PDLP 008 The Knowledge in the Explanatory Notes
008 The Knowledge in the Explanatory Notes
Xia Linyu's mathematical mind has always been quick-witted, but when he first encountered the terminology of ancient book collation, it was like entering a thick fog.
The explanatory notes on that page about "The Collected Works of Gao Changshi" were like words seen through frosted glass, hazy yet stubborn. He pushed up his glasses, almost giving up—until Zhen Xiaosi's voice drifted over from the side.
She always speaks in that way, initially fragmented, like a jigsaw puzzle with a few wrong pieces mixed in. You have to listen patiently until she finishes, then sort things out and fill in the gaps yourself before the picture gradually becomes clear.
“Collation Notes,” she later leaned against the bookshelf, unconsciously running her fingers along the spine of an old book, “is a long, whispered conversation between the people who organize ancient books and those hundreds-of-year-old papers.”
As words are passed down, they become distorted, worn down by countless hands, their edges eroded, and their characters blurred.
The proofreader's job is to systematically compare different versions of old documents to find where a stroke is added, a line is missing, or where the error is outrageous. Zhen Xiaosi says this job is like restoring an ancient painting. It requires both the meticulousness of embroidery and the intuition of a detective.
The preface is like a blueprint drawn up before work begins. It specifies in advance how the work will be done and what rules will be followed. Nowadays, the preface is always at the very beginning of ancient books, serving as the first touchstone for readers to judge the book's credibility.
Xia Linyu is only now beginning to appreciate the significance of her casual remark that "the original text is a Ming Dynasty movable type edition of the *Collected Works of Gao Changshi*, reproduced from the *Sibu Congkan*."
The original text is the foundation. The Sibu Congkan was a large series of books during the Republic of China era, emphasizing "preservation of authenticity." The Ming Dynasty movable type editions within it, due to the characteristics of movable type printing, sometimes contained fewer additions and alterations by later generations than the woodblock-printed editions. Movable type was laid out one by one, making it more likely to be copied exactly as it was—of course, typesetters could also doze off and misread words.
Therefore, a smart organizer will not stick to just one book and obsess over it.
“Refer to the Complete Tang Poems, Dunhuang manuscript S.559, and ten Tang poems selected by Tang people…” Zhen Xiaosi counted them off one by one on her fingers.
The Complete Tang Poems is comprehensive and authoritative, but the people of the Qing Dynasty were too far removed from the Tang Dynasty. When they were compiling it, their hands would sometimes itch, and they couldn't help but change a few words according to their own ideas.
Dunhuang Fragment S.559 is different. It's like a feather that drifted directly from the Tang Dynasty. Every character on it was written by the Tang people themselves, bearing the habits and mistakes of that time, exactly as they were. Using it for comparison is like using a Tang ruler to measure the clothes of later generations.
The selection of "Ten Tang Poems by Tang Dynasty Poets" reflects the perspective of "contemporary" judges from the Tang Dynasty. The poems chosen by renowned poets of that era likely more closely resemble the poems as they were originally circulated, carrying the aesthetic sensibilities of that time.
“Choose the best from the variant readings.” Zhen Xiaosi’s eyes became very focused as she read these six words. She said that this is the most skillful and also the most grueling part of the collation process.
When faced with different phrases, one must act like a judge ruling a case. First, check if the words are similar in form and mistaken for each other. Or if they sound similar and are misheard? Or perhaps the meanings are similar but the words are different?
Then, one must throw oneself back into the prosperous Tang Dynasty, into the world of Gao Shi. He was a frontier poet, his style vigorous and his poetry rigorously structured. Does this word fit the rules here? Does it rhyme? Is the imagery too lofty or too low?
One must also consider the background and characteristics of each version. The Dunhuang manuscripts are from an earlier period, but the copyists may not have been highly educated; the Ming dynasty editions are from a later period, and perhaps their ancestors passed down a lost Song or Yuan dynasty rare edition. One must have an invisible genealogy in mind.
Even language itself quietly shifts with time. Common words from the Tang Dynasty might have become unfamiliar by the Ming Dynasty, and publishers, with good intentions, would replace them with the more common ones of the time—but this good intention sometimes diluted the original flavor.
“Choosing the good and following it is not based on feelings,” she concluded. “It requires a wealth of knowledge, including texts, phonetics, exegesis, history, and so on. You also need to understand poetry and the person behind it.”
Xia Linyu gradually understood the considerations behind the phrase "not to list them one by one".
If every variant reading and the process of textual research were laid out, the annotations would be several times longer than the main text, which would scare away the average reader and ruin their reading interest.
