History

Some quick background:

By the year of 1649, which was five years after the Manchus, a semi-nomadic tribe, descended from the seemingly unbreakable great wall and achieved their great feat of conquering Northern China, the authority conducted a census and found out by that time there were only 55330 adult males in the entire population. In the mean time, they have to deal with more than 100 millions subjugated Chinese. This sheer difference of numbers between the conqueror and the conquered forced practically every Manchus men to become soldiers, including the author of this diary.

The author acted sort of like a nowadays squad leader in the Manchus army, for he had 4 soldiers under his command. However, Since the Manchus army suffered from the above mentioned predicament of lacking manpower, he , as a born Manchus himself, actually enjoyed a very trusted position in the eyes of his general and could get in touch with some ultra confidential information/ high level officials every now and then.

The diary itself covered a period of roughly 3 years: from the New year's day of 1680 to 1682, and it mainly focused on the author's military career during the Manchus conquest of the southern China. Although as you can probably tell from reading his work, the author himself was not exactly the most educated and bright guy on the earth and due to the nature of his job this diary's narration suffered badly from many huge gaps, it was a really unique and extremely valuable piece of historical source and eye-witness account.

I wish I could translate all of them but for now please enjoy the first five months of this diary that I have already translated!

In the reign of Elhetaifin khan(the original text omitted this title here, yet the author did use Khan to address his monarch in the later part of the dairy. The Chinese word for Elhetaifin was Kang xi), in year 19, the canary monkey year of the Manchu calendar.

The new year‘s day: General Manggitv(this is apparently either a spelling mistake or a nickname, since this general's name was actually Manggitu as we can find from the later part of the diary and other history sources) led his councilors,janggins (a Manchu military title)and local officials to the city of Nan ning fu (The word fu already means city in Chinese , but the author,as a Manchu, clearly was unaware of it and he probably thought it is a part of the city’s name. So in the original text he wrote Nan ning fui hoton, in which hoton means city in Manchus,thus it could be translated as the city of Nan ning city). They entered the Dung Yoo miyoo(meaning the temple of eastern mountains in Chinese) and made a dedication to the divine. The subordinates of the councillors prostrated themselves to each other to show their courtesy. By the time of the festival, the janggins of the eight banners and soldiers started to eat and drink, even those armoured bayaras(one of the most elite Manchu military units) went on the street, they got some women’s clothes and wore them themselves to pretend like women, and they sang along with those who were singing the song of Doo yang ke (again, ke already means song in Chinese, and the author was not aware of that. I think making this kind of mistake twice probably suggests the author has no knowledge of the Chinese language.)to entertain themselves. The image of the old men (sakdasa in the original text, which probably refers to the author’s parents) emerged in my heart, fuck.

25th,February: Shang zhi xin(a Chinese dynast who serves the Manchus), the mighty conqueror general, the king who pacified the south; along with Manggitu,the general of the south theatre; Ecu, the general of Jiangning; Lebei and Hife, the counsellor and lord of the banner; and Ehene, the vice janggin, met together to hold a war council on the best method to enter and conquer Yun nan(a province in southwestern China).The plan was made, and it was decided that we should initiate the invasion next winter. I sewed a tent and saddle for my horse(not sure what exactly that means,do horses need tents?) and also fixed my weapons.

3rd,March: Mang(this time for sure a nickname of general Manggitu, potentially coined by the author himself) said there was a decree issued from the khan’s court…..(the content of the decree was too long and rather irrelevant, so I did not translate it). I took some time to finish the necessary maintenance.