To Xu Qing of Chuzhou — on hearing that his wife will go on campaign滁州許勍
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) 桂苑筆耕集 · Choe Chiwon · 886 (Tang, 6th year of the Zhonghe era · Silla, 12th year of King Heongang) · 1 passages · 166 Chinese characters · reading time 0.7 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 12 — Dispatches A collection Choe Chiwon made by choosing out of the writings of his four years in the headquarters of Gao Pian, military commissioner of Huainan under the Tang, binding them into twenty volumes and presenting them to King Heongang of Silla in 886. It holds 366 pieces — memorials and reports sent up to the emperor, the proclamation denouncing Huang Chao, letters to the several military commissioners, orders and dispatches issued to those under him, Daoist and Buddhist texts for services, funeral offerings, records written for the outer wall of Chengdu and for a painting of Annam, and the reports and poems he sent up to Gao Pian. Here is the first report, which begins "I am a man of Silla," and the proclamation against Huang Chao with its line, "Not only do all the men of the world think to kill you openly; the ghosts under the earth have already discussed cutting you down in secret." The last volume holds the poems he made on the voyage home to the country he had left at twelve. It is the oldest collection by a Korean that survives, and when Hong Seokju and Seo Yugu printed it with movable type in 1834 they called it "the root and the beginning of the writing of our Eastern Country." Their two prefaces are translated with it.
Word to Xu Qing. I have your report and know that your wife, of the Liu family, is to go with the campaign and wishes to offer her diligent labor. My heart's praise for it is more than my words can tell. I once looked through the Book of Later Wei and found one Yang Daiyan, whose skill in arms was beyond compare and whose battle merit stood first. His wife, of the Pan family, was quite good at riding and shooting, and when it came to attacks and battles and hunts, Pan too put on armor and rode beside him, bit level with bit. When they reached a distant camp she sat with him under the tent, and before the staff officers she laughed and talked and was well pleased, and Daiyan would point to the company and say, "This is General Pan." I have long wished to see such a person, and I did not look to raise up so fine a talent this very evening. She too may well be called General Liu. I picture the drums just now sounding while lute and zither follow each other. Being of one heart, they will surely spend all their strength. In teaching war she will surely put Sun Wu to shame, and in breaking a siege she may borrow from Chen Ping. Strive to achieve rare merit, and a rich reward will follow at once. Know all of this. I do not set it out in full, and so on.