, some people changed their tune and said: Nevertheless, one cannot write good vernacular without reading the old books. We should naturally be lenient toward the good intentions of these preservationists of antiquity, but we cannot help pitying and laughing at their ancestral methods. Anyone who has read even a little of the old books possesses this old trick: a newly risen idea is "heresy" and must be annihilated; but once it has fought its way through and established itself, they discover that it was originally "of the same source as the sacred teachings." Foreign things are all intended to "transform the civilized with the barbarian" and must be expelled; but once the "barbarian" has taken charge of the Central Kingdom, research reveals that even this "barbarian" was, after all, a descendant of the Yellow Emperor. Is this not beyond all expectation? Whatever it may be, our "antiquity" contains absolutely everything!

Those who use the old tricks naturally will never improve. Even now they still say that one who has not "read through several hundred volumes" cannot write good vernacular prose, and they forcibly drag out Mr. Wu Zhihui as an example. And yet there are those who find this "nauseating affectation amusing" and relate it with great relish — things in this world are truly wondrous beyond measure. In fact, Mr. Wu's "writing in conversational style" does not in appearance "resemble what is produced by babes and sucklings." Is it not true that "wherever his brush goes, it readily produces ten thousand words"?

Among these there are naturally classical allusions unknown to "babes and sucklings," and especially new allusions unknown to "beardless youths." At the end of the Guangxu era, when I first arrived in Tokyo, this Mr. Wu Zhihui was already waging a great battle with the envoy Cai Jun. His battle history was that long, so naturally his range of knowledge and experience is beyond the reach of today's "babes and sucklings." Therefore, his choice of words and use of allusions can in many places be fully understood only by those who are thoroughly familiar with all manner of great and small stories. From the perspective of youth, the first impression is astonishment at the torrent of his prose. This is perhaps what the distinguished scholars consider his strength — but the vitality does not reside there.

Section 6

In my native place, mutton is not much eaten; in the entire city, no more than a few goats are slaughtered each day. Beijing is truly a sea of humanity, and the situation is vastly different — mutton shops alone are everywhere you look. Flocks of snow-white sheep often fill the streets, but they are all hu-sheep, what we in my part of the country call mian-yang, or wool sheep. Mountain goats are rarely seen; I hear that in Beijing they are rather prized, because they are cleverer than the hu-sheep, able to lead the flock, which follows their every move. Therefore, although herdsmen occasionally keep a few, they are used solely as leaders for the hu-sheep and are never slaughtered.

I have seen such a mountain goat only once. It was indeed walking at the head of a flock of hu-sheep, with a small bell hanging from its neck — a badge of the intellectual class. Usually, however, the leader and driver is the herdsman, and the hu-sheep form a long line, pressing and jostling, a vast procession, their eyes fixed with an excess of docility, following him as he hurries along, racing toward their future. Whenever I see this earnest, bustling scene, I always want to open my mouth and put to them a question of unsurpassable stupidity:

"Where are you going?!"

Among humans there are also such mountain goats, who can lead the masses steadily and calmly to where they ought to go. Yuan Shikai understood something of this, but unfortunately did not employ it with much skill — probably because he did not read much, and so found it difficult to master the subtleties. The military men who came after were even stupider, knowing only how to slash and hack wildly, creating such cries of anguish that they filled the ears. The result was that in addition to brutalizing the common people, they also earned the reputation of despising learning and neglecting education. But "from each experience one gains wisdom": a quarter of the twentieth century has passed, and the clever people with little bells around their necks are bound to come into good fortune, though at present they still inevitably suffer some minor setbacks.

At that time, people — especially the young — will all follow the rules and behave properly, neither arrogant nor restless, marching single-mindedly toward the "right path" — as long as no one asks:

"Where are you going?!"

Section 7

A friend suddenly sent me a copy of the Morning Post Supplement, and I immediately felt something was unusual, for he knew I was too lazy to read such things. But since he had specially sent it, I thought I might as well glance at the heading: "A Notice to Readers Regarding the Following Bundle of Correspondence." The signature read: Zhimo. Ha! This was sent to tease me, I thought. I quickly turned the page and found several letters — this person writing to that one, that one writing to this — and after reading a few lines, I realized it still seemed to be about the "Idle Talk... Idle Talk" business. I knew only a little about this matter, namely that I had seen a letter from Professor Chen Yuan (Xi Ying) at the New Tide Society, saying that my "fabricated facts and circulated 'rumors' were already beyond counting." I could not help laughing; a man suffers from being unable to chop his own soul into mincemeat — and therefore he has memory, and therefore he has feelings of emotion or absurdity. I recall that the first person to pass judgment on the Yang Yinyu affair — that is, the Women's Normal University disturbance — on the basis of "rumors" was none other than this same Mr. Xi Ying, and that great essay appeared in the May 30 issue of Modern Review last year. Because I should not have been born of "a certain native place" and should not have been teaching in "a certain department," I too was classified among those who "secretly stirred up the disturbance," though he said he did not yet believe it, merely found it regrettable. Let me make a clarification here, to prevent readers' misunderstanding: "a certain department" presumably refers to the Chinese Literature department, not the Research Clique.

At that time, when I saw the word "rumors," I was quite indignant and immediately issued a rebuttal, though I was also rather ashamed that I lacked "ten years of reading and ten years of cultivating one's composure." Unexpectedly, half a year later, these "rumors" had been transformed into rumors circulated by me — fabricating one's own "rumors" about oneself — this is truly digging one's own grave. Not even a clever person, let alone a fool, could make sense of it. If the so-called "rumors" this time are not about "a certain native place and a certain department" but about Professor Chen Yuan, who does not believe in "rumors," then I truly do not know what fabricated facts and rumors about Professor Chen are circulating in society. To say it is embarrassingly humbling: I do not attend banquets, have very few social contacts, do not run about, and do not make calls. I have not the slightest interest in Professor Chen's private life, and even if I had, I would have no way of knowing anything about it.

What I know of this professor is merely what he has published in print. In the Modern Review, I have read his "Idle Talk" columns, his lengthy essay on "The Women's Normal University Incident," and letters from Xu Zhimo and others. From these I know: he is a returned student from England; he is a professor at Peking University; he apparently resides outside the university; he associates with Xu Zhimo, Tang Youren, and others; and he writes under the pen name Xi Ying. That is all.

Section 8

On January 30, the supplement of the Morning Post was packed full of certain material, now referred to by some as the "Attack Zhou Special Issue" — truly amusing stuff that reveals the true colors of these gentlemen. For reasons unknown, today's Morning Post Supplement suddenly brought the matter to a close, following the customary format of correspondence: Professor Li Siguang (李四光) provided the opening remarks, followed by "Poet-Philosopher" Xu Zhimo (徐志摩) with the concluding section. Singing in unison, they tossed out: "Halt! Let us roar a mighty 'Halt!' at both parties in this brawl!" And then came the "declaration: henceforth this publication will not carry writings that attack individuals," and so forth.

Their problem of "idle talk… idle talk" had nothing whatsoever to do with me. "Halt" or let loose, pull together or push apart — naturally they can play whatever games they please. But was it not just a few days ago that, on account of the "elder brother" connection, even my "face" was attacked? I had not gone to "brawl" at all; rather, I was dragged in by association. Now I have barely opened my mouth, and suddenly they want to "halt" again? From the gentlemen's perspective, this was naturally no more than "infringing" upon me with "a word or half a phrase," and there was certainly no need to "leap halfway to the sky." Yet in truth I had not "leapt halfway to the sky" at all — it is simply that I cannot so obediently heed their commands: when you want to "halt," I too must "halt."

I beg your pardon, but I had no inclination to read those writings carefully. The gist of what the "Poet-Philosopher" said seems to be this: if this carries on, university professors will lose their decorum, the "elders bearing the weighty responsibility of guiding the youth" will be disgraced, students will lose faith, and young people will grow impatient. How pitiful — if there is a stench, hurry up and cover it. "Elders bearing the weighty responsibility of guiding the youth" — do they have so much disgrace to lose, so much disgrace to fear losing? Wrapping "disgrace" in layer upon layer of gentlemen's clothing, putting on a fine face — does that make one a professor, a guide for the youth? The youth of China do not want mentors in top hats and fur coats, striking poses. They want mentors without pretense —

And if none exist, at least mentors with less pretense. Should anyone don a mask and set himself up as a mentor, we must demand that he take it off. Otherwise, we shall tear it off — tear each other's off. Tear until the blood runs, until the stinking airs are smashed to pieces — only then can we talk of what comes next. At that point, even if the value is only half a copper, it is real value; even if the ugliness is enough to make one "retch," it is the true face. To peel back a corner and then hurriedly stuff it back into a satin box — though this may lead people to suspect it is a diamond, they may equally guess it is dung. Even if the outside is plastered with fine labels — Anatole France! Bernard Shaw! — it is utterly useless!

Professor Li Siguang first advised me to "spend ten years reading and ten years cultivating my temperament." Let me reply with one more gentlemanly phrase: I appreciate the kind intention. I have read books — for more than ten years; I have cultivated my temperament — for less than ten years. But my reading never went well, and my cultivation never went well either. I am one of those whom Professor Li long ago deemed should be "cast to the jackals and tigers." At this point, there is really no need for gentle admonition, telling me about "causing others to suffer without cause." Does he truly believe himself the embodiment of "justice," and that after sentencing me to such severe punishment, I should kowtow in gratitude for the imperial grace? Furthermore, Professor Li considers that my "flavor of an Eastern literary man seems particularly abundant… so I always have to write to the barest bone before I am satisfied." My own view is quite the opposite. Precisely because I was born in the East, and moreover born in China, the lingering poison of the "Golden Mean" and "prudence" has seeped into my very flesh and marrow. Compared to the Frenchman Léon Bloy — who outright called the journalists of major newspapers "maggots" — I am truly "a minor sorcerer before a great one," which makes me ashamed that I ultimately cannot match the ferocity and boldness of the white man. Let me take Professor Li's own case as an example: First, because I knew Professor Li is a scientist who does not often "wage battles of pen and ink," I refrained from mentioning him whenever I could. It was only because I needed to return a toast to a member of his honorable society that I brought up the matter of "holding concurrent positions." Second, regarding the matter of concurrent positions and salaries, I already replied in Yusi (Thread of Talk), issue 65, though even there I did not "write to the barest bone."

I myself know that in China, my pen is considered rather sharp, and my words sometimes spare no one's feelings. But I also know how people use the fine names of justice and righteousness, the badges of upright gentlemen, the false faces of warmth and sincerity, the weapons of rumor and public opinion, and the tortuous, evasive language to pursue private gain, leaving the weak — who have neither knife nor pen — unable to draw breath. If I did not have this pen, I would be just another one bullied with no court of appeal. I have awakened, and so I must use it constantly — especially to expose the donkey's hooves beneath the qilin's hide. Should those hypocrites actually feel a twinge of pain, gain a measure of self-awareness, and realize that even tricks have their limits, and put on a few fewer masks — then, to borrow Professor Chen Yuan's own words, that would be "a lesson."

As long as anyone reveals his true worth, even if it amounts to only half a copper, I would never dare slight him with half a sentence. But if you try to fool people with the methods of stage acting — that will not work. I know what is what, and I will not play along with you.

To come to the aid of Professor Chen Yuan, the "Poet-Philosopher" seems to have quoted Romain Rolland to the effect that everyone has demons on their person, but people only know how to exorcize the demons on others.

I did not read it carefully and cannot speak to it precisely. But if that is roughly what was said, then it amounts to an admission that Professor Chen Yuan also has demons on his person, and Professor Li Siguang can hardly escape either. Previously, they had assumed themselves demon-free. If they truly know now that they too carry demons, then the matter of "halting" becomes quite easy to settle. Simply stop putting on stage performances, stop striking stinking poses. Forget your titles as professors, and do not play the role of elders guiding the youth. Plant your banner of "justice" on a night-soil cart. Toss your gentlemen's garments into a stinking privy. Take off your masks, stand naked before us, and say a few true words — that will be enough!

February 3.

Section 9

Sitting and listening to the sound of firecrackers near and far, I know that the Kitchen Gods are ascending to Heaven one after another, off to speak ill of their masters before the Jade Emperor. But he probably never says anything in the end — otherwise, the Chinese would certainly be even more unlucky than they already are.

On the day the Kitchen God ascends to Heaven, a kind of candy is still sold in the streets, about the size of a tangerine. In our part of the country we have the same thing, only flat, like a thick little griddle cake. This is the so-called "jaw-sticking malt candy." The original idea is to feed it to the Kitchen God so that it sticks his teeth together, preventing him from wagging his tongue and speaking ill of you to the Jade Emperor. The gods and spirits in the Chinese imagination seem somewhat more honest than living people, which is why such strong-arm methods must be used on gods and spirits, while for living people one can only invite them to dinner.

The gentlemen of today often avoid speaking of eating, especially of being invited to eat. This is naturally nothing to wonder at — it does indeed sound rather unseemly. But there are so many restaurants in Beijing, so many dinner engagements — can they all be dining on clams and discussing the moonlight, "singing merrily as the wine warms and ears flush"? Not entirely. In fact, a great deal of "public opinion" is sown in such places. It is only because no trace can be found between public opinion and dinner invitations that the pronouncements stand forth so grandly and imperially. Yet in my view, the public opinion that emerges after drinking is actually more humane. Man is not made of wood or stone — how can one discuss nothing but reason? Being swayed by personal feelings and leaning to one side — therein lies precisely a human breath. Besides, China has always placed great store by "face." What is "face"? Someone in the Ming Dynasty already explained it: "Face is what you call... face." Naturally one does not know what he means, but one can also understand what he means. In today's world, expecting impartial public opinion is nothing but a dream. Even post-dinner assessments and after-wine pronouncements — why not listen to them with a grain of salt? However, if you take them for the genuine, old-brand article of public opinion, you will certainly be taken in —

But one cannot blame this entirely on the opinion-makers. Society promotes the practice of inviting people to dinner while taboo-ing any mention of dinner invitations, compelling people to be false — and surely society must share its portion of the blame.

I recall that several years ago — it was after the "remonstrance by armed force" — during the era when the class that possessed guns was particularly fond of holding conferences in Tianjin, a young man indignantly told me: "What conference? Over the banquet table, at the gambling table — a few casual words and everything is decided." He was one of those deceived by the doctrine that "public opinion does not originate at banquets," which is why he was perpetually indignant. Little did he know that the ideal state of affairs he envisioned would probably not materialize until the year 2925, or perhaps not until 3925.

Yet there are indeed honest people who do not regard wine and food as paramount — otherwise China would be even worse off. Some conferences begin at two in the afternoon: debating issues, studying bylaws, questioning and challenging, a tempest of words, all the way until seven or eight o'clock. Then everyone inexplicably begins to feel somewhat anxious and agitated, tempers grow worse, arguments become more tangled, bylaws more remote. Although they say "let us not adjourn until the discussion is concluded," in the end it breaks up in a tumult, without result. This is the retribution for slighting food. The anxiety at six or seven o'clock is the stomach's warning to itself and to others. But everyone has swallowed the heretical doctrine that eating has nothing to do with speaking justice, and pays it no heed. So the stomach ensures your speeches lack brilliance, your manifestos — you do not even have a draft.

But I do not mean that whenever there is a matter to discuss, one must head to some Taiping Lake Restaurant or Jieying Western-food House for a grand banquet. I hold no shares in any of those establishments and have no reason to solicit customers for them — nor does everyone necessarily have that much money. I merely say: making pronouncements and being invited to dinner are still connected; being invited to dinner still serves the making of pronouncements. Although this is merely human nature, nothing especially remarkable.

In passing, I would also like to offer a word of sincere advice to enthusiastic and honest young people: for meetings without wine or food, do not let them drag on too long. If it is getting late, buy a few sesame buns to eat before continuing. With this simple measure, it will certainly be easier to reach conclusions and come to a close than arguing on an empty stomach.

As for the strong-arm method of jaw-sticking malt candy — when used on the Kitchen God, I do not care how it works — but applied to living people, it is not very advisable. If it is a living person, nothing works better than getting him drunk and well-fed once, so that he refrains from opening his mouth of his own accord — not because his jaws are glued shut. The Chinese are quite ingenious in their dealings with people, but with gods and spirits they always employ special measures. The trickery played on the Kitchen God on the twenty-third night is one example. But, strangely enough, the Kitchen God seems not to have caught on even to this day.

The Taoists' method of dealing with the "Three Corpse Spirits" is even more formidable. I have never been a Taoist priest, so I do not know the details. But according to "hearsay," Taoists believe that within the human body dwell three Corpse Spirits, and on a certain day they steal up to Heaven while their host is sound asleep, to report his transgressions. These are truly the spies within the body itself — the "Three Corpse Spirits" constantly mentioned in The Investiture of the Gods, as in "the Three Corpse Spirits rage, and smoke pours from seven orifices."

But apparently it is not difficult to thwart them, for the day they ascend to Heaven is fixed. One need only stay awake on that day, and they find no gap to exploit — they can only keep all the transgressions stored in their belly and wait for next year's chance. They do not even get any jaw-sticking malt candy to eat; they are truly more wretched than the Kitchen God, and deserving of sympathy.

The Three Corpse Spirits do not ascend to Heaven, and the catalogue of sins stays in the belly. The Kitchen God does ascend, but with his mouth full of candy, he mumbles something unintelligible before the Jade Emperor and comes back down again. As for the state of the world below, the Jade Emperor does not understand a word and knows nothing at all. And so, this year again, naturally everything carries on as before — peace reigns under Heaven.

We Chinese have such methods even when dealing with gods and spirits.

We Chinese, though we revere and believe in gods and spirits, consider them on the whole stupider than people, and so employ special methods to deal with them. As for dealing with people, that is naturally different — but special methods are still employed, only no one will say so. The moment you say it, they claim you are demeaning them. Admittedly, one who fancies he has seen through everything can indeed sometimes appear rather shallow.

February 5.

Section 10

When the Chinese deal with gods and spirits, they fawn upon the ferocious ones — such as the God of Pestilence and the God of Fire — while bullying the more honest ones, such as the Earth God or the Kitchen God. The treatment of the emperor follows a similar logic. Ruler and people belong to the same nation; in times of chaos, "he who succeeds is a king, he who fails is a bandit." In normal times, one follows custom and becomes emperor while the many follow custom and remain commoners. Between the two, there is no great difference in thinking. Thus, while the emperor and his ministers have their "policy of keeping the people ignorant," the common people likewise have their own "policy of keeping the ruler ignorant."

In the household of my youth, there was an old maidservant who once told me the method she knew — and believed in — for dealing with the emperor. She said:

"The emperor is very frightening. He sits upon the Dragon Throne, and the moment he is displeased, he has people killed — he is not easy to deal with. So the food you give him cannot be given carelessly. If it is something not easily obtained and he eats it and wants more, and you cannot procure it immediately — say he fancies melons in winter or peaches in autumn — and you cannot provide them, he flies into a rage and has people killed. So now they feed him spinach all year round. Whenever he wants it, there it is, no trouble at all. But if you call it spinach, he will be angry again, because it is a cheap thing. So everyone gives it a different name — they call it 'Red-Beaked Green Parrot.'"

In my hometown, spinach is available all year round, and its roots are very red — just like a parrot's beak.

An emperor so foolish that even an ignorant old woman could see it — one might think he could well be done away with. Yet she did not think so. She believed he was necessary, and moreover should be allowed to lord it over everyone as he pleased. As for his purpose, it seemed to be that he was needed to suppress others who were even more powerful than oneself. Therefore, killing people at will was precisely an indispensable attribute. But if one were to encounter him oneself, and moreover had to serve him? That felt somewhat dangerous, and so one had no choice but to train him into a fool, patiently feeding him "Red-Beaked Green Parrot" all year long.

In truth, those who exploited his title and position to "hold the Son of Heaven hostage and issue orders to the lords" shared exactly the same idea and method as my old maidservant — except that the one wanted him weak, while the other wanted him stupid. The Confucians' reliance on a "Sage King" to implement the Way amounted to the same trick: because they needed to "rely" on him, they needed his prestige and lofty position; because they needed him to be easy to manipulate, they also needed him to be rather naive and obedient.

Once the emperor became aware of his own supreme authority, things grew difficult. Since "all land under Heaven belongs to the king," he ran amok, and even said, "I obtained it myself, I lose it myself — what have I to resent!" And so the disciples of the sages had no choice but to feed him "Red-Beaked Green Parrot" — which is to say, "Heaven." The Son of Heaven, it was said, should model all his actions on the will of Heaven and must not run amok. And this so-called "will of Heaven" just happened to be known only to the Confucian scholars.

Thus it was settled: anyone who wished to be emperor had no choice but to consult them.

But then unruly emperors would run amok again. You tell him about "Heaven"? He retorts: "Was my birth not ordained by Heaven?!" Not content with merely failing to comply with Heaven's will, he defied Heaven, turned his back on Heaven, even "shot arrows at Heaven" — reducing the country to ruin and leaving the sage gentlemen who relied on Heaven for their livelihood unable to cry or laugh.

And so they could only retire to write their books and treatises, giving him a good tongue-lashing, anticipating that a hundred years hence — that is, after their own death — their works would be widely circulated, and congratulating themselves that this amounted to something remarkable.

But in those books, at most, it is only recorded that both the "policy of keeping the people ignorant" and the "policy of keeping the ruler ignorant" were complete failures.

February 17.

1

Again a saying from Mr. Schopenhauer:

"There is no rose without thorns. — But there are plenty of thorns without roses." The title has been changed a little, making it more pleasing.

"Roses without blooms" is also rather pleasing.

2

Last year, for some reason, this Mr. Schopenhauer suddenly suited the palates of the gentlemen in our country, and so they dragged in a bit of his essay "On Women." I too jumbled things together and quoted him several times, but unfortunately it was all thorns, missing the roses — truly a great spoiler of the scenery, and my apologies to the gentlemen.

