To Zhang Yifu of Chuzhou — to the man who sent in a fine楚州張義府
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 · 100 Chinese characters · reading time 0.4 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.
1If a man can mend his fault, there is no greater good
Word to Zhang Yifu. I have your report, and with it the fine you sent. You have drawn the blame upon yourself and reproached yourself, and that is enough to prove where your heart is set. There is an old saying, "Who among men is without fault? If a man can mend his fault, there is no greater good than that." The rite of sending food and provisions is one the Spring and Autumn Annals held weighty; but while you belong to a subordinate department, how can you have dealings outside it? Do not be one who attaches himself to another when he is hungry. You wished to make your case apart before one who knows you, and you would wipe away the flaw in the white jade tablet, and so you made gold serve for a redeeming punishment. Reading your words closely, it seems you hold some other worry; but a complaint that goes no deeper than the skin truly does not carry. Only take care from first to last, and plan for lasting wealth and honor. Know all of this.