The Chinese History Class

History, prose, Qing Emperors and others; I am a writer and translator currently based in Cambodia

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Gu Hongming(辜鸿铭), and the Men and Women of China

Keynotes for a public lecture by Haijun

 Gu Hongming (18 July 1857 – 30 April 1928) was a Chinese polyglot, defender of Confucian values and man of letters in the English language. He was raised in Scotland to be a British gentleman of education and taste, however, in his mature years while living in China found himself in fame and worldwide attention as an eccentric apologist of the no longer fashionable Chinese traditions. Gu went headstrong in advocating Confucian values, often at the expense of a victimised Western civilisation, and eventually became a living tourist attraction to be visited by curious men such as Somerset Maugham and Rabindranath Tagore. Gu’s most remarkable essay work is The Spirit of The Chinese People, published in 1915 in Peking, in an attempt to offer a way out of the imminent doom faced by the then war-plagued Europe. Of course, his answer was the Chinese traditions and values. I would say, however arguably, Gu was the first man to have thoroughly understood both China and the West as a whole, and I often suspected that his fanatic love for everything Chinese was less to China’s end, but, knowing Europe so well, more of disappointment in Europe.

 Gu, the man

Gu’s life journey was best summarised along the following four lines:

                          Born in the South (Malaysia),

                          Raised in the West (Scotland),

                          Married in the East (Japan) and

                          Hired to work in the North (Beiyang, China).

Gu was born in Malaysia to a Chinese father who worked as manager for a rubber plantation owner and a Portuguese mother. The boy Gu was greatly favoured by the said plantation owner, a Scottish gentleman, and as a result, upon the Scottish family’s departure for Europe, was taken to Scotland to be raised in the British fashion. The young scholar received a proper gentleman’s education and was more than adept in his scholastic career. By the age of 23 when he returned to Asia, Gu was fluent in English, German, French, and, like other classically educated young men of his class, had profound understanding of Latin and Ancient Greek and wrote prose in both, though, he was at that time rather awkwardly alien to Chinese. The one thing which he had done but most of his European peers would not have done, or at least not have been able to, was that he later married a Japanese concubine, apart from his Chinese wife. He was to become a life-time advocate for polygyny. Aged 28, Gu had for the first time set foot in China, and it was in China, the flower of his genius mind would blossom and come to fruit. He learned Chinese like a pupil and, as happened to all his European tongues, he mastered it and on a later stage was recognised as one of the top Chinese classicists of his time.

The Chinese spirit

Gu held that the Western civilisation was possible to survive only on account of two matters: Christianity and Law, nevertheless, Christianity had lost its grip upon Europe by the time of Great War, therefore Law must be forced upon the vacuumed human soul, and yet Law could not possibly be forced unless the police and the soldier were introduced, hence Militarism. Timely, Gu unveiled the Chinese personality, the good citizenship, the quality of being righteous with style of a Chinaman, the belief in the ordinary Chinese that to do good is right and one needs not a gun to protect oneself from his neighbour, and, above all, the power of a nation’s belief in man’s nature being good.[i] And that, not war, was the only answer to Europe’s question of escape from imminent ruin.

The women of China

Gu pointed out ruthlessly that the fact about the Chinese woman was not that she had no soul, but rather, she had no self. The chief end of a woman in China was not to live for her country, or to do good to the world, or even to live for her own self. The chief end of a Chinese woman was to live in such roles as a wife, a mother, and it was in such roles, not in roles so glorious as a saviour (Jean d’ arc), a ruler (Katherine the Great), but roles that did not stand on their own, roles that were fulfilled with value only when they served man’s purpose. Of all such disagreeable ideas, Gu was a fervent advocate and practiced without question. On the matter of concubine, Gu was once confronted by an American lady, and the event induced his infamous teapot argument: one takes it as natural for a teapot to have a few tea cups; it is barely acceptable if a tea cup had more than one teapot to match with.

Gu kept his ponytail queue till the end of his life, a symbol to pronounce his contempt to all new reformation.

