How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology

The “Nineteen Old Poems” are the earliest known coherent group of pentasyllabic poems, first collected in the Wen xuan (Anthology of Refined Literature), compiled by Xiao Tong (501–531), the crown prince of Liang. The authorship and dating of these nineteen poems have long been a subject of debate. Eight of the poems have been attributed to the Former Han poet Mei Sheng (d. ca. 140 B.C.E.) and at least one to the Later Han poet Fu Yi (d. ca. 90) by some premodern scholars. However, most modern scholars have discredited these attributions and believe that the poems were written toward the end of the Later Han by anonymous literati living in the capital city of Luoyang. Another perplexing issue about this collection is its relation to the Han yuefu (chap. 4). Some of the poems have been collected in yuefu anthologies, and one poem contains segments that were still performed as late as Jin times. Despite the lingering presence of some yuefu motifs, however, the waning, if not complete disappearance, of oral performance is clearly evident.

The “Nineteen Old Poems” introduces new themes and transforms old ones in ways that reflect the rising self-consciousness of the literati. Whether speaking directly or through a female persona, the anonymous poets consistently brooded over their inner experience and searched for the meaning of their lives on an abstract philosophical level unseen in earlier shi poetry. The new syntactic and structural features of this collection also yield ample internal evidence of self-reflective literati writing instead of singers performing or others orally communicating the poems. In view of such profound thematic and formal changes, modern critics generally agree that this collection marks an important transition from a performative to a self-reflective tradition in the evolution of pentasyllabic shi poetry. For this reason, it is often hailed as a fountainhead of Chinese lyricism and given a prominent place in the history of Chinese poetry.

To prepare for our discussion of pentasyllabic poetry in this and the next three chapters, we should look first at its metrics. As illustrated in the table, pentasyllabic poetry has five major rules:

1. There are five characters per line.

2. The number of lines in a poem is variable.

3. Lines are usually organized into couplets.

4. Rhyme usually occurs at every other line—in other words, at the end of the closing line of each couplet (as indicated by the triangular rhyme marker ▲).

5. The first two characters make up a disyllabic segment (usually a disyllabic compound), and the remaining three a trisyllabic segment (usually a disyllabic compound plus a monosyllabic word).

I ride my carriage to the Upper East Gate,

Gazing at the graves north of the wall.

White poplars, how bleak they are in the wind!

Pine and cypress flank the broad paths.

[Poem 13, lines 1–4; WX 29.1348]

The first and second rules set forth the spatial configuration of a pentasyllabic poem; the third and fourth, the rhyming pattern; and the fifth, the semantic rhythm. Of these five rules, the last represents an important metrical innovation. Before the rise of pentasyllabic poetry, disyllabic beat was the most important metrical unit in Chinese poetry. In the Shijing (The Book of Poetry), for instance, tetrasyllabic lines, made up of two disyllabic segments, were used with a much higher frequency than any other poetic lines (chap. 1). While tetrasyllabic poetry has an even 2 + 2 beat, pentasyllabic poetry, with the addition of one monosyllabic word, produces a much more dynamic rhythm. In a pentasyllabic line, a semantic pause, generally treated as an unmarked caesura, falls between the second and third characters and divides the line into two distinctive units (as indicated by the column division). This creates a distinctive 2 + 3 semantic rhythm.

This semantic rhythm can be further divided because there is a secondary caesura (as indicated by ◦) between the monosyllabic word and the disyllabic compound in the final unit. Depending on whether the secondary caesura occurs after the third or the fourth character, a 2 + 3 semantic rhythm can be broken down into either a 2 + (2 + 1) rhythm (as in lines 1 and 2) or a 2 + (1 + 2) rhythm (as in lines 3 and 4). In short, the imbalance of the disyllabic and trisyllabic units, together with the shifting of the secondary caesura, creates a varied, fluid rhythm. Not only is this new shi rhythm uniformly employed in all subsequent pentasyllabic poetry (chaps. 6–8, 10, and 11), but it also serves as the core rhythm in heptasyllabic poetry (chaps. 9 and 10).

