Lu Xun records each day as a terse accounting of weather, letters sent and received, books and rubbings bought with exact prices, visitors, and small ailments, rarely interpreting any of it. The texture of a working intellectual's life emerges not from reflection but from the accumulated bookkeeping of errands, purchases, and correspondence.
A diary can function purely as a factual log, noting events and expenditures without editorializing, confession, or narrative shaping. This withholding is itself a stance: the writer treats recording as sufficient and leaves meaning for the reader or a later self to assemble.
Tracking what someone acquires to read, including rubbings, classics, and periodicals, with dates and costs, reveals the shape of their intellectual appetite more reliably than their stated opinions. The pattern of purchases over time becomes a portrait of attention and influence.
The diary shows that a writer's productive existence is carried less by dramatic events than by a continuous, unremarkable flow of letters exchanged, visits paid, and small obligations met. Maintaining this network of ordinary contact is presented as the ongoing infrastructure of the work.