I recall that as a small child I saw a play — the title I have forgotten — in which a family was in the middle of a wedding, but the soul-snatching ghost of Impermanence had already arrived and joined in the wedding ceremony: bowing together, entering the bridal chamber together, sitting on the bed together... Truly a great spoiler of the scenery. I hope I have not quite come to that.

3

Someone has called me "one who shoots cold arrows."

My understanding of "shooting cold arrows" differs somewhat from theirs: it means someone is wounded but does not know where the arrow came from. What is called "rumor" is something close to this. But I — I am plainly standing right here.

Yet I sometimes shoot without specifying who the target is. This is because I have no desire to "have everyone join in condemning him." I only want the target himself to know, to know he has a hole in him, and to stop puffing out his face so tight. Then my business is done.

4

No sooner had Mr. Cai Yuanpei (蔡孑民) arrived in Shanghai than the Morning Post, citing a Guowen News Agency telegram, solemnly published his remarks, adding editorial commentary to the effect that they "must be the result of years of quiet research and cold-eyed observation, well worthy of instructing the nation and deserving the attention of the intellectual class."

I strongly suspect those were actually the remarks of Mr. Hu Shi (胡適之), and there was some error in the Guowen Agency's telegraph code.

5

The prophet — that is, the one who awakens first — is invariably unwelcome in his homeland and is often persecuted by his contemporaries. Even great men often fare thus. To earn people's reverence and admiration, one must die, or fall silent, or not be present.

In short, the first requirement is that verification must be difficult.

If Confucius, Shakyamuni, and Jesus Christ were still alive, their followers would inevitably be alarmed. One can only imagine what the founders would sigh about their followers' behavior.

Therefore, if they are alive, there is no choice but to persecute them.

By the time a great figure has become a fossil and everyone calls him a great man, he has already been turned into a puppet.

There is a class of people for whom "greatness" and "smallness" are measured solely by how much profit they can extract from someone.

6

The French writer Romain Rolland turns sixty this year. For this occasion, the Morning Post Society solicited essays, and Mr. Xu Zhimo (徐志摩), after his introduction, expressed this sentiment: "...But if someone were to take some fashionable slogans — 'Down with imperialism' and so forth — or the phenomena of division and suspicion, and report to Mr. Rolland that this is the New China, I can no longer predict what his reaction would be." (Morning Post Supplement, No. 1299)

He lives far away and we cannot verify this immediately. But does it seem, from the "Poet-Philosopher's" point of view, that Mr. Rolland believes the New China should welcome imperialism?

The "Poet-Philosopher" has gone off to West Lake to view the plum blossoms again, and for the moment we cannot verify this either. I wonder whether the ancient plum trees of Solitary Hill have bloomed yet, and whether they too are there opposing the Chinese slogan "Down with imperialism"?

7

Mr. Zhimo said: "I very rarely praise people. But speaking of Xi Ying's study of the writings of Anatole France, I dare say he has already earned, in the Tianjin expression, the phrase 'well-grounded.' " Moreover, "Someone like Xi Ying, in my view, truly deserves the title of 'scholar.' " (Morning Post Supplement, No. 1423)

Professor Xi Ying (西瀅) said: "China's new literary movement is still in its infancy, but those who have made some contribution — Hu Shizhi, Xu Zhimo, Guo Moruo, Yu Dafu, Ding Xilin, the Zhou brothers, and others — have all studied foreign literature. Especially Zhimo — not only in thought but also in form, his poetry and prose already possess a style never before seen in Chinese literature." (Xiandai Pinglun [Contemporary Review], No. 63)

Although it was tedious to copy, the "well-grounded" "scholar" and the "especially" distinguished thinker and man of letters of today's China have managed to select each other.

8

Mr. Zhimo said: "As for the works of Mr. Lu Xun — and this is very disrespectful to say — I have read very few. Just two or three short stories from the Nahan [Call to Arms] collection, and recently, because someone honored him as China's Nietzsche, a few pages from his Re Feng [Hot Wind] collection. His usual miscellaneous pieces — even if I read them, it is as though I haven't, for nothing goes in, or I simply don't understand." (Morning Post Supplement, No. 1433)

Professor Xi Ying said: "The moment Mr. Lu Xun picks up his pen, he fabricates charges against people....

But his writings — after I read them I put them where they belong. To speak frankly, I feel they should never have come out of there in the first place. But I don't have them at hand." (ibid.)

Although it was tedious to copy, I have been duly trampled by the concerted efforts of China's current "well-grounded" "scholar" and "especially" distinguished thinker and man of letters.

9

But I wish to return the honorific title of "having studied foreign literature." One of the "Zhou brothers" is no doubt me again. When have I ever studied anything? Reading a few foreign novels and literary biographies as a student — does that count as "having studied foreign literature"?

The said professor — pardon my "official language" — once said that I laughed at others for calling them "men of letters" but did not laugh when "a certain newspaper trumpeted daily" that I was "an authority in the world of thought." Now I do more than laugh — I downright spit upon it.

10

And in truth, to retaliate when slandered yet stay silent when praised is simply human nature. Who can argue that because one's left cheek received a kiss from a lover without a sound, one must therefore, citing this precedent, silently offer one's right cheek for an enemy to bite?

The reason I now decline even the honorific title that Professor Xi Ying bestowed as window-dressing — "to speak frankly" — is out of necessity. Are there not "legal secretaries" among my fellow Shaoxingers? They all know: certain people, in order to demonstrate their impartiality when they harm you, will praise you in a few irrelevant places, as if there were both reward and punishment, making onlookers think they are disinterested...

"Halt!" I am about to "fabricate charges against people" again. This point alone is already enough to make one "read and yet not read," or "read and then put it where it belongs."

February 27.

1

The British nobleman Lord Birkenhead said: "Chinese students only read English-language newspapers and have forgotten the teachings of Confucius. The greatest enemy of England is this kind of student who curses the Empire with all his might and takes delight in its misfortunes.... China is the best field of activity for radical parties...." (Reuter telegram from London, June 30, 1925.)

A dispatch from Nanjing reports: "The Christian city chapel invited a certain theology professor from the University of Nanjing, a Doctor of Divinity, to give a lecture, in which he stated that Confucius was a disciple of Jesus, since Confucius prayed to God when eating and sleeping. A member of the audience... asked on what basis he made such a claim; the Doctor was speechless. Thereupon several church members suddenly bolted the doors shut and declared: 'Those who ask such questions are bought with Soviet Russian rubles.' They then called the police to arrest them...." (Guomin Gongbao [National Public Gazette], March 11.)

The miraculous powers of Soviet Russia are truly vast — to have bribed Shuliang He (叔梁紇) into begetting Confucius before Jesus! Then those who "forget the teachings of Confucius" and those who "ask on what basis such a claim is made" must surely all be acting under the influence of rubles.

2

Professor Xi Ying (西瀅) said: "I hear that in the 'united front,' the rumors about me are especially numerous, and it is said I alone receive three thousand yuan a month. 'Rumors' flow on the tongue; on paper, they are not much seen." (Xiandai Pinglun [Contemporary Review], No. 65.)

Last year, the said professor only heard rumors about other people, which he then published in print. This year, it is said, he has heard rumors about himself, which he likewise publishes in print. "One person receiving three thousand yuan a month" is indeed especially absurd, which shows that "rumors" about oneself are not to be believed. But in my view, those about others seem rather more often close to the truth.

3

It is said that after "Mr. Gu Tong" (孤桐先生) left office, his journal Jia Yin (甲寅) gradually began to show some signs of life. From which one may see that one should not hold office. Yet now he has become Secretary-General of the Provisional Executive Government again — I wonder whether Jia Yin still shows signs of life? If it does, then holding office is perhaps not so bad after all....

4

It is no longer the time for writing things like "Roses Without Blooms."

Although what I write is mostly thorns, it still requires a certain peaceable heart.

Now, I hear, in Beijing, a great slaughter has already been carried out. At the moment I was writing these trivial words above, it was the very moment when many young people were being struck by bullets and cut down by blades.

Alas — the souls of one person and another do not communicate.

5

On March 18 of the fifteenth year of the Republic of China, the government of Duan Qirui (段祺瑞) ordered its guards to use rifles and broadswords to surround and massacre, before the gates of the State Council, unarmed petitioners — young men and women whose purpose was to support the nation's diplomacy — numbering in the hundreds. And then issued an order slandering them as "rioters"!

Such cruel and treacherous conduct is not only unseen among beasts; even among humankind it is exceedingly rare — save for a slight resemblance to the incident when Tsar Nicholas II sent Cossack soldiers to slaughter the populace.

6

China simply allows wolves and tigers to devour it, and no one cares. The only ones who care are a few young students, who should properly be studying in peace, but the times are so turbulent that they cannot sit still. If those in power had the slightest conscience, how ought they to examine themselves and stir up a shred of natural goodness?

Yet they slaughtered them!

7

If it were true that such young people could be finished off by a single slaughter, then know this: the slaughterers would by no means be the victors either.

China would perish together with the perishing of its patriots. Though the slaughterers, having accumulated gold and wealth, may nurture their descendants somewhat longer, the inevitable outcome is certain to arrive. What joy is there in "descendants continuing in an unbroken line"? Their extinction will merely come a little later, but they will inhabit the most uninhabitable wastelands, work as miners in the deepest shafts, practice the lowliest of trades....

8

If China is not yet fated to perish, then the historical record has already taught us that what comes next will far exceed the expectations of the slaughterers —

This is not the end of something. This is the beginning.

Lies written in ink can never obscure facts written in blood.

Blood debts must be repaid in kind. The longer the debt is carried, the greater the interest!

9

All the above is empty talk. What does it matter, being written with a pen?

What the real bullets fired, however, was the blood of the young. Blood is neither obscured by lies written in ink nor intoxicated by elegies written in ink. Even force cannot suppress it, for it has already been deceived past deceiving and killed past killing.

Written on March 18 — the darkest day since the founding of the Republic.

Section 13

From the perspective of ordinary people — especially the Chinese, long trampled by foreign races and their lackeys and running dogs — the killer is always the victor, and the killed is always the loser. And the facts before our eyes are indeed thus.

The massacre of unarmed petitioning citizens and students by the Duan government on March 18 has already left us beyond words — it only makes us feel that the place we inhabit is not the human world. Yet Beijing's so-called world of public opinion has at least managed some commentary. Although paper, pen, and voice cannot cause the young people's hot blood, spilled before the government gates, to flow back into their bodies and revive them, it amounts to nothing more than hollow cries, which together with the facts of the killing gradually grow cold.

But among the various commentaries, I find some more terrifying than knives and guns. These are the assertions of several pundits that the students should not have set foot on that ground of death and gone to throw away their lives. If unarmed petitioning is "throwing away one's life," and the gates of one's own government constitute a "ground of death" — then the Chinese truly have no place left to be buried, unless they willingly and wholeheartedly serve as slaves, "living out their days without a word of complaint." But I still do not know what the majority of Chinese think. If they think likewise, then it is not only the ground before the Executive Government that is a ground of death — all of China, everywhere, is a ground of death.

People's sufferings are not easily shared. Because they are not easily shared, the killer takes killing as the only path, and even finds pleasure in it. But also because they are not easily shared, the "terror of death" that the killer displays still cannot deter those who come after, turning the people into cattle and horses forever. In history's records of reform, those who fall are always followed by others who carry on. This is largely due to the cause of justice, of course; but the fact that people who have not experienced the "terror of death" are not easily cowed by the "terror of death" — this too, I believe, is a very significant reason.

Yet I earnestly hope that the business of "petitioning" can stop from now on. If this much blood has purchased such an awakening and such a resolve — and if it is remembered forever — then it may not be considered too great a loss.

The progress of the world, naturally, is mostly achieved through bloodshed. But this bears no relation to the quantity of blood, for there are plenty of cases in history where a great deal of blood was shed and yet the nation moved closer to extinction. Take this very incident: so many lives lost, only to earn the verdict of "walking into a ground of death" — this alone has revealed to us the inner workings of a portion of the human heart, and shown us that the grounds of death in China are exceedingly vast.

As it happens, I have before me a copy of Romain Rolland's Le Jeu de L'Amour et de La Mort, in which it is said: Carnot maintained that for the sake of human progress, a small blemish is permissible, and if absolutely necessary, even a touch of evil. But they did not wish to kill Korbatchy, because the Republic did not care to hold his corpse in its arms — for it was too heavy.

A nation that feels the weight of corpses and does not wish to carry them — in such a nation, the "death" of martyrs is the sole remedy for the "life" of those who come after. But in a nation that no longer feels their weight, it is merely something that presses everyone down into a common destruction.

The aspiring young reformers of China know the weight of corpses, which is why they always resort to "petitioning." Little do they know that there are others who do not feel the weight of corpses — and who moreover slaughter the very heart that "knows the weight of corpses."

The ground of death is indeed before us. For China's sake, the awakened youth should no longer die so lightly.

March 25.

Section 14

The massacre of March 18, viewed in retrospect, was clearly a snare laid by the government, into which the pure-hearted young people unfortunately fell — with casualties numbering over three hundred. The key to the success of this snare lay entirely in the efficacy of "rumors."

This is an old custom in China. The hearts of the literati generally harbor murderous intent; for those who disagree with them, they always arrange some path to death. From what I have personally witnessed, whenever conspirators attack another faction, in the Guangxu era they used the label "Kang Party," in the Xuantong era "Revolutionary Party," after the second year of the Republic "Rebel Party," and now, naturally, it must be "Communist Party."

In truth, when last year certain "upright gentlemen" dubbed others "academic rogues" and "academic bandits," murderous intent was already present, for such epithets differ from "stinking gentry" or "petty literatus" — in the characters for "rogue" and "bandit" there already lurk paths to death. But perhaps this is merely the deep inquisitorial logic of the "clerk with a poisoned pen."

Last year, for the sake of "rectifying academic morals," rumors were spread far and wide about how deplorable academic morals had become, how detestable the "academic bandits" were — and these rumors proved remarkably effective. This year, again for the sake of "rectifying academic morals," rumors were widely spread about how the Communist Party was operating, how detestable they were — and again these proved remarkably effective. Thus the petitioners were treated as Communists, and over three hundred people were killed or wounded. If a single so-called Communist leader had died among them, it would have sufficed to prove that this petition was an "insurrection."

Unfortunately, not one did. Surely then they were not Communists? Reportedly they still were, but they had all fled — which made them all the more detestable. And this petition was still an insurrection. The evidence consisted of one wooden club, two pistols, and three bottles of kerosene. Setting aside whether these were truly items carried by the crowd — even if they were, that the weapons carried by over three hundred dead and wounded amounted to no more than this: what a pitiful insurrection that would be!

Yet the next day, arrest warrants were issued for Xu Qian (徐谦), Li Dazhao (李大钊), Li Yuying (李煜瀛), Yi Peiji (易培基), and Gu Zhaoxiong (顾兆熊). Because they had "gathered mobs together" — just as the students of the Women's Normal University had last year "gathered male students" (the words used by Zhang Shizhao [章士钊] in his petition to dissolve the Women's Normal University) — they had "gathered" a mob armed with one wooden club, two pistols, and three bottles of kerosene. To attempt to overthrow the government with such a mob would naturally result in over three hundred casualties; and for the Xu Qians to play with human lives to this extent, they naturally ought to bear the charge of murder — especially since they themselves did not appear on the scene, or had all fled!

The above concerns political affairs, which I do not really understand well. But viewed from another angle, this so-called "strict arrest" seems rather more like chasing people away. The so-called "strict arrest" of rioters seems to amount to nothing more than chasing away the president of Beijing's Sino-French University and chairman of the Commission for the Settlement of Qing Dynasty Affairs (Li), the president of the Sino-Russian University (Xu), a professor at Peking University (Li Dazhao), the dean of academic affairs at Peking University (Gu), and the president of the Women's Normal University (Yi). Three of them were also members of the Russian Indemnity Commission — vacating a total of nine "fine and handsome positions."

On the same day there arose yet another rumor: that over fifty more people were to be arrested. But a partial list of names did not appear in the Jingbao until today. Such a scheme is quite conceivable in the minds of the likes of Zhang Shizhao, currently Secretary-General of Duan Qirui's (段祺瑞) government. For political criminals to number over fifty would indeed be a grand spectacle for the Republic of China. And since most of them are presumably teachers, if they were all to vacate over fifty "fine and handsome positions" simultaneously, flee Beijing, and set up a school somewhere else, that would truly be an amusing episode for the Republic of China.

The name of that school should be the "Gathering" School.

March 26.

I

On March 25, in the fifteenth year of the Republic of China — the day the National Beijing Women's Normal University held a memorial service for Miss Liu Hezhen (刘和珍) and Miss Yang Dequn (杨德群), who had been killed before the Executive Mansion of Duan Qirui (段祺瑞) on the eighteenth — I was pacing alone outside the ceremonial hall when I ran into Miss Cheng, who came up and asked me: "Sir, have you written anything for Liu Hezhen?" I said, "No." She solemnly urged me: "Sir, you really ought to write something; in her lifetime, Liu Hezhen was very fond of reading your essays."

This I knew. Every periodical I have edited has always had rather meager sales, probably because they tend to begin but never end. Yet even amid such hardship, one person who had resolutely subscribed to Mangyuan for the full year was she. I too had long felt the necessity of writing something, though this would make no difference whatsoever to the dead; for the living, however, this is perhaps the most one can do. If I could believe there truly existed such a thing as "a spirit in heaven," I might naturally find greater comfort — but as things stand now, this is the most one can do.

Yet I truly have nothing to say. I only feel that the place where I live is not the human world. The blood of more than forty young people is flooding all around me, making it difficult for me to breathe, to see, to hear — how could I still find words? Singing a long song in lieu of weeping is something that can only be done after the pain has subsided. And since then, the sinister arguments of a few so-called scholars and literati have made me feel all the more sorrowful. I have passed beyond mere anger. I shall savor deeply this thick, black sorrow of a world that is not the world of humans; with my greatest grief I shall make a display before this inhuman world, to let it take pleasure in my anguish, and offer this as a meager sacrifice before the spirits of the departed.

II

The true warrior dares to face the bleakest life head-on, dares to confront the most profuse blood. What manner of sorrowful and fortunate person is this? Yet fate often designs things for the mediocre: with the passage of time it washes away old traces, leaving only a faint red bloodstain and a vague sorrow. Amid this faint red bloodstain and vague sorrow, people are granted a temporary stolen existence, sustaining this world that seems human yet is not. I do not know when such a world will reach its end!

We still live in such a world; and I too had long felt the necessity of writing something. Two weeks have already passed since March 18; the savior called Forgetting is about to descend — and I have all the more reason to write something now.

III

Among the more than forty young people killed, Miss Liu Hezhen was my student. As for the word "student" — I have always thought and spoken of it thus, but now I find myself hesitating, for I should offer her my sorrow and my respect. She was not a student of "I who have merely lingered on till now"; she was a young Chinese woman who died for China.

The first time her name came to my attention was in the early summer of last year, when Ms. Yang Yinyu (杨荫榆) was serving as president of the Women's Normal University and expelled six members of the student self-government association. She was one of them; but I did not know her. It was not until later — perhaps already after Liu Baizhao (刘百昭) had led his male and female officers to drag the students forcibly out of the school — that someone pointed out a student and told me: "That is Liu Hezhen." Only then could I match the name with the person, and I was secretly astonished. I had always imagined that a student who could resist pressure and stand up against a well-connected president would, no matter what, be somewhat fierce and sharp-tongued. But she was always smiling, with a most gentle demeanor. When they had taken refuge in Zongmao Hutong, renting rooms to hold classes, she first came to attend my lectures, and so we met more frequently — yet she was always smiling, with a most gentle demeanor. When the school was restored to its former state, and the former faculty, feeling their duty discharged, prepared to withdraw one by one, I saw her worrying about the future of her alma mater, so despondent as to shed tears. After that we seemed not to meet again. In sum, in my memory, that last time was our farewell.

IV

On the morning of the eighteenth, I first learned that there was to be a mass petition to the Executive Mansion that morning. In the afternoon came the dreadful news: the guards had actually opened fire, killing and wounding several hundred people, and Miss Liu Hezhen was among the victims. But I was so incredulous of these reports as almost to doubt them. I have always been unsparing in attributing the worst malice to the Chinese, yet I had not expected, nor could I believe, that they could stoop to such depths of vileness and cruelty. Moreover, how could the ever-smiling, gentle Miss Liu Hezhen come to bleed to death, for no reason at all, before the gates of the Mansion?

Yet that very day it was proved to be fact, the proof being her own corpse. There was another — that of Miss Yang Dequn. And moreover it was proved that this was not merely killing but outright murder by torture, for there were still the marks of clubs upon their bodies.

Yet the Duan government issued an order calling them "rioters"! And immediately there followed rumors, saying they had been used by others.

The ghastly scene has already made my eyes unable to bear looking; the rumors have made my ears all the more unable to bear listening. What more can I say? I understand now the reason why declining nations perish in silence. Silence, oh silence! Those who do not explode in silence shall perish in silence.

V

But I still have something to say.

I was not there in person; I have heard that she, Miss Liu Hezhen, went gladly at the time. Naturally — it was only a petition; anyone with a shred of humanity would never have anticipated such a trap. Yet she was shot before the Executive Mansion, the bullet entering from her back, piercing diagonally through heart and lungs — already a fatal wound, though she did not die at once. Her companion Zhang Jingshu (张静淑) tried to lift her up, and was hit by four bullets, one from a pistol, and fell instantly. Her companion Yang Dequn tried in turn to lift her up, and was also shot — the bullet entered from the left shoulder, passed through the chest, and exited on the right — and she too fell instantly. But Liu Hezhen was still able to sit up, whereupon a soldier struck her savagely twice on the head and chest with a club, and then she died.