 Haijun

[email protected]

 [i] The opening line of the first book a Confucian pupil was taught on was Man is born good. (人之初，性本善。)

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Zeng Guofan (曾国藩), The Last Confucian Sage of China

Zeng Guofan (曾国藩) (1811-1872), Confucian scholar, philosopher, poet, diarist, soldier and empire-saviour, was the last Confucian sage of China and the only man to have achieved such status within 500 years of his time. For those who are new to the Chinese history class, it is hard to comprehend the magnitude of a man of such prowess, both in intellect and in battle, without weighing him against great men of the West, however, Napoleon would have lacked the poetic aura, Dante short of his political flair, and Saint Francis would have been alright had he not proven himself merely a military dilettante when fighting his native Assisi wars. The man was a sage.

Then comes the question: what makes a Confucian sage?

The answer lies in the four stages of a Confucian scholar’s life (if he lives long enough to go through all).

Stage 1: self-cultivation (修身 Xiushen). The fundamental element of a Confucian personality. A self-cultivated man is a man of refined manners, noble taste and devoid of menace, or highly restrained from it, not only on the appearance but, more importantly, in the deep of his very true self, that is to say, above all, to be honest to himself. Zeng had achieved self-cultivation before the age of 40, mainly by meditation and an acidly introspective diary.

Stage 2: cultivation of one’s family (齐家 Qijia). This is self-cultivation being achieved and extended to provide for a happy family. A happy family is a family within which each member acts up to his or her supposed role, i.e. father being upright and exemplary, mother kind and loving, children studious and obedient. Zeng’s letters, written in the hiatuses of his military campaigns, addressed to his younger brothers and children were both numerous and patient, the collection of which has become the most widely read family-cultivating textbook in modern China. As a result, the Zeng clan had enjoyed generations of prosperity after Zeng’s death.

Stage 3: rule of a kingdom (治国 Zhiguo). In the Confucian idea, when one is cultivated in both self and family, one’s merit is bound to be discovered and inevitably put one in the public office, from which onward, one is to rule the kingdom. Zeng first gained fame by impressing the Emperor with a beautifully written essay on etiquette, thereafter, he was selected for high office to govern the central organs of the Empire.

Stage 4: to quell all land under heaven (平天下 Pingtianxia). This has often been the final but unsurpassable obstacle in a Confucian scholar’s journey to sagehood, for in order to quell, one first needs the provision of a rebellion or uproar of some sort. Many great men had achieved the previous three stages, however, only a handful of them had been fortunate, or unfortunate depending on how one views the situation, enough to have been put in the position to “quell the land”, usually in a military uniform. Zeng was what now we see as the last saviour of the last feudal dynasty of China from the philistine hand of the Taiping Rebellion (太平天国), in the purest of scholarly manner ever possibly adoptable by a Confucian, thus, he achieved sagehood.  

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The Top 10 Best-looking Men in China’s History (lecture notes)

飒飒东风细雨来，芙蓉塘外有轻雷。

金蟾啮锁烧香入， 玉虎牵丝汲井回。

贾氏窥帘韩掾少，宓妃留枕魏王才。

春心莫共花争发，一寸相思一寸灰。

--A poem by Li Shangyin (Tang Dynasty)

 Two criteria by which a man’s charisma is judged:

·        韩掾少   少[shào] : physical beauty, youth

·        魏王才   才[cái] : prodigious literary talent

 韩掾 : Han Shou, ( ?- 300AD), a young advisor to the then Prime Minister, with considerable literary talent, remarkable beauty and oratory, won the heart of the daughter of his boss, subsequently visited the young lady’s bedchamber in a similar manner as Romeo did at Juliet’s. The two were eventually able to marry at the PM’s blessing, however, much to his annoyance, for the young man’s social status was no match to that of his bride.

 魏王 :Cao Zhi, (192-232), prince of the Kingdom Wei. Often considered as unrivalled, throughout his era, in literary mastery, the prince was both young and Byronic. One great critic of his time even went so far as to claim that the prince accounted for 80% of China’s entire literary gravity. Envied and often victimised by his brother, the King, the prince died young and in dismay.

 The ranking

 My apologies.

I did mean to select 10 lethally charming men to present to you, hence the title, however, after much struggle, I have decided: there aren’t 10, in fact, there are only 6, to be categorised into three levels. 

The lethally good-looking, legendarily accomplished level:

No. 6 公孙阏

Gongsun Yan, a.k.a. Zidu (around 700s BC), member of the ruling acristocratic family in the Dukedom of Zheng, and, as a young man, was in the fantasy of every young woman in his time and his name remained iconic of such until this day in China.

