{"id":1372,"date":"2009-05-13T06:46:28","date_gmt":"2009-05-13T11:46:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/china\/?p=1372"},"modified":"2014-08-30T13:37:21","modified_gmt":"2014-08-30T13:37:21","slug":"but-what-about-the-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/2009\/05\/but-what-about-the-books\/","title":{"rendered":"But what about the books?"},"content":{"rendered":"

So supposedly they are going to tear down my office building and replace it with a new one. This may end up not happening, and it will probably not happen real soon, but this time it is apparently coming. Besides the hassles of being in a temporary office for a year, what is going to happen with all my books? I took a weird shaped interior office specifically so I would have room for them all1<\/a><\/sup> and now they are going to spend a year in limbo and then what? Will they all fit in the new office? What will happen to my careful system of disorganization? Could they maybe just cut my arm off and leave it an that?<\/p>\n

I was going to write a poem about all this, but Bai Juyi already did it for me<\/p>\n


\nBai Juyi, On the Cabinet for My Literary Collection<\/strong><\/p>\n

I broke up cypress to make a book cabinet,
\nthe cabinet sturdy and the cypress strong.
\nWhose collection is stored there?-
\nthe heading says “Bai Ledan.”
\nMy lifetime’s capital is in writing
\nfrom childhood on to old age.
\nSeventy scrolls from beginning to end,
\nin size, three thousand pieces.
\nI know well that at last they will be scattered,
\nbut I cannot bear to rashly throw them away.
\nI open it up, I lock it tight,
\nplacing it by my study curtain.
\nI am childless Deng You,
\nand there is no Wang Can in this age.2<\/a><\/sup>
\nI can only entrust it to my daughter
\nto keep and pass on to my grandchild.3<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

  1. well, all the ones in the office ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li>

  2. Deng You was a famous litereratus who gave all this books to the young Wang Can ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li>

  3. From Owen The Late Tang: Chinese Poetry of the Mid-Ninth Century p.55 Not exactly the same problem as mine, but pretty close ↩<\/a><\/p><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    So supposedly they are going to tear down my office building and replace it with a new one. This may end up not happening, and it will probably not happen real soon, but this time it is apparently coming. Besides the hassles of being in a temporary office for a year, what is going to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[100,165,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-china","category-english"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9yoH3-m8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4683,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions\/4683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}