THEME: AGING AND HUMAN TRANSIENCE

What distinguishes the “Nineteen Old Poems” from earlier shi poetry is their central theme. Commenting on this distinguishing trait, Qian Qianyi (1582–1664) wrote, “‘Man’s life is between heaven and earth, / Rushing through like a traveler with a long way to go.’ These poetic lines convey a meaning not to be found in either the Three Hundred Poems [Book of Poetry] or the Lyrics of Chu.”¹ In the “Nineteen Old Poems,” this all-important theme is explored from the contrasting perspectives of the abandoned woman and the wandering man.

Poems 1, 2, 8, 9, 17, 18, and 19 are poems of the abandoned woman. Here, abandoned women lament the misery of separation and dwell on the sorrow of aging. These two motifs figure prominently in poem 1:

C5.1

No. 1, On and On, Again On and On [You Go]

[WX 29.1343]

This poem begins with a poignant moment of reflection by an abandoned woman. Instead of recounting the story of her husband’s departure, she merely utters: “On and on, again on and on [you go].” With a doubling of the reduplicative binome “on and on” (xing xing), she conveys how painful it was to watch her husband disappear down the long road and picture him moving from place to place on his outbound journey. Then, in lines 3 and 4, she tells us that the journey’s completion did not end her misery but actually led to another kind of waiting—the wait for him to return. That proves even more painful than enduring his outbound trip, since she cannot know when (if ever) he will return. So she sighs, “The road is rugged and long, / How can I know when we shall meet again?” Apparently what affects her the most is not so much her husband’s physical separation as her painful awareness of the slow passage of time, measured by her endless yearning for his return.

In the second half of the poem the speaker begins to reflect on time’s passage by measuring it against her own lifespan. Up to line 10, her sense of time is measured by unhappy events. Time seems to drag because she yearns for an end to the separation. But when she notices how she has wasted away in pining, she awakens to a different kind of time, one that is measured against her own biological life. To anyone who treasures life, any passage of time is too swift and any sign of aging too saddening. Seeing time’s passage in this new light, the wife breaks into this lament: “Thinking of you makes one old, / Years and months are suddenly gone.” This dramatic, ironic shift in her perception of time marks the transformation of her sorrow at separation into melancholy over the hastened process of aging.

If we accept the consensus view that the “Nineteen Old Poems” were written by a group of disenchanted literati men living in the capital city of Luoyang, we can say that the author of this poem is adopting the persona of an abandoned woman as a means of subtly expressing his grievances. In Chinese poetry, a woman abandoned by her husband is customarily compared with a scholar-official out of favor with his ruler or patron (thematic table of contents 2.3). Speaking in the voice of a frail, abandoned woman, the poet probably intends to express his grief over abandonment by his patron, or his forlorn pledge of loyalty in the hope of regaining his patron’s trust and favor. By foregrounding the issue of aging, he also turns his political woes into a deeper pain over life’s brevity.

Poems 3, 4, 6, 7, 11, 13, 14, and 15 are poems of the wandering man. Appearing as weary wanderers, the speakers seem less fictional than the abandoned woman seen earlier. This is partly because of the disappearance of the gender difference between speaker and poet and partly because of the presence of some genuine reflections about the conditions of the poets’ actual world. In poem 3, for instance, we find explicit references to the capital city and its major landmarks:

C5.2

No. 3, Green, Green Grows the Cypress on the Hilltop

[WX 29.1344]

“Luo” and “Wan” in line 8 denote, respectively, the capital city of Luoyang and a smaller city to the south of Luoyang; lines 9–14 are vivid descriptions of the royal palaces and mansions. However, even though we encounter the speaker in this realistic locale, we still find it difficult to identify him with the poet. His pursuit of worldly pleasure, his existential anxiety, and his solutions to emotional crises are described in very general terms. There is little solid evidence of the life of a unique individual. The persona of the wandering man seems to reveal merely the collective identity of a disenchanted literati group.