The ever-smiling, gentle Miss Liu Hezhen is indeed dead — this is true, with her own corpse as proof. The courageous and loving Miss Yang Dequn is also dead — with her own corpse as proof. Only the equally courageous and loving Miss Zhang Jingshu still lies moaning in the hospital. When three women calmly made their way through the concentrated fire of bullets invented by civilized men — what an awe-inspiring greatness that was! The glorious feats of the Chinese military in slaughtering women and children, the martial achievements of the Eight-Nation Alliance in punishing students — all were unfortunately obliterated by these few streaks of blood.

Yet the murderers, both Chinese and foreign, actually held their heads high, unaware that every face among them was stained with blood...

VI

Time flows on forever, the streets remain as peaceful as ever. A few limited lives count for nothing in China — at most, they provide after-dinner conversation for idle folk without malice, or furnish seed for "rumors" among idle folk with malice. As for any deeper significance beyond this, I find it very sparse, for this was in truth nothing more than a petition by unarmed people. The history of humanity's bloody advance is like the formation of coal: at the time, enormous quantities of wood were consumed, yet the result was only a small lump — and petitions have no place in that process, let alone unarmed ones.

Yet since blood has been shed, it will naturally, even involuntarily, spread. At the very least, it should soak into the hearts of kinfolk, teachers, friends, and lovers, so that even as time flows on and washes it to a pale red, the smiling, gentle image of old shall endure forever amid the vague sorrow. Tao Qian (陶潜) once wrote: "Kinfolk may yet grieve a while, / Others have already sung their songs. / What is there to say of the dead? / Their bodies rest with the hills." If this much can be achieved, it is enough.

VII

I have already said: I have always been unsparing in attributing the worst malice to the Chinese. But this time, several things exceeded even my expectations. First, that those in power could be so cruel. Second, that the rumormongers could stoop to such depths of vileness. Third, that Chinese women could face danger with such composure.

I first witnessed Chinese women in action only last year, and though they were few in number, their capable decisiveness and unyielding spirit moved me to admiration time and again. As for this occasion, when in a rain of bullets they rescued one another, not flinching even at the cost of their own lives — this is all the more proof that the courage and fortitude of Chinese women, though suppressed for millennia by plots and conspiracies, has in the end never perished. If one seeks the significance of these casualties for the future, it lies in this.

Those who merely linger on, amid the faint red bloodstain, may dimly perceive a faint hope; the true warrior shall stride forward all the more resolutely.

Alas! I cannot find words, but with these lines I commemorate Miss Liu Hezhen!

I

I have never approved of petitioning — but not because I feared a massacre like that of March 18. Such a massacre I had truly never dreamed of, even though I habitually view my fellow Chinese with the mentality of a "clerk with a poisoned pen." I knew only that they were apathetic, without conscience, and not worth reasoning with — let alone through petitions, let alone unarmed ones — yet I had not expected such insidious cruelty. Those who could have foreseen it were probably only Duan Qirui (段祺瑞), Jia Deyao (贾德耀), Zhang Shizhao (章士钊), and their ilk. The lives of forty-seven young men and women were taken entirely through deception — it was nothing short of murder by enticement.

Certain creatures — what should I call them? I cannot think of a word — said: the leaders of the masses ought to bear moral responsibility. These creatures seem to acknowledge that it is proper to open fire on an unarmed crowd, that the space before the Executive Mansion was a "killing ground," and that the dead had walked into a trap of their own accord.

The leaders of the masses had no telepathic bond with Duan Qirui and his kind, nor were they in any secret collusion — how could they have anticipated such insidious brutality? Such brutality is something that anyone with the slightest trace of humanity would never, ever have imagined.

I believe that if one must find fault with the leaders of the masses, there are only two points: first, that they still considered petitioning useful; second, that they thought too well of their adversaries.

II

But even the above is hindsight. I think that before this event actually occurred, probably no one would have expected such a tragedy to unfold — at most, they expected only the customary futility. Only learned and clever people could foresee in advance that all petitioning amounts to throwing away one's life.

Professor Chen Yuan's (陈源) "Idle Talk" stated: "If we were to advise our women activists to participate less in mass movements henceforth, they would certainly say we look down on them, so we dare not say too much. But regarding underage boys and girls, we cannot but hope that hereafter they will no longer participate in any movements." (Modern Review, No. 68.) Why? Because participating in various movements means — even like this time — "braving a hail of bullets and suffering the agony of being trampled, wounded, and killed."

This time, forty-seven lives were spent to purchase a single piece of knowledge: that the space before the Executive Mansion of one's own country is a place of "hails of bullets," and that if one wishes to go there to die, one should wait until one is of age and goes of one's own free will.

I believe that "women activists" and "underage boys and girls" would probably not face very great danger if they participated in school athletic meets. As for petitioning amid "hails of bullets" — even adult male activists should inscribe this firmly in their minds and desist henceforth!

Look at how things stand now. Nothing more than a few extra poems and essays, a few more topics for idle chatter. A few celebrities and some authorities are negotiating for burial plots — the great petition has been reduced to a small petition. Burial is naturally the most fitting conclusion. Yet how strange: it is as if these forty-seven dead had feared that in old age they would have nowhere to be buried, and came specifically to secure a small plot of government land. The Wanshengyuan is so nearby, yet before the tombs of the Four Martyrs there are still three headstones without a single character engraved — how much more so for a place as remote as the Yuanmingyuan.

If the dead are not buried in the hearts of the living, then they are truly and completely dead.

III

Reform naturally often cannot avoid bloodshed, but bloodshed is by no means equivalent to reform. The expenditure of blood, like the expenditure of money: stinginess is certainly no good, but squandering is a great miscalculation.

I feel profound sorrow for the victims of this sacrifice.

I only hope that such petitioning will henceforth cease.

Petitioning is admittedly a common occurrence in every nation, one that need not result in death; but we now know that China is the exception — unless you can eliminate the "hail of bullets." Proper battle tactics, too, can only be employed when the adversary fights as a warrior. The end of the Han dynasty was supposedly still a time when people's hearts were quite old-fashioned — forgive me for citing a fiction: when Xu Chu (许褚) went into battle bare-chested, he was promptly struck by several arrows. And Jin Shengtan (金圣叹) laughed at him, saying: "Who told you to go bare-chested?" As for our present age, when so many firearms have been invented, battles are fought from trenches. This is not out of miserliness with life, but out of refusal to squander life, for the life of a soldier is precious. In places where soldiers are few, their lives are all the more precious. "Precious" does not mean "kept safely at home," but rather that a small investment should be exchanged for the greatest possible return — or at the very least, the transaction should be fair. To drown one enemy in a flood of blood, to fill a gap with the corpses of comrades — these are already trite phrases. Viewed from the perspective of the most modern tactics, what an enormous loss that would be.

The merit bequeathed by this time's dead to those who come after lies in having torn away the human masks of many creatures, exposing their unexpectedly insidious hearts, and teaching those who continue to fight to fight by other methods.

April 2.

Section 17

Between Beijing and Tianjin, many battles large and small have been fought, with who knows how many soldiers killed — all in the name of "suppressing the Reds." Before the Executive Mansion, two volleys were fired, killing forty-seven petitioners and wounding over a hundred; arrest warrants were issued for five men, including Xu Qian (徐谦), accused of "leading rioters" — all in the name of "suppressing the Reds." Fengtian airplanes flew over Beijing's skies three times, dropping bombs that killed two women and wounded one small yellow dog — all in the name of "suppressing the Reds."

Whether the soldiers killed between Beijing and Tianjin, and the two women killed by bombs in Beijing, and the one small yellow dog wounded by bombs, are in fact "Reds" — there has been no "official decree" on this, and we commoners cannot know. As for the forty-seven persons shot dead before the Mansion, the first "official decree" already stated that there had been "accidental casualties."

The Beijing District Procuratorate then issued a public letter stating: "The purpose of this assembly and petition was proper, and there was no improper conduct." And then the State Council decided to "draw up generous compensation." If so, then where did the "rioters" led by the Xu Qians go? Did they all possess magic charms that could deflect bullets and shells?

In sum: "suppress" they certainly did — but where are the "Reds"?

And where the "Reds" are, let us set aside for now. In the final analysis: the "martyrs" are laid to rest, the Xu Qians are in exile, and two seats on the Russian Indemnity Commission are vacant. On the 6th, the Jingbao reported:

And there was another news item, with the headline "Five Private Universities Also Taking Interest in the Russian Indemnity Commission."

The death of forty-seven persons has rendered no small service to "Chinese education." "Generous compensation" — who could object?

Henceforth and hereafter, may we hope that in "Chinese educational circles" people will no longer brand those who disagree with them as "Ruble Party"?

April 6.

1

The paper stockpiled in Tianjin cannot be transported to Beijing; even book printing has been considerably affected by the war. My old collection of miscellaneous essays, Canopy Collection, was sent to press two months ago, yet typesetting and proofreading are not even half finished.

Unfortunately, a preview advertisement was published first, which drew Professor Chen Yuan's (陈源) "counter-advertisement" —

"I cannot, because I do not respect Mr. Lu Xun's character, refrain from saying his fiction is good; nor can I, because I admire his fiction, go on to praise his other writings. I find that his miscellaneous essays, apart from two or three pieces in Hot Wind, truly have no value worth reading." (Modern Review No. 71, "Idle Talk.")

How very fair! So I too have fallen into "the present is inferior to the past"; the sales of Canopy Collection, compared to Hot Wind, will probably be rather more pessimistic. Moreover, it turns out that my writing of fiction has nothing to do with "character." A species of writing that is "characterless," like newspaper reportage, somehow earns the professor's "admiration." China seems to grow ever more fantastical and bizarre — and so perhaps those miscellaneous essays that "truly have no value worth reading" will continue to exist after all.

2

The author of the famous novel Don Quijote, M. de Cervantes, was certainly poor — but to say he resembled a beggar is merely a species of rumor particularly prevalent among Chinese scholars. He describes how Don Quijote went mad from reading chivalric romances and went out to be a knight-errant himself, righting wrongs. His relatives, knowing the books were to blame, invited the barber from next door to inspect them. The barber selected a few good ones to keep, and the rest were all burned. Burned, I think — I cannot quite remember; nor do I recall how many there were. One imagines that the authors of those "good books" that made the cut must have blushed and smiled bitterly upon seeing the reading list in the novel.

Though China may seem to grow ever more fantastical and bizarre — alas! We cannot even obtain a "bitter smile."

3

Someone sent me an express letter from the provinces, asking whether I was safe. He was unfamiliar with conditions in Beijing and had been taken in by the rumors.

The rumor press of Beijing has been passed down in an unbroken lineage since Yuan Shikai's (袁世凯) assumption of the imperial title, Zhang Xun's (张勋) restoration, and Zhang Shizhao's (章士钊) "rectification of academic morals" — it has always been thus. Naturally, it is thus now as well.

The first step is: such-and-such a faction intends to close such-and-such a school and arrest so-and-so. This is fabricated for the school and the persons in question to see — to intimidate them.

The second step is: such-and-such a school is already deserted, so-and-so has already fled. This is fabricated for the faction in question to see — to incite them.

And another step: such-and-such a faction has already raided School A and is about to raid School B. This is to intimidate School B and incite the faction.

"He who has a clear conscience need not be alarmed when someone knocks at his door at midnight." If School B has no guilty conscience, how can it be intimidated? But hold on a moment. There follows yet another step: Last night, School B burned all its Bolshevizing books throughout the entire night.

Thereupon School A issues a correction, saying it was never raided; and School B issues a correction, saying it possesses no such books.

4

And so even the morality-defending journalists, the circumspect university presidents, take up residence in the Hotel of the Six Nations; the great newspapers that preach justice take down their signboards; the school porters stop selling the Modern Review. It is as if "flames engulf Mount Kunlun, and jade and stone alike are consumed."

In reality, things will probably not go that far, I think. However, rumors are indeed the facts that the rumor-makers themselves wish for in their hearts. Through them, we may observe the thoughts and conduct of a certain class of people.

5

In the ninth year of the Republic of China, July: the Zhili-Anhui War commenced. In August, the Anhui army was annihilated, and Xu Shuzheng (徐树铮) and eight others took refuge in the Japanese Legation. At this time there was still a small embellishment: a few upright gentlemen — not the same upright gentlemen as today's — went to lobby the Zhili warlords, requesting them to slaughter reformist thinkers. In the end, nothing came of it; and even this episode has long since vanished from people's memories. But if you go and look through the Beijing Daily of August that year, you can still find a large advertisement, full of ancient and elegant maxims about how after a great hero achieves victory, he must sweep away heterodox doctrines and put heretics to the sword.

That advertisement bore signatures, which I need not bring up here. But compared with the current rumor-mongers who lurk exclusively in the dark, one cannot help but feel that "the present is inferior to the past."

I think a hundred years ago was better than today, a thousand years ago better than a hundred years ago, ten thousand years ago better than a thousand years ago... Especially in China, this is perhaps indeed the case.

6

In the corners of the newspapers one often sees earnest admonitions addressed to the youth: cherish every scrap of written paper; pay attention to National Studies; Ibsen was like this, Romain Rolland was like that. The times and the language have changed, but the underlying message strikes me as very familiar: exactly like the admonitions of the elders I heard in my childhood.

This might seem to be counter-evidence for "the present is inferior to the past." But there are exceptions to everything in the world, and as regards the matter discussed in the previous section, this too may count as one such exception.

May 6.

Section 19

— And yet still without blossoms.

Because Yusi is to be changed to a medium-format publication, I no longer wish to use the old title, and so, making an extraordinary effort, I resolve to write "new roses."

— This time, will they bloom at last?

— Buzz, buzz — probably not.

I have long been somewhat aware that I am, on the whole, self-centered. The principles I discuss are principles "as I see them"; the conditions I describe are conditions as I have observed them. I am told that a month ago, the apricot blossoms and the peach blossoms all bloomed. I did not see them; therefore I do not acknowledge that there were apricot blossoms and peach blossoms.

— Yet those things exist. — The scholars will probably say.

— Very well! Then, let them be. — This is my respectful reply to the scholars.

Certain preachers of "justice" say my miscellaneous essays have no value whatsoever. That is certain. In truth, by the time they come to read my miscellaneous essays, they have already lost their own souls —

Assuming they have souls. If my words happened to suit the palate of the preachers of "justice," would I not have become a member of the "Society for the Maintenance of Justice" myself? Would I not have become him, and all the rest of the members? Would not my words be equivalent to their words? Would not many persons and many words be equivalent to one person and one speech?

Justice is singular. Yet I hear it has long since been appropriated by them, so I already possess nothing at all.

This time, "foreign flags within the city of Beijing" were apparently especially numerous, enough to provoke the scholars to indignation: "...As for outside the boundaries of the Legation Quarter, whether Chinese or foreign, one absolutely cannot borrow and display foreign flags as talismans for the protection of life and property." This is quite right. As "talismans for the protection of life and property," we have our own "laws."

If one is still not reassured, then use a more dependable flag: the Red Swastika flag. Positioned between Chinese and foreign, transcending both "shamelessness" and shame — truly an excellent flag!

Since the end of the Qing, the signs reading "Do not discuss national affairs" have been posted in wine houses and restaurants, and to this day they have not been removed along with the queues. Therefore, at certain times, those who wield the pen find themselves in a difficult position.

But at such times one can observe an interesting thing: writings produced by those who hope that others will come to grief through their writings.

The clever people's discourse grows ever more clever by the day. They say that the students killed on March 18 deserve sympathy, because she did not actually want to go and was incited by her teachers. They say that "those who directly or indirectly use Soviet Russian money" deserve some understanding, because "they themselves can go hungry, but their wives and children cannot go without food!" They push aside A while entrapping B; they pardon the circumstances while establishing guilt as fact. And above all, the actions and convictions of these people are shown to be utterly worthless.

Yet I hear that Zhao Mengfu's (赵子昂) paintings of horses were, after all, reflections of his own form seen in a mirror.

Because "wives and children cannot go without food," the "birth control question" naturally arises. But when Mrs. Sanger came to China some time ago, "certain activists" raised a great hue and cry, saying she wanted to make the Chinese race extinct.

Celibacy is still opposed by many today, and birth control is impracticable. For the benefit of gentlemen in utter poverty, the best method at present, I believe, is nothing other than to find a wealthy woman for a wife.

Let me go all the way and impart this secret in full: verbally, one must of course say it is for "love."

The "Soviet Russian money" — 100,000 yuan — has this time actually caused a dispute between the Ministry of Education and the education world, because everyone wants a share. This too is perhaps on account of "wives and children." But this batch of rubles is not the same as that batch of rubles. This is the returned Boxer Indemnity — the residual bounty of the Boxers' "Support the Qing, exterminate the foreigners" and the allied armies of the nations entering Beijing. That date is easy to remember: the end of the nineteenth century, 1900. Twenty-six years later, we are "indirectly" using the Boxers' money to feed our "wives and children." If the Grand Master of the Boxers has a spirit in heaven, he will surely feel a sense of bewildered loss.

Furthermore, the money that various nations use for "cultural enterprises" in China also comes from this same fund...

May 23.

Section 20

When I compiled *Hot Wind* a couple of years ago, I still harbored what the gentry would call a "well-meaning disposition" and deleted quite a few pieces. But there was one essay I had originally intended to include; having lost the manuscript, I had no choice but to leave it out. Now it has turned up after all. When *Hot Wind* is reprinted, I could add this piece, run an advertisement, and induce those readers who have a superstitious faith in my writings to buy another copy—which would not be without benefit to me. But never mind, that really would not be very amusing.

Better to publish it once more here, to be collected later in a third volume of miscellaneous impressions—consider it an addendum.

This concerns Mr. Zhang Shizhao (章士釗)—

"Two Peaches Killed Three Scholars" Mr. Zhang Xingyan (章行嚴) criticized what he called "new culture" in Shanghai, arguing that "Two peaches killed three warriors" (er tao sha san shi) is a model of fine expression, while "Two peaches killed three scholars" (liang ge taozi shale san ge dushuren) is correspondingly bad—and from this he concluded that the new culture "should this not also be put to an end?" Indeed it may well be put to an end! "Two peaches killed three warriors" is by no means an obscure allusion; it is commonly found in books of the old culture. But since the poem says, "Who could have devised this stratagem? Prime Minister Yanzi of Qi"—let us have a look at the Yanzi Chunqiu.

The Yanzi Chunqiu now has a Shanghai lithographic edition, readily obtainable, and the classical tale in question is in volume two of that edition. The gist is: "Gongsun Jie (公孫接), Tian Kaijiang (田開疆), and Gu Yezi (古冶子) served Duke Jing (景公) and were renowned for their bravery and strength in fighting tigers. When Yanzi passed them and quickened his step, the three men did not rise." So old Master Yan considered this discourteous and told Duke Jing that they should be gotten rid of. His method was to have Duke Jing send them two peaches, saying: "You three may eat the peaches according to your merits." Ah, and then the trouble started:

"Gongsun Jie looked up to heaven and sighed, 'Yanzi is a wise man. Now if the Duke has our merits assessed and we do not take the peaches, we show no valor. But the warriors are many and the peaches few—why not assess our merits and eat the peaches? I once grappled a tiger and then grappled another. Such merits as mine surely entitle me to eat a peach without sharing with others.' He seized a peach and stood up.

"Tian Kaijiang said, 'With my weapon I have twice repulsed an army of three contingents. Such merits as mine surely entitle me to eat a peach without sharing with others.' He seized a peach and stood up.

"Gu Yezi said, 'Once I accompanied my lord across the river, when a giant turtle seized the left trace-horse and dragged it into the current at the Pillar Rapids. At that time, I was still young and could not swim well; I dived and fought my way a hundred paces against the current and nine li downstream, slew the turtle, grasped the trace-horse's tail in my left hand and held the turtle's head in my right, and leaped forth like a crane. The ferry men all said it was the River God; but look—it was the head of a great turtle. Such merits as mine surely entitle me to eat a peach without sharing! Why do you two not return your peaches?' He drew his sword and stood up."

Copying out books is truly tedious. To summarize: the two warriors were ashamed that their merits were inferior to Gu Yezi's and killed themselves; Gu Yezi, unwilling to survive alone, also killed himself. Thus was accomplished "Two peaches killed three warriors."

Although we do not know whether these three warriors had any attainment in the old culture, since the book says they were "renowned for bravery and strength," they cannot be called "scholars." If the Liang Fu Yin had said "Two peaches killed three brave warriors," the meaning would naturally be clearer, but unfortunately it is a five-character poem that does not allow extra words. So it had to say "two peaches killed three warriors"—and thus it also led Mr. Zhang Xingyan astray into interpreting it as "two peaches killed three scholars."

The old culture is indeed too difficult to understand, the classical allusions are truly too hard to remember, and those two old peaches have really been causing too much mischief: not only did they send three warriors to their death back then, but even now they have caused one scholar to make a fool of himself. "Should this not also be put to an end!"

Last year, because of the "every time lower" (mei xia yu kuang) controversy, I was subjected to quite a few lectures from young people who considered themselves fair-minded, saying that because Zhang had revoked my "clerkship," I bore him a grudge. Now I must specially declare here: this piece was written in September 1923 and published in the Morning Post Supplement. At that time, the editor of the Morning Post Supplement was not yet the "Poet-Sage" who had accompanied Mr. Tagore, nor had it yet taken on the mission of driving others to death and strangling itself, so it still occasionally published articles by vulgar persons like me. And at that time, between myself and this person later known as "Mr. Lone Paulownia," there was not the slightest "grudge born of a sideways glance."

The "motive" was probably no more than a wish to lend a little help to the spread of the vernacular.

In these times when "disaster comes from the mouth," let me defend myself a bit more thoroughly.

