Dispatch for Zheng Qi, magistrate of Hailing海陵縣令鄭杞
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 · 138 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 13 — Notices 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.
1Take up the government of the former chief minister, cultivate the sincerity of a true gentleman
This dispatch carries out the decision handed down. Government that nurtures the people is what officials find hard. If one would wait three years for it to be accomplished, one must also mend it within a single day without fail. To speak of entrusting a charge for the long term, the state truly leans on one both worthy and able. The officer named above is deep in the Odes and quick in conduct. He does not go near the grease of Liu Yu, and he relies only on the richness of Xie Fei. Again and again he has been lent a whole district, and he has shown the three good things in full. Look at that near border of eastern Wu. It is truly the inner region of Nanyan. In the past he filled a vacant place there with much diligence, and the longing for him after he left is still alive. Now he may take up the government of the former magistrate and cultivate the sincerity of a true gentleman, making government and punishment even and comforting the common people everywhere. To let the courser stretch out is in the end to hope for an open road. In killing a chicken, do not shrink from a blade fresh off the whetstone. Go, and be reverent. Do not let your strength crumble. This matter must be a request that he act as magistrate of Hailing county.