In the poems of the wandering man, we usually encounter three distinct motifs: (1) a lonely wanderer contemplating a desolate scene, either a wintry landscape or a graveyard; (2) a vehement lamentation over human transience; and (3) a sustained reflection on various ways of coping with human transience. Poem 13, for instance, features these three motifs:

C5.3

No. 13, I Ride My Carriage to the Upper East Gate

[WX 29.1348]

The speaker first tells us that he catches a glimpse of the graveyard on Mount Mang when his carriage passes through the northern gate of Luoyang. What meets his eyes are weeping poplar trees, pine, and cypress—all associated with the dead because they were often planted to mark grave sites. The sight of these trees evokes a dark mood of melancholy, leading him to conjure up an even more dismal world below. Underneath, there is no life, only a mass of dead bodies from long ago; no light, just an everlasting darkness; and no awakening, but an eternal sleep. After describing the imagined scene of an underworld, the speaker breaks into a lament about the evanescence of human existence: “Man’s life is as transient as a sojourn, / His frame is not as firm as metal or stone.” In the poems of the wandering man, such depressing statements abound:

[Poem 3, lines 3–4; WX 29.1344]

[Poem 15, lines 1–2; WX 29.1349]

Such philosophizing about human transience is not found in pre-Han poems. Only in historical or philosophical writings before the Han do we come across statements on the brevity of human life. But in the “Nineteen Old Poems,” such statements occur with a frequency probably unrivaled by any other poetic collection and thus constitute a defining feature of the collection.

In the last part of poem 13, the speaker turns to a search for a solution to human transience. He first dismisses the Confucian pursuit of ming (a name) as useless, since even sages and all others of great name must die just as common people do. Next he ridicules the popular Daoist practice of taking longevity drugs, declaring that those taking such drugs will only shorten, if not end, their own lives. Finally, he settles on the idea of carpe diem as the only sensible thing to do in this world. So he exhorts himself and all others to seek the pleasure of fine wine and clothes. This advocacy of carpe diem, too, abounds in the “Nineteen Old Poems”:

[Poem 3, lines 5–6; WX 29.1344]

[Poem 15, lines 3–8; WX 29.1349]

This Chinese version of carpe diem seems to be a poetic rendering of the hedonist ideas attributed to Yang Zhu (fl. third century B.C.E.):

The myriad creatures are different in life but the same in death. In life they may be worthy or stupid, honorable or humble. This is where they differ. In death they all stink, rot, disintegrate, and disappear. This is where they are the same.… The man of virtue and the sage die; the wicked and the stupid also die. In life they were Yao and Shun [sage-emperors]; in death they are rotten bones. In life they were Jie and Zhou [wicked kings]; in death they are rotten bones. Thus they all became rotten bones just the same. Who knows their difference? Let us enjoy our present life. Why should we worry about what comes after death?”²

Yang Zhu elucidates three points central to his hedonist philosophy:

1. Death is the final end for the existence of an individual.

2. Man cannot overcome death—that is, the destruction of his physical form—with something extraneous to his body such as fame and glory.

3. Given the preceding two points, man must enjoy the present and forget about death.

Yang Zhu’s argument appears to underlie the entire reflective process in poem 13. Although Yang Zhu’s hedonist ideas echo in many Han yuefu works, they are never so fully expressed as in poem 13 and other similar pieces. The preponderance of hedonist ideas is therefore widely seen as another important thematic feature of the “Nineteen Old Poems.”

POETIC MODE: FROM THE NARRATIVE TO THE LYRICAL

The authors of the “Nineteen Old Poems” adopted a mode of presentation markedly different from that used by yuefu composers. While yuefu composers tended to express themselves through storytelling, they limited the narrative elements to a bare outline while filling in with abundant emotional expressions. To see this reversed balance of narrative and lyrical elements, let us compare three of the “Nineteen Old Poems” with “Watering Horses at the Grotto near the Great Wall (hereafter, “Watering Horses”), a well-known yuefu composition attributed by some to Cai Yong (132–192).

C5.4

No. 6, I Cross the River to Pluck Hibiscus Flowers

[WX 29.1345]

This poem may be seen as a refashioning of lines 1–3 of “Watering Horses”:

[XQHWJNBCS, 192]

The motif of riverside lamentation is appropriated and turned into a monologue in poem 6. While “Watering Horses” merely touches on the speaker’s emotional state, poem 6 presents us with a sustained process of self-expression. The speaker complains about the distance preventing him from sending the flowers to his wife, looks longingly toward home, and laments their separation.

