Singing of Indolence

1. First read through without overthinking, then savor the tone line by line and feel the self-acceptance behind the word "idleness."
2. Read alongside Bai Juyi's other leisure poems to observe the consistent thread of his later years' state of mind.
3. Note the typesetting and line breaks of the original Republican-era printing and compare differences with current popular editions.
4. Read only one or two times each session, before bed or in the afternoon, as short, relaxing reading.

"Republic-era Commercial Press Original Editions" refers to original books printed by The Commercial Press during the Republican period, not a separate publishing house. Judging from the 300 titles held in the collection, its publishing focus centers on classical poetry and lyrics, literary appreciation, classic works, military texts, prose and miscellaneous writings, and Eastern philosophy. Representative titles include Wang Guowei's Renjian Cihua, Zhong Rong's Shipin, the lyric collections of Xin Qiji and Liu Yong, Sun Wu's The Art of War, and Lü Buwei's Xianshi Lan. Its author resources are mainly classical writers, together with modern scholars such as Li Jingbang and Guo Huaruo, whose collations and annotations are also represented, giving the list a character centered on original texts while attending to annotation and appreciation. Public information on the precise Republican-era catalog and printings is limited; this overview is based only on the titles held in the collection.