Sān shì zhōnggào 三事忠告
Loyal Counsels for the Three Offices by 張養浩 (Zhāng Yǎnghào, 撰)
About the work
The Sān shì zhōnggào in 4 juǎn is the collected administrative writings of Zhāng Yǎnghào 張養浩 (1270–1329), Yuán statesman, poet, and major exponent of the guānzhēn genre. The “three offices” of the title refer to his successive appointments as a county magistrate, a Censor (御史), and a Grand Councillor of the Privy Council (中書參議), and the corresponding three component works are: (1) Mùmín zhōnggào 牧民忠告 — Loyal Counsels for Shepherding the People, addressed to a county magistrate, written during his time as Magistrate of Tángyì 堂邑; (2) Fēngxiàn zhōnggào 風憲忠告 — Loyal Counsels on Censorial Wind, addressed to a Censor, written during his Censorate tenure; (3) Miàotáng zhōnggào 廟堂忠告 — Loyal Counsels of the Hall of Court, addressed to a Grand Councillor, written near the end of his life. The three works circulated separately at first; the consolidated Sān shì zhōnggào edition is preserved with a Zhìzhèng 15 (1355) preface by Gòng Shītài 貢師泰 of Xuānchéng 宣城 (the SBCK base edition reproduces this), and is the form preserved in WYG.
Tiyao
Abstract
The Sān shì zhōnggào is the most important Yuán-period contribution to the guānzhēn genre, and the only work in the genre to have achieved canonical status across all three levels of imperial administration. Its three component works were composed at different points in Zhāng Yǎnghào’s career: the Mùmín zhōnggào during his magistracy of Tángyì (around 1304–1308); the Fēngxiàn zhōnggào during his Censorate career (1320–1322); and the Miàotáng zhōnggào in the late 1320s, before his death in 1329. Zhāng was one of the most respected officials of the late Yuán: he was famed for refusing imperial summons under Yīngzōng (after his retirement to mourn his father) and for finally accepting in 1329 the order to direct famine relief in Shǎnxī, where he died of exhaustion. The Sān shì zhōnggào was a major influence on subsequent Ming-Qing administrative literature; the Fēngxiàn zhōnggào in particular is the foundational text of the imperial Censorate’s professional ethos. The KR catalog meta lists the work as “1269–1329”; CBDB and standard biographies give Zhāng’s lifedates as 1270–1329, and the catalog meta of 1269 is therefore corrected to 1270 in the present person note.
Translations and research
- Guānzhēnshū jíchéng 官箴書集成. Vol. 1. Huángshān, 1997. Includes the standard reprint.
- Sān shì zhōnggào 三事忠告 (modern editions, e.g., Zhōngguó shèhuì kēxué chūbǎnshè 1996; numerous popular reprints).
- Gōng Tiānjié 宮天捷. 2010. Zhāng Yǎnghào yú “Sānshì zhōnggào” 張養浩與三事忠告. Various studies in Yuán-shǐ yánjiū 元史研究.
- Will, Pierre-Étienne. 2020. Handbooks and anthologies for officials in imperial China. Brill. (Substantial entry.)
- For Zhāng Yǎnghào himself, see the studies of his sǎnqǔ poetry by Xiè Bǎochéng 謝寶成 and others.
Other points of interest
Zhāng Yǎnghào is also a famous sǎnqǔ 散曲 poet — his Tóngguān huái gǔ 潼關懷古 is one of the most-anthologized Yuán sǎnqǔ, lamenting the suffering of the people under successive dynasties (“興，百姓苦；亡，百姓苦”). The Sān shì zhōnggào and his sǎnqǔ together form a coherent literary-administrative corpus, and Zhāng is remembered both as an exemplary moral administrator and as one of the major popular voices of Yuán literature. The Mùmín zhōnggào’s reception in the Míng and Qīng made it the single most widely cited guānzhēn of the genre.