This is a common method for popularizing edited versions, assuming that readers need a reliable, well-organized text, not all the behind-the-scenes conflicts. Scholars who truly want to conduct in-depth research will naturally follow the clues and find those versions for comparison.
Of course, this doesn't mean one can be lazy. A responsible editor will always make a subtle note in key places—those that affect the meaning, are controversial, or particularly highlight the characteristics of the version—leaving a mark. This preserves the structure of the text while also ensuring a smooth reading experience.
Zhen Xiaosi closed the book in her hand and suddenly said, "Now we have digital humanities and databases, and it seems that proofreading can be handed over to machines. But, when it comes to 'choosing the good and following it,' which word 'good' is better and more fitting... In the end, it is still the human brain and human knowledge that make the final decision."
Xia Linyu nodded. The fog before his eyes had completely dissipated. This short example, like a prism, allowed him to glimpse the rigorous yet flexible methods of an ancient discipline: establishing a solid foundation, gathering extensive evidence, and carefully demonstrating arguments, thus building a balanced bridge between the abyss of scholarship and the ferry crossing of dissemination.
This attitude of not blindly following others, not easily giving up, and carefully seeking evidence from multiple sources gave him, a science student, a strange sense of familiarity. It resonated deeply with the same cautious approach to data and formula derivation he took in the laboratory.
The silent discipline of ancient book collation has thus pierced through the dust of time and the chasms of textual reasoning, gently knocking on the hearts of all truth-seekers and emitting similar echoes.
The candlelight flickered slightly in the celadon lamp.
Zhen Xiaosi's ring gently brushed against the line "just finished proofreading at Han Pass" on the page, and she shook her head. The paper was a lithographic edition from the Republican era, and the ink had blotted out, like overnight tea stains.
“All the versions are wrong, they’re practically incoherent.” He looked up at the boy sitting opposite him and said, “Listen to this tune—'Completely proofreading the drum below Han Pass,' is that even remotely plausible?”
The boy's name was Xia Linyu, a science student. He had been dragged to this "night class" by his cousin, who was majoring in Chinese literature. Professor Zhen, who looked quite young, was giving him a hard time. He stared at the line of text, feeling that it was indeed awkward, but he couldn't quite put his finger on why.
“Here,” Teacher Zhen took out a few sheets of photocopy paper from the drawer and spread them on the rosewood table, “look at this.”
One is a facsimile of a Ming dynasty movable type edition from the *Sibu Congkan* (Four Series of Books), with inconsistent character sizes and slightly crooked layout. Another is a black-and-white photograph of a Dunhuang scroll, the handwriting as messy as flying sand. There's also an inner page from *Quan Tang Shi* (Complete Tang Poems), densely packed with annotations like an ant colony.
“Proofreading is a bit like solving a crime.” Teacher Zhen picked up her teacup, not to drink, but just to warm her hands. “You have to find the one that is most likely to be correct among countless incorrect versions—or rather, the one that is closest to the poet’s original intention.”
He pointed to the two characters “全伐”: “Look here first. In Tang Dynasty manuscripts, the character ‘全’ is often mistakenly written as ‘金’ because they are similar in shape. ‘金伐鼓’—have you ever heard of ‘鸣金收兵’ (sounding the gong to retreat)? ‘金’ is a gong, and ‘鼓’ is a drum, both of which are military musical instruments. ‘金伐鼓下榆关’ (The gong beats the drum as it descends from Yuguan Pass) makes sense.”
"Yuguan?"
"Isn't the character '梒' uncommon? I've looked it up, and in dictionaries from various dynasties, it's only used to refer to a tree, and has nothing to do with the frontier." Teacher Zhen pulled out a copy of the "Old Book of Tang," its spine torn and re-stitched with cotton thread. "In the twenty-sixth year of the Kaiyuan era, Wu Zhiyi was defeated at Nalu Mountain—this place is on the upper reaches of the Liao River. Gao Shi was then in Jibei, and to return to the Central Plains, he had to pass through Yuguan, which is now Shanhaiguan."
His finger traced a dotted line on the map copy: "'梒' should be a misprint of '榆'. It's easy to misread characters with the '木' radical, especially one that has been copied over hundreds of years."
Xia Linyu suddenly felt that the stiff black characters had come to life. He seemed to see a weary poet passing through a pass on an autumn day, hearing the sound of gongs and drums, and then writing that rhythm into his poem.
“Look at this sentence again, ‘塞草排’ (sāi cǎo pái).
