Sima Xiangru (179-117 BCE)
“Open the storehouses and granaries to succour the poor and starving and help those who are in want; pity the widower and widow, protect the orphans and those without families! I would broadcast the name of virtue and lessen punishments and fines.”
- An excerpt from Sima Xiangru’s Shanglin fu included in the Records of the Grand Historian (Shi Ji, 117) by Sima Qian. Translated by Burton Watson (Columbia University Press, 1993).
