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山居新話

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Text ID
KR3l0081
Date
1340–1361
Dynasty
元

Shānjū xīnhuà 山居新話

New Talk from a Mountain Dwelling by 楊瑀 (撰)

About the work

A four-juàn anecdote-collection (bǐjì) by 楊瑀 Yáng Yú 楊瑀 (1285–1361; zì Yuánchéng 元誠, hào Shānjū 山居), Hángzhōu native and senior Yuán court official who served as Fèngyì dàfū Tàishǐyuàn pànguān 奉議大夫太史院判官 in the Tiānlì period (1328–30) under Wénzōng, later (1355) as Jiàndélù zǒngguǎn 建德路總管 during the rebellions in Jiāngdōng Zhèxī, eventually rising to Zhōngfèng dàfū Zhèdōngdào xuānwèishǐ dūyuánshuài 中奉大夫浙東道宣慰使都元帥. The work is one of the principal Yuán bǐjì for inside reportage on the late Mongol court — its Tàishǐyuàn and Kuízhānggé matter, the Bāfǔ zǎixiàng institutional precedents, the careers of figures like 高克恭 Gāo Kègōng and 脫脫 Tuōtuō (Tuōktō, written 托克托 in the Qīng Sìkù transcription) — composed after Yáng Yú’s retirement to private life. The work bears the author’s own zìbá dated Zhìzhèng gēngzǐ (1360), 3rd month, with a preface by 楊維楨 Yáng Wéizhēn dated 4th month of the same year.

Tiyao

Your servants report: Shānjū xīnhuà in 4 juàn, by the Yuán Yáng Yú. Yú has no biography in the Yuánshǐ; Yáng Wéizhēn’s collection contains Yú’s tomb-stele, which says: Yú zì Yuánchéng, of Hángzhōu. In the Tiānlì period he was promoted to Zhōngruìsī diǎnbù; the emperor loving his probity and prudence, he was advanced beyond rank to Fèngyì dàfū Tàishǐyuàn pànguān. In Zhìzhèng yǐwèi (1355), when bandit-bands rose in Jiāngdōng Zhèxī, he was reassigned as Jiàndélù zǒngguǎn. Yú approached his prefecture as if it were his own house; the people in turn looked upon him as a parent. His likeness was enshrined in fourteen places. The Xíngshěng (Branch Secretariat) ranked his merit highest; he was advanced to Zhōngfèng dàfū, and so on.

At the book’s end is the author’s own postface dated Zhìzhèng gēngzǐ (1360), 3rd month, with signature Zhōngfèng dàfū Zhèdōngdào xuānwèishǐ dūyuánshuài — so it was composed after his elevation in rank. The opening preface, by Yáng Wéizhēn, is dated the 4th month of the same year, and calls the work composed guītián hòu (after retirement to the fields) — meaning he had already by that year retired from office. The work records what the author saw and heard, mixing in much of the supernatural and the strange — the manner of the xiǎoshuōjiā (anecdotalist). Yet his record of the Chǔzhōu sugar-cane and arrow-bamboo, his record of the Zhìyuán 6th-year (1340) imperial grain-sale, his record of 高克恭 Gāo Kègōng’s relaxation of the fire-prohibition, his record of 脫脫 Tuōtuō (transcribed in this Qīng edition as 托克托 — Manchu-period orthographic re-transcription of the Mongol name) opening the old river, all bear on civil affairs; his record of the four-fold distinction of chìlìng géshì 勅令格式, his record of the Bāfǔ zǎixiàng 八府宰相 functions, his record of the Kuízhānggé 奎章閣 from beginning to end, his record of the Yífèngsī 儀鳳司 and Jiàofāngsī 教坊司 precedence, all aid the study of institutional precedent; his record of the Mǐfūrén and Chéncáirén dying for principle, his record of Gāo Lián’s daughter holding to chastity, his record of Fán Shízhōng dying for the cause, all benefit moral instruction; and there are many other fine sayings and exemplary deeds that may be drawn on for admonition.

