any document involving anyone whose name approximated quei. I do not know whether there was really no record of Ah Q's trial or whether no search had been made, but I do know that I have done everything possible and that it has been of no use. As I am afraid that the national phonetic alphabet is not yet generally known, I have to resort to the use of Latin letters and spell his name Q-u-e-i, according to the system of transliteration current in the English speaking world,[1] and I have abbreviated this to Q. This smacks of blindly following the faddism of the New Youth, and I regret it myself, but what can I do since even the esteemed licentiate cannot throw any light on the subject?
The fourth difficulty is Ah Q's native place. If his name had been Chao, we could say that he was a native of T'ienshui in Lung-hsi, in accordance with the annotations of the Place Origins of Common Family Names. Unfortunately, as I have pointed out, we are not sure that this was his patronymic. True, he used to live in Wei village, but he had also lived elsewhere. Even though we disregard such niceties, "a native of the Wei village" somehow does not sound right according to the established usage of historical writing.
The only thing that comforts me is that the character Ah is indubitably authentic. There is no stretching the point or reading between the lines about it. As to the rest, it is beyond the capacities of an unlearned person like myself; we can only hope that some day the disciples of the historically minded Hu Shih[2] will take up the problem and throw some light on the various points now in doubt. Only I am afraid
