Dispatch making Wang Chushun garrison commissioner of Yancheng王處順充鹽城鎭使
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 · 144 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 14 — 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.
This dispatch carries out the decision handed down. The system of the frontier commands is this: to station the keen troops at the center and set the several garrisons about the outside, so as to guard against trouble at the heart, and it rests firmly on the diligence of claw and fang. The officer named above has stored up a stout design deeply and brought forth a courageous spirit that stands out. Had Jiang Wei been here, he would not have claimed the name of a bold lad. Were Jiao Du to meet him, he would surely yield him the name of a stout fellow. Again and again he has unfolded the constancy of one who repays a kindness, and again and again he has set out the merit of striking rebels down. Look now at Yancheng, lying on the seacoast. If that one district loses its order, the truth is that there will be much to fear on all four sides far off. So the name of Chushun is called up, to hold the charge of blocking the wicked. Do you take as your model the brave man who bars his gates twice over, and bring a settled life to a people in peril. Make the borders firm for the time being, and give no thought to the term when the melons ripen. Only, when you meet the host of calamity, strive to raise the sound of bamboo splitting. This matter must be an appointment as garrison commissioner of Yancheng.