LXI

 

  1. YONG TCHING
  2. his fourth son, to honour his forebears
  3. and spirits of fields
  4. of earth
  5. heaven
  6. utility public
  7. sought good of the people, active, absolute, loved
  8. No death sentence save a man were thrice tried
  9. and he putt out Xtianity
  10. chinese found it so immoral
  11. his mandarins found this sect so immoral
  12. ‘The head of a sect’ runs the law ‘who deceives folk
  13. ‘by pretending religion, ought damn well to be strangled.’
  14. No new temples for any hochang, taoists or similars
  15. sic in lege
  16. False laws are that stir up revolt by pretense of virtue.
  17. Anyone but impertinent fakers wd have admitted
  18. the truth of the Emperor’s answer:
  19. What I say now I say as Emperor
  20. Applied to this daily and all day
  21. Not seeing my children not seeing the Empress
  22. till the time of mourning be ended
  23. Xtians being such sliders and liars.
  24. Public kitchen in famine
  25. Public works for the unemployed, 1725,
  26. a dole, nothing personal against Gerbillon and his colleagues, but
  27. Xtians are disturbing good customs
  28. seeking to uproot Kung’s laws
  29. seeking to break up Kung’s teaching.
  30. Officers at Tientsing
  31. who faked rice distribution
  32. and gave bad rice to the needy
  33. can damn well pay up what they have embezzled.
  34. Lieu-yu-y, state examiner said:
  35. Put magazines in the 4 towns of Chan-si
  36. (that there be set up a fondego)
  37. Look whom you choose to administer
  38. that these be not the overworked Governors
  39. To keep out graft ... if any man have loaned rice in secret ...
  40. A 100,000 pund capital
  41. wd/ mean Thirty thousand great measures
  42. At moderate price we can sell in the spring
  43. to keep the market price decent
  44. And still bring in a small revenue
  45. which should be used for getting more next crop
  46. AMMASSI or sane collection,
  47. to have bigger provision next year,
  48. that is, augment our famine reserve
  49. and thus to keep the rice fresh in store house.
  50. IN time of common scarcity; to sell at the just price
  51. in extraordinary let it be lent to the people
  52. and in great calamities, give it free
  53. Lieou-yu-y
  54. Approved by the EMPEROR
  55. (Un fontego*)
  56. And in every town once a year
  57. to the most honest citizens: a dinner
  58. at expense of the emperor
  59. no favour to men over women
  60. Manchu custom very old, revived now by YONG TCHING
  61. An’ woikinmen thought of.  If proper in field work
  62. get 8th degree button and
  63. right to sit at tea with the governor
  64. One, european, a painter, one only admitted
  65. And Pope’s envoys got a melon
  66. And they druv out Lon Coto fer graftin’
  67. sent him to confino to watch men breakin’ ground
  68. He had boosted the salt price.
  69. And they received the volumes of history
  70. with a pee-rade with portable cases like tabernacles
  71. the dynastic history with solemnity.
  72. ‘I cant’, had said KANG HI
  73. ‘Resign’ said Victor Emanuel, you Count Cavour can resign
  74. at your convenience.
  75. ‘To comfort the soul of my father
  76. Emperor now defunct and in heaven’, said YONG TCHING;
  77. Don’t think that soft talk is wanted
  78. you write down what you take for the facts
  79. call pork pork in your proposals
  80. your briefs shd/ be secret and sealed and our Emperor
  81. will publish at his discretion.
  82. Eleventh month 23rd day for ceremonial ploughing
  83. (I take it december)
  84. Out by the Old Worker’s Hill
  85. YONG ploughed half an hour
  86. three princes, nine presidents did their stuff
  87. and the peasants in gt/ mass sang the hymns
  88. befitting this field work
  89. as writ in LI KI in the old days
  90. And they sowed grain and in autumn the grain of that field
  91. was for ceremonial purposes put in sacks of Imperial
  92. yellow as fit for this purpose.
  93. ‘You Christers wanna have foot on two boats
  94. and when them boats pulls apart
  95. you will d/n well git a wettin’ ’ said a court mandarin
  96. tellin’ ’em.
  97. And they set up a yellow pavilion
  98. with a buffet beneath it
  99. And the dishes and the court silver
  100. and in deep silence sounded suddenly trumpets
  101. and music for the Emperor YONG TCHING
  102. and Dom Metello and the Europeans went to their places
  103. a cushion for Dom Metello
  104. and the Emperor’s wine was brought in, which he offered to
  105. Dom Metello
  106. who knelt, drank, and returned to his cushion
  107. whereon they offered him fruit piled high in a pyramid
  108. and the Emperor YONG said: take him somewhere where it is cooler.
  109. So they dined him and showed him a comedy
  110. and gave him seven trunks of stuff for himself
  111. and 35 for the Portagoose boss who had sent him
  112. i.e. he wuz honoured but cdn’t spill proppergander
  113. and the chink grandees took him down the canal
  114. with a dinner cooked by the chefs of the Palace
  115. and his trappings up- (as they say) -held the honour of Europe
  116. and as to Sounou being Xtian, he wuz probably also a conspiracy
  117. But the population of Yun-nan was growing
  118. and the price of grain kept goin’ up.
  119. Lot of land undeveloped
  120. so they opened it
  121. tax exemption for six years on good rice land
  122. and for ten years on dry
  123. and honours in proportion to
  124. how much a bloke wd put under culture
  125. button 8th class for enough, and diplomas
  126. for 15 arpens. A peasant got two bouquets for his cap
  127. and a cramoisi scarf and a band to walk home wiff.
  128. And a boost for any mandarin
  129. that wd stake out new settlers
  130. 800,000 in doles
  131. a million on canal reparations
  132. Good of the empire of any part of the empire
  133. concerns every mandarin
  134. no matter where he is located
  135. It is like a family affair
  136. Ghost frightens no honest man. No house is
  137. durable if perched on yr neighbor’s ruin
  138. An honest peasant is a prognostic
  139. wrote YONG TCHING
  140. passing in silence the other ‘prognistics’ of the Governor’s letter
  141. Men are born with a fund of rightness    you will
  142. find good men in any small village
  143. but the bureaucrats take no notice
  144. let Chiyeou be made a 7th class mandarin
  145. give him 100 ounces of silver as incentive to other men
  146. Heaven has scattered riches and poverty
  147. but to profit on other men’s loss is no better than banditry
  148. in momentum of avarice, no longer steers his own course.
  149. Chiyeou didn’t do it on book readin’
  150. nor by muggin’ up history.
  151. Million in earthquake relief
  152. and a thousand taels to the capital Jesuits
  153. but expelled the rest from Canton
  154. ‘they go on buying converts’
  155. Died 1735 at 58
  156. in the 13th year of his reign
  157. Came KIEN, 40 years before ‘our revolution’
  158. YONG TCHING unregretted by canaglia and nitwits
  159. ‘A man’s happiness depends on himself,
  160. not on his Emperor
  161. If you think that I think that I can make any man happy
  162. you have misunderstood the FU

