Its thirteen books provide a detailed record of the years 1608-18,a period during which both Yuan Zhongdao's father and his beloved brother Hongdao died, whilst Zhongdao himself belatedly achieved the examination success long expected of him and took up the first of his official posts. Yuan Zhongdao's diary, entitled Youju feilu, Book One of which is translated here, is a remarkable work, perhaps in part by virtue of the superfluity spoken of by Qian Qianyi. 'Excellent advice', Yuan had responded, 'but although you may well be able to do this to them, I cannot, and I am myself forever fearful of the extent to which the gush of my inspiration tends to overflow the banks'. Your travel records, for instance, if only you were to edit them severely, deleting more than half their text, could well stand alongside those of the ancients'. 'Both your poetry and your prose', Qian records himself as telling Yuan on one occasion, 'suffer from an excess of talent. To the mind of his earliest biographer, the great Qian Qianyi (1582-1664), his problem in the latter respect was certainly not due to any lack of talent. Yuan Zhongdao, the youngest of the three famous Yuan brothers of the late Ming period, never quite achieved either the official success of his eldest brother, Yuan Zongdao (1560-1600), or the literary reputation of the most famous of the three, Yuan Hongdao (1568-1610). Or if I haven’t written a line of poetry during the course of a year spent on land, my poetic inspiration surges up again like a spring the moment I find myself within the cabin of a junk. If when studying at home I can understand not a word of what I happen to be reading, on board a junk I become intoxicated with the copiousness of my reading notes. Whenever I live in town I become as inflamed as if being cauterised with moxa, only finding release when I climb upon a junk.

As one junk fell into disrepair, I have had another built. Thus it is that, for the six years now since the Wushen year, I have spent much of my time aboard a junk.

Repose book