LXI
- YONG TCHING
- his fourth son, to honour his forebears
- and spirits of fields
- of earth
- heaven
- utility public
- sought good of the people, active, absolute, loved
- No death sentence save a man were thrice tried
- and he putt out Xtianity
- chinese found it so immoral
- his mandarins found this sect so immoral
- ‘The head of a sect’ runs the law ‘who deceives folk
- ‘by pretending religion, ought damn well to be strangled.’
- No new temples for any hochang, taoists or similars
- sic in lege
- False laws are that stir up revolt by pretense of virtue.
- Anyone but impertinent fakers wd have admitted
- the truth of the Emperor’s answer:
- What I say now I say as Emperor
- Applied to this daily and all day
- Not seeing my children not seeing the Empress
- till the time of mourning be ended
- Xtians being such sliders and liars.
- Public kitchen in famine
- Public works for the unemployed, 1725,
- a dole, nothing personal against Gerbillon and his colleagues, but
- Xtians are disturbing good customs
- seeking to uproot Kung’s laws
- seeking to break up Kung’s teaching.
- Officers at Tientsing
- who faked rice distribution
- and gave bad rice to the needy
- can damn well pay up what they have embezzled.
- Lieu-yu-y, state examiner said:
- Put magazines in the 4 towns of Chan-si
- (that there be set up a fondego)
- Look whom you choose to administer
- that these be not the overworked Governors
- To keep out graft ... if any man have loaned rice in secret ...
- A 100,000 pund capital
- wd/ mean Thirty thousand great measures
- At moderate price we can sell in the spring
- to keep the market price decent
- And still bring in a small revenue
- which should be used for getting more next crop
- AMMASSI or sane collection,
- to have bigger provision next year,
- that is, augment our famine reserve
- and thus to keep the rice fresh in store house.
- IN time of common scarcity; to sell at the just price
- in extraordinary let it be lent to the people
- and in great calamities, give it free
- Lieou-yu-y
- Approved by the EMPEROR
- (Un fontego*)
- And in every town once a year
- to the most honest citizens: a dinner
- at expense of the emperor
- no favour to men over women
- Manchu custom very old, revived now by YONG TCHING
- An’ woikinmen thought of. If proper in field work
- get 8th degree button and
- right to sit at tea with the governor
- One, european, a painter, one only admitted
- And Pope’s envoys got a melon
- And they druv out Lon Coto fer graftin’
- sent him to confino to watch men breakin’ ground
- He had boosted the salt price.
- And they received the volumes of history
- with a pee-rade with portable cases like tabernacles
- the dynastic history with solemnity.
- ‘I cant’, had said KANG HI
- ‘Resign’ said Victor Emanuel, you Count Cavour can resign
- at your convenience.
- ‘To comfort the soul of my father
- Emperor now defunct and in heaven’, said YONG TCHING;
- Don’t think that soft talk is wanted
- you write down what you take for the facts
- call pork pork in your proposals
- your briefs shd/ be secret and sealed and our Emperor
- will publish at his discretion.
- Eleventh month 23rd day for ceremonial ploughing
- (I take it december)
- Out by the Old Worker’s Hill
- YONG ploughed half an hour
- three princes, nine presidents did their stuff
- and the peasants in gt/ mass sang the hymns
- befitting this field work
- as writ in LI KI in the old days
- And they sowed grain and in autumn the grain of that field
- was for ceremonial purposes put in sacks of Imperial
- yellow as fit for this purpose.
- ‘You Christers wanna have foot on two boats
- and when them boats pulls apart
- you will d/n well git a wettin’ ’ said a court mandarin
- tellin’ ’em.
- And they set up a yellow pavilion
- with a buffet beneath it
- And the dishes and the court silver
- and in deep silence sounded suddenly trumpets
- and music for the Emperor YONG TCHING
- and Dom Metello and the Europeans went to their places
- a cushion for Dom Metello
- and the Emperor’s wine was brought in, which he offered to
- Dom Metello
- who knelt, drank, and returned to his cushion
- whereon they offered him fruit piled high in a pyramid
- and the Emperor YONG said: take him somewhere where it is cooler.
