All Men Are Brothers – [Shui Hu Chuan] – Author’s Preface #2

All Men Are Brothers – [Shui Hu Chuan] – Author’s Preface #2

By Shih Nai-an of Tung-tu

When my friends are all come there should be 16 of us but there are not many days when all can come. Yet except on days of great winds or of mighty rains, there are few days when none come. Usually 6 or 7 gather together each day. When my friends are come they do not necessarily drink wine; if they like to do so, they may, but they need not if it is not their wish – each man to his own heart. We do not depend on wine for our happiness. Conversation is our delight. What we talk of is not the affairs of the nation. This is because not only do I feel it right to keep to my humble position, but also because our place is far distant from affairs of state, and political news is only hearsay and hearsay is never true and it is a waste of saliva to talk of it. Neither do we talk of people’s sins. Men under Heaven have no sins originally and we ought not to malign them. What we speak of ought not to be such as to frighten persons. What I speak of I want people to understand easily; although after all they cannot understand, because I speak of that of which they have never heard and moreover every man is intent on his own affairs.

My friends are all contemptuous of high place. They are wide of heart and they understand everything and so what they discourse upon has its influence on all, and therefore when our day’s talk is over, a matter is ended. Yet there is no one to write out our words, although sometimes I think I will put down what we have said in a book to leave to those who come after us. But until now I have not put it down thus. Why? When the desire for fame is over, the heart grows languid. We discourse for pleasure and the making of books is tiresome. Moreover, when we are gone no one will read what we have said. Or if perhaps this year we make the book the next year we will surely regret it.

In this book there are 70 chapters. When my friends were gone and I sat alone under the lamp, I wrote in idleness. At times when the wind blew and the rains fell and no one came then also did I write. Turning the book over and over in my mind it became at last such a habit to me that it was not necessary even to open my book and take up my brush and prepare something to write and read for my own diversion. For when at times I walked along my garden wall or at night covered by my quilt I lay awake, or when I picked up the end of my girdle and twisted it in my fingers, or when I stared unseeing at some object, at such times the stuff of which my book is made came crowding into my mind.

Some may ask thus: “You have said already that you did not make a book from your discourse with friends; why then have you now made this book alone?” But if this book is made it is without fame, and if it be not made no harm is done. When the heart is idle and there is nothing to force its will, whether the reader is good and learned or evil and unlearned, anyone can read this book. Whether the book is well done or not is not important enough to worry over.

Alas, I was born to die! How can I know what those who come after me and read my book will think of it? I cannot even know what I myself, born into another incarnation, will think of it. I do not even know if I myself afterwards can even read this book. Why therefore should I care?