The river does not stop
Seven writers stand on a riverbank and think about time, from Confucius and Heraclitus, who lived in the same years at opposite ends of the world, to Whitman on the East River speaking to passengers a hundred years later. By the end the river is carrying readers as well as water.
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Step 1: 論語（學而、爲政、里仁、述而、子罕） The Analects: Books 1, 2, 4, 7 and 9
學而時習之，不亦說乎？有朋自遠方來，不亦樂乎？To learn something and, in due time, to practise it: is that not a pleasure? To have friends come from far away: is that not a joy?
In Book 9 the Master stands by a river and says only that it flows on like this, never stopping, day or night, and readers have argued ever since about whether he meant time, learning or both; in the same years, at the other end of the world, Heraclitus was looking at a river too.
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Step 2: The Fragments of Heraclitus
You cannot step twice into the same rivers; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.
You cannot step twice into the same rivers, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you: Heraclitus makes the river a law of change rather than a lament; the Han song that comes next hears only the one-way flow.
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Step 3: 長歌行 A Long Song
百川東到海，何時復西歸？A hundred rivers flow east to the sea: / when will any of them come back west?
A hundred rivers flow east to the sea, and when will any of them come back west?: the anonymous Han song turns the river into plain advice to use the years while you have them; on a spring night, Zhang Ruoxu finds something on the river that does come back.
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Step 4: 春江花月夜 A Spring River on a Night of Flowers and Moonlight
江畔何人初見月，江月何年初照人？Who on this riverbank first saw the moon? / In what year did the river moon first shine on a person?
Who on this bank first saw the moon, and in what year did the moon first shine on a person?: lives go on generation after generation, the river moon looks the same each year, and the long river keeps sending its water on; three and a half centuries later, Su Shi gives an answer.
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Step 5: 前赤壁賦 The Red Cliff Rhapsody (the first)
惟江上之清風，與山間之明月，耳得之而為聲，目遇之而成色，取之無禁，用之不竭，是造物者之無盡藏也Only the cool breeze on the river and the bright moon over the mountains, which the ear takes in as sound and the eye meets as colour: no one forbids us to take them, and using them never wears them out. They are the inexhaustible treasury of the maker of things.
Below Red Cliff a guest grieves that life is brief and the Yangzi endless, and Su Shi answers him with Confucius’s own words, that what flows away like this has never gone, and with the moon that wanes without ever growing less; Zhuangzi’s river god learns how much water there really is.
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Step 6: 莊子·秋水（節選） Zhuangzi: Autumn Floods (excerpt)
井蛙不可以語於海者，拘於墟也。You cannot talk about the sea to a frog in a well: it is confined to its hole.
Swollen with the autumn floods, the Lord of the River thinks all the beauty in the world is his, until he reaches the Northern Sea and can see no end to the water; Whitman’s river carries the trail a hundred years downstream.
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Step 7: Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
It avails not, time nor place—distance avails not, I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence,
Whitman crosses the East River at sundown and speaks to whoever will cross it ‘fifty years hence’ and ‘a hundred years hence’, saying that distance avails not: here the river carries readers as well as ferries, and you are one of them.