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I hope someone can read this chinese script. Would love to know the translation.

Dear Alex,

Maybe would help to insert some contrast in the photograpth with photoshop to get inscription clearer.

So, apologies - it seems quite fragmentary to me. But, since I love to be a kind of "Poirot" or "Sherlock Hlmes" I say yet it’s plausible the inscription refers to a regnal-date formula. Let me explain myself: Inserting placeholders for missing characters, it might read: “*年 四月 六一” 1)*年 = “X-year,” indicating the ruler’s regnal year,2) 四月 = the 4th lunar month, 六一 = fragmentary date marker—but unlikely to represent “day 61,” since the Ganzhi cycle has only 60 combinations.By hypothesis is that 六一 is part of a stems-and-branches pair - for instance, 甲午 (Jiǎwǔ), which is the 31st of the 60 Ganzhi combinations Years corresponding to 甲午 include 1834, 1894, 1954, etc So the reconstructed date could be something like: (*年)四月 甲午”) “In the Xth year (of the king’s reign), 4th lunar month, on the Jiǎwǔ day.” But please, I am not specialist. I am just an african-brazilian that is a humble japanese language studen and as soon as I get better on that matter maybe I will try a little bit of mandarin too.

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