Some may say that this time, digging up old addenda constitutes "beating a dog that has fallen in the water"—a rather "impure motive." But I think not. Granted, compared with the not-so-distant days when Secretary-General Shizhao was masterminding behind the scenes, abusing his public position for private ends, plotting to kill students and issuing warrants for dissidents—while the "upright gentlemen" sometimes joined in mocking the fugitives, sometimes calling out "Mr. Lone Paulownia! Mr. Lone Paulownia!" with fawning warmth—there is indeed, at this moment, an air of desolation. But in my view, he has not actually fallen into the water. He is merely "residing peacefully" in the concession area. In Beijing, the creatures he once reared are still baring their fangs and brandishing their claws; the newspapers he cultivated ties with are still turning right and wrong on their heads; the girls' school he nurtured is still stirring up storms. It remains his world.

Delivering a little jab over "peaches"—how can this be mentioned in the same breath as "beating a dog in the water"?!

Yet somehow this "Mr. Lone Paulownia" went and defended himself in the Jiayin journal, claiming it was merely a trifle. That is true—it is merely a trifle.

Getting one little thing wrong—what harm is there in that? Even if one did not know about Yanzi or about the state of Qi, it would cause no damage to China. What farmer understands the Liang Fu Yin? And yet agriculture can still save the nation. But I think the grand enterprise of attacking the vernacular is also something one could well do without. Replacing classical Chinese with the vernacular, even if somewhat imperfect, is after all merely a trifle.

Although I have never crept under the tutelage of "Mr. Lone Paulownia" and have not had the glory of seeing German books strewn all over his tables, beds, and floors, I have occasionally seen the "classical Chinese" he has published, and I know that he actually does understand: the unreliability of the law, the impermanence of moral customs, the inevitability of linguistic change—he understands all of this quite well. One who understands and says so plainly becomes a reformer; one who understands but keeps silent, using that understanding to deceive others, becomes "Mr. Lone Paulownia" and his "ilk." At bottom, his defense of classical Chinese is nothing more than this.

If my diagnosis is correct, then "Mr. Lone Paulownia" has presumably also contracted the common ailment that Idle Talk attributes to "certain patriots"—being burdened by "wife, concubines, sons and daughters." Henceforth, it seems he ought to buy a few more German books and study "birth control."

May 24.

Section 21

It was two or three years ago that I happened to come across a note on He Dian in the Supplementary Catalogue of the Shenbao Press, printed in the fifth year of the Guangxu reign (1879). It said:

"He Dian, ten chapters. This book was compiled by The Passerby, with commentary by Mr. Tangled-and-Muddled, and a preface by The Peaceful Guest. The characters cited therein include one called Living Ghost, one called Pauper Ghost, one called Living Dead Man, one called Stinking Flower Lady, and one called Miss Side-Chamber—reading this far is already enough to make one burst out laughing. Moreover, looking at what it records, there is not a single expression that is not vulgar village speech; making something out of nothing, stealing leisure amidst busyness. Its language is ghost-talk; its characters bear ghost-names; its events involve opening ghost-hearts, putting on ghost-faces, fishing for ghost-fire, performing ghost-plays, and building ghost-stages. The saying goes, 'From what classic does this come?' Henceforth, anyone who uses vulgar speech for literature may say, 'It comes from He Dian,' and leave it at that."

Suspecting it to be rather distinctive, I kept an eye out for it but could not find it. Chang Weijun (常維鈞), who knew many people in the old bookshops, was asked to search, but still in vain. This year, Bannong (半農) told me he had come across it by chance at the Changdian temple fair and was going to collate and punctuate it for publication. I was delighted to hear this. Afterward, Bannong sent the proofs to me in installments and said he hoped I would write a short preface—he knew that at most I was only capable of short prefaces. Yet I still hesitated; I felt I simply lacked the talent for this sort of thing. I believe that many tasks require the person doing them to possess a special aptitude in order to do them well. For instance, punctuation can only be entrusted to Wang Yuanfang (汪原放), preface-writing only to Hu Shizhi (胡適之), and publishing only to the Yadong Library. Liu Bannong (劉半農), Li Xiaofeng (李小峰), and I are simply not the right candidates. And yet I decided I would write a few words. Why? Simply because I had at last decided I would write a few words.

Before I had even begun, we were caught up in warfare, and amidst the gunfire and rumors, I was deeply unsettled and had no inclination to pick up the pen. On top of that, I learned that some literary types had attacked Bannong in some newspaper, saying how undignified the advertisement for He Dian was—who would have thought a university professor could sink so low! This made me rather despondent, for it recalled other matters to mind, and I too felt that "who would have thought a university professor could sink so low." From then on, every time I saw He Dian, I felt only pain, and could not utter another word.

Yes, university professors will sink. Whether tall or short, white or black, or grey. But some of what others call sinking, I call hardship. One aspect of what I call hardship is the loss of status. I once wrote "On 'His Mother's...!'" and there were already young moralists who heaved putrid sighs about it—am I still concerned with status? Yet in some ways, yes. Although I "detest with the utmost loathing" those gentlemen who wear masks, I am after all not from a family of "academic bandits." Seeing so-called "upright gentlemen" naturally makes me shake my head, but rubbing shoulders with crooked men and lackeys would probably not suit me either. Viewed without distinction, what is so remarkable about a university professor making a comical, or even exaggerated, advertisement? What would even be remarkable about making an advertisement full of "his mother's"? But ah—here one must use a "but"—I was, after all, born in the nineteenth century, and I served as an official for some years, in the same ministry as the so-called "Mr. Lone Paulownia." The air of officialdom—of the upper class—

is not easily dispelled, so sometimes I too feel that the most fitting thing for a professor is still to mount the podium. Another "but" is needed: but there must be adequate and living wages; moonlighting is acceptable. This view has probably by now gained universal approval in educational circles. Those champions of justice who unanimously attacked moonlighting at some public assembly last year have this year quietly gone moonlighting themselves, though the "major newspapers" will certainly not report it, and they themselves will naturally not advertise the fact.

Bannong went to Germany and France to study phonology for several years. Although I do not understand the French-language book he wrote—I only know it contains quite a few Chinese characters and undulating curves—nevertheless, books are books, and there must be people who understand them. So his proper vocation, I believe, is still to teach these curves to his students. But Peking University is about to close its doors for good, and he has no moonlighting positions. In that case, even if I were the most thoroughbred upper-class person, I could not oppose his printing and selling a book. Once one prints, one naturally wants to sell many copies; wanting to sell many, one naturally must advertise; and advertising, one naturally must say nice things. Is there anyone who prints a book and then publishes an advertisement saying this book is very boring, and would your lordships please not read it? The advertisement saying my miscellaneous impressions had no value whatsoever—that was made by Xiying (西瀅, i.e., Chen Yuan 陳源).—Let me take this opportunity to run an advertisement for myself: Why did Chen Yuan make such an anti-advertisement for me? One need only read my Canopy Collection to understand. Honored patrons, look! Look quickly! Six jiao per copy, published by Beixin Books.

Come to think of it, it was over twenty years ago. Tao Huanqing (陶煥卿), who devoted himself to revolution, was so poor that in Shanghai he called himself Master of Kuaiji and taught hypnotism to make a living. One day he asked me: is there some drug that will put a person to sleep with one sniff? I knew perfectly well he feared his hypnotic techniques would fail and was seeking help from pharmaceuticals. In truth, performing hypnotism on a crowd is never easy. I did not know the miraculous drug he sought and could not help him. Two or three months later, letters appeared in the newspapers (perhaps advertisements) saying that Master of Kuaiji did not understand hypnotism and was deceiving people. The Qing government, however, was considerably more astute than these worthless fellows, and when they issued a warrant for his arrest, the accompanying couplet ran: "Authored A History of Chinese Power; studied Japanese hypnotism."

He Dian is about to be published, and the short preface is also approaching its deadline. The night rain patters down; picking up my pen, I suddenly think of the wretched Tao Huanqing with his hemp-rope belt, and extraneous thoughts crowd in, unrelated to He Dian. But the preface is approaching its deadline, and I have no choice but to write it out, and moreover to have it printed. I am not likening Bannong to a "rebel"—although the present Republic of China was created by revolution, many citizens of the Republic still regard the revolutionaries of that time as rebels, that much is perfectly clear—I am only saying that at this moment, the past comes back to me, I think of several friends, and I feel my own continuing powerlessness.

But the short preface has at any rate been written, and though it is not much of a thing, it has at least brought a task to its conclusion. I shall also write down other feelings of this moment, and publish them, as an advertisement for He Dian as well.

Night of May 25th, by the east wall, writing.

Preliminary Preface

Writing a preface before a single word of the diary has been set down—that is what I call a preliminary preface.

I used to keep a diary every day, written for my own eyes; I imagine quite a few people in this world keep such diaries. If the writer becomes famous, after his death the diary may well be printed, and readers will find it especially interesting, because when he wrote he did not need to put on airs as if composing an "Essay on Inner Feelings" or an "Essay on Outer Appearances," so one can see his true face instead. This, I think, is the orthodox and legitimate lineage of diary-writing.

My diary, however, is not like that. What I record is correspondence sent and received, money coming in and going out—there is no question of a "face," still less of one being true or false. For instance: February 2, clear. Received letter from A; B came.

March 3, rain. Received salary from C School, X yuan. Replied to D's letter. When a line was full and there were still things to note—paper being rather too precious to waste—I would write the remaining items in the blank space of the previous day's entry. In short: it is not very reliable. But I think whether B came on February 1 or February 2 does not much matter—indeed, even leaving it unrecorded would do no harm; and in practice, there are often times when I do not record anything. My purpose is merely to note who has written, so I can reply, or when I have replied; and above all, the school's salary—which month's and what fraction I have received—comes in such dribs and drabs that I can never keep it straight and need a ledger to check, so that both sides may be reasonably clear, and I may also know how much debt is owed to me and what sort of petty tycoon I shall become once it is all collected. Beyond this, I have no ambitions whatsoever.

Mr. Li Ciming (李慈銘), a fellow townsman, used his diary as a form of scholarship. From court regulations at the top, through learning in the middle, down to personal feuds at the bottom—everything was recorded there. Sure enough, someone has now lithographed that manuscript, at fifty yuan per set; in times like these, never mind students, even teachers cannot afford it. The diary itself records that each time he completed a fascicle, people were already borrowing and copying it around—there was certainly no need to wait for "after his death." Though this is not the orthodox lineage of diary-writing, anyone with aspirations of leaving words for posterity, intentions of delivering praise and blame, and the desire to be known yet the fear of being known, may as well try imitating it. But when someone writes a few pieces of vernacular and then claims they are chapters of a book to be published a hundred years hence—that is a stench of stupidity beyond anyone's reach.

This diary of mine, however, harbors no such "high expectations," nor is it the very simple sort of old. It does not yet exist; I intend to start writing it. Four or five days ago I ran into Bannong (半農), who said he was going to edit the supplement to the Shijie Ribao and that I should send some contributions. That was naturally agreeable. But contributions of what? This was genuinely troublesome. Readers of supplements are mostly students—all of them people who have been through it and written things like "On the Saying 'Is it not a pleasure to study and practice what you have learned'" or "A Discussion of the Decline of Human Hearts"—and they must know what writing essays feels like. Some call me a "man of letters," but I am really not one; do not believe them. The proof is that I, too, am most afraid of writing essays.

But since I had agreed, I had to think of something. After much deliberation, I realized that I do occasionally have some thoughts—but ordinarily, being lazy, I let them go and forget them. If I wrote them down at once, they would probably be a species of miscellaneous impressions. And so I resolved: the moment a thought occurs to me, I shall write it down immediately, send it off at once, and consider it my sketchbook. Because this is prepared from the start for a third party's eyes, I fear it may not show my very true face either; at the very least, things unfavorable to myself will still be concealed for now. Let the reader first understand this point.

If I cannot write, or can write no more, I shall stop at once. So how long this diary will be, I have not the slightest idea at present.

June 25, 1926, recorded by the east wall.

June 25. Clear.

Ill.—Writing this today seems rather superfluous, since this happened ten days ago, and by now I can more or less count as recovered. But the aftereffects are not entirely past, so I may as well make this the "Opening Manifesto, Chapter the First." The rules for a man of talent establishing his words require him to proclaim three great sufferings: first, poverty; second, illness; third, society persecutes me. And the result is the loss of a sweetheart—or, to use the proper term, unrequited love.

My Opening Manifesto, though it may resemble the second great suffering, is in fact nothing of the kind. Rather, it was because I received a few wen of manuscript fees just before the Dragon Boat Festival, ate too much, and since then have had indigestion and stomach pain. My stomach's horoscope is not auspicious; it has never been able to bear good fortune. I would very much like to see a doctor. Chinese medicine, though some say its mysteries are inexhaustible, with internal medicine being its unrivaled specialty—I simply cannot believe in it. Western medicine? The renowned practitioners charge dearly, are busy, and give cursory examinations. The unknown ones are naturally cheaper, but I still feel some hesitation. Since things have come to this pass, I can of course only let my poor stomach ache on in silence.

Ever since Western doctors cut out one of Liang Qichao's (梁啟超) kidneys, voices of reproach have risen like a storm, and even literary men with little expertise in kidneys have all "spoken out for justice." At the same time, the theory that "Chinese medicine is truly wonderful" sprang up in response. Kidney trouble? Why not take astragalus? Whatever the illness, why not eat deer antler? But corpses do indeed often come out of Western hospitals. I once earnestly advised Dr. G: if you open a hospital, you must never admit patients who appear beyond saving. Those who recover and walk out, nobody notices; those who die and are carried out cause a sensation—especially if the deceased is a "notable." My true intention was to find ways to promote modern medicine, but Dr. G seemed to think my conscience was bad. That interpretation is not necessarily wrong—let him think what he will.

But as I see it, hospitals that practice what I described are actually quite common; only their true intention is not to promote modern medicine. The homegrown Western doctors are also mostly muddled; the moment they start practicing, they learn the quack tricks of Chinese medicine: gentian tincture diluted with water, two doses for eight jiao a day; mouthwash of dilute boric acid, one yuan per bottle. As for their diagnostic skills—well, a layman like me cannot speak to that. In short, Western medicine in China has hardly sprouted before it is already verging on rot. Although I believe only in Western medicine, lately I too have been somewhat discouraged.

A few days ago I discussed these matters with Jifu (季茀), and said that for my illness, if only a friend would write me a prescription it would be enough—there was no need to waste money on some PhD. The very next day, he brought over Dr. H., who was continuing his research. He wrote a prescription: naturally it called for dilute hydrochloric acid, plus two other things I need not mention here. What I was most grateful for was that he also added some Sirup Simpel, so I could drink it sweetly without difficulty. Going to the pharmacy to have the prescription filled became another problem, because pharmacies too are not free of muddle-headedness: drugs they do not have in stock may be substituted, or simply omitted. In the end, Fraeulein H. was asked to make the long trip to a larger pharmacy.

Even with the cab fare added, it was still three-quarters cheaper than hospital prices.

My stomach acid, having gained foreign reinforcements, grew mighty; before I had finished even one bottle, the pain stopped. I resolved to keep drinking for a few more days. But the second bottle was strange: the same pharmacy, the same prescription, yet the taste was different—not sweet like the first time, and not sour either. I examined myself: no fever, no thick coating on the tongue—this was clearly something fishy with the medicine. I drank two doses; no ill effects at least. Fortunately it was not an urgent illness—nothing critical—so I drank it up as usual. When I went to buy the third bottle, I accompanied it with a stern interrogation. The answer was: perhaps the sugar content was a little less. Meaning: the important drugs are not wrong. Things in China are truly peculiar. A little less sugar, and it is not only not sweet, but not even sour—this is indeed "special national conditions."

Nowadays there is much criticism of the indifference of large hospitals toward patients. I think some of these hospitals do treat patients as research subjects; and there are also "high-class Chinese" in the hospitals who regard patients as inferior research subjects. Those who object can only go to privately operated hospitals, but there the consultation fees and drug prices are very high. If you ask a friend to write a prescription and buy the medicine yourself, the medicine may turn out different from bottle to bottle.

This is a problem of people. When things are done without care, everything becomes suspect. "Lu Duan was not muddled on important matters"—which implies that on small matters one may well be a bit muddled—and this naturally shows off the generosity of spirit of us Chinese. But my stomach ache was prolonged because of it. In the whole panorama of the universe, my stomach ache is of course only a trifle, or perhaps not even a thing at all.

After my stern interrogation, the third bottle of medicine tasted the same as the first. The earlier mystery is now easily solved: the second bottle contained only one day's dose of medicine, with two days' worth of water added, so the medicine was half the proper strength.

Although even taking medicine was so beset with difficulties, the illness did at last improve. As it improved, H. attacked me for my long hair, asking why I did not hurry to get a haircut.

This sort of attack I am used to hearing—as always, "the motion is noted and shelved." But I had no desire to work either; I merely tidied up drawers. Rummaging through waste paper, I found a bundle of slips, copied out several years ago. This made me feel that I was growing lazier by the day—nowadays I would never want to do such things.

At that time, I must have been planning to write an essay attacking the absurd punctuation of recently printed books; among the waste paper I had copied out some quite marvelous examples. Just as I was about to stuff them into the wastepaper basket, I felt that a few were still too good to discard. Let me copy some here, have them printed at once, for "all eyes to enjoy." The rest can serve as kindling for matches—

"Guochao Chen Xilu Huang Shi Yuhua yun. Tang Fu Yi kaoke Daojing zhongben. You Xiang Yu qie. Ben Qi Wuping wunian Pengchengren. Kai Xiang Yu qie zhong. De zhi." (Shanghai Jinbu Shuju lithographic edition, Chaxiangshi Congchao, volume 4, leaf 2.)

"Guochao Ouyang Quan Dianji yun. Ouyang Xiu Zuiwengting. Ji rangquan ye. Benji ji Chuzhou shike. Bing tong zhuxuanben. Zuo niangquan. Wu ye." (Same work, volume 8, leaf 7.)

"Yuan Shigong dianshi Qinzhong. Hou po zihuiqi shaozuo shiwen. Jie cuiran yichu yuzheng." (Shanghai Shilin Jingshe lithographic edition, Shuying, volume 1, leaf 4.)

"Kao... Shunzhi zhong, Xiushui you you yi Chen Chen,... zhu Chengzhai shiji, bu chu huting, lu dushi suibi, tong xingming lu zhushu." (Shanghai Yadong Tushuguan typeset edition, Shuihu Xuji Liangzhong Xu, leaf 7.)

Punctuating classical texts is indeed a small but tricky business; one often does not know where to place one's pen. In many places, I have always suspected that even if the author himself were asked to punctuate, he too would hesitate. But the examples listed above are not so impossibly obscure. The last two are especially clear in meaning—yet the punctuation has been applied with even greater "ingenuity."

June 26. Clear.

Morning: received a letter from Jiye (霽野) sent from his hometown. Not many words—saying there was a sick person at home, and everyone else was living in the terror of being struck by illness without any defense. At the end, a few words of lamentation.

Afternoon: Zhifang (織芳) came from Henan. After a few words he left in great haste, leaving behind two packages, saying, "This is 'fang sugar'—a present for you to eat, though I'm afraid it may not be very good." Zhifang had put on some weight this time, and he was in such a hurry, and wearing a square-cut mandarin jacket—I'm afraid he is about to become an official.

When I opened the packages, the contents were not "square" (fang) at all, but round little thin slices, of a yellowish-brown color. They were cool and delicate to the taste—definitely a good thing. But I could not understand why Zhifang called it "fang sugar." Still, this too could serve as one more proof that he was about to become an official.

Jingsong (景宋) said it was a specialty from some place in Henan, made from persimmon frost, cooling in nature; if you get little sores at the corners of your mouth, you smear this on and they heal. No wonder it was so delicate—it turned out to have been filtered through persimmon skin by nature's own skillful hand.

Unfortunately, by the time she explained this, I had already eaten more than half. I hastily put away the remainder, keeping it in reserve for the day my mouth corners might develop sores, to smear on then.

At night, I ate another large portion of the stored persimmon frost candy, because I suddenly reconsidered: the occasions when one gets sores at the mouth corners are really not so frequent after all—better to eat some now while it is fresh.

To my surprise, one bite led to another, and I had again eaten more than half.

June 28. Clear, strong wind.

Went out in the morning, intending to buy medicine. The streets were hung everywhere with five-color national flags; military police stood at every turn. Halfway down Fengsheng Hutong, I was driven by military police into a side alley. Before long, I saw yellow dust billowing on the main road as a motorcycle roared past. Before long, another; before long, another; another; another... The occupants could not be clearly seen—only gold-trimmed caps. Soldiers hung on the sides of the vehicles, some carrying broadswords wrapped in red silk. The people in the side alley all wore an air of solemn awe. Before long, the motorcycles ceased, and we gradually slipped out; the military police said nothing.

I slipped to the main street at Xidan Pailou, also hung everywhere with five-color national flags, military police standing in rows.

A group of ragged children, each holding a handful of little paper sheets, cried out: Welcome Marshal Wu Yufu special edition! One of them called out to me to buy one; I did not.

Near the Xuanwu Gate, a fellow in a yellow uniform, sweat streaming down his face, walked in from outside and suddenly exclaimed loudly: Fuck your mother! Many people looked at him, but he walked on past, and many people stopped looking. Entering the archway of Xuanwu Gate, another ragged child was holding a handful of little paper sheets, but this one silently pressed a sheet into my hand. I looked at it: a lithographed handbill from a Mr. Li Guoheng, the gist of which was that his hemorrhoids of many years had been cured by a certain Master So-and-so, a healer of national stature.

