Hu Shi praised Hu Shi's best skill in describing the scenery in "The Travels of the Old Disabled", "The best thing in "The Travels of the Old Disabled" is the technique of description. In this regard, this book can be regarded as unprecedented. 」

Liu He (1857-1909), also known as Tieyun, also known as the Convention, pen name Hongdu Baiqisheng, formerly known as Meng Peng, was a Chinese writer of the Qing Dynasty. His ancestral home is Dantu County, Zhenjiang Prefecture, Jiangsu Province, and he was born in Liuhe County, Jiangsu Province, and moved to Dizangsi Lane in Huai'an Fucheng (now Chuzhou District, Huai'an City) with his father when he was a child.

In his youth, Liu He was reluctant to take the road of imperial examinations, but extensively studied water conservancy, arithmetic, medicine, gold and stone, astronomy, music, and exegesis.

In 1880, he went to Yangzhou to study under Li Guangxin of the Taigu School. He will not resist Western learning, and encourages "foreign for Chinese use". He also set up an industry, but he was accommodating to many foreign businessmen, "worldly and traitorous".

In 1884, Liu He opened a tobacco shop in Chengnan City, Huai'an Prefecture, but closed down due to poor management, and later went to Yangzhou to practice medicine. He went to Nanjing to participate in the township test and returned before the end. He also co-opened Shichang Bookstore in Shanghai, which also ended in failure.

In 1887, Liu He went to Henan to invest in Wu Dashi, the governor of the East River, and served as a transfer officer of the Hetu Bureau. It took Liu He three years to complete the five volumes of "The Yellow River Map of the Three Provinces of Henan, Zhilu and Shandong". Since then, he has gone to Shanxi to mine coal and set up some industries one after another.

Because he used the character "Gangbi" in his work to allude to the fortitude of the cool officials at that time. Framed by the resolute design, in the 26th year of Guangxu (1900), the Eight-Nation Coalition invaded Beijing, and Liu He bought Taicang grain from the Russian army at a low price and resold it to the residents to relieve the hunger in Beijing.

In 1908, Liu He bought land in Pukou on the other side of Nanjing to prepare for the opening of a commercial port, was impeached for selling cangsu privately, and distributed it to Dihua, Xinjiang (now Urumqi), and died of cerebral hemorrhage the following year, and was buried in Huai'an, Jiangsu.

Liu He's famous literary work is "The Travels of the Old Remnant". It is one of the four major condemnation novels of the late Qing Dynasty. It was originally published in the semi-monthly magazine of "Embroidered Novels", and the next 13 times were stopped for some reason, and then republished in "Tianjin Daily News", a total of 20 times. This novel has a very deep description of many of the evils of the time. However, some experts believe that the second half is fake.

Liu He supervised the wine Wang Yirong family to the son of the old country. A large number of Yin Shang oracle bones were purchased and the book "Iron Cloud Hidden Turtle" was the first collection of oracle bone inscriptions. It laid the foundation for later oracle bone research.

Liu He also has works in mathematics and water conservancy, such as "Pythagorean Tianyuan Grass", "Lone Triangle", "Diagram of the Changes of the Yellow River in the Past Dynasties", "Seven Sayings on River Governance", "Continuation of River Governance", "Human Life and Peace Collection", "Tieyun Tibetan Pottery", "Tieyun Mud Seal" and so on.

The article "Minghu Listening Book" turns music into specific parts:

Wang Xiaoyu opened her lips, sang a few words. At first, the sound was not very loud, but I felt that there was an indescribable wonderful realm in my ears, and in the five internal organs, like ironing, there was no place that was not sticked, and there were 36,000 pores, like eating ginseng fruit, and there was not a single pore that was not happy.

After singing more than a dozen sentences, he gradually sang higher and higher, and suddenly pulled out a sharp point, like a line of wire thrown into the sky, and couldn't help but secretly scream.

After a few turns, it is one layer higher, there are three or four stacks in succession, and it rises one step after another, just like the scene of climbing Mount Tai from the west of Aolai Peak: at first glance, Aolai Peak cuts the wall of thousands of people, thinking that it is connected with the sky; until it turns to the top of Aolai Peak, it is seen that the fan cliff is more on the Aolai Peak; and when it turns over to the fan cliff, and sees the South Heavenly Gate more on the fan cliff -- the more dangerous it is, the more dangerous it is, the more dangerous it becomes.