- So they dined him and showed him a comedy
- and gave him seven trunks of stuff for himself
- and 35 for the Portagoose boss who had sent him
- i.e. he wuz honoured but cdn’t spill proppergander
- and the chink grandees took him down the canal
- with a dinner cooked by the chefs of the Palace
- and his trappings up- (as they say) -held the honour of Europe
- and as to Sounou being Xtian, he wuz probably also a conspiracy
- But the population of Yun-nan was growing
- and the price of grain kept goin’ up.
- Lot of land undeveloped
- so they opened it
- tax exemption for six years on good rice land
- and for ten years on dry
- and honours in proportion to
- how much a bloke wd put under culture
- button 8th class for enough, and diplomas
- for 15 arpens. A peasant got two bouquets for his cap
- and a cramoisi scarf and a band to walk home wiff.
- And a boost for any mandarin
- that wd stake out new settlers
- 800,000 in doles
- a million on canal reparations
- Good of the empire of any part of the empire
- concerns every mandarin
- no matter where he is located
- It is like a family affair
- Ghost frightens no honest man. No house is
- durable if perched on yr neighbor’s ruin
- An honest peasant is a prognostic
- wrote YONG TCHING
- passing in silence the other ‘prognistics’ of the Governor’s letter
- Men are born with a fund of rightness you will
- find good men in any small village
- but the bureaucrats take no notice
- let Chiyeou be made a 7th class mandarin
- give him 100 ounces of silver as incentive to other men
- Heaven has scattered riches and poverty
- but to profit on other men’s loss is no better than banditry
- in momentum of avarice, no longer steers his own course.
- Chiyeou didn’t do it on book readin’
- nor by muggin’ up history.
- Million in earthquake relief
- and a thousand taels to the capital Jesuits
- but expelled the rest from Canton
- ‘they go on buying converts’
- Died 1735 at 58
- in the 13th year of his reign
- Came KIEN, 40 years before ‘our revolution’
- YONG TCHING unregretted by canaglia and nitwits
- ‘A man’s happiness depends on himself,
- not on his Emperor
- If you think that I think that I can make any man happy
-
you have misunderstood the FU
- (the Happiness ideogram) that I sent you.
- Thus Tching whom Coupetai had brought up,
- for the number of bye-laws
- for his attention to detail
- unregretted by scoundrels
- never had death sentences such attention
- three trials, publication of details, examination,
- to poorest as for the highest
- CAI TSONG HIEN HOANG TI be he credited
- so his son Kien Long came to the throne
- in the 36th of that century———
- and as to the rise of the Adamses———
- Extensive Mohamedan treasures
- ‘Question of coin in these conquered towns is very important.
- I advise a few of YOUR mintage
- and to leave the old pieces current.
- Those used here,
- Haskai, yerqui and hotien
- are of bronze weighing about 1/5th of one of our ounces
- 50 of these mahometan discs make a teuke
- about one of our taels.
- There are some useless old cannon here
- which I suggest we melt up for small cash
- to keep commerce moving.’
- Tchao-hou
- to his EMPEROR
- from the camp before Hashan
- (or Kasgar, a city in little Boucaria)
- This princess entered the palace when YONG TCHING was emperor
- as ‘a young lady merely of talents
- recited with beautiful voice
- and had other amiable qualities’
- concubine, and having a son was made queen
- and for forty two years had seen him, this son,
- on the first throne of Asia
- in the 86th year of her age
- posthumous EMPRESS
- Hiao Ching Hien Hoang Héou
- and her son as memorial
- exempted his empire from the land tax
- for a year as indeed he had done before on her birthdays
- when she was 70 and when she reached her eightieth birthday
- and now, in memoriam. And he wrote
- a poem on the Beauties of Mougden
- and condensed the Ming histories
- literary kuss, and wuz Emperor
- fer at least 40 years.
- Perhaps you will look up his verses.