When I reached the pharmacy that was my destination, a crowd outside was gathered around watching two people in an argument; a faded light-blue Western umbrella was blocking the pharmacy door. When I pushed at the umbrella, it was by no means light. At last, from beneath the umbrella a head turned around and asked me, "What do you want?" I said I wanted to go in and buy medicine. He said nothing, turned his head back to watch the argument; the umbrella stayed where it was. I had no choice but to summon the fullest twelve degrees of determination and charge. One charge, and I was in.

Inside the pharmacy, only a foreigner sat at the accounts desk; the rest of the staff were all young compatriots, cleanly and smartly dressed. I cannot say why, but I suddenly felt that in ten years they would all become "high-class Chinese," while I myself already felt like a member of the lower class. And so, with the utmost deference, I presented my prescription and bottle to one parted-haired compatriot.

"Eighty-five fen," he said, taking them as he walked.

"Hey!" I truly could not help it; my lower-class temper flared up again. The medicine cost eighty fen, and the bottle deposit was the usual five fen—I knew this. Now I had brought my own bottle—why should I still pay five fen? This single "Hey!" served the same function as the national oath "His mother's"; it was packed with all that meaning.

"Eighty fen!" He too understood at once and let the five fen go—truly "following the good as water flows," showing the bearing of a true gentleman.

I paid eighty fen, waited a while, and the medicine was brought out. I thought: with this sort of compatriot, it sometimes does not do to be too polite. So I uncorked the bottle and tasted a sip right there before him.

"There's no mistake," he said, quite shrewdly knowing that I did not trust him.

"Mm." I nodded in approval. In fact, it was still not right. My sense of taste is not so dull; this time it tasted a bit too sour. He had been too lazy even to use a measuring cup, and the dilute hydrochloric acid was clearly in excess. But this was no trouble at all for me: I could simply take smaller doses each time, or add water and take more doses. So I said "Mm."

"Mm"—a reply hovering between two possibilities, whose true meaning is impossible to fathom.

"Goodbye, goodbye!" I took my bottle and said as I walked.

"Goodbye. Won't you have some water?"

"No, I won't. Goodbye."

We are, after all, citizens of a nation of ritual propriety; in the end, there is always courtesy. Having been courteously let out through the glass door, I hastened through the dust under the blazing sun. Near East Chang'an Avenue, there were more military police. I was about to cross the road when a patrolman put out his hand and stopped me: "Not allowed!" I said I only needed to take a dozen steps to get across. His reply was the same: "Not allowed!" The result was a detour through other streets.

I detoured to L's lodgings and knocked. A servant-boy came out and said L had gone out and would not be back until lunchtime. I said it was nearly that time, and I would wait here a bit. He said: "Not allowed! What is your surname?" This put me in a rather awkward spot. The road was so long, walking was so difficult, and to make the trip for nothing was really a pity. I thought for ten seconds, then fished a name card out of my pocket and told him to go in and inform the lady of the house that such-and-such a person wished to wait here a bit—would that be all right? After about a quarter of an hour, he came back out, and the result was: Not allowed either! The master would not return until three o'clock; come back at three.

After thinking for another ten seconds, I could only decide to visit C. Still under the blazing sun, still through the dust, I hastened on—and this time met no obstacles. Arrived. I knocked, and the person who opened the door said: Let me go and see if he is in. I thought: this time things look very promising. Sure enough, he led me into the parlor at once, and C himself came running out. The first thing I did was ask him to give me lunch. And so he gave me bread, and also wine. The host himself ate noodles. The result was that a plate of bread was consumed to the last crumb by me, and although there was butter as well, the four side dishes were also left with very little.

Having eaten my fill, we chatted idly until five o'clock.

Outside the parlor was a large open space, planted with many trees. Beneath one apple tree, children were always lingering. C said they were waiting for apples to fall, for there was a rule: whoever picks it up, it belongs to him. I laughed at the children's patience, willing to engage in such a roundabout enterprise. But strangely, by the time I took my leave, I saw that three children already each had an apple in hand.

Back home, reading the evening paper, it said: "...Wu spent one night at Changxindian. Besides the above reasons, there was another matter: after Wu set out from Baoding, Zhang Qihuang had a divination cast for Wu, saying that entering the capital on the 28th would be greatly auspicious and he would certainly pacify the Northwest. Entering on the 27th would be unfavorable. Wu was quite persuaded. This was another reason Wu entered the capital one day late." This reminded me of my own day of "Not allowed!" all day long—my luck had been decidedly poor, and I might as well cast a divination myself to see what the night's fortunes would be. But I did not know the methods of divination, had no tortoise shell or yarrow stalks, and truly had no way to proceed. Later I invented a new method: pull any book off the shelf, close one's eyes, open it, point a finger, then open one's eyes and read the two lines one is pointing at—that would serve as the oracle.

I used the Collected Works of Tao Yuanming (陶淵明). Following the procedure, the two lines were: "The meaning is lodged beyond the words; this bond—who can discern it?" I pondered for a while but could not for the life of me figure out what it meant.

Section 23

A few days ago I ran into Xiaofeng (小峰), and mentioned that I was going to submit some contributions to the supplement Bannong was editing, under the title "Diary in Haste." Xiaofeng said with a dejected look: recollections go into "Revisiting Old Things," and current miscellaneous thoughts go into this diary of yours...

Between the lines, the implication seemed to be: what are you going to write for Yusi then?—

But this may just be my own suspicious mind. At the time I was secretly thinking: a man born in a place where people dare to eat pufferfish—how can he be so rigid? Political parties open branch offices, banks open branch stores—can I not write a branch diary? Because contributions for Yusi were also needed, I immediately put this secret thought into practice, and thus I write a branch diary.

June 29. Clear.

Woken early by a small fly crawling back and forth on my face. Shooed it away; it came back. Shooed it away; it came back—and it insisted on crawling on one particular spot on my face. After swatting at it for a while without killing it, I had no choice but to change tactics: get up myself.

I recall the summer before last, passing through S-zhou. The swarms of flies in the inn were truly alarming. When food was brought out, they chased after it for inspection first. At night they covered every surface in the room. When we lay down, we had to lower our heads slowly and carefully; if we threw ourselves down suddenly, startling them, they would rise with a great buzz, leaving you dizzy, defeated, and utterly routed.

At dawn—that dawn the young people so yearn for—naturally they came as usual to crawl across your face. But walking through the streets, I saw a child sleeping. Five or six flies crawled across his face, and he slept sweetly on, not even twitching a muscle. In China, this sort of training and cultivation is absolutely indispensable. Instead of promoting "fly-catching," it would be far more practical to cultivate this particular skill.

Did not feel like doing anything. Whether because the stomach ailment had not fully cleared up or because of insufficient sleep, I could not tell. Still lazily rummaging through waste paper, I found a few more items in the style of Chaxiangshi Congchao. They were already balled up and thrown in the wastepaper basket, but I felt "reluctant to discard them." Let me pick out a few related toErta on the Water Margin and transcribe them here—

Song dynasty, Hong Mai's (洪邁) Yijian Zhizhi, volume 14: "In the twenty-fifth year of Shaoxing [1155], Wu Fupeng...was appointed as prefect of Anfeng Garrison. He sent a soldier from Poyang to summon his officials. Traveling through Shu prefecture territory, the soldier saw villagers swarming, scores and hundreds gathered together. He set down his carrying-pole to watch. They said, 'A woman from our village was carried off by a tiger. Her husband, unable to contain his fury, went alone with a knife to the tiger's lair. Time has passed and he has not returned; we are now planning to go to his rescue.' After a long while, the man came back carrying his dead wife. He said: 'When I first tracked the tiger to its lair, both the male and female tigers were out. Two cubs were playing below a rock cave. I killed them and hid inside to wait. Before long, I saw the female carrying a person, entering the cave tail first, not knowing I was hidden there. I quickly seized her tail and cut off one foot. The tiger dropped the person it was carrying and hobbled away. I came out slowly and looked—it was indeed my wife, already dead. The tiger dragged its foot some tens of paces and fell into a ravine. I went back into the cave to wait. Before long the male tiger came bounding and roaring. It too entered tail first. Again using the same method, I killed it. My wife's wrong has been avenged; I have no regrets.' He then invited the villagers to come look, and they carried the four tigers home and divided and cooked them." Note: The Water Margin's account of Li Kui (李逵) killing four tigers on Yi Ridge is very similar in its particulars, and I suspect it was based on such traditions. The Yijian Zhizhi was completed at the beginning of the Qiandao era (1165); this entry is titled "The Shu Man Kills Four Tigers."

Song dynasty, Zhuang Jiyu's (莊季裕) Jilei Bian: "People in Zhejiang consider 'duck' a great taboo word. Northerners only know that duck soup, no matter how hot, produces no steam. When I later went south, I first learned that if there is only one drake with the hens, then though they mate, there are no eggs. You need two or three drakes before there will be chicks. The reason for the taboo is this, not the matter of steam." Note: In the Water Margin, when Yun'ge (鄆哥) goes to Wuda (武大) to ask for wheat chaff, "Wuda said, 'We don't raise geese or ducks at my house—where would I get wheat chaff?' Yun'ge said, 'You say you've got no chaff, but how come you're so plump and fat? Even if you were hung upside down, it wouldn't matter—throw you in the pot and there wouldn't be any steam!' Wuda said, 'You filthy little monkey! Insulting me like that! My wife doesn't sleep around—how am I a duck?'..." That ducks need multiple drakes to become fertile was evidently a popular saying in Zhejiang during the Song; it is no longer known today. From this we can see that the Water Margin is indeed an old text, and its author was a Zhejiang native. Even Zhuang Jiyu himself only knew about duck soup having no steam. The Jilei Bian has a preface dated the third year of Shaoxing (1133)—nearly eight hundred years ago.

Yuan dynasty, Chen Tai's (陳泰) Suo'an Yiji, preface to "Jiangnan Qu": "When I was a child, I heard elders speak of Song Jiang's deeds but did not know the details. In the autumn of the guihai year of the Zhizhi era [1323], on the sixteenth day of the ninth month, I passed Liang Mountain Marsh. From the boat I saw a distant peak, towering and majestic. I asked the boatman, who said, 'This is An Mountain, where Song Jiang made his stand. The lake he carved out as his stronghold spans ninety li, all covered with lotus, water chestnuts, and water caltrops. Tradition has it that these were planted by Song's wife. Song as a man was brave, fierce, wild, and chivalrous. His followers numbered thirty-six, like Song himself. To this day at the foot of the mountain there is a spoils-dividing platform with thirty-six stone seats. The folk saying goes: "Thirty-six went out; eighteen pairs came back"—this seems to have been their oath of brotherhood. When I first passed here, lotuses stretched as far as the eye could see; now there are none left, only a lingering fragrance seeing us off. Recalling Wang Anshi's verse: "Thirty-six ponds of spring water / white-haired, I long to see Jiangnan again," I savor those words and compose a "Jiangnan Qu" to record my journey and to console the spirit of Song's wife who planted the lotuses. (Note: The poem was lost when the pouch was damaged.)'" Note: That Song Jiang had a wife at Liang Mountain Marsh who planted lotus and water chestnuts is found only here. And the description of Song Jiang as brave, fierce, wild, and chivalrous differs completely from the character as known today, showing that Song and Yuan traditions about the Water Margin tale were many and varied. Chen Tai, courtesy name Zhitong (志同), styled Suo'an, was from Chaling. In the jiaxin year of the Yanyou era (1314), he passed the provincial examination in twelfth place with his "Tianma Fu," then the metropolitan examination, receiving the jinshi degree in the yimao year under the Zhang Qiyan list. He was appointed Grand Secretary candidate and then magistrate of Longnan, where he died in office. It was not until his great-grandson Pu that his remaining writings were collected in one volume. In the dingwei year of Chenghua, his descendants Quan and others supplemented and reprinted it. The "Jiangnan Qu" is in the supplementary volume, but the poem itself was lost. The recent Hanfenlou Miji, tenth collection, contains a manuscript copy by Jin Kan, which has lost even the preface. The lines "From the boat I saw a distant peak" and "where Song Jiang made his stand" seem to have textual corruptions, but as I have not seen another edition, I cannot correct them.

July 1. Clear.

Morning: Kong Liu (空六) came to chat. We talked entirely about things reported in the newspapers—truth and falsehood impossible to distinguish.

After a long while, he left. I had forgotten almost everything he told me, as though we had not talked at all. I remember only one thing: it was said that Generalissimo Wu Peifu (吳佩孚), at a banquet, announced that he had traced the origins of "Bolshevization" and found that its progenitor was Chiyou (蚩尤). Because "chi" (蚩) and "chi" (赤, red) are homophones, Chiyou means "Red You" (赤尤), and "Red You" means "the worst of the Red"—that is, "the extreme of Bolshevization."

Upon finishing, the whole table broke into "delight," it was said.

The sun was fierce. The leaves of a few pots of small flowering plants were drooping a bit; I watered them. Tian Ma (田媽) admonished me that watering flowers must be done at a fixed time each day—no deviation; any deviation does harm. I found this reasonable and hesitated. But then I thought: there is no one to water at a fixed time, and I myself have no fixed watering time; if I followed her doctrine, those little flowers would simply have to wither and die in the sun. Even erratic watering is better than no watering; even if harmful, it is still better than death by sun. So I continued watering, though my heart was naturally not very enthusiastic. By afternoon, all the leaves had straightened up again—no great harm, it seemed—and only then was I relieved.

Too hot under the lamp at night, so I sat in the darkness. A cool breeze stirred faintly, and I too felt somewhat "delighted." If one can be "above it all," reading the newspapers is actually a kind of tranquil pleasure. I have never been a voracious reader of newspapers, yet in the past six months I have encountered quite a few memorable masterpieces. From afar: Provisional President Duan Qirui's (段祺瑞) "Essay of Two Reflections," Inspector-General Zhang Zhijiang's (張之江) "Telegram for Rectifying Academic Mores," Professor Chen Yuan's (陳源) "Idle Talk."

From nearer: Inspector-General (?) Ding Wenjiang's (丁文江) speech calling himself a "bookworm," Dr. Hu Shizhi's (胡適之) reply about British Boxer Indemnity funds, Mr. Niu Rongsheng's (牛榮聲) theory of "reversing course" (in Xiandai Pinglun, issue 78), and Commander-in-Chief Sun Chuanfang's (孫傳芳) letter to Mr. Liu Haisu (劉海粟) debating art. But all these pale immeasurably beside the genealogy of Bolshevization.

This spring, Inspector-General Zhang Zhijiang had plainly sent a telegram endorsing the execution of students suspected of Bolshevization, yet in the end he himself could not escape the charge of Bolshevization. This puzzled me greatly. Now that I know Chiyou was the patriarch of Bolshevization, the riddle melts like ice. Chiyou fought Emperor Yan (炎帝), and Emperor Yan was also a "Red Chief." Yan means fire; fire is red. And "Emperor"—is that not a leader? So the March 18 Massacre was essentially Red fighting Red: no matter which side you look at, one cannot escape the label of Bolshevization.

Such ingenious scholarship is rare in all the world. I only recall that years ago in Tokyo, Japan, I saw in the Yomiuri Shimbun a great work serialized daily, which contained a study proving that the Yellow Emperor was Abraham. The reasoning was: in Japanese, oil is called "abura" (Abura), and oil is generally yellow, so "Abraham" equals "yellow."

As for "Emperor"—whether it is similar in form to "Khan" or similar in sound to "Kehan"—I honestly cannot remember clearly now. In any case: Abraham equals the Oil Emperor, and the Oil Emperor is the Yellow Emperor. I have also forgotten the title of the piece and its author; I only recall that it was later published as a book—the first volume, no less. But this line of reasoning is after all too roundabout; best not to pursue it.

July 2. Clear.

Afternoon: after buying medicine outside Qianmen Gate, I strolled to the East Asia Company at Dongdan Pailou.

Though it is only a shop that incidentally sells some Japanese books, the selection on Chinese studies is already quite substantial. Due to certain restrictions, I bought only one book by Yasuoka Hideo (安岡秀夫), From Fiction: The National Character of the Chinese (Shosetsu kara mita Shina Minzokusei), and left. It was a thin volume, decorated in bright red and deep yellow, priced one yuan twenty fen.

By evening, sitting under the lamp, I looked through the book. He cites thirty-four works of fiction, though among them some are not actually fiction, and some are one work counted as several. Mosquitoes bit me several times. Though there seemed to be only one or two, I could not sit still. I lit a mosquito coil, and things gradually settled down.

Mr. Yasuoka is quite polite; in the introduction he says, "This is not something exclusive to the Chinese—even in Japan, there are probably some who would not escape the net." However, "once one measures the degree and breadth of it, to call it the national character of the Chinese is not in the least something one need feel scruples about." So from the perspective of this Chinese person (Zhina-ren), the effect is indeed perspiration-inducing. One need only look at the table of contents: 1. General remarks; 2. Excessive emphasis on face and appearance; 3. Resignation to fate and willingness to settle; 4. Ability to endure and forbear; 5. Lack of sympathy and much cruelty; 6. Individualism and sycophancy toward the powerful; 7. Excessive frugality and dishonest greed; 8. Addiction to empty ritual and empty formalities; 9. Deep superstition; 10. Indulgence in pleasure and rampant licentiousness.

He seems to trust Smith's Chinese Characteristics greatly, often citing it as evidence. In Japan, a translation appeared twenty years ago under the title The Temperament of the Chinese; but among the Chinese ourselves, hardly anyone pays attention to it. The very first chapter cites Smith's view that the Chinese are a people with a considerable flair for theatricality. When their spirits are slightly elevated, they become like actors; every word and phrase, every gesture and movement, is performed and posed. The share coming from genuine feeling is always less than the share devoted to keeping up appearances. This is because they attach too much importance to face and always want to make their face absolutely perfect—hence they dare to put on such words and actions. In sum, the compound key to the Chinese national character is this: "face."

If we observe broadly and examine ourselves, we can see that this is not excessively harsh. The reputedly finest couplet for the stage reads: "The theater is a small world; the world is a great theater." Everyone fundamentally regards everything as merely a play. Anyone who takes things seriously is a fool. But this does not stem solely from the active pursuit of face: when one's heart harbors injustice but one is too timid to retaliate, one dismisses everything with the thought that all things are just a play. Since all things are a play, then the injustice is not real, and not retaliating is not cowardice. So even if one witnesses injustice on the road and cannot draw one's sword to help, one remains an old-brand upright gentleman.

The foreigners I have encountered—whether influenced by Smith or through their own experience—include quite a few who are diligently studying what the Chinese mean by "face" or "mianzi." But I feel they have actually long since gained insight and are applying it. If they become even more proficient and polished, they will not only win in diplomacy but also gain the affections of upper-class "Chinese." At that point, they must not even say "Zhina-ren" but substitute "Chinese" (Huaren), because this too concerns the "face" of the "Chinese."

I still remember that when I first came to Beijing in the early Republic, the plaques above post office doors read "Postal Bureau" (Youzheng Ju). Later, the cries of foreigners not interfering in China's internal affairs grew louder. I do not know whether by coincidence or design, but within days, all the plaques were uniformly changed to "Postal Affairs Bureau" (Youwu Ju). A foreigner managing some postal "affairs" has truly nothing to do with internal "politics"—and this act has been playing ever since.

I have always disbelieved that the tears of national essence advocates and moralists are sincere. Even if there are genuine pearls rolling from the corners of their eyes, one must check whether their handkerchiefs have been soaked in chili water or ginger juice. Preserving national heritage, promoting morality, upholding justice, rectifying academic standards... do they truly think this in their hearts? Once it is all an act, the pose on stage never matches the face backstage. But the audience, though knowing it is a play, can still be moved to tears or laughter as long as it is well performed, and so the show goes on. Anyone who exposes the charade is accused of spoiling the fun.

Previously, the Chinese would hear the three words "Russian Nihilists" and be frightened out of their wits, no less than they are now by so-called "Bolshevization." In truth, there never was such a "party." There were, however, "nihilists" or "thinkers of nihilism"—a term created by Turgenev (I. Turgeniev) to describe those who believe in neither God nor religion, who deny all tradition and authority, and who seek to return to a life of free will. But even such people, from the Chinese point of view, are already detestable. Yet look at certain Chinese—at least the upper class—and their attitude toward God, religion, and traditional authority: is it "belief" and "obedience," or "fear" and "exploitation"? One need only observe their skill in changing colors, their utter lack of principle; they believe in nothing. But they must always put up a front different from what is in their hearts. To seek nihilists in China, there are in fact quite a few. The difference from Russia's nihilists is merely this: theirs think this way, say this way, and do this way. Ours, though they think this way, say that way; backstage they do this, but onstage they do that... Let us call this special breed "theatrical nihilists" or "respectable nihilists" to mark the distinction, even though the adjective and the noun are utterly irreconcilable.

Night: sent a letter to Pinqing (品青), asking him to borrow Luqiu Bianyou from the Kongde School on my behalf.

Late at night, just before I resolved to go to sleep, I tore today's sheet off the calendar. The sheet underneath was printed in red. I thought: tomorrow is still Saturday—why red? Looking closely, there were two lines of small print: "Anniversary of the Machang Oath to Restore the Republic." I thought again: should I hang out the national flag tomorrow?... Then, thinking no further, I went to bed.

July 3. Clear.

Extremely hot. Morning spent idling; afternoon spent sleeping.

After dinner, cooling off in the courtyard, I suddenly recalled the Wansheng Gardens and said: that place would actually be quite worth visiting in summer—a pity one cannot get in nowadays. Tian Ma then brought up the two tall men who guarded the gate, saying the taller one was her neighbor, and he had now been hired by Americans to go to America, with a salary of one thousand yuan a month.

This remark gave me a great revelation. Previously, I had seen in Xiandai Pinglun a recommendation of eleven fine works. Mr. Yang Zhensheng's (楊振聲) novel Yujun was one of them, and one of the reasons cited was that it was "long."

