Among the eight occupational groups in the civil service pay scale, academics were ranked second highest, after state-organ officials.
An early version of this chapter appeared as an article in the Fall 2007 issue of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture.
string and fret, one by one, recall the blossoming years. Did it wait, this mood, to mature with hindsight? In a trance from the beginning, then as now.
“Brocade Zither” is often grouped and discussed with the untitled poems.
Reading, interpreting, and studying are all creative activities. They are a recreation on the basis of the texts of the past.
These difficult verses have been translated in various ways.
Page numbers in this chapter refer to the first editions and all translations are mine.
for an exile, Habits of life, expression, activity in the new environment inevitably occur against the memory of these things in another environment. Thus both the new and the old environments are vivid, actually, occurring together contrapuntally.