Translation and annotation of short essays on self-protection in Chinese

The translation and annotation of Zishi's short essay in Chinese are as follows:

There was a northerner who did not know water chestnuts from birth. He was an official in the south and once ate water chestnuts at a banquet. He took the shells with them. eat. Someone said: "Be sure to remove the shells when eating water chestnuts." He wanted to cover up his mistake, so he said: "It's not that I don't know about eating them with the shells. The word "zhe" in the article is translated as "thing", which means that "Come to clear away the heat."

The questioner asked: "Are there water chestnuts in the north?" He replied: "Where are they not found in the front mountains and back mountains?" Water chestnuts grow in water and are said to be produced in the soil. This is to force ignorance into knowledge.

There are two common uses of "Zhe" in classical Chinese: special pronouns, used after verbs and adjectives to help form "Zhe" phrases (phrases), which can be translated into "..... .’s” “…person” “…thing” “…thing” “…reason” etc. As a modal particle, it is placed in the middle of the sentence to express the Teton mood and is not translated; when used at the end of the sentence, it corresponds to "ruo" and "like", and the expression is translated into "like" and "like".

Expansion:

Jiang Yingke (1553-1605), named Jinzhi, also known as Luluoshan. Taoyuan people. His grandfather Boyu and father Feng Ling both "learned farming". Jiang Yingke was smart since he was a child. In the fifth year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty (1577), he entered the county to study and work as a student. In the thirteenth year (1585), he passed the provincial examination and "he has made a name for himself". However, after that, he went to Beijing twice to take the Jinshi examination in the 14th and 17th years of Wanli, but he failed both times.

In March of the 20th year of Wanli (1592), he and public security officer Yuan Hongdao were awarded Jinshi. In August, he was awarded the county magistrate of Changzhou (now Wuxian County, Jiangsu Province). Changzhou belongs to Sanwu, and "the taxation is the most important in the world". Jiang Yingke sympathized with the people, and was often "scolded by his superiors" for his inability to urge officials. In order to relieve the people's suffering from "Beijing's relief from various servitudes", more than 2,000 acres of servitude land were purchased to finance the servitude.

After serving for six years, his reputation as a wise man spread far and wide. In the twenty-sixth year of Wanli (1598), he first reported to the head of the Ministry of Personnel, but later changed his position to the chief of Dali Temple because Li Yingce impeached Jiang Yingke for "failed to collect taxes". He left Beijing in the winter of that year and was ordered to be punished in Yunnan and Guizhou. Two years later, he was promoted to Yuanwailang of the Ministry of Household Affairs and took charge of the examination in Sichuan. In July of the 32nd year, he was promoted to deputy envoy of Sichuan University.