Buddha Patriot

A Classically Liberal Neoconservative Tibetan Buddhist from the Midwest

Saturday, January 12, 2013

So I'm half way through F.W. Mote's 1999 book Imperial China 900-1800 and I find this nugget, a mid-14th Century Chinese poet essentially bitching about Mongol gun-control:

Last year the edict forbidding us to ride horseback;
This year another edict saying we cannot carry a bow.
Yet we still hear about all those robbers who by the light of day
Ride their horses and shoot people on the empire's highway.

The footnote lists: Ne & Gaohua 1985, vol. 1 pp. 192-196 
...which is apparently: Yang Ne and Chen Gaohua, Yuandai nongmin zhanzheng shiliao huibian (Beijing, 1985) 4 vols.   
I'm assuming Volume 1 would have the poem in the original Chinese (which would be freaking awesome).