C5.5

No. 16, Cold and Cold: The Year Approaches Its End

[Lines 5–16; WX 29.1349]

This poem offers a useful comparison with lines 4–8 of “Watering Horses”:

Again, we can observe the sharp difference between the narrative and lyrical treatments of a similar situation. Both pieces describe a neglected wife’s dream of a reunion with her husband. “Watering Horses” merely tells us when the neglected wife falls asleep, whom she sees in her dream, and where she finds herself upon waking. By contrast, poem 16 provides minute, intimate details of the neglected wife’s dream: her feeling of estrangement (lines 6–7), her subliminal fulfillment of what she cannot fulfill in her waking life (lines 9–12), and her mournful awakening to the impossibility of regaining her lost love (lines 13–16). Her complex emotions range from elation to utter despair.

C5.6

No. 17, The First Winter Month: The Cold Air Comes

[WX 29.1349–1350]

This poem is obviously a “lyricized” version of the last section of “Watering Horses” (lines 13–20):

Both pieces depict a neglected wife’s receiving a letter from her husband. The depiction of the event is of the same length (eight lines) and begins with an identical line. “Watering Horses” devotes six of the eight lines to the description of the event itself. To enhance story interest, it includes the detail of the surprise discovery of the letter in the double carp. Not until the last two lines does the speaker reveal her emotion. If the narrative prevails over the lyrical in “Watering Horses,” the reverse is true in poem 17. There, all but two lines are devoted to the wife’s selfscrutiny. With narrative elements kept to a minimum, the poet explores a much richer world of feelings and thoughts, describing not only the husband’s profession of love but, more important, the wife’s complex response to it.

The shift of balance from the narrative to the lyrical in the “Nineteen Old Poems” is likely the consequence of the disappearance of oral performance. With oral performance gone or marginalized, the authors of the “Nineteen Old Poems” no longer needed to assume the role of a storyteller. As they began to turn inward, a scrutiny of their own emotional condition became the central concern of their works. In exploring their own inner worlds, they were no longer bound by the temporal sequence, as the yuefu composers had been when telling stories to a live audience. Very often they would survey their present condition in the first part of the poem, drift back into memory in the second, and then leap into an imagined future in the third. Indeed, following their reflective impulse, they could move among these three temporal realms in any order they chose. Such complex time frames of emotional response occur in as many as twelve poems in the collection.

POETIC STRUCTURE: BI-XING AS GLOBAL STRUCTURE

The “Nineteen Old Poems” also introduces a binary structure markedly different from the sequential structure of the Han yuefu. In this collection, the speakers usually observe external situations in the first part of a poem and respond to them emotionally in the second part. In poem 17, for instance, we can clearly perceive this binary structure of external observation and inward reflection. The first half of the poem depicts a desolate wintry scene through the eyes of a lonely woman. The “north wind” stirs the sense of touch; the “stars” appeal to the sense of sight; the “moon” and its mythical metaphor, “toad and hare,” evoke the extreme coldness of the Cold Palace (another metaphor for the moon). The second half leads us through a sustained process of self-reflection: the woman’s memory of her husband’s first and only letter, her gratitude for his words of love, her pledge of loyalty to him, and her fear of his failure to appreciate her fidelity and profound love.

This balanced combination of natural description and emotional response bears the imprint of the bi-xing construction in the Book of Poetry, which has long been regarded as the ultimate source for the “Nineteen Old Poems.” Originally a four-line oral formula, the bi-xing construction is substantially expanded in the “Nineteen Old Poems” to become a distinctive global structure. We can locate a binary structure of natural description and inward reflection in all but two of the nineteen poems. A binary structure identical to that of poem 17 may be found in poem 2 (6:4; six lines of external observation and four lines of inward reflection), poem 4 (8:6), poem 5 (10:6), poem 6 (4:4), poem 7 (8:8), poem 9 (6:2), poem 11 (6:6), poem 13 (10:8), poem 14 (6:4), poem 17 (8:6), poem 18 (6:4), and poem 19 (4:6). In addition, we find a binary structure in reverse order—that is, inward reflection preceding external observation—in poem 3 (8:8), and double binary structures in poem 1 (4:2/6:4), poem 8 (6:2/4:2), poem 12 (6:4/6:4), and poem 16 (6:6/4:4).

