Discourses of a Hidden Man

Wang Fu never held office. Born of a concubine and too blunt to flatter, he lived in obscurity in the northwest and wrote, under the name of the Hidden Man, a scathing critique of his age: officials chosen for family connections rather than merit, the luxury of the rich while the poor starve, rulers deceived by flatterers, frontier provinces abandoned to the Qiang, and the superstitions of diviners and shamans. His essays combine Confucian ideals with hard practical sense. This complete new English translation gives all thirty-six chapters, from In Praise of Learning onward, with the appendices of surviving fragments, a rare voice of protest from the Eastern Han. Names are given in modern pinyin and key terms are rendered plainly rather than buried in jargon, so the arguments, stories and debates can be read straight through by anyone curious about Chinese thought.