This paragraph above is from a letter written to a friend after Sima Qian’s castration. At that time, Sima Qian was immersed in pain, anger and disappointment, but he still remembered his father’s will of completing a book praising the leaders and heroes from the past. Sima Qian was trying to encourage himself to transform his pain into the power of writing with the stories of figures from the past who had experienced similar adversary in their life. The following messages (along with inspiration and encouragement) were conveyed through this passage: First, people who had severe physical deform or disability could not be put in important positions in the royal government; second, the physical deforms or disabilities would not stop a person from becoming a great man remembered by history; and third, the expression of thought should not be confined by the physical adversaries, instead, people should value the adversaries because the adversaries could help with encouraging the writings of the thoughts.      

These messages from Sima Qian play important roles in defining disability and the social recognition for disability in both ancient China and today’s China because Sima Qian’s works were extremely influential.  A lot of work in ancient Chinese literature were chosen as the orthodox education materials by each leading regime as important parts of the propaganda for the orthodox moral standards. Sima Qian’s works were one of the few texts that remained selected throughout almost all emperors, presidents, and prime ministers. This paragraph shown here is one of the first ancient Chinese literatures that I recited in my childhood. I remember that even though I had no idea what the words mean at that time, this piece was relatively easy to recite because the characters were ordered beautifully in rhymes and rhythm. Reciting these texts since a very young age has been a very common practice since thousands of years ago, so Letter to Ren An and the messages it conveys has been implanted in the mind of Chinese people from almost all generations. As the disabled figures were used to convey the morality of overcoming adversaries, disability itself was reaffirmed to be something that will affect political career but not the will and thoughts of great people.