 Merit: arguably the most skilled martial artist and the most valiant military leader of his day in the Dukedom.

 Downfall: lost to another general in a weight-lifting game, thence bearing grudge, and consequently, in an active battle, shot from behind and killed with an arrow the said general, for which crime, he was punished with death at a young age.

  No.5 宋文公

Song Wengong ( ?-589 BC), younger brother of the Duke of Song. Hopelessly attracted to his youthful spirit and unearthly beauty, his grandmother (not biological), the young widow of the late duke his grandfather, took fancy to him and in a deliberately plotted accident murdered his brother the current duke and made him ruler and Duke of Song. He is considered as “the man who won a dukedom by beauty”.

 Merit: able, wise and determined as a ruler, unlike his brother, he was much loved and cherished by his male subjects, and worshiped by the female ones.

 Downfall: due to the inconvenient accident through which the duke gained power, he was constantly criticised and occasionally attacked by rulers of other dukedoms, therefore attracting consistent military threats from outside, and eventually died of exhaustion.

  No. 4  卫阶

Wei Jie (286-312 AD), dubbed as the “jade man”, was a member of a politically distinguished family. From a very young age, he was pursued by female, sometimes also male, crowds whenever he appeared in public.

 Merit: one of the top three orator/debater and philosophers of his time. He was often not allowed to speak by his protective mother, but when he did speak, the audience listened with a half-fallen jaw and danced in dreams to the tune of his speech.

 Downfall: he was never robust in health, and at the age of 26, when he travelled to the southern capital city of Nanjing, he was pursued and surrounded by fan crowds who had heard too much about him and were determined to never let him go out of their sight, hence, he fell gravely ill due to the 24-hour all-weather hot pursuit. Later the same year, he died.

  The level of the historic Sages both in beauty and in literature

No. 3 潘安

Pan An (247-300), as a young man, he was often trapped by large fanatic fan crowds in town, and when he decided to take a stroll in the more quiet suburbs, women ranging from teens to housewives pursued him and threw fruit into his carriage (not an unfriendly action), and by dusk when he returned home, he would have a whole carriage of fruit.

 Merit: a giant of beauty as well as of literature, Pan An was a leading figure among the top men of letters of his time. His works can still be found and are read until this day. Although desperately handsome, he was an exemplary husband of loyalty. He met his wife when he was 12, and the two were thence betrothed, and married when they were grown. Years after the death of his wife, by then both still in their 20s, he mourned and wrote heart-sinking prose for the woman he had always loved. The prose is still read today and puts all men and women, who have loved, into tears.

 Downfall: although an enormously talented man, Pan An was not wise in politics. He befriended the wrong lot and, in the end, brought ruin to himself and his family.

 No. 2 宋玉

Song Yu (298BC- 222BC), rising from an obscure background, was the envy to everyone’s eye. The King envied him for his youth, the intellectual for his overwhelming outburst of talent, the clowns for his oppressive beauty. Words are too feeble to describe the awe.

 Merit: in China’s literature hall of fame, his name is among those such as Confucius, Qu Yuan and Li Bai. His 《登徒子好色赋》 is a queer piece of art to have combined both beauty and genius in one single form to vanquish any challenges from the same category. One still laughs and sometimes sinks down on ones knees when reading it today.

 Downfall: unrecorded.

 The level of “The Only One”

No. 1 高长恭

Gao Changgong (541-573), Prince of Lanling, cousin of the King of Qi. His beauty and valour were a gift of heaven, which elevated him to a semi-deity status that had never been achieved before him and would never be reached again after him. His beauty was that which was unaccountable, contrasting that of other famously good-looking men, and unanswerable by any human devise, therefore, the beauty itself had transformed into a decisive force that changed tides in battle as well as in life. He knew it well, so that he often wore a mask to battle.

 Masterpiece: in the year 560, at 19 years old, the prince, masked as usual, led a 500 strong cavalry to rescue the siege of Luoyang. The battle became a bloody tangle and the ally forces inside the castle were hesitating as they were unsure of the identity of the masked figure. At a moment of life and death, the prince removed the mask from his face. The world went quiet, gasped and frozen, and the next moment, the gate flung open, soldiers bewitched. The prince triumphed.

 Downfall: increasingly envied by his cousin, the King, the prince enchanted the heart of the whole kingdom and blinded the public eye to such an extent that the King could no longer feel safe to rule. At the age of 32, the prince was awarded a glass of wine by royal appointment, one ingredient of which was the deadly 鸩.

