Six Records of a Resurrected Life
Preface by the Author
My name is Dai Fuk, styled Fuk Seng, a native of the Eighteen Villages in San On County, Kwangtung Province. At the age of eleven, I went to Hong Kong alone and enrolled at Anglo-Chinese College, a charity school. Three years later, the charity school closed down, and I became an apprentice at Anglo-Chinese Printing House and specialized in typesetting. I have been engaged in it ever since, unchanged for more than fifty years. I am not a scholar or a man of letters, but merely a typesetter. However, since I was young, I have been obsessed with characters, always reading whenever I see text and never tired of it. I especially loved the characters in engraving printing, appreciating their neatness and regularity, clear strokes, varying shades of ink, like shadows following forms, with subtle variations but not departing from their original intent. Whenever I came across an engraved book, I would be entranced and would examine each character carefully as if savoring a delicacy. Later, when I first saw the art of Western movable type printing, the exquisite casting and the ingenious operation presented a fascinating spectacle, which eventually became my lifelong career. It fits my temperament perfectly.
Throughout my life, I have been a low-key person, having limited experience and narrow horizons, with nothing worth boasting about. But one regret has lingered for decades without being able to let go. Now that I have reached the age which I can act as my heart desires, I have personally arranged it into words, printed it into a book, to express the unrequited love and unconsummated aspirations of the past years, which I believe does not exceed the bounds of propriety. The incident that I want to narrate is not beneficial to worldly wisdom, nor enough to kill time, but to express my heartfelt emotions bit by bit to comfort the departed spirit. The text in the book was originally a letter written for someone when I was young, all addressing to “you” as the conversation partner, which is different from the usual biography. Here, with many original texts, I have edited and strung them together, removing repetitions and redundancies, added some factual supplements, and tried to preserve its original appearance as much as possible to reveal the truth of those years. The tragic situation is perhaps close to popular novels, but it is all written straight from the pen, without embellishment, for the suffering in the world is boundless after all. Although I have spent my life with words, due to my limited education, my language is mixed, my styles are inconsistent, and there is no literary talent. I hope the readers will forgive me.
A time of great change is approaching and the universe is at its turning point. I myself am growing old, and though my time in this world may not last much longer, I still have hopes for the new generation. Thus, I have chosen “Resurrection” as the topic, and it comprises six chapters, collectively known as Six Records of a Resurrected Life.
October of the Xinhai Year *
December 1911 AD
I. Enlightenment
Heng Yi, I promised you I’d write, and you didn’t believe me, so I’m writing to you now. I should have written this letter sooner. I deeply regret delaying it till now. If I had written earlier, letting you know my intentions, perhaps things wouldn’t have come to this. However, even if you knew my intentions, you were unable to control the circumstances. But at least our intentions were our own. I don’t know if you agree or not.
I have hesitated for a long time to write to you, mainly because I do not know how. Before entering Anglo-Chinese College, I had studied for several years in a private school in my village, where I learned only a few characters. During my three years at Anglo-Chinese College, apart from studying foreign books, I also read some Chinese texts, but they were all superficial knowledge. With this superficial knowledge, I guess I couldn’t have passed the imperial examination. When I was fourteen, I started working at the College Printing House, day and night I was surrounded by Chinese translations of the Bible and the Chinese texts written by Western missionaries. It was only after printing Mr. Legge’s translation of Chinese classics that I read through the Four Books. As for poetry and novels, they were not my cup of tea. Over time, whenever I picked up a brush to write in Chinese, it didn’t feel right, and the results were so poor that they were not presentable. I later heard that even when Mr. Wong Shing received an invitation from the court, he dared not reply in his own hand and had to ask Mr. Wang Tao from Shanghai to write on his behalf. This proves that not being good at writing Chinese is not something unusual. However, it would be very shameless of me to compare myself with Mr. Wong Shing.
Look, I’ve been beating around the bush for so long without getting to the point. This really shows my shortcomings. After much contemplation, I figured that no matter how poor my writing might be, it’s better than not writing at all. As the ancients say, “it’s enough to express oneself.” Hence, I won’t care about the style or syntax, or whether to use classical or vernacular Chinese; my primary aim is to express my thoughts to you and make you understand. I firmly believe that you won’t laugh at me, but the question remains, where should I start? Looking back, it’s been over ten years since we first met, but the number of times we’ve talked face to face can be counted on less than ten fingers. You probably know very little about me. Given this, I might as well start from the beginning, tell you about my childhood, how I came to Hong Kong to study, how I became an apprentice, and how I became close to you. As I recount my story, you’ll understand why I feel the need to write this letter to you, and you won’t find my actions overly abrupt.
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