    fu 1

  163. (the Happiness ideogram) that I sent you.
  164. Thus Tching whom Coupetai had brought up,
  165. for the number of bye-laws
  166. for his attention to detail
  167. unregretted by scoundrels
  168. never had death sentences such attention
  169. three trials, publication of details, examination,
  170. to poorest as for the highest
  171. CAI TSONG HIEN HOANG TI be he credited
  172. so his son Kien Long came to the throne
  173. in the 36th of that century———
  174. and as to the rise of the Adamses———
  175. Extensive Mohamedan treasures
  176. ‘Question of coin in these conquered towns is very important.
  177. I advise a few of YOUR mintage
  178. and to leave the old pieces current.
  179. Those used here,
  180. Haskai, yerqui and hotien
  181. are of bronze weighing about 1/5th of one of our ounces
  182. 50 of these mahometan discs make a teuke
  183. about one of our taels.
  184. There are some useless old cannon here
  185. which I suggest we melt up for small cash
  186. to keep commerce moving.’
  187. Tchao-hou
  188. to his EMPEROR
  189. from the camp before Hashan
  190. (or Kasgar, a city in little Boucaria)

  191. This princess entered the palace when YONG TCHING was emperor
  192. as ‘a young lady merely of talents
  193. recited with beautiful voice
  194. and had other amiable qualities’
  195. concubine, and having a son was made queen
  196. and for forty two years had seen him, this son,
  197. on the first throne of Asia
  198. in the 86th year of her age
  199. posthumous EMPRESS
  200. Hiao Ching Hien Hoang Héou
  201. and her son as memorial
  202. exempted his empire from the land tax
  203. for a year as indeed he had done before on her birthdays
  204. when she was 70 and when she reached her eightieth birthday
  205. and now, in memoriam. And he wrote
  206. a poem on the Beauties of Mougden
  207. and condensed the Ming histories
  208. literary kuss, and wuz Emperor
  209. fer at least 40 years.
  210. Perhaps you will look up his verses.

 

Note: Canto XXXV.