NánTáng jìnshì 南唐近事
Recent Affairs of the Southern Tang by 鄭文寶 (撰)
About the work
A short anecdotal compilation (one juàn in the Sìkù edition; “nánTáng jìnshì jí” in 2 juàn per the Sòng shǐ Yìwén zhì) by 鄭文寶 Zhèng Wénbǎo (953–1013), dated to Tàipíng xīngguó 2 / 977 — the year after the Southern Táng’s final fall but before Zhèng’s own entry into Sòng service. Composed as a personal record of Southern-Táng court life and personalities, written from the perspective of a Southern-Táng survivor (Zhèng was a Southern-Táng jiàoshū láng under Hòuzhǔ Lǐ Yù 李煜 before the conquest). The work is the matrix from which Zhèng later derived (with substantial expansion) his Jiāngbiǎo zhì KR2i0011, completed in 1010 as a formal shǐtǐ historiographic work.
Tiyao
Your servants report: NánTáng jìnshì in 1 juàn, by the Sòng Zhèng Wénbǎo. Wénbǎo’s Jiāngbiǎo zhì is already catalogued. This book has a self-preface bearing the date Tàipíng xīngguó 2 dīngchǒu (977), evidently composed while not yet in Sòng service. The Sòng shǐ Yìwén zhì writes “NánTáng jìnshì jí” — slightly different in name; the basis is uncertain. But the Sòng shǐ has many slips and the graph “jí” is plainly a spurious addition. The genre is close to xiǎoshuō; presumably after the Southern Táng’s fall, Wénbǎo, having set his heart on the State History, gathered old report and arranged it in narrative form: the great state-political matters went into the Jiāngbiǎo zhì, completed in Dàzhōng xiángfú 3 (1010); the remaining miscellaneous talk and trivial matter he separately stitched together first into the present compilation. The one is shǐtǐ (historiographic form), the other is xiǎoshuō tǐ. Among entries: the Kònghè (Crane-suspended) poem causing death — already in [the Shǔ] Hé Guāngyuǎn’s Jiànjiè lù, where it concerns the female adept Jiǎng Liànshī; here it is given as the matter of the Daoist priest of the Lúshān Jiǔkōngshǐ temple — appears to be forced association. Hán Wō relied on Wáng Shěnzhī [in Fújiàn] to end his days, never seeing the Southern Táng’s pacification of Mǐn; yet the entry “jīnlián zhú” colophon by Hán Wō [under the Southern Táng] also misses the chronology. Nevertheless Wénbǎo’s generations served Jiāngnán [the Southern Táng], and what he got through hearing-and-seeing, though touched by fúcí (floating talk), preserves enough shílù (truth) that Mǎ Lìng 馬令 and Lù Yóu 陸游 in their NánTáng shū drew on this book in some 50–60% of their material; the Sòng did not dismiss its testimony. In the book Qìngwáng Hóng Mào is written Wáng Hóng, Yán Kěqiú is written Yán Qiú, Liú Cúnzhōng is written Liú Cúnzhōng — the recorded names diverge from other sources in many places.
Abstract
Zhèng Wénbǎo (953–1013), a third-generation Southern-Táng official (his father Zhèng Yànhuá was Zhènhǎi jiédùshǐ), composed the NánTáng jìnshì in 977, in the immediate aftermath of the Southern Táng’s destruction (975). The work covers the three Southern-Táng reigns (Lǐ Biàn 李昪, Lǐ Jǐng 李璟, Lǐ Yù 李煜) with anecdotes on court ritual, ministers, women of the harem, poets and musicians. Its compositional ethos — “fúcí bùmiǎn ér shílù zhōng cún” (floating talk is inevitable, but reality is preserved) — neatly captures the work’s mixed source-value: many famous Lǐ Yù court anecdotes (the Yán Yánzhī YánLǐ tú attribution, the Huāruǐ fūrén legend, the post-conquest farewells) survive only here.
The work is the principal Sòng source for: (a) Southern-Táng court ritual; (b) the lives of Southern-Táng poets (most centrally Lǐ Yù himself); (c) the political maneuvering surrounding the succession of Hòuzhǔ; (d) the personalities of the senior Southern-Táng ministers. Modern Southern-Táng historians (Bryant, Sī Yìzǔ) use it heavily, with the proviso that the closer comparison-text is Zhèng’s own later Jiāngbiǎo zhì.
Standard modern edition: BāShǔ shūshè 1989, with collation against Shuōfú and Sòng witnesses.
Translations and research
- Bryant, Daniel. 1982. Lyric Poets of the Southern T’ang. UBC Press. Uses Nán-Táng jìnshì and Jiāng-biǎo zhì extensively.
- Kurz, Johannes L. 2003. Das Kompilationsprojekt Song Taizongs (reg. 976–997). Lang. Treats Zhèng Wén-bǎo’s Southern-Táng historiography.
- No European-language translation has been located.
Other points of interest
The work is one of the earliest post-mortem histories of a Chinese regime by a survivor: Zhèng wrote within two years of the Southern Táng’s destruction, and the perspective is unusually intimate.
Links
- Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §62.
- https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=en&res=86322