I had always felt somewhat bewildered by this reasoning, but on the evening of July 3—the "Anniversary of the Machang Oath to Restore the Republic"—I finally understood: "length" does indeed have value. Xiandai Pinglun's claim to equally value "scholarly reasoning and facts" can indeed be said and done.

As of my bedtime today, no national flags appear to have been hung. Whether they were hung in the latter half of the night, I do not know.

July 4. Clear.

Morning: again woken by a fly crawling back and forth on my face, again unable to shoo it away, again having no choice but to get up myself. A reply from Pinqing: the Kongde School does not have Luqiu Bianyou.

This was still on account of that book, From Fiction: The National Character of the Chinese. Because it discussed Chinese cuisine, I wanted to look into Chinese cuisine. I have never paid attention to this subject. The old records I have seen are only the so-called "Eight Treasures" in the Book of Rites, an imperially bestowed menu in the Youyang Zazu, and the gourmand Yuan Mei's (袁枚) Suiyuan Shidan. From the Yuan dynasty there is He Sihui's Yinshan Zhengyao; I only stood in the old bookshop flipping through it—it appeared to be a Yuan edition and was therefore beyond my means. From the Tang dynasty, there is Yang Yu's Shanfu Jingshou Lu, collected in the Luqiu Bianyou. Since this book cannot be borrowed, I can only give up.

In recent years I have often heard both Chinese and foreigners praise Chinese food—how delicious, how hygienic, the best in the world, number n in the universe. But I truly do not know what "Chinese food" means. Some of us gnaw on scallions and garlic with mixed-grain pancakes; some eat with vinegar, chili peppers, and pickled vegetables; many can only lick black salt; and many more have not even black salt to lick. What Chinese and foreigners consider delicious, hygienic, first-rate and nth-rate is certainly not these; it must be the dishes of the wealthy, the upper class. But I feel that just because they eat this way, one cannot rank "Chinese food" as first class—just as last year's appearance of two or three "high-class Chinese" did not make everyone else anything other than "lower class."

Yasuoka's discussion of Chinese food, citing Williams's The Middle Kingdom, appears in the last chapter, "Indulgence in Pleasure and Rampant Licentiousness." There is a passage in it—

I myself think that I do not easily take offense at foreigners pointing out our country's failings, but reading this I could not help laughing. Banquet dishes are indeed generally rich, but they are not the common people's daily fare. Chinese magnates are indeed often licentious, but they have not yet reached the point of combining cuisine with aphrodisiacs. "Even if Zhou was wicked, it was not so extreme as this." Foreign researchers of China, thinking too deeply and feeling too keenly, often arrive at such results—results showing an even greater sexual sensitivity than the "Chinese" themselves.

Yasuoka then says himself—

"The relationship between bamboo shoots and the Chinese is the same as with shrimp. The Chinese fondness for bamboo shoots surpasses that of the Japanese. Though it may be a laughable thing to say, perhaps it is the erect and protruding shape that stimulates the imagination."

Kuaiji to this day has much bamboo. In antiquity, bamboo was highly valued; hence the expression "the bamboo arrows of Kuaiji." But the reason for valuing it was that it could be made into arrows for warfare, not because it was "erect and protruding" like a phallus. Where there is much bamboo, there are many shoots; because of the abundance, the price is about the same as that of Chinese cabbage in Beijing. In my hometown, I ate bamboo shoots for over a decade. Looking back now and examining myself, no matter what, I cannot find the slightest shadow of a thought appreciating bamboo shoots for being "erect and protruding." The one thing whose effectiveness is imagined because of its shape is cistanche—but that is medicine, not food. In short, though bamboo shoots are commonly seen in the bamboo groves and on the dining tables of the south, like the telegraph poles on the streets and the pillars in houses, though "erect and protruding," they probably have nothing to do with the degree of sexual desire.

But clearing ourselves on this one point is not enough to prove that the Chinese are a decent people. To reach a conclusion would require many more twists and turns. Yet the Chinese are simply unwilling to study themselves. Yasuoka also says: "More than a decade ago, there was...a novel of unknown authorship called Liudong Waishi, which seemed to record actual events, probably with the malicious intent of depicting the sexual immorality of the Japanese. But reading the whole thing through, rather than attacking the Japanese, it inadvertently and painstakingly confesses more about the misconduct of Chinese students abroad—which is rather comical." This is true. To prove that the Chinese are not decent, one need only look at the matters of earnestly banning co-education and banning nude models.

I have not had the glory of attending a "great banquet." I have only experienced a few medium-sized banquets, eating shark fin and bird's nest. Looking back now, during and after the banquets, I did not feel any particular surge of lust. But what I still find strange is how, among stewed, steamed, and simmered dishes cooked to a soft mush, there was suddenly a plate of squirming, still-alive drunken shrimp. According to Yasuoka, shrimp too is connected to sexual desire. I have heard such claims not only from him but also in China. Yet what I find strange is the juxtaposition of these two extremes: as if, in a society rotting with civilization, there suddenly appeared the unmistakable savagery of eating raw flesh and drinking blood. And this savagery is not the kind progressing from barbarism toward civilization—if we compare the former to white paper, upon which writing is about to begin—but the kind that has fallen from civilization back into barbarism, a black paper already covered with writing. On one hand: establishing rites and composing music, revering Confucius and reading the classics, "four thousand years of civilization"—perfectly ripened. And on the other hand: calmly setting fires and killing, raping and plundering, doing things that even barbarians would not do to their own kind... The whole of China is just such a grand banquet!

I believe the food of the Chinese should be rid of what is cooked to a soft, dispirited mush;

and also rid of what is completely raw, or completely alive. What should be eaten is food that, though cooked, still retains some rawness, still dripping with blood...

At noon, as usual, it was time for lunch, and the discussion was suspended. The dishes: dried vegetables; bamboo shoots that were no longer "erect and protruding"; bean-thread noodles; pickled vegetables. What Professor Chen Yuan loathes about Shaoxing is "pettifogging clerks" and "the pen-tips of litigious scribes." What I loathe is the food.

The Jiatai Kuaiji Gazetteer is being lithographed, though not yet published. In the future I very much want to look up exactly how many great famines Shaoxing has endured, to have so terrified its inhabitants that they seem to think tomorrow is the end of the world, obsessively hoarding dried goods. Got vegetables? Dry them. Got fish? Dry them. Got beans? Dry them too. Got bamboo shoots? Dry them beyond recognition. Water chestnuts, whose special quality is abundant moisture, tender and crisp flesh—even those they dry out... I hear that Arctic explorers, eating only canned food and lacking fresh provisions, often get scurvy. If the people of Shaoxing took their dried goods on such expeditions, they might perhaps get a bit farther.

Evening: received a letter from Qiaofeng (喬峰) along with the manuscript of Congwu's (叢蕪) translation of Bunin's short story "A Slight Sigh" (Qingwei de Xixu). It had been lying silently in a Shanghai bookshop for half a year; this time it was finally retrieved by other means.

The Chinese simply refuse to study themselves. Examining national character through fiction—that too is a good subject. Beyond that: the relationship between Daoist thought (not Daoism the religion, but the ancient alchemists) and great events in history, and its power in contemporary society; how the Confucianists have made the "Sacred Way" compatible with their own unscrupulousness; what the "profit" and "harm" invoked by the Warring States traveling persuaders were really like, and whether today's politicians are any different; how many literary inquisitions China has had from antiquity to the present; the methods and effects of manufacturing and spreading "rumors" throughout history, and so on...

There are truly many new avenues for research.

July 5. Clear.

Morning: Jingsong (景宋) brought a portion of Notes on Old Fiction (Xiaoshuo Jiuwen Chao), sorted and cleaned up. I reviewed it myself once more; it took until afternoon to finish. Sent it to Xiaofeng (小峰) for printing. The heat was truly unbearable.

Felt fatigued. In the evening, my eyes could not bear the lamplight. I turned off the light and lay down—it felt almost like bliss. I heard someone knocking at the door and hurried out to open it, but no one was there. Stepping outside to investigate, a child had already run off into the darkness.

Closed the door, came back, lay down again—again almost bliss. A passerby sang an opera tune as he walked by, his trailing notes drawn out: "Yi, yi, yi!" Somehow, it suddenly made me think of old Mr. Qiang Ruxun (強汝詢) and his opinions in the Notes on Old Fiction I had proofread today. This gentleman's study was called the "Seek-What-Is-Useful Studio"—so one can well imagine the content of essays written within it. He himself said he truly could not understand why anyone would be so bored as to write fiction, or to read it. But his verdicts on old fiction were lenient, because it was ancient, and because earlier scholars had already catalogued it.

The loathing of fiction is not limited to this Mr. Qiang; such lofty pronouncements can be heard everywhere. Yet the learning of our citizens in fact largely depends on fiction—and even on operas adapted from fiction. Even the great men who worship Lords Guan and Yue (關岳), if asked what these two "Martial Saints" look like in their mind's eye, would probably picture a red-faced giant with squinting eyes and a fair-skinned scholar with five long strands of beard, perhaps in gold-embroidered satin armor, with four pointed pennants on their backs.

Recently, indeed, there has been a concerted effort from top to bottom to promote loyalty, filial piety, chastity, and righteousness. At New Year, visiting the temple fairs to look at New Year prints, one can see many newly made illustrations of these virtues. Yet every ancient personage depicted is nothing but a laosheng, xiaosheng, laodan, xiaodan, mo, wai, huadan...

July 6. Clear.

Afternoon: went outside Qianmen Gate to buy medicine. After it was prepared, I paid and drank one dose standing right there at the counter. My reasons were three: first, I had already missed one day and should drink early; second, to taste whether it was correct; third, the weather was too hot, and I was genuinely a bit thirsty.

To my surprise, a customer was watching with amazement. I could not understand what was so remarkable. Yet he was indeed amazed, and whispered to the shop clerk:

"That's opium cure, isn't it?"

"No, it's not!" The clerk defended my reputation.

"That's for quitting opium, right?" He then asked me directly.

I felt that if I did not let him identify this medicine as "opium cure," he would probably never rest in peace. Life is short—why be stubborn? So I gave a movement of my head that was neither quite a nod nor quite not, and simultaneously deployed my excellent "hovering between two possibilities" reply:

"Mm, mm..."

This neither undermined the shop clerk's good intentions nor failed to gratify his fervent hopes—it should have been a miracle remedy. Sure enough, from that moment all sounds ceased, heaven and earth were at peace, and I corked my bottle in the silence and walked out onto the street.

I went to Zhongyang Park, heading straight for the agreed-upon secluded spot. Shoushan (壽山) had arrived first. After a brief rest, we began the parallel translation of Little Johannes (Xiao Yuehan). It is a fine book, but its acquisition was a matter of chance. About twenty years ago, I bought several dozen issues of old German literary magazines at a used bookshop in Tokyo. Among them was an introduction to this book and a critical biography of the author, as it had just been translated into German. I found it interesting and ordered it through the Maruzen bookstore. I wanted to translate it but lacked the ability. Later I often thought of it but was always sidetracked. Not until last year did I resolve to translate it during the summer vacation and even placed an advertisement—but that summer turned out to be harder than any other time. This year I remembered it again, looked through it, found many difficult passages, and still lacked the ability. I asked Shoushan if he would co-translate. He agreed, and we began. We also agreed that it must be finished during this summer vacation.

Evening, back home. After eating a little, I sat in the courtyard to cool off. Tian Ma told me that this afternoon, the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law from some family diagonally across the way had a terrible quarrel. In her view, the mother-in-law was naturally somewhat in the wrong, but ultimately it was the daughter-in-law who was being too unreasonable. She asked my opinion—what did I think? I had not even heard clearly which family had been quarreling, did not know what sort of people the two were, had not heard their words back and forth, and knew nothing of their old grudges or new grievances. Now to ask me to pass judgment—I truly did not dare trust my own opinion, especially since I have never been a critic. So I could only say: I cannot determine this matter.

But the result of this statement was very bad. In the dimness, though I could not see faces, my ears heard: all sounds went silent. Stillness—heavy, oppressive stillness. Then someone stood up and walked away.

I too listlessly got up, walked into my own room, lit the lamp, lay on the bed and read the evening paper. After a few lines, listlessness descended again. So I went to the east wall and sat down to write this diary—this "Branch Diary in Haste."

The courtyard gradually filled again with the sounds of talk and laughter, and sounds of righteous pronouncements.

Today's luck seems to have been rather poor: a passerby accused me of drinking "opium cure"; Tian Ma said I... What she said, I do not know. But may it be that from tomorrow, things will no longer be like this.

July 7. Clear.

Recording the weather each day has truly grown tiresome even to myself; from now on I intend to stop. Fortunately, the weather in Beijing is mostly clear. If it were the plum rain season, then the mornings would be clear, the afternoons overcast, and in the late afternoon there would be a great downpour, followed by the sound of mud walls collapsing.

Never mind; and fortunately this diary of mine will never be taken up by a meteorologist as reference material.

Morning: visited Suyuan (素園). Chatting idly, he said the famous Russian writer Pilnyak (Boris Piliniak 畢力涅克) had been in Beijing last month but had now left.

I only knew he had been to Japan; I did not know he had also come to China.

In the past two years, as far as I have heard, four famous writers have visited China. The first was naturally the most famous of all, Tagore—that is, "Zhu Zhendang" (竺震旦). Unfortunately, the men of Zhendang who wore Indian caps made such a muddle of everything that he departed in utter bewilderment.

Later he fell ill in Italy and telegraphed for the Zhendang "Poet-Sage" to come, though what happened afterward is also unknown. Now I hear that someone wants to drag Gandhi to China as well—this supremely austere and extraordinary great man, who could only have been born in India and could only have lived under British rule in India, is again to leave his great footprints on the soil of Zhendang. But before his bare feet have even touched Chinese soil, dark clouds are probably already rising from the hills.

Next was the Spaniard Ibanez (伊本納茲). China had people who introduced him early on. But during the Great War, he was a great advocate of universal love and cosmopolitanism. Judging from this year's resolutions of the National Federation of Education Associations, he was really quite unsuitable for China, and naturally nobody paid him any attention—because our educators were now promoting nationalism.

The other two were both Russians. One was Skitalets (斯吉泰烈支), and the other was Pilnyak. Both are pseudonyms. Skitalets was living in exile abroad. Pilnyak, however, was a Soviet writer; but according to his autobiography, from the first year of the revolution, he spent over a year busy trying to buy bread flour. Afterward, he wrote fiction, and even took cod liver oil. Such a life—even the Chinese writers who complain of poverty all day probably cannot dream of it.

His name had appeared in Ren Guozhen's (任國楨) compiled and translated Debates on Literature and Art in Soviet Russia, but not a single translated work existed. In Japan there was a translation of Ivan and Maria, quite distinctive in format. That feature alone, in the eyes of China—the eyes of the Golden Mean—would already be objectionable. Some people already feel as though their eyes are full of ground glass when the grammar is somewhat Europeanized; how much more so when the very form is stranger than Europeanization. That he came and went quietly, unnoticed, is really a blessing of fate.

Furthermore, Libedinsky (U. Libedinsky 里培進司基), whose name in China has only appeared in Debates on Literature and Art in Soviet Russia, has already had a novel translated in Japan, titled One Week (Isshukan). The speed and volume of their introductions is truly formidable. Our military men take their military men as masters, but our literary men do not in the least emulate the example of their literary men—from which one can predict that China will certainly be more "peaceful" than Japan in the future.

But according to Owase Keishi (尾瀨敬止), the translator of Ivan and Maria, the author's view is that "the blossoms of the apple tree open in the old courtyard too; as long as the earth endures, they will always open." If so, he is not without nostalgia after all. Yet he has seen, has lived through the revolution; he knows there is destruction in it, bloodshed, contradiction, but also creation. So he is by no means in despair. This is precisely the heart of a living person in a revolutionary era. The poet Blok (Alexander Block 勃洛克) was the same. They are naturally poets of the Soviet Union, but if judged through the lens of orthodox Marxism, there would certainly still be much to criticize. However, I feel that Trotsky's (托羅茲基) literary criticism is not quite so severe.

Unfortunately, I still have not read their newest author's work, One Week.

In a revolutionary era, there will always be many literary artists who wither, and many who charge into the new cataclysmic waves only to be swallowed up or wounded. Those swallowed up are destroyed; those wounded live on, carving out their own lives, singing songs of pain and joy. When these too have passed away, a newer new era emerges, producing newer literature.

In China, since the revolution of the first year of the Republic, there have been no literary artists who withered, none who were wounded, naturally none who were destroyed, nor any songs of pain and joy. This is because there has been no new cataclysmic wave—which is to say, there has been no revolution.

July 8.

Morning: went to Dr. Ito's (伊東) residence to have a tooth filled. Waiting in the reception room, rather bored. On the four walls hung only one woven picture and two pairs of couplets. One pair was by Jiang Chaozong (江朝宗), the other by Wang Zhixiang (王芝祥). Below each signature were two seals: one with the name, one with the title. Jiang's read "General Diwei" (迪威將軍); Wang's read "Disciple of the Buddha" (佛門弟子).

Afternoon: Miss Gao (密斯高) came. As it happened, there were no snacks at all, so I had no choice but to bring out the treasured persimmon frost candy—the kind that is effective for sores at the corners of the mouth—arranged on a plate. I usually have some snacks, and when guests come I offer them. At first I treated "Misses" and "Misters" equally. But the Misters can sometimes be formidable—they often eat with great thoroughness, not leaving a single piece, so that I myself end up with a sense of "being left out." If I want to eat, I must go out and buy more. So I grew wary and changed my strategy: in dire necessity, I substitute peanuts.

This stratagem works very well. They never eat much. Since they do not eat much, I begin pressing them to eat more, and sometimes I press with such vigor that even someone like Zhifang (織芳), who fears peanuts, ends up fleeing in dismay.

Since inventing this peanut policy last summer, I have been rigorously enforcing it ever since.

But the Misses are another matter. Their stomachs seem to be four-fifths smaller than the Misters', or their digestive capacity eight-tenths weaker. Even a very small snack they mostly leave half-finished; if it is a piece of candy, they leave a corner. To display it for a moment and have a bit nibbled is a negligible loss to me—"why change the system?"

Miss Gao is a rare visitor, and it would be difficult to apply the peanut policy. As it happened, there were no other snacks either, so I had no choice but to bring out the persimmon frost candy. This was a famous confection brought from afar—naturally a gesture of due respect.

I thought that since this candy was not very common, I should first explain its origin and function. But Miss Gao had already grasped it all at a glance. She said: this comes from Si Shui County (汜水縣) in Henan. It is made from persimmon frost. The best color is deep yellow; if it is pale yellow, it is not pure persimmon frost. It is very cooling. If you get sores around the mouth corners, you hold it in your mouth and let it gradually seep out from the corners, and the sores will heal.

She knew it far more clearly than what I had picked up secondhand. I could only say nothing—and only then did I recall that she was from Henan. Offering a few slices of persimmon frost candy to someone from Henan is like offering me a small cup of yellow rice wine—truly a stupidity "beyond reach."

Water chestnuts with black spots in the center—we call them "grey water chestnuts" back home—even country folk are unwilling to eat them; but in Beijing they are used at grand banquets. Napa cabbage in Beijing is sold by the jin and by the cartload; but once it reaches the south, it is hung upside down by a string tied to the root outside fruit shops, sold by the liang or by the half-head, used in fancy hotpots or as a bed for shark fin. But if someone in Beijing specifically invited me to eat grey water chestnuts, or took a Beijinger south and served him boiled napa cabbage, then even if one were not called a "blockhead," it would still be rather eccentric.

But Miss Gao did eat one slice—perhaps just to humor the host's face.

By evening, sitting with nothing in my mouth, I thought: this should be served to people from provinces other than Henan. While thinking, I ate. Before I knew it, I had eaten them all up.

All things are valued for their rarity. If studying in Europe or America, the best thesis topic would be Li Taibai, Yang Zhu, or Zhang San. Researching Bernard Shaw or H. G. Wells would not be quite advisable, let alone Dante and the like. The author of the Life of Dante, Butler (A. J. Butler), himself said that the literature on Dante was truly too much to read through. But once back in China, one could very well lecture on Shaw, Wells, and even Shakespeare. In what year and month one once wept at the grave of Katherine Mansfield; in what month, what day, what hour, and where one once exchanged nods with Anatole France, who even patted one's shoulder saying: you will someday bear some resemblance to me. As for the Four Books and Five Classics—on home ground, it seems best to talk about them as little as possible.

Even if mixed with some "rumor," it need not necessarily be a hindrance to "scholarly reasoning and facts."

Section 25

Afternoon: while doing some minor work with C in Zhongyang Park, I suddenly received a warning from a well-meaning former colleague. He said the ministry had issued salary payments today—three-tenths. But one must collect in person, and within three days.

Otherwise?

What "otherwise" meant, he did not say. But this is "clear as watching fire": otherwise, you get nothing.

Whenever money passes through someone's hands—even if it is not a patron's alms—people always love to put on a little show of authority. Without it, they might have to acknowledge their own triviality and insignificance. You bring perfectly good goods to pawn, yet the pawnshop presents you with its imperious face and its towering counter. You go to exchange silver dollars for copper coins, yet the money-changer posts a sign reading "Purchasing Silver Dollars," implicitly casting himself as the "buyer." Of course, bank notes should be redeemable for cash at the responsible institution, yet sometimes an absurdly short deadline is imposed. You must take a number, queue up, wait, and suffer abuse;

military police stand guard, whips of the national heritage in hand.

Won't comply? Then not only no money, but a beating too!

I have said before: officials of the Republic of China all come from common stock and are not a special breed. Although the lofty men of letters or journalists regard them as a different species and consider them far more peculiar, contemptible, and laughable than themselves, from my own experience of the past few years, they are really not so very special. All their quirks are about the same as those of ordinary compatriots. So when money passes through their hands, they too cannot resist the habitual urge to throw their weight around a bit.

