Běi shòu jiànwén lù 北狩見聞錄
Record of What I Saw and Heard during the [Imperial] Northern Hunt by 曹勛 (compiler)
About the work
A first-person record by Cáo Xūn 曹勛 (1098–1174) of the captivity and northward removal (the “northern hunt,” běi shòu 北狩 — euphemism for forced exile) of the abdicated Sòng emperor Huīzōng 徽宗 by the Jīn after the Jìngkāng 靖康 disaster (1127). Cáo Xūn was one of only four officials — with Jiāng Yáochén 姜堯臣, Xú Zhōnglì 徐中立, and Dīng Fú 丁孚 — permitted to remain in close attendance on Huīzōng in the Jīn camp; he was therefore the principal eyewitness to the unfolding events. The work was submitted to the Sòng court at Nánjīng 南京 (modern Shāngqiū 商丘) in the seventh month of Jiànyán 2 (1128), Cáo’s running title at submission being Bǎoxìnjūn Chéngxuānshǐ, Manager of the Court Reception, etc. (保信軍承宣使知閤門事兼客省四方館事). It begins with the second day of the second month of Jìngkāng 2 (1127), the day Huīzōng was taken into the Jīn camp. Four anecdotes about Huīzōng’s earlier reign are appended at the end. The work corroborates and corrects the accounts in other Jìngkāng-era memoirs, and is especially detailed on Cáo’s own secret transmission of an imperial calligraphy on a silk collar and on the famous “two flying butterflies and gold ring” (shuāng fēi jiá dié jīn huán 雙飛蛺蝶金環) episode, in both of which Cáo was personally the agent of communication between Huīzōng and his son Gāozōng 高宗.
Tiyao
Composed by Cáo Xūn 曹勛 of Sòng. Xūn’s zì was Gōngxiǎn 功顯; he was a man of Yángdí 陽翟 (in modern Hénán). He took the jìnshì in Xuānhé 5 (1123). After the southern crossing he rose to Military Commissioner of Zhāoxìn 昭信軍節度使. His record is in his biography in the Sòngshǐ. The book’s running rubric reads: “Compiled by your servant Cáo Xūn, Bǎoxìnjūn Chéngxuānshǐ, Manager of the Court Reception and concurrent Manager of Reception and the Hostel of the Four Quarters” (保信軍承宣使知閤門事兼客省四方館事臣曹勛編次). It was submitted at the time of his first arrival at Nánjīng 南京 in the seventh month of Jiànyán 2 (1128). It begins on the seventh day of the second month of Jìngkāng 2 (1127), the day Huīzōng was taken into the Jīn camp; only four men — Cáo Xūn, Jiāng Yáochén 姜堯臣, Xú Zhōnglì 徐中立, and Dīng Fú 丁孚 — were permitted to remain at his side. The events of the northern journey it records all overlap with other accounts. But its narration of the secret transmission of an imperial calligraphy on a silk collar, and of the “twin-butterflies gold ring” affair — episodes for which Cáo was personally the courier — is by far the most detailed of any account, since the others are at second hand. Four further anecdotes about Huīzōng’s earlier reign are appended at the end, also presented at the same time. The narration is mostly close to fact and is enough to expose the falsity of Běi shòu rìjì 北狩日記 and similar works. As regards the matter of Gāozōng’s continuation of the dynasty, it is especially relevant. Though only a few pages, the work is genuinely useful to historians for verification.
Abstract
The Běi shòu jiànwén lù of Cáo Xūn 曹勛 (1098–1174, zì Gōngxiǎn 功顯, of Yángdí 陽翟) is the principal eyewitness account of the captivity of the abdicated Sòng emperor Huīzōng 徽宗 in the immediate aftermath of the Jīn capture of the Sòng capital Bīanjīng 汴京 in the first month of Jìngkāng 2 (1127). Cáo was at the time still a young court official assigned to the personal entourage of the abdicated emperor; when most of the imperial household was sent north as captives in early 1127, only four officials — Cáo, Jiāng Yáochén 姜堯臣, Xú Zhōnglì 徐中立, and Dīng Fú 丁孚 — were permitted by the Jīn captors to remain in Huīzōng’s immediate service. Cáo escaped from the Jīn camp later that year and made his way south; he submitted this record to the new emperor Gāozōng 高宗 at the temporary capital Nánjīng 南京 in the seventh month of Jiànyán 2 (1128), the date of composition therefore established as 1128. The text covers the period from the seventh day of the second month of Jìngkāng 2 (1127) onward, with four further anecdotes about Huīzōng’s earlier reign appended. Two episodes are uniquely from Cáo’s own service as Huīzōng’s secret courier and have shaped Sòng dynastic memory: (i) the smuggling out of an imperial calligraphy hidden in a silk collar and entrusted to Cáo for delivery to Gāozōng — the legitimating token of dynastic continuity from father to son; and (ii) the “twin butterflies and gold ring” (shuāng fēi jiá dié jīn huán 雙飛蛺蝶金環) story, also a Huīzōng→Gāozōng symbolic transmission. The Sìkù compilers consider this text the corrective to other less reliable Jìngkāng-era memoirs (notably the Běi shòu rìjì 北狩日記). The work is also Sòng dynastic-historiographical evidence for the legitimacy of the Gāozōng restoration: through Cáo’s couriership Huīzōng is shown explicitly transmitting authority southward.
Translations and research
- Pierre Baroux. 1979. “Le récit du voyage en Mandchourie de Cao Xun.” Études Song 2.6: 1–30.
- Patricia Buckley Ebrey. 2014. Emperor Huizong. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Discusses the Běi shòu jiànwén lù and Cáo Xūn’s couriership in detail.
- Tao Jing-shen. 1976. The Jurchen in Twelfth-Century China: A Study of Sinicization. Seattle: University of Washington Press. (Cites the work in apparatus.)
- Hilde De Weerdt. 2015. Information, Territory, and Networks: The Crisis and Maintenance of Empire in Song China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. (Discusses Jìngkāng-era memoirs as a genre, including this work.)
- Cóngshū jíchéng chū biān edition is the most accessible reading text in Chinese.
- Christian Lamouroux. 2003. Fiscalité, comptes publics et politiques financières dans la Chine des Song. Paris: Collège de France. (Background on Jiànyán court politics.)
Other points of interest
Cáo Xūn’s later distinguished career as a Southern-Sòng general and his close association with Gāozōng’s restoration are inseparable from his role as courier of Huīzōng’s secret authority-transmission documents — a role recorded most fully in this short text and made canonical in subsequent Sòng court historiography. The “silk-collar imperial writ” (lǐngdài chuán cǎo 領帶傳詔) became a standing trope in Southern-Sòng memorialization of the Jìngkāng catastrophe.