YING HING SOO's PREFACE.
Karl Friedrich Neumann translation
In the summer of the year Ke sze (1809),[16] I returned from the capital, and having passed the chain of mountains,[17] I learned the extraordinary disturbances caused by the Pirates. When I came home I saw with mine own eyes all the calamities; four villages were totally destroyed; the inhabitants collected together and made preparations for resistance. Fighting at last ceased on seas and rivers: families and villages rejoiced, and peace was every where restored. Hearing of our naval transactions, every man desired to have them written down in a history; but people have, until this day, looked in vain for such a work.
Meeting once, at a public inn in Whampo,[18] with one Yuen tsze, we conversed together, when he took a volume in his hand, and asked me to read it. On opening the work, I saw that it contained a History of the Pirates; and reading it to the end, I found that the occurrences of those times were therein recorded from day to day, and that our naval transactions are there faithfully reported. Yuen tsze supplied the defect I stated before, and anticipated what had occupied my mind for a long time. The affairs concerning the robber Lin are described by the non-official historian Lan e, in his Tsing yĭh ke, viz. in the History of the Pacification of the Robbers.[19] Respectfully looking to the commands of heaven, Lan e made known, for all future times, the faithful and devoted servants of government. Yuen tsze's work is a supplement to the History of the Pacification of the Robbers, and you may rely on whatever therein is reported, whether it be of great or little consequence. Yuen tsze has overlooked nothing; and I dare to say, that all people will rejoice at the publication. Having written these introductory lines to the said work, I returned it to Yuen tsze.[20]
Written at the time of the fifth summer moon, the tenth year of Tao kwang, called Kăng yin (September 1830).
A respectful Preface of Ying hing Soo, from Peih keang.