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[prose] Sorrow of A Lost Lover

-- A nod to Oscar Wilde

The melancholy Emperor of Qing sat in his throne of gold dragons and ivory. He observed the court.

Twelve eunuchs led in twelve young dancers, each of whom clad in an exotic colour of attire to represent her exotic nation, to comfort their shared sovereign. Each year on this day they had done so, for to-day, seven years before, was the day on which the Emperor first met his foreign wife, who had come from the Gobi-surrounded country of Uyghur and perished a year after in the sombre grandeur of the Chinese court. She had not been happy, for she was but a damsel of seventeen and had been worn ill by the parting from her of her father, the King of Uyghur, who had loved her greatly but had to betroth her to the Emperor, for his love for the friendship of China was greater.

So dearly did the Emperor love his new wife that he suffered the Imperial Guards to cross the Tianshan Mountains to bring back sand and cactuses on the saddles of horses and camels, so that the imperial garden was reformed to resemble the barren playground of his wife’s childhood.

Every afternoon, she planted lilies in the garden by the labour of her own elegant fair hands, and every afternoon, he watched her through the laboriously carved windows of their palace of red.

Now, six times had the lilies blossomed, but she had seen none.

Six years, in the mid-night of every full-moon, the Emperor bathed in the soup of rosemary and clothed in the golden garment of nine dragons, the incensing of which was carried out by the careful work of six most trusted eunuchs.

When the hour came, the Emperor paced lonely steps into the dark bedchamber of fragrance, which had been maintained as if she was still living within, and quietly he closed the door behind. He knelt beside her bed, in which lay the cold clothes of her wedding day. He bent to place his face against the bed edge of rosewood, and, in tearful agony, prayed more fiercely than the most pious of Christians. In moments of violent grief, he would grasp the wedding gown and try to wake by mad kisses the silk sleeves.

The twelve dancers were each ready to be his comfort, but the Emperor had been forever married, and the name of his bride was Sorrow.

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4-The Reluctant Traitor

Mr. Nikan’s chief distress in life was that he was never quite decided as to which party he should belong, the Chinese, or the Manchu. As the immediate result of such confusion, he crossed the floor a few times. One tends to argue that a few times of harmless floor-crossing could do no evil. Taking Sir Winston Churchill for an example, he had crossed the floor many times, which never seemed to have bothered him, and consequently got himself into Dawning Street. Well, this is a quite different matter. At the time of the event, in which the old cousin’s castle was sacked, Mr. Nikan had taken office in General Lee’s Chinese regiments, acting as some sort of informant, I should think. But on the other hand, he, a Manchu by birth, was a pal of the old cousin through tribal links. The siege continued for weeks without decisive outcome. General Lee’s patience wore thin.

As would happen in all stand-off events, some self-anointed, or otherwise fat-headed, fellow would pop up to suggest an idea or two, usually involving suicidal activities, such as David at the battle field with the Philistines; and such as Joan of Arc at the siege of Orleans. Now, it was Mr. Nikan’s turn. In went he to the castle, to put in a word to win the heart of the enemy, in the name of a Manchu kinsman. The defence was softened, and the gate reluctantly open. Within seconds, before he was able to devise a route for flight, swarms of Chinese soldiers poured in unannounced. The conquest was instant, but the slaughter lasted long. Mr. Nikan himself merely escaped the destiny of a chopped head by a friendly Chinese sword. The event was typically characteristic of General Lee, for which, we should find him hardly blamed. As for a distinguished head-chopper, disguise, plot and treacherous adventure, such were day-to-day materials which paved his way to glory. And yet, such also rendered Mr. Nikan forever foe in the Manchu eye, thus, a traitor was born. He was hated by all, and, among those who hated, Nurhaci hated him still more.

However, hatred did not feed one’s stomach full. So, the boy turned his horse, pinned together the pieces of a broken heart, and wondered an orphan’s pace in the direction of home.

At such a point, a skilled director would timely put on Chopin’s Cello Sonata in G Minor, so that tears may be shed free.

Well, the day was in fact saved, by a still younger boy, named Eidu. That is a name, my dear class, later would enjoy such fame equal to that of any immortalised warrior.

