Tao Te Ching

“Kangxi had originally represented himself as a man in pain and a man with doubts [but in the] valedictory edict he emerges only as a shadow, his platitudes enshrined and his forcefulness and anger and honesty and pain all—alike—removed.”

— Jonathan D. Spence 1936 CE –
China-hand historian/professor
from Emperor of China, Self-Portrait of K'ang-hsi