Jīnhuá zǐ záibiān 金華子雜編
Miscellaneous Compilation of Master Jinhua by 劉崇遠 (撰)
About the work
A two-juàn anecdotal-biographical compilation by the Southern-Táng official 劉崇遠 Liú Chóngyuǎn 劉崇遠, who styled himself Jīnhuá zǐ 金華子 — a reference to the Daoist transcendent Chìsōngzǐ 赤松子 and his elder brother who according to legend “roamed in the realm of Jīnhuá.” Composed in old age (the preface speaks of remembered childhood and a now-aged author), Liú Chóngyuǎn’s Jīnhuá zǐ records late-Táng court anecdote — the fēngliú of the Zhāozōng and Tiānyòu era — heard from family elders and now in danger of being lost. The work’s titulary in the preface is “Wénlín láng, Dàlǐ sīzhí (Court-Forest Officer, Dàlǐ Directly-Attached Officer) Liú Chóngyuǎn.”
Tiyao
No tiyao in the present source file (the base text in /home/Shared/krp/KR3l/KR3l0019/ does not preserve the Sìkù 提要; only the author’s own preface — KR3l0019_000.txt). Liú Chóngyuǎn’s preface, in summary: “The Jīnhuá zǐ is a Hénán man Liúshēng; from youth I admired Chìsōngzǐ and his elder brother for being able to slip out of the harness of office and roam among grazing herds; reading their books and imagining their persons I would lose myself in the realm of Jīnhuá, and so styled myself accordingly. From childhood I was given to loving people and broadly studying, yet by the time of greying temples I had accomplished nothing of note; in literary composition I knew only the basic principles, was given especially to yǐnyǒng (chanting / poetry), but the results never rose above the run of my peers. Past forty I served in offices around the capital, governing two districts and ranging through more than twenty cold-and-hot seasons, never doing more than tip-toeing and being careful, never magnificent or efficacious. After my retirement I returned to the capital, where I got attached to the standing roster, but the family was poor and I was at the imperial gate three or four years in considerable distress. When at leisure I would still take to chanting, indefatigably, indulging the heart’s impulse — sometimes a couplet or a single line would hit on the qīngqí (pure-and-novel). Considering ‘eating jade and burning cassia’ [a metaphor for absurdly expensive comfort], it troubled me; once disengaged, I would whistle and roam freely, or meet a fine friend at a good gathering, hearing tales of rise-and-fall and order-and-disorder, my ear keen and my heart eager, always going round and round in observation, hoping for some clue that might be of use to lǐdào (the Way of governance)… The reigning emperor toils diligently at the Great Treasure, taking nighttime meals to govern…” The preface continues to motivate the present compilation as a salvage of court-and-minister memory at risk of being lost. End-signed “Wénlín láng Dàlǐ sīzhí chén Liú Chóngyuǎn zhuàn.”
Abstract
CBDB id 33572 records the name without lifedates. The Southern-Táng dating is established by the titulary in the preface and by internal evidence (references to Zhāozōng and to events of the Táng-Southern-Táng transition). Modern scholarship places composition in the 950s — 960s, in the closing decades of the Southern Táng. The work consists of approximately 40 entries divided into two juàn, with material on:
- court politics and ministerial culture of Zhāozōng and Tiānyòu;
- regional administration of the late Táng (Liú Chóngyuǎn’s own bureaucratic experience);
- poets and literati of the late Táng (including some otherwise-unknown figures);
- supernatural and prodigy anecdotes appended in juàn 2.
Several entries are cited by Sīmǎ Guāng’s Tōngjiàn kǎoyì, and the work is among the principal Southern Táng sources for late-Táng court memory.
Translations and research
- Wú Qǐ-míng 吳企明, coll. 1988. Jīnhuá zǐ záibiān (Zhōnghuá, Táng-Sòng shǐ-liào bǐ-jì cóngkān). Standard modern critical edition.
- No European-language translation has been located.
Other points of interest
The author’s Wénlín láng Dàlǐ sīzhí posting in the preface is a distinctive Southern-Táng official titulary, since the Wénlín láng in the Táng was a prestige rank rather than a substantive post; its survival into the Southern-Táng makes the work a small witness to the bureaucratic continuity-with-modification of the Southern dynasties.
Links
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §62 (Five Dynasties).
- https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=en&res=86342