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3-Chinese Names

To provide a comprehensive account for Nurhaci’s tragic family saga, I must first introduce to the stage a somewhat treacherous figure, Nikan Wailan, that’s his name, in fact he is the first of a few Manchu traitors in the course of this class. Mr. Nikan, wait, for those of you who are acquainted with Chinese names, you might have, up until this point, raised a sceptical finger to a point of information: the name does not sound Chinese at all. You are right, and, you might as well allow me a few more moments for an extra-curriculum lesson on Chinese names.

All Chinese surnames carry vital information of the family and their history. In my very personal opinion, all Chinese names can be attributed to two aspects: origin, and a certain subject which played an essential role in the life of the first fellow who decided to adopt it thousands of years ago. For example, the oldest names often appear distinctly feminine, i.e. Jiang 姜, Ji 姬, as they were names of ancient matriarchic clans. And during the centuries before Confucius’ time, it was commonly fashionable for noble men to adopt the names of their fiefs as surnames, and particularly true in case of ruinous endings. For example, my unfortunate forefather was a prince of some ignorable city-state named Zeng 曾, which was encircled by coveting kingdoms and, in time, ruthlessly devoured by its muscular neighbours. The poor prince had to flee the homeland, thence, he adopted Zeng as his surname in memory of the goodie oldie days. To elaborate on this matter, we could look to Sir Henry Percy, the valiant Scottish Hotspur, for reference.

“O, Harry, (for he was slain by his namesake, another yet more valiant Henry, Henry V of England, according to Shakespeare.)

“O, Harry, thou hast robbed me of my youth!”

So did Shakespeare record the heart-sinking scene of his last.

If Harry be spared of his life, however, as a punishment of his rebellious deeds, his father, the Earl of Northumberland, be deprived of his title. Then, Harry might as well flee to Scotland and cuddle up in some cold unloved coastal cottage, living on memories, and call himself Harry Northumberland instead. Such is the matter.

Other Chinese names might have less historical bearing, rather, the old fellows took no trouble in securing one for themselves. Prominent examples in this category are such names as Ma 马(horse), Mei梅(plum tree), rather convenient. The old ancestors were either very fond of the animal, or thought highly of certain such botanical objects.

In any event, neither Nikan nor Wailan belonged to any of the above introduced cases. As a matter of fact, they are a transliteration, for the most readily understood reason that the fellow was not Chinese. He was a Manchu, so was Nurhaci, so were the great lot of many upcoming characters. I advise you, my dear class, to take heed of this matter, so as to be exempted from future beguilement. Nevertheless, that should be no hindrance in preventing us from addressing him as Mr. Nikan.

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2- The Importance of Being Good-looking

Before we resume the adventure of our young hero, you will allow me to break in and insert at this point a little story of the very past. As you may have noticed, the profession of a historian is often haunted by the urge to interrupt here and break in there, only to introduce side issues quite irrelevant to the subject, to “nourish the atmosphere”, as he would call it. The audience, on the other hand, may find it disconcerting to follow the picture jumping hither and thither and rather hoped he did not have to. Well, he could not help it.

Long time ago, there was a very good-looking little fellow named Joseph, whose physical beauty was such that his brothers had to sell him to an Egyptian to feel at ease. My dear class, if you have been diligent with your homework at the biblical studies lately, you might as well go on telling the rest of the story by yourself. To cut a long story short, the wife of his Egyptian master took fancy in him, and, as it was recorded, cast her eyes upon Joseph; and she said, Lie with me. Joseph declined the generous invitation and, as a result, nearly lost his life. At such points, many a school master would have closed the book and cast a benign eye upon the class and said: “Children, good looks aren’t fortune.” Now, recess.

Well, agreed, that is to say, only if it was not in ancient China.

If you still recall the day in which our dear cousin’s castle was sacked, I was hardly reporting the full truth by merely focusing on the father and the grandfather. In fact, our young boy, now 25 years of age, was taken captive too. And presently, he was brought to the audience of Mrs. Lee, wife of General Lee, in private or in public? I am afraid I found no such relation in my history book. All we know is that the otherwise secluded Chinese lady was greatly overtaken by the boy’s appearance. If you let the scholars of King James have their way, they would have written as follows:

… and it came to pass, as she cast her eyes upon Nurhaci; and she said, *** *** *** *** And it came to pass, as she set him free into the depth of the woods and the young man was fled forth. …

What was the conversation? What curiously interesting activities in between? Why did the lady release him?

