From: lix@thames.bu.edu (Xiaowen Li)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china
Subject: FWD for Mr. H. Anonymous - Learn from Geshu (13)
Date: 12 Nov 92 16:27:28 GMT
Distribution: soc.culture.china
Organization: Boston University

This is again a forwarding.

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  Learn from Geshu (XIII)

Sorry Jim, it is just humanly impossible to resist such juicy targets:

>    If Du Fu said Geshu swept the southeast Asia in his poem but there is
>no record in any official history book, then it would be perfectly legitimate
>to add this conquest to your Geshu eulogy, by quoting Du Fu.  However, you
>used Li Bai and Du Fu's Gan-ye (High-ranking Official Be My Master) poems,
>without any necessity, to enhance the halo you painted on Geshu...

Not that I am still wondering about the dead silence on my humble
little Kao3Ju4 on the Geshu-Yan Wu-Du Fu connections, or whether 
Sanyee's latest opinion as quoted above should be termed "amateurish
professionalism" or "professional amateurism".  But if I may, I would 
like to ask for Sanyee's comments on some of Li Bai's, no doubt, 
"junk" yet strongly "militaristic" poems written while he was on the 
staff of Prince Li Lin.

Not that these "junk" poems would make Sanyee's so far formidable
task of turning our usually "Hao4Da4Xi3Gong1" poet into some sort of 
a Green Peace activist even more formidable, but could Sanyee kindly 
explain why not only these "junk" poems always seem able to "slip" 
through into some "decent" Li Bai anthologies, selected, no doubt, by 
some "indecent" "critics"?  But furthermore and still more a case 
of "Shi4 Ke3 Ren3, Shu2 Bu4 Ke Ren?", the same "junk" was even used, 
"without any necessity" of course, by, again, a "junk" historian by 
the name of (Dr.) Hu Sanxing in his study and research on the (no doubt) 
"junk" history chronicle _ZiZhiTongJian_ ( specifically, Vol. CCXIX)?

For those who might not have read those poems hence maybe some
doubts about their "militarism" (BTW, yet another "junk" critic and/or
historian too gave the "junk" poems quite some "damn" and cited them as 
evidence of Li Bai's competence in geostrategy as well as his 
familiarity with military issues) let's just say some of them, 
particularly that cited by Dr. Hu, could have been adopted, with little 
change, by the PLA as their military march in the spring of 1949,
not to mention a potential "plagiarism" case to be brought up
against Mao Zhuxi.

Now Jim, let's look at a rather improbable scenario.  Let's suppose 
Sanyee were in a position or had the capacity to enforce this wonderful 
idea of his about which source material is admissible, or in Sanyee's 
words, "legitimate", to the "court" of history.  Let's imagine that he
would then label anything that neither contradict nor complement 
(in a "disjoint" fashion) what he could find in the "official history 
book" as "junk", including though by no means limited to Li Bai's 
aforementioned	"Gan (Wang2) ye" poems, to be banned, at least withheld 
from general use by "decent" historians (with the "indecent" Hu Sanxing 
posthumously excluded, if not subjected to "Bian1Shi1 300", naturally)?   
I am sure you would agree that under these conditions many terrible 
things would be bound to happen.

Of course, not everything would be so grim.  For one thing, "lucky" 
for both of us, neither you Jim nor I would be in really grave jeopardy
of losing our jobs.  But at least 90% of all "professional historians" 
certainly would lose theirs as the result of Sanyee's censorship of what 
he considers "junk" stuff.  But as friends of Sanyee, shouldn't we be a 
bit concerned about the equally certain yet dreadful scenario in which 
hundreds of currently enrolled graduate students of history would have 
no realistic job prospect whatsoever.  Many would probably march and 
swarm to where Sanyee lives and works.  I will leave you to speculate 
on the prospect of a repeat of last year's horrible tragedy at 
University of Iowa.

(To be continued)
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