21st Day of the Eleventh Month, 946 CE Today I went once again to Uncle's command tent to pay my respects, and…
21st Day of the Eleventh Month, 946 CE
Today I went once again to Uncle's command tent to pay my respects, and once again he treated me with the same cold indifference. Then again, Uncle is a great minister of the court. So many seek an audience with him each day. Why would he spare a glance for some poor, down-at-heel nephew like me?
I know well enough that the soldiers in camp show me respect only to my face. Behind my back, who knows what names they call me.
Yes, I have borrowed Uncle's name, and wrapped myself in the hide of "Governor Du Chongwei's kinsman." But so long as I still wear that hide, those camp louts should show me some respect.
What right have they to look down on me? What right have they to make sport of me behind my back?
Only Ding Xiao, only he alone, has ever treated me with true sincerity.
When others mocked me for being useless and unlearned, it was he who wrote documents for me. When others pressed me and made a show of my ignorance, it was he who stepped forward on my behalf.
He... he ought to be true to me as well.
When he was reduced to slavery because his father and elder brother failed to hold the city, it was I who saved him.
When, marked by guilt and with nowhere to go, he lived from one day to the next, it was I who gave him clerical work so he could earn his keep.
Ding Xiao, you must not become like those who trample on me.
I have treated you as a brother. You owe me that much.