You will excuse me, I know no more than you do, as my history book tells not.

All we have learned is, children! Good looks save lives.

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1- Bad Neighbours

The year 1576 was a year passed quite uneventfully, except that some English fellow besought for the job of a licensed pirate. Queen Elizabeth granted him the job. The unfortunate fellow went west, determined he was going to India: in the end, he sailed himself into Greenland. It was also the year in which Queen Elizabeth had her 43rd birthday party, which, expectedly, wasn’t a happy one: she was still unmarried. Her future lover, the French Duke of Anju, was yet a 21-year old young man who was, in this year, busying himself besieging his brother, the King, around Paris for the very judicious cause that he preferred to love Jesus the protestant way.

Meanwhile, in the Far East, in the forests of Manchuria, someone’s father died.

The victim, accompanied by his own father, had previously been on a visit to their distant cousin who had resided in a castle and enjoyed a country gentleman’s life, you know, racing, hunting, and, in agreeable weathers, harassing the Chinese neighbours, the sort of horse-back sports any good-humoured Manchu man would entertain with from time to time back in those days. The Chinese (then called the Ming Empire) neighbours took good part in it. I mean, you have got to understand it if you were Chinese and had neighbours whom you addressed as “barbarians” whose industrial genius afforded no further solution than cutting skirts out of the skin of a freshly killed leopard while you had your dinning table cloth furbished with fabrics made of fine silk. What else could you do other than letting the poor chaps pinch a teapot from you Monday, and rob a sleeping gown from your wife Wednesday? After all, they had got the horses and bows and all that rot. The ordinary Chinese were reasonable folks, and consequently, they bore no hard feelings, until one day a certain General Lee poked his face into the matter.

This General Lee was evidently a hard-boiled egg with a forceful personality. According to my history book, a descendant of Korea, the Chinese military officer spent his career majorly doing two things: in his youth, cutting heads off his barbarous enemies; and in his advanced years, ordering others to cut heads off his barbarous enemies. A symptom defined by our modern-day pathology as being suffering from “homicidal disorders”, but in the olden days brought him fame and struck terror into the hearts of his Manchu neighbours.

Well, my apologies for the topic being carried away into neighbourhood stories. In the year 1576, I imagine it was a fine sunny day, birds were twitting, flowers smiling, or, was it rather a snowy day, for in that part of the planet, inhabitants were accustomed to two seasons: the season with heavy snow, and the rest. All right, let’s say it was a snowy afternoon, the distant cousin, presumably after a dose or two of the old liquor, mesmerised, went on the horseback to the sports. This time, he had got hold of the wrong stick: he harassed the wrong man, General Lee.

General Lee was not amused. The old boy wasted no time taking to his daily business of head-chopping. All we know is that by the time our old cousin realised which was which, he found his castle sacked, and soon his head chopped off. And, in the hustle, together chopped off were the heads of his two guests. In fact, it was a massacre, the total number of chopped heads was two thousand two hundred and twenty two.

Over night, our boy, whose name, Nurhaci, would later be made famous, was orphaned.

The boy, at least 6 feet tall, with a voice resembling the sound of a monastery bell (according to my history book) and with eyes as small and unopened as a sleepy oyster (according to his portraits), was otherwise an average sort of chap. The type of fellow who introduced himself as George or Mike in the first class, and, by the end of the term, managed to produce legacy in the memory of neither the teacher nor the students.

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Preface

Dear Class,

Below, you will find a series of serious history lessons on the Qing Emperors of China. Emperors, warriors, royal concubines, and sometimes even foreigners, the whole lot of them. You will also find that I am terribly opinionated. Well, before you ask, I shall tell you why. I appreciate no opposition in opinion simply for the reason that I have only managed to read, and will only draw materials from, one book, the Draft History of Qing. To call it “one book” is quite an understatement, in fact, it is one book cover out of whose belly are produced 47 books.

It only happened so that the book was written in classical Chinese and I happened to read classical Chinese. Considering the fact, I regret to say, that the book was quite boring to read due to its matter-of-fact disposition, I shall be greatly honoured if you find knowledge or amusement in the class, and I shall regret but be scarcely held against any boredom or displeasure if such does happen.

I wish you a very joyous day.

Your Unofficial Historian of Manchuria