The history of the "collect in person" problem goes back quite far. In the eleventh year of the Republic, it once provoked the grumbling of Fang Xuanzhuo (方玄綽)—I wrote a story about it called "The Dragon Boat Festival."

But though history is said to spiral, it is after all not a printing block, so the present differs somewhat from the past. In the good old days, those who insisted on "personal collection" were the crack troops of the "Salary Demanding Society"—

Alas, these technical terms—forgive me for not having leisure to explain them one by one; besides, paper is precious.—These crack troops ran about day and night, shouting at the State Council, sitting in at the Ministry of Finance until they got results. Once the money was in hand, they begrudged those who had not gone along the claiming of their unearned share, and used "personal collection" to make them suffer a little. The idea was: this money was fought for by us, so it is as good as ours. You want it? You must come here to collect your charity. Have you ever seen alms-givers personally deliver clothes or porridge to the homes of the recipients?

But that was in the good old days. Nowadays, no matter how much "demanding" is done, not a single cent is forthcoming. If salaries happen to be "issued," it is an unexpected grace from above, having nothing whatsoever to do with any "demanding." Yet the patron who issues the "personal collection" order on the spot still exists—only it is no longer the crack soldiers good at demanding salaries, but the "loyal ministers" who show up at the office every day without seeking other employment. So the former "personal collection" was a punishment for those who had not joined the salary-demanding expedition; the present "personal collection" is a punishment for those who, unable to survive on empty stomachs, cannot come to the ministry every day.

But this is only a rough outline. As for the rest, without experiencing it firsthand, it is really hard to say. It is like a bowl of hot and sour soup: hearing about it or talking about it can never compare with taking a sip yourself. Recently, several scheming notables have indirectly advised me that last year my essays dealt exclusively with quarrels between a few individuals, and that I no longer discussed literature, art, or affairs of state—what a pity. Little do they know that I have in fact come to understand: if I cannot even fathom the small matters I experience firsthand, still less can I comment on such lofty and grand yet not-very-clear enterprises. For now I can only speak of relatively personal, private matters. As for the grand and magnificent—things like "justice"—let the justice specialists amuse themselves with those.

In short, I believe the present advocates of "personal collection" are considerably inferior to those of the past. This is what "Mr. Lone Paulownia" would call "deteriorating ever further." And even idle grumblers like Fang Xuanzhuo seem to have grown very few indeed.

"Go!" The moment I received the warning, I walked out of the park, jumped on a rickshaw, and headed straight for the ministry.

As soon as I entered the gate, a policeman snapped to attention and gave me a salute—proof that if one has been an official of some standing, even after a long absence, they still recognize you. Inside, there was nobody about, for office hours had been moved to the morning and everyone had presumably already collected their pay and gone home. I found an attendant, inquired about the "personal collection" procedure, and was told: first go to the Accounting Section to obtain a slip, then take that slip to the Main Hall to collect the money.

So I went to the Accounting Section. An official glanced at my face and immediately produced the slip.

I knew he was a veteran official, familiar with all colleagues, charged with the grave responsibility of "verifying identity." After receiving my slip, I gave him two extra nods by way of farewell and deep gratitude.

Next came the Main Hall. First I passed through a side door with a strip of paper reading "Group C," and below it a note in small print: "Less than one hundred yuan." Looking at my own slip, the amount was ninety-nine yuan. In my mind I thought: truly, "Man's life does not fill a hundred years, yet he harbors a thousand years of worry..." At the same time, I walked straight in. An official about my own age told me that "less than one hundred yuan" referred to the full salary; mine was not handled here, but in the inner room.

So I went to the inner room. There were two large tables, several people sitting around them, and an old colleague I knew called out to greet me. I handed over my slip, signed my name, and received a money order—smooth sailing throughout. Next to this section sat a very fat official, presumably a supervisor, for he had dared to unbutton his official gauze—or perhaps pongee silk; I am not very good at telling these fabrics apart—revealing a chest and belly so plump they folded in upon themselves, over which beads of sweat rolled majestically down the creases.

At that moment I felt an inexplicable stirring of emotion. I thought: everyone nowadays talks about "disaster officials," but there are still plenty who are "broad of mind and fat of body." Even two or three years ago, when teachers were clamoring for their salaries, in the faculty preparation rooms there were still people who, having eaten too much, would go "urp" and have a belch of stomach gas rebel out of their mouths.

Stepping out into the outer room, the official about my own age was still there, and I seized him to air my grievances.

"Why are you people putting on these shenanigans again?" I said.

"It's his idea..." he replied amiably, even with a grin.

"What about people who are sick? Do they have to be carried here on a door plank?"

"He says: those cases will be handled by other means..."

I understood at once. But an "outsider"—a person outside the gate, the gate of a ministry—might not find it so easy to grasp, so let me add a small explanation. This "he" refers to the Minister or Vice-Minister. At this point the referent may seem somewhat vague; dig further and you can pin it down; but if you dig even further, it may become vague again. In any case, since the salary is already in hand, such matters should be dealt with on the principle of "quit while you're ahead, and don't be greedy." Otherwise, there may be some danger. Even my having said this much is already a bit improper.

So I withdrew from the Main Hall, only to run into several old colleagues. Chatting a while, I learned there was also a "Group E"—for issuing salaries to those who had already died. This group presumably did not require "personal collection." I also learned that the one who proposed the "personal collection" rule this time was not only "he," but also "they." This "they," on first hearing, sounded much like the leaders of the "Salary Demanding Society," but in fact it was not so, for there had long been no "Salary Demanding Society" in the ministry, so this time it was naturally an entirely different batch of new figures.

The salary we "personally collected" this time was for the month of February, Year Thirteen of the Republic.

This gave rise to two schools of thought beforehand. One: issue it as the salary for February of Year Thirteen. But what about newcomers or those who recently received raises? They would have to be "left out." And so the second, new theory naturally arose: never mind what came before; just treat it as this year's June salary. But this theory too was not quite sound; the phrase "never mind what came before" alone contained considerable flaws.

This approach had already been devised by others before. Last year, after Zhang Shizhao (章士釗) dismissed me, he congratulated himself on having dealt a blow to my position, and even some literary types danced for joy. But after all they were clever people who had seen "German books covering tables, beds, and floors." They quickly realized that merely losing my post would not finish me off, because I could still draw back pay and live in Beijing. So their bureau chief, Liu Bailhao (劉百昭), proposed at a departmental meeting that back pay should not be issued—whatever month you come to collect, it would be counted as that month's salary. Had this been implemented, the blow to me would have been considerable, for I would have been under economic pressure. But in the end it did not pass. The fatal flaw was in "never mind what came before." And the Liu Bailhaos were not willing to call themselves revolutionaries and advocate starting everything from scratch.

So now, each time political funds arrive, what is distributed is still old money. Even if someone is no longer in Beijing this year, if they were here in February of Year Thirteen, it would be hard to say that because they are not here now, their having been here back then does not count either. But since a new theory has arisen, something must be adopted from it—adopting something is also a form of compromise. Therefore, the receipt we signed this time bore the date February, Year Thirteen, but the amount was that of June, Year Fifteen.

By this reckoning, since it was not "never mind what came before," and those who had recently been promoted or received raises could get a bit more money, it may be called relatively thorough. For me it was neither gain nor loss—as long as I was still in Beijing, and could present my "own person."

Checking my simple diary, I have already collected salary four times this year: the first time, three yuan; the second time, six yuan; the third time, eighty-two yuan and fifty fen, that is, two-and-a-half tenths—received on the night of the Dragon Boat Festival; the fourth time, three-tenths, ninety-nine yuan—this time. Calculating the salary still owed me, it is approximately nine thousand two hundred and forty yuan, not counting July.

I feel I am already a tycoon in spirit. Unfortunately, this "spiritual civilization" is not very reliable—Liu Bailhao has already tried to shake it. In the future, when someone good at financial management comes along, they will probably establish a "Back Pay Adjustment Committee." Inside, a few personages will sit; outside, a signboard will hang, and everyone with back pay will go there to negotiate. After a few days or months, the personages will have vanished; then even the signboard will vanish. And the spiritual tycoon will become a material pauper.

But for now I have indeed received ninety-nine yuan. Feeling somewhat more at ease about life, let me take advantage of this leisure to air a few opinions.

July 21.

Section 26

Lu Xun is about to leave for Xiamen. Although he himself says that the climate may prevent him from staying there for long, at the very least he will be away from Beijing for half a year or a whole year, which is truly, as we feel, a matter for much regret. On August 22, the student union of the Women's Normal University held a commemoration of the anniversary of the school's destruction. Mr. Lu Xun attended and gave a speech. I fear this may be his last public lecture in the capital before his departure, so I have recorded it here as a small token of remembrance. When people mention Mr. Lu Xun, they may perhaps feel that he is somewhat too cool-headed and detached in manner, but in truth he is at all times filled with fervent hope and overflowing with rich emotion. In this particular talk, his position can be seen with especial clarity; therefore, my recording of this speech as a memento of his departure from Beijing is perhaps not entirely without significant meaning. As for myself, to spare honest folk any unnecessary concern, I should declare: I attended the meeting in the capacity of a minor functionary.

(Peiliang)

Main Text

Last night I was proofreading The Worker Shevyryov, intending to have it reprinted. I went to bed too late and am still not fully awake even now. While I was proofreading, certain thoughts suddenly came to mind, making my head quite confused, and it remains confused right up to this moment, so I fear I shall not have much to say today.

Speaking of the history behind my translation of The Worker Shevyryov, it is actually rather interesting. Twelve years ago, the great European conflagration began, and later our China also joined the war -- what is called "declaring war on Germany." Many workers were sent to Europe to help; afterwards victory was won -- what is called "the triumph of justice." China was naturally entitled to its share of the spoils of war --

One item consisted of the German-language books from a German merchants' club in Shanghai -- a considerable number in all, mostly literary works -- which were all moved to the gate tower of Wumen. The Ministry of Education, having obtained these books, wanted to organize and classify them -- in fact, the Germans had already classified them properly, but some people felt the classification was not good enough, so they had to be reclassified.

At the time, many people were assigned to the task, and I was one of them. Later, the Minister wanted to have a look at what sort of books they were. How was this to be done? We were told to translate the titles into Chinese -- translating meaning where meaning was available, transliterating sound where it was not -- Caesar, Cleopatra, Damascus.... Each person received ten yuan a month for transportation expenses, and I must have collected a hundred yuan or so, because at that time there was still a bit of so-called administrative funding. After muddling about like this for over a year, spending several thousand yuan in total, the Treaty of Peace with Germany was concluded, and later when Germany came to reclaim the books, we who had inventoried them simply handed them all back -- though perhaps a few volumes were missing. As for whether the Minister ever looked at "Cleopatra" and the like, that I cannot say.

As far as I know, the result of "declaring war on Germany" was, for China, a commemorative arch inscribed "The Triumph of Justice" in Zhongyang Park; and for me, nothing but this one translation of The Worker Shevyryov, for the original text was selected from among those German books I was organizing at the time.

There were a great many literary works in that pile. Why, then, did I single out this particular one? The reasoning, I now recall only vaguely. Roughly, I felt that before and after the founding of the Republic, we too had had many reformers whose circumstances closely resembled those of Shevyryov, so I would borrow someone else's wine cup, as it were. Yet looking at it again last night -- it is not merely of that time; take, for example, the persecution of reformers, the suffering of their representatives -- it is true of the present, too -- and of the future -- even several decades hence, I believe, many reformers will still find their circumstances resembling his.

So I plan to have it reprinted....

The author of The Worker Shevyryov, Artsybashev, was a Russian. Nowadays, the mere mention of Russia seems to set people's hearts trembling with fright. But this is quite unnecessary. Artsybashev was by no means a Communist; his works are not well received in Soviet Russia either. I hear he has gone blind and is in great hardship, so he is certainly not about to send me a single ruble.... In short: he has absolutely nothing to do with Soviet Russia. But the strange thing is that so many things in his work bear such a striking resemblance to China. The suffering of reformers and their representatives goes without saying; but even the old woman who tells people to know their place is exactly like our men of letters and scholars. When a teacher was dismissed because he refused to accept his superior's abuse, she reproached him behind his back, calling him detestably "arrogant": "Look -- I was once slapped twice across the face by my master, and I didn't say a word, just endured it. In the end they realized I was innocent, and with their own hands they rewarded me with a hundred rubles." To be sure, our men of letters and scholars would never phrase things quite so crudely; their prose would be considerably more ornate.

Yet Shevyryov's final state of mind is truly terrifying. At first he worked for society, and society persecuted him, even trying to kill him. Then he underwent a transformation and turned to taking revenge on society -- everything was an enemy, everything was to be destroyed. In China we have not yet seen anyone who destroys everything in this way, and probably there never will be such a person; nor do I wish for one. But China has always had a different kind of destroyer, so those of us who do not go about destroying are constantly being destroyed. We are destroyed on one side while patching things up on the other, toiling to carry on. And so our life becomes a life of being destroyed and patching up, destroyed and patching up, over and over again. This school, too, after being destroyed by the likes of Yang Yinyu and Zhang Shizhao, was patched up, tidied up, and carried on.

Perhaps the Russian-old-woman type of men of letters and scholars will say this is detestably "arrogant" and deserves punishment. That sounds rather plausible, to be sure, but it is not entirely so. In my own home there lives a country woman who, because of the fighting, lost her home and had no choice but to flee into the city. She was truly not "arrogant" at all, nor had she ever opposed Yang Yinyu, yet her home was gone -- destroyed. When the fighting ends, she will certainly want to go back, and even if the house is in ruins, the furnishings scattered, and the fields gone to waste, she will still want to go on living. She will probably just gather up whatever scraps remain, patch things up, tidy things up, and carry on living.

Chinese civilization is just such a weary, wounded, pitiful thing, destroyed and then patched up, destroyed and then patched up again. But many people take great pride in it, and even the destroyers take pride in it too. If the very person who destroyed this school were sent to some international women's congress and asked to describe the state of women's education in China, that person would certainly say: "We in China have a National Peking Women's Normal University."

It is truly an immense pity that we Chinese, when it comes to things that are not our own, or things that will not remain ours, always have to destroy them before we feel content. Yang Yinyu, knowing that she could not remain as principal, employed literary schemes through her literati's "rumors" and martial force through old amahs from Sanhe, determined not to rest until every last "feathered young girl" was hunted down and exterminated. I once read accounts of how Zhang Xianzhong slaughtered the people of Sichuan, and I could never fathom his motive.

Later I read another book, and at last I understood: he had originally intended to become emperor, but Li Zicheng entered Beijing first and became emperor, so Zhang set out to destroy Li Zicheng's imperial throne. How was he to destroy it? To be an emperor, one must have subjects; if he killed all the subjects, then no one could be emperor anymore. With no subjects, there could be no emperor, and so only Li Zicheng would remain, making a fool of himself on barren ground -- much like a principal after a school has been dissolved. Though this is an absurd and extreme example, there are by no means few people who share this kind of thinking.

We are, after all, Chinese; we must inevitably face Chinese affairs. But we are not destroyers in the Chinese manner, so we live a life of being destroyed and then patching up, being destroyed and then patching up again. Many of our years are wasted to no purpose. The only consolation we can find, thinking it over again and again, is still what we call hope for the future. Hope is contingent upon existence; where there is existence, there is hope, and where there is hope, there is light. If the words of historians are not lies, then there has as yet been no precedent in this world for anything enduring because of its darkness. Darkness can only be contingent upon things that are heading toward extinction; once they are extinct, the darkness perishes along with them -- it does not last forever. But the future will always come, and it is bound to grow bright. As long as we do not become appendages of darkness, but rather perish for the sake of light, then we shall surely have a long future -- and that future shall surely be a bright one.

Postscript

Four days after I attended this gathering, I left Beijing. In Shanghai, reading the daily papers, I learned that the Women's Normal University had been reorganized as the normal department of a Women's College, with the Education Minister Ren Kecheng himself serving as dean and Lin Suyuan as the head of the normal department. Later, reading a Beijing evening paper dated September 5, I came across a report: "This afternoon at 1:30, Ren Kecheng specially accompanied Mr. Lin and led some forty men comprising security police from the Police Bureau and soldiers from the Military Inspectorate, racing to the Women's Normal University for an armed takeover...." So, just on the first anniversary, there was military force again. I wonder whether next year on this day it will be the armed ones who hold an anniversary of the school's founding, or the ones attacked who hold an anniversary of its destruction? For now, let me simply transcribe this piece by Mr. Peiliang here, as a memento of this year.

October 14, 1926. Postscript by Lu Xun.

Section 27

Dear Xiaofeng,

The day after we parted, I boarded the train and arrived in Tianjin that evening. Nothing happened along the way, except that just as I came out of Tianjin station, a man in uniform -- probably some sort of customs officer -- suddenly grabbed my basket and demanded, "What's this?" I had barely answered "Daily necessities" when he had already shaken the basket twice and strode off. Fortunately my basket contained no ginseng soup, mustard-tuber broth, or glassware, so there was no loss whatsoever. Please do not worry.

From Tianjin to Pukou, I rode the special express, so it was not rowdy, but it was crowded all the same. I had not taken this train since escorting my family to Beijing seven years ago; now it seems men and women sit separately. In the neighboring compartment there was originally a family of one man and three women, but this time the man was expelled, and another woman was invited in to take his place. As we neared Pukou, a small commotion arose because that family of four had given the tea-boy too little tip. A tall, burly tea-boy then came to our section to deliver a speech, so that they might "hear of it." The gist was: Money is naturally required. Why does a man work if not for money? However, the fact that he himself serves as a mere tea-boy for a few coins in tips is because his conscience is still in the middle here, and hasn't gone over to the side (pointing under his armpit). He could just as well sell off his fields, buy a gun, gather a band of bandits, and become their chief; have himself a good time, and then he could rise to an official post and make a fortune. But his conscience is still right here (pointing at his breastbone), so he is content to be a tea-boy, earn a little money, and have his children get some schooling so they can live decently in the future.... But if people push him too far and make things unbearable, there is nothing that a man won't do, even things unworthy of a human being! There were six of us in all in our section, and nobody contradicted him. I heard that in the end an extra yuan was added, and the matter was settled.

I have no intention of following in the footsteps of those brave literary gentlemen who scold Generalissimo Sun Chuanfang in weekly magazines published in Beijing. However, upon arriving at Xiaguan, when I recalled that this was the dominion of courteous gentlemen who play the ritual game of pot-tossing, I could not help but feel a certain sense of the absurd. In my eyes, Xiaguan was still the same Xiaguan of seven years ago, the only difference being that last time it was pouring rain and this time it was sunny. Having missed the special express, I had no choice but to take the night train, and so I rested briefly at an inn. The porters (called "fuzi" in local parlance) and tea-boys were still as honest as ever; the pressed duck, char siu, oil-braised chicken, and such things were still inexpensive and of fine quality. I drank two liang of sorghum liquor, which was also better than Beijing's. This is of course merely "my opinion"; but it is not entirely without reason, for it had a slight taste of raw sorghum, and after drinking it, if you closed your eyes, you felt as though you were standing in a field after the rain.

Just as I was in that field, the tea-boy came to say that someone wanted to speak with me outside. When I went out to look, there were several men with three or four soldiers carrying guns on their backs -- exactly how many, I did not count closely; suffice it to say it was quite a crowd. One of them said he wanted to inspect my luggage. I asked which piece he wanted to see first. He pointed to a leather suitcase in a hemp cloth cover. I untied the ropes, opened the lock, and lifted the lid for him, and only then did he squat down and rummage through the clothing. After fumbling about for a while, he seemed to lose heart, stood up, and waved his hand, whereupon the whole group of soldiers did an about-face and walked out. The commanding one even nodded to me before leaving -- most courteous. This was my first encounter with the current "armed class" since the founding of the Republic. I thought them not bad at all; if they were as adept at manufacturing "rumors" as those who call themselves the "unarmed class," I would not even be able to travel.

The night train to Shanghai departed at eleven o'clock. There were few passengers, and one could well lie down to sleep, but unfortunately the seats were too short and one's body had to be curled up. The tea on this train was superb, served in glass cups, excellent in color, fragrance, and taste -- perhaps because I had been drinking well-water tea for so many years that I was too easily impressed, but I believe it really was very good. On account of this I drank two cups in total, gazing out at the nocturnal Jiangnan landscape, and hardly slept at all.

It was on this train that I first encountered students spouting English at every turn, and first heard talk of "wireless telegraphy" and "submarine cables." It was also on this train that I first saw the delicate young dandies, in silk shirts and pointed shoes, cracking sunflower seeds, a copy of Leisurely Diversions or some such tabloid in hand, which they never seemed to finish reading. This type of person seems especially abundant in Jiangsu and Zhejiang; I fear the days of pot-tossing shall continue for a long while yet.

Now I am staying at an inn in Shanghai; I am eager to be on my way. Having traveled for several days, I have developed a taste for it and feel like continuing to go here and there. I used to hear that in Europe there was a people called the "Gypsies" who delighted in wandering and refused to settle down, and privately I thought their temperament most peculiar. Now I realize they had their reasons all along -- it was I who was being obtuse.

It is raining here, and not terribly hot anymore.

Lu Xun. August 30, Shanghai.

Section 28

The origins of my contributions to Free Talk have already been explained in the "Preface." By this point the main text is complete; but the electric light is still on and the mosquitoes are temporarily quiet, so with scissors and pen, let me preserve some of the trivia that arose on account of Free Talk and myself -- a little encore, as it were.