Teacher Zhen showed me a larger image of the Dunhuang scroll. On the yellowish hemp paper, the moon radical of the character "飛" was somewhat blurry, but still recognizable.
“The character ‘排’ feels awkward here. How can grass be ‘排’? To line up? To arrange?” He shook his head. “But if it were ‘飛’—‘百卉具飛’, from the Book of Songs, meaning the withering of grass and trees. In late autumn on the frontier, the grass is fading, then that would be right.”
As he spoke, his eyes behind his glasses squinted slightly, as if trying to discern something extremely far away. The candlelight cast the shadow of his hand turning the pages on the wall; his fingers were long and slender, with thin calluses at the joints from years of holding a pen.
"There's also 'jade chopsticks'. All versions write it as 'chopsticks', but only the Complete Tang Poems notes that it is also written as 'chopsticks'. Do you know what 'jade chopsticks' is?"
Xia Linyu shook his head.
“They are tears,” Teacher Zhen said softly. “There is a poem from the Southern Dynasties called ‘The Night Crow Cries,’ which says, ‘Jade chopsticks flow in all directions.’ Tears like chopsticks are a metaphor for a woman’s weeping. Gao Shi is describing the wife of a soldier weeping in the rear, so ‘jade chopsticks’ is more appropriate.”
He paused, then added, "I've marked all these changes in red on the manuscript. But when it's published, I won't list every single piece of research—otherwise, the footnotes would be longer than the main text, and who would read poetry then?"
The tea was changed for the third time. Teacher Zhen began to explain the entire poem.
“In the twenty-sixth year of the Kaiyuan era, a staff member returned from a campaign beyond the Great Wall with General Zhang Shougui and wrote a poem called ‘Yan Ge Xing’. Gao Shi saw it and, moved by the border affairs, wrote a poem in response.” He read out the preface, his voice suddenly becoming a little deeper, “But do you know? That year, Zhang Shougui’s troops actually suffered a defeat. The general concealed the defeat and instead reported a great victory.”
The candlelight flickered again.
"So this poem, on the surface, describes the Han dynasty and the Xiongnu chieftain, but in reality, every line is about the present." Teacher Zhen underlined the lines "Half of the soldiers on the front lines are dead or wounded, while the beauties in the tents are still singing and dancing." "Look at this contrast—more than half of the soldiers on the front lines have died or been wounded, while the general in the tents is still watching singing and dancing. Gao Shi dared not say it outright, so he could only use the past to satirize the present."
He explained it line by line. When he came to the line "Golden drums beat down at Yuguan Pass, banners flutter between Jieshi Mountain," he got up and took a yellowed map from the bookshelf, slowly unfolding it on the table. It was a hand-drawn topographical map of northern Ji, with place names like Shanhaiguan, Jieshi Mountain, Huangshui River, and Langjuxu Mountain, each like a sleeping seal.
"The army marched out of the pass, the drums thundered, and the banners stretched eastward along the Bohai Bay." Teacher Zhen swept across the 3D map, as if she could touch the wind of a thousand years ago. "But north of the Huangshui River, it was the territory of the Xi and Khitan people. There were no cities there, only 'desolate mountains and rivers on the extreme border.'"
Xia Linyu looked at the blank area on the map. It turned out that the poem's lines, "In the desolate autumn of the vast desert, the grass withers, the lonely city stands deserted at sunset," did not describe the northwestern desert, but rather the sandy lands of the northeast.
"The most painful part is this one." Teacher Zhen read it very slowly: "Wearing iron armor, she has long toiled on the distant frontier; her jade chopsticks should weep after parting. The young woman in the south of the city is heartbroken; the soldier in the north of Ji looks back in vain."
He took off his glasses and wiped them with the corner of his clothes: "There is a market town south of Jixian City where the families of soldiers going to war mostly live. The husbands are on the frontier, their fate unknown, while the wives in Chang'an are longing for them—'looking back in vain,' those three words express all the hopeless longing."
The night grew deeper. A breeze rustled through the bamboo in the courtyard outside the window.
When Teacher Zhen reached the ending, "I still remember General Li," he remained silent for a long time. A wick had formed on the candle wick, but he didn't trim it.
"Li Guang loved his soldiers like his own children, sharing their joys and sorrows." He finally spoke, "Gao Shi wrote this line to ask: Are there still generals like this today? Zhang Shougui concealed his defeats and indulged in pleasure; does he deserve the respect of those soldiers who died in battle?"
He closed the book very gently: "The poem can be finished, but some questions will remain unanswered even a thousand years later."