After Wang Xiaoyu sang to a very high three or four times, he fell suddenly, and tried his best to carry out his spirit of a thousand twists and turns, like a flying snake circling and interspersing in the middle waist of the thirty-six peaks of the Yellow Mountain, and in an instant, several times around"

Hu Shih said, "This part of the rhyme of writing a singing book is a very bold attempt. Music can only be listened to, and it is not easy to write in words, so it is impossible not to use many specific things as metaphors. Bai Juyi, Ouyang Xiu, and Su Shi have all used this method. 」

"Mr. Liu Yi used seven or eight different metaphors in this paragraph, using fresh words and clear impressions, so that the reader can feel the beauty of the imageless music from these compelling impressions, and this attempt is finally very successful. 」

The two Qing Dynasty officials Yuxian (Yuxian) and Gangbi (Gangyi) in "The Travels of the Old Disabled" are actually representatives of cruelty and rigidity.

Lu Xun wrote in his commentary on "The Travels of the Old Remnant": "The so-called hatefulness of the Qing officials, or even more so than the corrupt officials, has not been said, although the author is also very happy."

"The Travels of the Old Remnant" is not completely realistic, for example, when Zhuang Gongbao alludes to Zhang Yao, the governor of Shandong, there is an unfair description. The book "The Travels of the Old Remnant" also has some antipathy to the revolution, such as scolding Sun Yat-sen for leading the revolution as a "dog maker" and a "poisonous dragon".

"The Travels of the Old Disabled" is a casual work. Xia Zhiqing, a Chinese-American, believes that "judging from the artistic talent displayed by Liu He in The Travels of the Old Remnant", "it is not that he does not know how to write a comprehensive story", but that he is "dissatisfied with the plot-centered novels of his predecessors, and has the ambition to take on higher and more complex completeness, so as to echo his personal views on the national economy and people's livelihood";

He also said: "As its title suggests, the text of "The Travels of the Old Remnant" is a third-person travelogue of what the protagonist sees, thinks, says, and acts", "This travelogue is more or less careless about the layout, and it also likes to look like trivial things or things that have no beginning or end, making it similar to modern lyrical novels, rather than traditional Chinese novels of any kind." The conclusion of "The Travels of the Old Disabled Man" is "an almost revolutionary achievement".

In 1903, "The Travels of the Old Disabled" was first published in the "Portrait Novel". Since 1903 to 2003, there have been 186 Chinese editions of "The Travels of the Old Disabled".

In A Brief History of Chinese Novels, Lu Xun called Liu He's The Travels of the Old Remnant, Li Baojia's The Appearance of Officialdom, Wu Zhaoren's The Strange Status Quo Witnessed in Twenty Years, and Zeng Pu's The Sea of Flowers of the Late Qing Dynasty as "the four major condemnation novels of the late Qing Dynasty".

In 1929, Arthur Welly published the third edition of the original book translated by Arthur Welly, and in 1939, Lin Sujin and Ge Deshun's TrampDoctorsTravelogue (Practicing Medicine) was translated in full.

In 1936, Lin Yutang translated the two episodes of "The Travels of the Old Disabled" and titled it "The Nuns of Taishan" (ANunofTaishan), and later in 1951, Lin Yutang had an excerpt translation of "The Travels of the Old Disabled" Widow, NunandCourtesan: threenovelettes from the Chinese (widows, nuns and famous prostitutes).

Mr. Decadent: notes takeninanouting, a 1983 translation by Yang Xianyi and Dai Naidie, TheTravelsofLaoCan, appeared, but it was not until Cornell University Press published a 1952 translation by Shedik that the book was not fully translated.

This translation by Xie Dike has been published by Nanjing Yilin Publishing House in 2005 as one of the "Great Chinese Libraries".

Toshio Okazaki translated it into Japanese and published it in 1941 by Life Society. The famous Czech sinologist Prškö published a Czech translation in 1946. The Russian translation of The Travels of the Old Disabled (Moscow, 1958) was translated by Semanov. The German translation was published in 1989 by Hans Küberner. (To be continued......)