The transformation of the bi-xing construction from an oral formula to a global structure greatly extended the scope of natural description and emotional expression. In the Book of Poetry, natural images are few in number, devoid of variety, and often highly repetitious. Cast in a rigid formula, these images usually do not link up consecutively and thus cannot form a coherent scene. By contrast, in the “Nineteen Old Poems,” natural images coalesce into a coherent scene through a process of perception (poems 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14) or narration (poems 1, 4, 6, 8, 16, 18, and 19). The extended scope and the internal coherence of natural description have not gone unnoticed by critics. For instance, the Tang poet-critic Wang Changling (698–756) characterized the new bi-xing usage of the “Nineteen Old Poems” in terms of its extended natural description and its perceptual and narrative coherence.³ The presentation of the speaker’s inner world also undergoes profound changes as a result of the evolution of the bi-xing construction. The emotional expression found in these two collections also strikes us as being very different from each other. While in the Book of Poetry we hear short, emphatic emotional utterances about a particular external event, we find in the “Nineteen Old Poems” a sustained, melancholic reflection on the meaning or, rather, meaninglessness of human life.

POETIC TEXTURE: THE DYNAMICS OF SILENT WRITING AND READING

Another important change brought about by the waning of oral performance is the emergence of a new kind of poetic texture. If poetic structure is the framework of a poem, poetic texture results from the interface process—borrowing a phrase from computer science—whereby each word is linked to every other word in an organic whole. Just as networking denotes a process of multilateral linkage, poetic texture means a process of multilateral interplay among words in a poetic text. In examining poetic texture, we seek to understand not only the contiguous relationship of any word with other words in the same line or the same syntactic unit, but also the noncontiguous relationship of that word with other words placed in either a corresponding or a noncorresponding position in other lines. To take a concrete example, when we focus on the third word of line 4 of a pentasyllabic poem, we must consider, on the one hand, how it links up with the other four words in the same line and, on the other, how it relates to, say, the fifth word of line 2 or the third word of line 6.

In performed poetry, by contrast, establishing and maintaining a tight contiguous relationship of words is a task of primary importance. An oral presentation is essentially a temporal sequence of sounds or auditory signs delivered within an expected duration of time. Once a composer or performer has started his oral presentation, he cannot easily stop without frustrating the live audience. Maintaining a smooth, rhythmic flow of words without the aid of a script is a great challenge for an oral composer or performer. In the process of his oral delivery, he must constantly think of what he is to say in the next breath. In making this effort, he depends greatly on the use of repetition as his aide-mémoire and his cue for the continuation of his presentation. “Mulberry Along the Lane” (C4.8) provides a good example of two common aides-mémoires: thimble phrasing (interlocking repetitions) and incremental repetition, a device extensively used in the Book of Poetry (C1.4) and evident in other ancient or living oral traditions outside China.

In nonperformed poetry, the importance of the contiguous relationship of words decreases while their noncontiguous relationship strengthens. This change has much to do with the different dynamics of written communication. Writing and reading are not as immediate and instantaneous a form of communication as speaking (or other means of oral delivery) and listening. In most circumstances, when two parties are in each other’s presence, they will choose to address each other orally. Only when one party is separated from the other, or when he is not sure how to best express his thoughts impromptu, or when he wants to convey thoughts too awkward or too embarrassing to say out loud, or when he wants to say something that he thinks the other party will need time to think about before responding, will he decide to write to the other party. Judging by these common circumstances for the use of writing, we can see that writing, as compared with speaking, is a delayed (often purposely) form of communication. In most cases, the writer and the reader are not compelled to respond to each other within a certain time. Consequently, a writer may pause as many times as he wants to think about how to better put his thoughts into words. By the same token, a reader may freely go over the words of a writer again and again before deciding what they mean.

As written communication allows ample time for the coding or decoding of messages, neither the writer nor the reader need depend on word-for-word repetitions to maintain a smooth temporal flow of words. Hence the various aides-mémoires of earlier poems have disappeared in the “Nineteen Old Poems.” Written communication also allows the writer and the reader to explore the noncontiguous relationship of words for the purpose of enhancing an emotive impact. As a writer pauses to review what he has written and makes revisions in the light of what he intends to write next, he naturally builds a system of textual resonance among words placed in different parts of a poem. In fact, this is exactly what the authors of the “Nineteen Old Poems” sought to accomplish in their works.