Zhen Xiaosi only briefly mentioned the two short poems in the appendix.
"The Song of Yingzhou is like a sketch. With just a few lines, the brave spirit of the young man from the border town comes to life. The Song of Listening to the Flute on the Frontier is even more wonderful. It does not directly describe the sound of the flute, but asks 'Where do the plum blossoms fall?' Let the wind blow the plum blossoms in the flute music and scatter them all over the mountains and passes overnight."
He looked at Xia Linyu: "Do you know what we're actually proofreading in the end?"
Xia Linyu shook his head.
“It’s a kind of warmth in school.” Zhen Xiaoshi gently stacked several ancient books. “Those words have been cold for thousands of years. We must carefully brush away the dust and let them breathe and beat again. So that when future generations read ‘Golden drums beat down at Yuguan Pass,’ they can hear the real drumbeats; when they read ‘Jade chopsticks should weep after parting,’ they can see the real tears.”
He blew out the candle. Moonlight streamed in through the windowpane, casting diamond-shaped spots of light on the map on the table, which fell precisely on the two characters "Yuguan".
“Let’s go back,” Zhen Xiaosi said. “We’ve finished reading the poem, but the moonlight over the borderlands in the poem has only just begun to rise.”
Xia Linyu walked into the courtyard and glanced back. New candlelight flickered on the window paper of the study—Zhen Xiaosi had begun proofreading another poem.
That cluster of light was small and steady, like a star that refused to sleep, shining deep within the folds of a thousand-year-old poem.
Inside the window, Zhen Xiaosi did not immediately unroll the new scroll. She sat quietly for a moment, then pulled out a page from the stack of unorganized photocopied historical materials on the corner of the table.
Those were a few lines from the "Biography of Zhang Shougui" in the Old Book of Tang. The paper was brittle and yellowed, and the words were concise, yet they exuded a sense of historical solemnity.
Xiao Si's gaze fell on this passage: "...In the twenty-sixth year of the Kaiyuan era, Zhao Kan, Bai Zhen Tuo Luo, and others, subordinate generals of Shou Gui, forced Wu Zhiyi, the military commissioner of Pinglu, to lead cavalry to intercept the remaining rebels of the Xi tribe north of the Huang River. Upon encountering the rebels, they initially won but were later defeated. Shou Gui concealed the details of the defeat and falsely reported a victory..."
The candlelight burned quietly, casting the text on and off.
Through this calm historical writing, Zhen Xiaosi saw the governor's mansion far away in Jibei. Behind the clamor of the victory reports rushing into the capital was the silence of the soldiers who died unjustly on the front lines, and the fear of those who knew the truth.
Why did Zhang Shougui, a once highly decorated general known as the "key to the northern gate of the empire," choose to cover up the bloodshed with lies amidst the illusion of victory and the weighing of his career prospects?
He could picture Gao Shi's expression when he wrote "Yan Ge Xing". What a complex emotion that must have been.
There is a magnificent depiction of the frontier scenery, a deep sympathy for the soldiers' suffering, and an unspoken disappointment and satire of the general who "still sings and dances under the tent of beauties." The "General Li" in the poem is not only a tribute to a good general of the past, but also a clear yet cold mirror, reflecting the rust and shadows on the soul of the current commander.
Poetry and history quietly converge in the candlelight of this moment. Every word clarified through collation becomes a fragment piecing together the truth of history; while the cold accounts in history books provide the most conclusive footnote to the surging undercurrents in the verses.
Zhen Xiaosi gently closed the page of the historical biography and placed it next to the collated manuscript of "Collected Works of Gao Changshi". The two stacks of papers, one with poetry and the other with history, were placed side by side in the dim light, like a silent confrontation spanning a thousand years.
She picked up her long sheep-hair brush and, with extremely fine strokes, gently wrote the character "Zhang" on the margin of the poem manuscript, next to the line "Soldiers at the front are half dead and half alive, while beauties sing and dance in their tents."
This character has no explanation, no extended meaning; it is merely a mark, a knot silently tied by the collator's knowledge and conscience at the intersection of poetic lines and historical facts.
The moonlight outside the window was even clearer.
In the study, the candlelight still shines, illuminating not only the old papers, but also attempting to illuminate the souls behind them—souls whose faces have been blurred by time, yet forever linger in poetry and historical records.
The image of Zhang Shougui, illuminated by candlelight and footnotes, emerges from behind the veil of history, revealing his complex and genuine features, and stepping into this night of textual criticism, poetry, and the pursuit of truth…