Water Margin. Shi Naian

      Foreword

      A man should not marry after thirty years of age; should not enter the government service after the age of forty; should not have any more children after the age of fifty; and should not travel after the age of sixty. This is because the proper time for those things has passed. At sunrise the country is bright and fresh, and you dress, wash, and eat your breakfast, but before long it is noon. Then you realize how quickly time passes. I am always surprised when people talk about other people’s ages, because what is a lifetime but a small part of a much greater period? Why talk about insects when the whole world is before you? How can you count time by years? All that is clear is that time passes, and all the time there is a continual change going on. Some change has taken place ever since I began to write this. This continual change and decay fills me with sadness.

      What excites pleasure in me is the meeting and conversing with old friends. But it is very galling when my friends do not visit me because there is a biting wind, or the roads are muddy through the rain, or perhaps because they are sick. Then I feel isolated. Although I myself do not drink, yet I provide spirits for my friends, as my family has a few fields in which we grow millet. In front of my house runs a great river, and there I can sit with my friends in the shadow of the lovely trees.

      I have four old women to do the cooking and household affairs, and also ten small boys who act as messengers. And when they have nothing to do they fill up their spare time in making brooms and mats.

      If all my friends came there would be sixteen, but because of the weather there are seldom more than six or seven here. When they come they drink and chat, just as they please, but our pleasure is in the conversation and not in the liquor. We do not discuss politics because we are so isolated here that our news is simply composed of rumors, and it would only be a waste of time to talk with untrustworthy information. We also never talk about other people’s faults, because in this world nobody is wrong, and we should beware of backbiting. We do not wish to injure anyone, and therefore our conversation is of no consequence to anyone. We discuss human nature about which people know so little because they are too busy to study it.

      My friends are all broad-minded, and well educated, but we do not keep a record of our conversations. The reason for this is (1) we are too lazy, and do not aspire to fame; (2) to talk gives us pleasure, but to write would give trouble; (3) none of us would be able to read it again after our deaths, so why worry; (4) if we wrote something this year we should probably find it all wrong the next year.

I have written these seventy chapters of the Shui Hu40 just for my own pleasure after my friends had left, or when they had not turned up owing to the weather. I have had no preconceived plan, but have jotted these items down just as they occurred to me, sometimes when sitting outside near the bamboo fence, or at early dawn when lying on my couch in pensive mood. But someone may ask, “As you did not write down your friends’ conversations why have you written this book?” To which I reply (1) because it is just a hotchpotch, and cannot make me famous or even discredit me; (2) I have only done this to fill up my spare time, and give pleasure to myself; (3) I have written it so that the uneducated can read it as well as the educated; (4) I have used this style of composition because it is such a trifle.

      Alas! Life is so short that I shall not even know what the reader thinks about it, but still I shall be satisfied if a few of my friends will read it and be interested. Also I do not know what I may think of it in my future life after death, because then I may not be able to even read it. So why think anything further about it?

      Shi

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