One need only glance to see that, during the period when I was publishing short commentaries, the most ferocious attacks came from the Great Evening News. This was not because of some grudge from a past life, but because I had quoted its text. Nor did I bear it any grudge from a past life; it was simply that the only papers I read were the Shenbao and the Great Evening News, and the latter's writing was often so remarkably novel as to be worth quoting, for the relief of melancholy and boredom. Right before my eyes at this very moment, for example, there happens to be an old copy of the Great Evening News from March 30, which came wrapped around some cigarettes, and it contains the following item -- "A man from Pudong named Yang Jiangsheng, aged forty-one, ugly in appearance and impoverished in circumstances, formerly a bricklayer who had worked for a bricklaying workshop run by a Suzhou man named Sheng Baoshan. Sheng has a daughter named Jindi, now just fifteen, abnormally short and of mean appearance. Yesterday evening at eight o'clock, Yang encountered Sheng on Tiantong Road in Hongkou. Yang violated his daughter. When questioned by the station chief, Yang did not deny it at all, admitting that since the January 28 Incident of last year, he had committed the act over ten times consecutively. A detective was dispatched to take Sheng Jindi to the hospital, where a doctor confirmed she was not a virgin. This morning the case was brought before the First Special District Court, where Judge Liu Yugui presided. The prosecution lawyer Wang Yaotang argued that the defendant had seduced a girl under sixteen, and though subsequent occasions were all initiated by the girl going to the defendant's home of her own accord, the law still required the charge of rape. The girl's father Sheng Baoshan was then summoned and testified that he had initially been unaware; two evenings ago he had scolded his daughter, who then suddenly disappeared, not returning until the next morning. Under stern interrogation, the daughter said she had stayed at the defendant's home and described how the defendant had seduced her, whereupon he learned of it and had the defendant taken to the police station. Sheng Jindi then gave her account: she had had intercourse with the defendant from February of last year up to the present, over ten times, each time at the defendant's summons, and he had told her not to tell her parents. When Yang Jiangsheng was confronted with this, he testified: the girl had always called me 'uncle'; even if I had desired to violate her, I could not have borne to do so; therefore there is absolutely no such thing; the so-called ten-odd times refer to the number of times I took the girl out for excursions. Judge Liu, finding the case required further investigation, ordered the defendant remanded in custody for a later hearing."

In the report itself, it is perfectly clear that Sheng made no claim of any "familial" relationship between himself and Yang; Yang testified that the girl called him "uncle," which is merely Chinese custom -- when someone is about ten years older, one often uses "uncle" or the like. But what headline did the Great Evening News use? In bold and banner type --

The girl claims to have been violated over ten times; the man says it was merely excursions and not a love affair.

They added "godfather" before "uncle," thus transforming the "girl" into a "goddaughter," and Yang Jiangsheng was thereby made into a major criminal guilty of "defying moral relations" or quasi-"defying moral relations." China's gentlemen lament the decline of public morals and abhor the "defiance of moral relations" by wicked men, yet they fear there are not enough stories of such defiance in the world, and must strain every nerve to embellish and exaggerate them with their pens, to catch the eye of readers with vulgar tastes. Yang Jiangsheng is a bricklayer and has no means to see this, and even if he saw it, no means to protest; he can only submit to their fabrications. But the social critic has a duty to call them out. Yet before any calling-out could occur -- merely because a few remarkable passages were quoted -- they started howling about "squire" this and "police dog" that, as though their own crowd subsisted on wind and dew and had brought their own private fortunes to serve society as volunteers. Yes, we know who the publisher is; but we still do not know who the proprietor is -- that is, who exactly is the "squire." If it is claimed to be neither commercially run nor government-run, that would be quite rare in the newspaper world. But this secret need not be investigated further here.

On a par with the Great Evening News in its attention to Free Talk was Social News. But its methods were far more adroit: it did not use incomprehensible or unwilling articles, but instead deployed a mixture of true and false reports. For example, the real reason for Free Talk's reform -- though one cannot be sure whether what it said was true or false -- I actually first read about in its second volume, issue 13 (published February 7) -- From Spring and Autumn and Free Talk to the Chinese Literary Scene, which read: The Chinese literary scene originally had no division between old and new, but in the year of the May Fourth Movement, Chen Duxiu fired a signal shot in New Youth, raised a new banner, and advocated literary revolution, with Hu Shi, Qian Xuantong, Liu Bannong and others cheering from behind....

[The article continues with a lengthy account of the old vs. new literary factions, the Saturday School (Libailiu pai), Zhou Shoujuan's dismissal from Free Talk, and Li Liewen's appointment as the new editor.]

According to what I have heard: Zhou's inability to keep his position also had its reasons. In his daily selection of manuscripts, he was too harsh and self-serving; any manuscript from an acquaintance would be published without reading the content, while unknown contributors or those Zhou did not recognize would also go unread, their manuscripts thrown wholesale into the wastebasket....

After three weeks, it specifically identified Lu Xun and Shen Yanbing (Mao Dun) as the "pillars" of Free Talk (March 24, Vol. 2, No. 28) -- Li Liewen Has Not Joined the Cultural League

The editor of the Shenbao's Free Talk, Li Liewen, studied in France and is a newcomer to the literary world. Since he took over Free Talk, its tone has completely changed, and the contributors have shifted from the old-school literati of the Saturday School to left-wing proletarian writers. The current pillars of Free Talk are Lu Xun and Shen Yanbing, with Lu Xun publishing especially prolifically under the pen name "He Jiagan."...

After another month and more, the "grand ambitions" of these two were discovered (May 6, Vol. 3, No. 12) -- The Grand Ambitions of Lu Xun and Shen Yanbing

Since Lu Xun, Shen Yanbing, and others made Free Talk their base and published their eccentric arguments, they have once again managed to attract the masses and achieve satisfactory results. In the original intention of Lu (?) and Shen, this was naturally a purposeful experiment, attempting to revive their cultural movement. Now, I hear the time is ripe for organizing a group....

These reports did no harm to the editor Li Liewen, but another tabloid-style periodical called Subtle Words published the following item in its "Literary Scene March" column --

"Cao Juren has been introduced by Li Liewen and others and has joined the Left League." (July 15, Issue 9.)

The difference between the positions of these two publications, arising from the presence or absence of personal grudges, is self-evident. But Subtle Words was even more adroit: with a mere fifteen characters, it implicated both parties at once, making each into a person who would necessarily be persecuted or suffer.

By early May, the pressure on Free Talk grew tighter by the day, and my submissions increasingly could not be published. But I believe this was not because of denunciations by Social News and the like, but rather because at that time discussion of current affairs was forbidden, and my commentaries frequently contained angry words about the political situation; nor was the pressure directed solely at Free Talk -- at that time all non-government publications were being subjected to roughly the same degree of pressure. But at such a time, the most suitable articles were about butterflies and mandarin ducks swimming and flitting about, and Free Talk was in difficulty. On May 25, it finally published the following notice -- Editorial Office

These days, it is hard to speak, and even harder to wield a pen. This is not to say "Misfortune and fortune have no gate; they come only as men invite them" -- it is truly that "when the Way prevails under Heaven," the "common people" should accordingly "not discuss." The editor respectfully burns a stick of incense and implores the literary masters of the land: henceforth, talk more of wind and moonlight, and complain less, so that both author and editor may have some peace. If you insist on passing judgment and recklessly discussing great affairs, then to suppress your writing would be unbearable, but to print it would be impossible -- placing the editor in an impossible dilemma, which is rather lacking in the spirit of fellow-feeling. As the saying goes: He who understands the times is a true hero. The editor dares to offer this counsel to the literary masters of the land. We beg your sympathetic understanding of our humble predicament! -- The Editor

This seemed to greatly satisfy the Social News crowd. In the "Cultural Secrets" column of Vol. 3, No. 21 (June 3), the following appeared -- Free Talk Changes Its Tune

Since Li Liewen took over as editor, the Shenbao's Free Talk recruited left-wing writers Lu Xun, Shen Yanbing, and the "crow-ist" Cao Juren as core contributors, producing a neither-fish-nor-fowl tone that greatly displeased readers....

And on May 14 at 1 p.m., there had also been the disappearance of Ding Ling and Pan Zinian. Most people suspected they had met with foul play, and this suspicion was increasingly confirmed. Rumors were therefore rampant; there were reports that certain others would meet the same fate, and some received warning or threatening letters. I received no letter, but for five or six days running, someone telephoned the Uchiyama Bookstore branch to inquire about my address. I believe these letters and phone calls were not the work of those who actually carry out assassinations, but merely the petty tricks of a few so-called literary figures -- naturally, even the "literary scene" has such people. But if someone is afraid of trouble, these little tricks can indeed have some effect. The following item appeared on June 9 in Free Talk after "Qu Lu Xu Yu" -- Editor's Note: Yesterday we received a letter from Mr. Zizhan, saying he is now devoting all his energy to a certain writing project and has no leisure for other things; "Qu Lu Xu Yu" herewith concludes.

Finally, the Great Evening News, having observed in silence for over a month, sent forth its glow from the literary supplement "Torch" on the evening of June 11, in considerable indignation -- "Do We Want Freedom or Not?" by Fa Lu. It has been a long time since the question of "freedom" was raised; recently, someone has again been discussing it at great length. Since national affairs are always too hot to handle, one might as well give up and resign oneself to talking about "wind and moonlight." But "wind and moonlight" are not talked about to one's satisfaction either, so one inevitably lets slip a few mumbled cries for "freedom" from the back of the throat. Yet sensing the gravity of the matter, mumbling is permissible, but plain speaking seems inconvenient. So the real issue is never raised head-on, the battle-axe never swung openly; instead, everything is roundabout, circling and dodging, so no one can find an edge. Touch the front side and they tell you to read it as the back -- this being, of course, the method for reading "humorous" writing....

This is to say: freedom is not really such a rare thing; it is you who, by all this discussion, have made it seem precious and unattainable. You should not satirize the political situation in such roundabout ways. Now he, dealing with the satirist, is "bluntly and directly" demanding that you go and die. The author is a straightforward, outspoken fellow, who has now been so muddled by others that he cannot even figure out whether he "wants freedom or not."

Yet on June 18 at 8:15 a.m., Yang Xingfo (Yang Quan, 楊杏佛/楊銓), Vice Chairman of the China League for Civil Rights, was assassinated.

That was indeed someone "fighting it out to the death." Mr. Fa Lu stopped making his bright pronouncements in the "Torch." Only Social News, in Vol. 4, No. 1 (published July 3), still painted a picture of left-wing writers' cowardice -- Left-Wing Writers Flee Shanghai in Droves

In May, Shanghai's left-wing writers had made quite a commotion, as though everything was about to turn red and the entire literary world would go left-wing. But by late June, the situation had clearly changed.... According to reliable sources, Lu Xun has gone to Qingdao, Shen Yanbing is in the Pudong countryside, Yu Dafu in Hangzhou, Chen Wangdao has returned to his hometown, and even the likes of Lian Pengzi and Bai Wei have vanished without trace.

West Lake is where poets go to escape the heat; Kuling is where the rich spend the summer -- I dare not even dream of them, let alone visit. Yang Xingfo's death did not suddenly make everyone else afraid of the heat. I hear Qingdao is also a fine place, but that is the holy ground where Professor Liang Shiqiu preaches the gospel, and I have not even had the good fortune to gaze upon it from afar. Mr. "Dao" has the Way indeed -- the terror he has imagined on my behalf is, in fact, inaccurate. Otherwise, a gang of hoodlums with a few pistols could truly pacify the realm.

But Subtle Words, whose nose seemed to have a particularly keen sense of smell, carried a different kind of news in its Issue 9 (published July 15) -- Free Wind and Moonlight, by Wan Shi

Since Li Liewen's Free Talk announced "talk only of wind and moonlight, complain less," the genuinely wind-and-moonlight manuscripts submitted by new writers have still been rejected. What has been published recently are either satirical articles by old writers under pseudonyms, or their cronies' pointless antiquarian exercises....

This, though also a form of "complaining," deploys phrases like "genuinely wind-and-moonlight" and "previously arrested" in ways I find quite amusing. A pity that the pen name "Wan Shi" is used -- for those of us whose spiritual essence does not reside in the nose, there is no way to determine whether this is a "new writer" or an "old writer."

The Postscript could end here too, but there is one more matter that ought to be mentioned: the so-called "bisection of Zhang Ziping" affair.

Free Talk had been running a novel by this author. Before it was finished, it was discontinued, and some tabloids trumpeted this as the "bisection of Zhang Ziping." At the time there may have been articles debating with the editor, but I had not paid attention and therefore did not collect them. All I have on hand is Social News, Vol. 3, No. 13 (published May 9), which contains an article claiming that the arch-criminal was once again me -- Zhang Ziping Squeezed Out of Free Talk, by Cui Gong

Today's Free Talk is a purposeful base, a broadcasting station for "crows" and "Ah Q" -- naturally there is no need for the "triangular and quadrangular love affairs" of Zhang Ziping to contaminate it....

Then: why is it that "the sex-maniac 'Stray Sheep'" -- Yu Dafu -- is an exception? Is he not of the same Creation Society origin as Zhang Ziping? Does he not also sing "Darling, I love you"? I can tell you: this is indeed an exception. For although Yu Dafu is a sex-maniac, he has managed to join the "Left League," acquaint himself with "Civil Rights" big shots, and become a comrade of today's Free Talk backstage boss, the venerable Lu (?) -- a partner of "crows" and "Ah Q."

According to the editor Li Liewen's stated reason for dismissing Zhang Ziping, readers had expressed dissatisfaction with "The Crossroads of Era and Love," hence the mid-course bisection. This was naturally an evasion. For the fat and oily proprietor of the Shenbao, a few thousand yuan spent buying a ten-yuan-per-thousand-character manuscript only to throw it in the wastebasket was nothing; but for Zhang Ziping, who lives by his pen, it was worse than a death sentence -- he still has to face people!...

Then came a passage about "the Liberation Lyricist" Zeng Jinke, about whom Social News (Vol. 3, No. 22, June 6) again blamed me -- Zeng Jinke Prepares Counterattack

Zeng Jinke, having been attacked by Lu Xun and others until he was stripped bare, has at all times wished to counterattack, but was too feeble to manage it....

At that time I thought: though I had not written a dedicated essay about Zeng Jinke, I had indeed touched on him in "The Liberation of Qu" (essay No. 15 in this book), which could perhaps be called an "insult."...

I could not write about two things at once, so I had previously neglected the host of the "Literary Salon," the "liberation lyricist" Mr. Zeng Jinke. But writing about him turns out to be very simple: apart from "preparing a counterattack," he was merely playing the game of "informing." Mr. Cui Wanqiu and this lyricist had originally been acquaintances, but over a minor dispute, Zeng anonymously submitted articles to tabloids, framing his old friend. Unfortunately the original manuscripts fell into Mr. Cui Wanqiu's hands, were made into copperplate prints, and published in fine reproduction in Chinese and Foreign Book and Newspaper News (No. 5) --

At the same time, a minor ailment was diagnosed: this lyricist had used Cui Wanqiu's name to write a preface for his own poems, and in this self-authored preface had lavishly praised his own poems....

I have pasted above the article "On 'Literary Men Without Virtue'"; in fact, it was a combined critique of the Zeng and Zhang cases. But from my perspective, the matter was even worse, so I also wrote a short commentary and submitted it to Free Talk. After a long time, it never appeared. When I requested the manuscript back, it was covered in greasy fingerprints -- evidence that it had been typeset and then pulled by someone. This shows that even without "sisters married off to great merchants as concubines," the "capitalist publisher" still provides "backing" for this sort of celebrity. But perhaps it was also because they feared that offending such celebrities would immediately earn you a red hat -- and for the sake of one's life, it was safer not to publish. I shall copy it here now --

Refuting "Literary Men Without Virtue"

The grand signboard of "literary man" is extremely useful for deceiving people. Even today, the contempt that society shows for literary men is still not as severe as the self-contempt of so-called "literary men." We see things that no mere "man" would ever stoop to do, yet commentators merely call this "lacking virtue," interpret it as "madness," and forgive them as "pitiful." In truth, they are peddlers, and have always been supremely clever; all their past doings were nothing but "business acumen," and all their present doings are not "lacking virtue" either -- rather, they want to "change their line of business."...

The above has in some places naturally seemed to touch upon the likes of Zeng Jinke and Zhang Ziping, but the earlier "bisection of Zhang Ziping" was decidedly not my idea. I myself do not care to read this author's masterworks, for a very simple reason: I do not want all those triangles and quadrangles in my head....

Yet the multi-angled crowd accused me of engineering the "bisection of Zhang Ziping." Having been thus accused, I simply turned the X-ray on their innards.

The Postscript really could end here this time, but hold on -- there is one more encore to the encore. Among my clippings there remains one marvelous piece of writing; to let it be scattered and lost would be a great pity, so I am specially preserving it here.

This article appeared in the "Torch" supplement of the Great Evening News on June 17 -- "The New Unofficial History of the Literati," by Liu Si

Chapter One: Raising the Flag to Pitch an Empty Camp; Deploying Troops in a Fog Formation. Now it happened that Karl and Ilyich were up in heaven discussing the Chinese revolution, when they suddenly looked down and saw, on the great Gobi of the Chinese literary scene below, murderous vapors rising and dust and sand filling the air. In the left-wing zone, an old general was hotly pursuing a young general; war drums shook the heavens and battle cries rose on every side. Suddenly the old general's teeth parted and he spat out a cloud of white mist. Karl, smelling it, immediately fainted. Ilyich pounded the table in fury and cried, "Poison gas! Poison gas!" Propping up Karl, they hurried away. It turned out that down below, on the great Gobi of the Chinese literary scene, within the left-wing zone, a new empty camp had recently been pitched, flying the banner of petty-bourgeois revolutionary literature....

The next day I received a letter from the editor, the gist of which was: A contributor signing himself "Liu Si" ("I imagine you can guess from the content who this person might be") has submitted a humorous piece entitled "The New Unofficial History of the Literati." Since it contains nothing damaging to personal reputation, we have decided to publish it; should you wish to submit a rebuttal, that too can be printed.... Making a publication temporarily into a battlefield and enlivening things -- this is a perfectly common tactic among editors. Having lately grown even more "worldly-wise," and the weather being so hot, I naturally would not go sweating and turning somersaults. Moreover, "rebutting" a humorous piece is a rather rare undertaking; even if it "damaged personal reputation," I would have no recourse unless I too wrote a "Old Unofficial History of the Literati" to dispute the truth of what "Karl and Ilyich" said. But I am no sorcerer, so how could I see "heaven"? "Liu Si" was a pen name that Yang Cunren had been using since he was still a "proletarian revolutionary literature" writer -- one need not read the content to know this -- and how short a time it took before, under the banner of "petty-bourgeois revolutionary literature," he was already dreaming such dreams, writing himself into such a figure. The great wheel of the age can indeed grind people up so coldly. But it is fortunate that this grinding occurred, for Mr. Han Shiheng thereupon discerned "conscience" within this "young general's" being.

This work was only the first chapter, of course unfinished. Though I had no desire whatsoever to "rebut" it, I was willing to see how this literature of "conscience" would continue. But from that point on, it was never seen again; to this day, over a month later, there is no news of "Karl and Ilyich" in "heaven" or of the "old general" and "young general" in hell. But according to Social News (July 9, Vol. 4, No. 3), the Left League had put a stop to it -- Yang Cunren Joins the AB Corps

Yang Cunren, who betrayed the Left League and raised the banner of petty-bourgeois struggle, has recently come from Wuhan to Shanghai, and is reportedly staying at the home of AB Corps minor operative Xu Xiang, having joined that organization's activities. The "New Gods and Demons" piece published in the Great Evening News under the name Liu Si was from Yang's pen, containing heavy satire of Lu Xun, but was cut short; reportedly due to a warning from the Left League.

That the Left League would take such a thing so seriously, and that it would still issue "warnings" to one who had "betrayed the Left League and raised the banner of petty-bourgeois struggle" -- now that would truly be a remarkable thing.... I imagine that before long, all territorial concessions, war indemnities, military disasters, floods, the disappearance of antiquities, and the illnesses of the rich will all be laid at the door of the Left League, and especially of Lu Xun.

This now reminds me of Mr. Jiang Guangci (蔣光慈).

The affair is already long past -- perhaps four or five years ago -- when Mr. Jiang Guangci organized the Sun Society and, allied with the Creation Society, led his "young generals" to surround and suppress me. He wrote an article containing several lines to the effect that Lu Xun had never been attacked, fancied himself supreme in the world, and now they would show him a thing or two. In fact this was mistaken; from the moment I began writing criticism, I have never been free from attack. In just these three or four months, concerning Free Talk alone, there have already been this many articles, and what I have collected is only a portion. Was it any different before? But those attacks perished along with the swift flow of time, vanishing without a trace, no longer noticed by anyone. This time, while several of these publications are still in my hands, I am transcribing a portion into this Postscript. This is not really for my own sake alone; the battle is far from over, and the old playbook will be trotted out again and again. Attacks on others will surely employ these same methods in the future, though naturally with different names substituted for the person under attack. If a young fighter of the future, finding himself in similar circumstances, should happen to see this record, I am sure he will break into a smile and understand more clearly what manner of creatures his so-called enemies really are.

Among the contemporaneous writings I have quoted, I believe quite a few actually came from the pens of former "revolutionary literature" writers. But they now use different pen names and wear different faces. This too is inevitable. If a revolutionary literature writer does not intend to use his literature to help the revolution deepen and expand, but instead exploits the revolution to promote his own "literature," then when the revolution is riding high, he is a parasite within the lion's body; and once the revolution meets with adversity, he is sure to discover his former "conscience" -- under the name of "filial piety," or "humanitarianism," or "a revolution even more revolutionary than the revolution now in difficulty" -- and step outside the battle lines. In the best case, he falls silent; in the worst, he becomes a lapdog. This is not my "poison gas" -- this is a fact that both sides have witnessed!

July 20, 1933, noon. Recorded.

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