Talk About Tigers Collection

Author: Zhou Zuoren
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2002-01-01
Features: "The essays collected in On Tigers are reviews on all kinds of human affairs. I am neither an censor nor a supervisory committee member, nor do I have any official duties or responsibilities. Why should I meddle in such matters and bring upon myself trouble? I simply enjoy talking, much like my tendency to ramble about literature. For many unrelated topics, I casually offer criticisms or annotations, resulting in this pile of manuscripts. The ancients said, 'To speak of tigers brings on a change of color.' Those who have encountered tigers may indeed fear hearing about them, while those who haven’t may still feel uneasy when discussing them, for tigers are truly terrifying creatures and should not be spoken of lightly. My little essays generally offend people and society, as if I have stepped on a tiger’s tail, leaving me feeling anxious and apprehensive. This is why I chose the title On Tigers—there is no deeper meaning beyond this. There are over two hundred such essays in total, but I have removed some of them. Half are outdated, and the other half involve personal opinions. I once considered compiling another collection to showcase some achievements in the literary world, but I quickly abandoned the idea. After all, my sense of propriety (as I am a moderate person) is quite strong, and I felt that such an act would be too self-deprecating. Thus, I decided to imitate Confucius’s editing of the Spring and Autumn Annals, and as a result, the previously advertised True On Tigers collection remains a book without a name. The cover illustrations for both On Dragons and On Tigers are borrowed from the works of the ancient Japanese painter Korin. In Korin’s Hundred Pictures, there are exactly two scrolls depicting a dragon and a tiger, which I used instead of commissioning someone to draw them separately.——The design for True On Tigers was already planned long ago, and I borrowed the golden-haired tiger from the wooden bell of the Jia Yin period. Although the project has now been abandoned, this clever adaptation feels quite appropriate, and discarding it would be a pity. I will note it here for posterity. November 8, 1927, Zhou Zuoren, Beijing, Kuyu Studio.