(June 24,1916)
To my dear kind elder brother Zisheng:
Since we said good-bye, the rains have been very heavy, and I have not been able to
return home. Also, because robbery4 continues and unrest is breaking out on all sides,
I dare not risk traveling. These five or six days I have been reading newspapers and
books, so you could say I have been well occupied. My mother, however, is ill at home,
and she suffers thinking of me. How can a wandering son remain unmoved? And then,
since school is closed for vacation and all of my classmates have gone home with one
3 The missing portion of this letter obviously included the list summarized here. The Chinese text
begins with the character meaning “to the right,” since it was written in traditional fashion from top to
bottom and right to left.
4 “Huanfu is not tranquil” — an allusion to a passage in the Zuo zhuan, twentieth year of Duke Zhao
(Legge, Vol. V, p. 684): “The consequence [of the ruler’s leniency] was that there were many robbers in
the state of Zheng, who plundered people about the marsh of Huanfu.”