Xin Xin Mo Cun | Song Shinan: We Walk Our Own Paths Calmly

Text/Song Shinan

If your years of hard work are destroyed, what will you do? Cry and complain? Be dejected and disheartened? No, the late Ming historian Tan Qian gave a very inspiring answer: if your hard work is destroyed, then one, two, three, four, do it again.

During the Ming Dynasty, because of the heartache of “the historian’s retreat, the royal palace’s flames, the country’s demise and the history also perished”, Tan Qian spent more than twenty years, “eliminating the true records of the fifteen dynasties, correcting their rights and wrongs, visiting the official newspapers of the seventeen years, and supplementing their omissions”, compiling a hundred volumes, three million-word Ming Dynasty chronicle masterpiece “Guo Que”. But the manuscript was first completed, but it was all stolen by a thief, not a single page was left. At that time, there was no U disk backup, nor cloud upload. Tan Qian’s family was poor, and he did not ask someone to copy a draft. If it was stolen, it was all gone, irrecoverable, and there was nothing he could do.

Why did the thief steal Tan Qian’s manuscript? One explanation is that the thief ran to Tan Qian’s house to break in and steal, but the latter’s house was empty, there was nothing to steal, and in a fit of anger, he took away the voluminous manuscript, and selling it as waste paper could also exchange for a few copper coins. Another explanation comes from Huang Zongxi, in the epitaph written for Tan Qian, he speculated that at that time, people who had experienced the chaos of the world, wanted to trace the cause and effect, to show the next life, and heard that Tan Qian was compiling this book, so they wanted to steal it for themselves. Therefore, the thief broke into the house to steal the manuscript, not by the way, but by the order of others.

Half a lifetime of hard work turned into nothing overnight, Tan Qian did not lose heart, he said, “My hand is still there, would I just give up?” You can steal my manuscript, but you can’t steal my hand. My hand is still there, is that all? He immediately began to rewrite “Guo Que”, once walked hundreds of miles to borrow books, and also did not fear the dangers of the road to interview the elders, got lost and rested in the deserted village, and enjoyed it. People at the time said that he rewrote “Guo Que”, “day by day against a compilation, the hand never stops… as far as the eyes and ears can see, there is no omission. How diligent he is”. It took nearly ten years, and “Guo Que” was completed again, with more than a million words more than the first draft, leaving many precious historical materials of the Ming Dynasty for later generations. Tan Qian was on good terms with Zhang Shenyan and Gao Hongtu in his early years. Zhang and Gao later rose to high positions in the imperial court of the Fu Dynasty and wanted to ask Tan Qian to work in the history museum. Tan Qian refused, saying, “I am an old commoner, can I bear to use the misfortune of the country to seek an official position?” I am a commoner, old and old, can I bear to use the misfortune of the former country to seek an official position for myself? Tan Qian’s personality is really clean and bright.

In front of Tan Qian, we are very ashamed, we have not been able to write a chronicle for our time. Even so, Mo Cun has experienced two disappearances, but it doesn’t matter, my hand is still there, would I just give up? One, two, three, four, do it again. The three armies can be robbed of their commanders, but the common man cannot be robbed of his will. Heaven gives virtue to me, what can Huan Tui do to me? It is also what my heart is good at, even if I die nine times, I still do not regret it.

Day after day, we keep walking the same road. Mo Cun, New Mo Cun, New New Mo Cun, is persistence, but also repetition. Kierkegaard has a wonderful pamphlet that praises repetition to the highest degree: “If a person chooses repetition, then he is living. He will not chase butterflies like a little boy or tiptoe to look at the wonders of the world, because he knows them, and he will not weave on the spinning wheel of memories like an old woman. He walks his own path calmly, and feels joy because of repetition.”

That’s it, we walk our own path calmly, and feel joy because of repetition. Our hands are still there, is that all? One, two, three, four, do it again. In a person’s life, only the repetition of the spirit is possible, only it allows us to exist in a doubled way, and then asks us to never forget.