Dispatch making Zhao Ci acting prefect of Hezhou趙詞攝和州刺史
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 · 161 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.
1If a man can mend his faults, he is a son of the Yan house
This dispatch carries out the decision handed down. Long ago Zhang Xu's son Chong loved roaming and hunting when he was young. He carried a hawk on his right arm and led a dog with his left hand. Xu saw him and said, "One body on two labors — is that not toilsome?" Chong knelt and answered, "A man stands firm at thirty. I am twenty-nine now. Grant me until next year." Xu said, "If a man can mend his faults, he is a son of the Yan house." After that Chong broke off his old ways and cultivated himself, and in the end he became worthy and eminent. So the bold and outstanding men of old can serve as a model even now. The officer named above has pulled his steps out of a road of delusion and thrown himself onto the road of duty. He has put away that misguided will for good, and his look of repentance deserves praise. Since he can serve his lord on the ground of serving his father, he can hold office and govern its business. So he is set among the senior aides, to try his loyalty. Still more, this is a time for honoring and caring for his parents, and he takes full joy in a settled home. Let Ci strive to offer proof in what follows, and mend well the faults that went before. He has already dispelled the worry of nine degrees of kin. Let him raise no anger of a single morning. This matter must be a dispatch making him acting prefect of Hezhou.