In describing a natural scene in the first part of a poem, the poets already anticipated the subsequent feelings and thoughts to be expressed and therefore deliberately blended into the scene some words suggestive of the emotive tenor of the second part. Known as shiyan (literally, verse eyes) in traditional Chinese criticism, these words, mostly verbs or adjectives, serve to animate descriptions of nature and prefigure the emotions to be subsequently expressed (thematic table of contents 4.2). In poems 1, 4, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17, and 19, such animating words vividly reveal the speaker’s emotional involvement in the external scene. For instance, in the famous lines “The Tartar horse leans into the north wind, / The Yue bird nests among southern branches” (poem 1, lines 7–8), the words “leans” and “nests” unmistakably bring into the scene the speaker’s own sense of homesickness.⁴ Without them, these lines would reveal far less of the speaker’s inner world.

Conversely, when expressing their feelings and thoughts in the second part, the authors of the “Nineteen Old Poems” often refer back to the initial natural scene, purposely using metaphors that resonate with the natural images there. This device I tentatively term “metaphoric resonance.” While verse eyes often anticipate the emotional expressions in the second part of a poem, metaphorical resonance in the second part brings us back to the natural scene in the first part. Poem 7 provides a good example of the interplay of verse eyes and metaphoric resonance:

C5.7

No. 7, Bright Moon Shines in the Clear Night

[WX 29.1346]

The image of “High you soared, strong, beating wings” in line 10 is intended as a metaphor for unscrupulous self-advancement. The constellations Southern Winnow (line 13) and Dipper in the North (line 13) and the star Draught Ox (line 14) are used as metaphors for empty, false friendship. These three images metaphorically convey emptiness and falsehood because they “falsely” use concrete things to represent intangible or “insubstantial” stars. Meanwhile, the images recall what we have seen in the first part. The beating wings (line 10) recall the flight images of the cicadas (line 7) and dark swallows (line 8); the three stellar names bring to mind the polestar, or “jade handle” (line 3), and the crowding stars (line 4) in the first part. Through such imagistic resonance, the four metaphorical images endow the opening autumnal scene with strong emotional overtones, intensifying the interaction between the binary parts, but in the reverse direction of verse eyes.

We should note that the verse eye and metaphorical resonance each introduces alien elements into the binary parts of a poem. But instead of destabilizing the poem’s structure, these two devices only make it more dynamic and more aesthetically engaging. Like aesthetic catalysts, they oblige the mind to transcend the boundary between the outer and inner worlds and to constantly move back and forth between them. Commenting on this movement of the mind, the famous Ming critic Wang Shizhen (1526–1590) wrote:

When these ancient people wrote, if there was a forward movement, there would be a backward movement; if there was a thrust downward, there had to be a thrust back upward. To soar like a startled wild goose or to wind along like a swimming dragon: this is the way we follow their rules of composition and the way we seek to understand their meaning. Having grasped this point, we will understand why these poems [the “Nineteen Old Poems”] are thought to be “seamless like clothes made by heaven.”⁵

In the “Nineteen Old Poems,” both the binary structure and the multilateral texture are born of a constant movement between outer and inner worlds in the poets’ creative process. In turn, they activate a similar movement in the mind of the reader. The intensification of this mental process can lead to a point where the boundary between the outward and the inward dissolves and a poetic vision emerges.

Zong-qi Cai

NOTES

1. Qian Qianyi, Mu zhai you xue ji (The Mu zhai Records of Learning) (SBCK ed.), 19.22a.

2. Liezi jishi (Collected Commentaries on “Liezi”) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979), 221; translation from A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, trans. Wing-tsit Chan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963), 310–311, with minor changes.

3. Wang Changling, Shi ge (Rules of Poetry), in Xu Tang shihua (A Sequel to the Poetry Talks of the Tang), ed. Shen Bingxun (Qianlong ed.), A.1.16–21.

4. The Tartars and other nomadic tribes, broadly referred to as the Hu peoples, inhabited the vast region of northern China outside the Great Wall during the Han dynasty. Yue is a region of southern China that is within present-day Zejiang Province. The Tartar horse leaning into the north wind and the Yue bird nesting among southern branches are expressive of a yearning to return home.

5. Wang Shizhen, Yiyuan zhiyan (Drunken Words in the Garden of Art), 1, in Lidai shihua xubian (Poetry Talks of Successive Dynasties: A Sequel), ed. Ding Fubao, 3 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983), 2:964.