As for his correction of 薩都剌 Sàdūlà’s Yuán gōngcí — saying that imperial carriages did not go out at night, so one cannot speak of “late-night the palace-cart goes out from the Jiànzhāng”; or that palace-women carrying garments to the Shìyísī and Fǎwùkù at major court audiences was a daily matter, not an isolated event, so one cannot speak of “purple-clothed small detachments in two or three rows”; and that the north has no lotus, the palace has no stone-railings, so one cannot speak of “by the stone-railing-bar a silver lamp’s passing light shows the frost on lotus-leaves”; and again his correction of the Jīngchéng chūnrì poem — saying that under the Yuán system one was not permitted to wash hands or water horses in the Yùgōu (imperial water-course); the Liúshǒusī dispatched men to patrol it, and offenders were punished — so one cannot speak of “at the imperial water-course watering my horse I did not turn back, looking with greed at willow-blossoms flying over the wall” — all this also rather aids textual verification (kǎozhèng).

Though this work too is of the Chuògēnglù lineage (cf. KR3l0090 Táo Zōngyí’s Náncūn chuògēnglù), compared with the miscellaneous coarseness of what Táo Zōngyí recorded, it far surpasses it. Respectfully checked, Qiánlóng 46 (1781), 10th month. Chief Compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Chief Collator: Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

Yáng Yú (CBDB id 35130; 1285–1361) was a high-functioning Hángzhōu literatus-administrator at the Yuán court whose career bridged the Tiānlì–Zhìshùn–Yuántǒng–Zhìzhèng reigns. As Tàishǐyuàn pànguān under Wénzōng he was an insider to the Kuízhānggé (the imperial academy where Wénzōng cultivated literary and antiquarian projects) and to the Yǎzhānggé–Yìngfènghànlín circles; as Jiàndélù zǒngguǎn during the Hóngjīn (Red Turban) rising in the south he had direct administrative experience of the collapse of Yuán rule in Jiāngzhè; and as Zhèdōng xuānwèishǐ dūyuánshuài in his final years he held a senior provincial military-civil command at the moment when Fāng Guózhēn and Zhāng Shìchéng were dividing the lower Yangzi.

The work’s composition window opens c. 1340 (the earliest internally-dated entries — Zhìyuán 6 = 1340 — are post-retirement reminiscences, but the bulk of the Tàishǐyuàn, Kuízhānggé, and Bāfǔ zǎixiàng institutional material reflects his court experience of c. 1328–1340) and closes at the author’s self-postface of Zhìzhèng gēngzǐ (1360), 3rd month, with Yáng Wéizhēn’s preface following in the 4th month. The author died the next year (1361), so the work as transmitted is essentially complete at his hand. Most of the material is anecdotal reminiscence rather than dated entry; the work is therefore better described as a retrospective composition of the 1350s–1360 finalized in 1360 than as a chronological diary.

The principal contributions: (1) Kuízhānggé and Tàishǐyuàn institutional history — Yáng Yú is one of two or three primary witnesses (alongside Sū Tiānjué’s Yuán wénlèi and Yú Jí’s Dàoyuán xuégǔlù) to the workings of Wénzōng’s literary academy; (2) the Bāfǔ zǎixiàng 八府宰相 — a peculiar Yuán institution by which eight provincial chief ministers were brought into central decision-making — for which Yáng Yú’s account is unique; (3) the Yífèngsī 儀鳳司 and Jiàofāngsī 教坊司 court music-and-ritual offices, on which the work is a primary source for Mongol-era ceremonial; (4) reportage on identified Yuán court figures including 高克恭 Gāo Kègōng (1248–1310), 脫脫 Tuōtuō (Tuōktō, 1314–1356, chancellor under Shùndì who reopened the Huánghé and led the suppression of the Red Turbans), 薩都剌 Sàdūlà (the Muslim poet whose Yuán gōngcí Yáng Yú corrects), 樊時中 Fán Shízhōng (the Zhèshěng deputy who died defending Hángzhōu in 1352), 米夫人 Mǐfūrén and 陳才人 Chéncáirén (Sòng palace ladies who died at the capture of Línān, 1276 — Yáng Yú heard the account from his own father, a shūmì officer); (5) miscellaneous kǎozhèng on Yuán court vocabulary, ceremonial, and material culture.

The work is consequently a standard primary source for late-Yuán political and institutional history. Frederick W. Mote drew on it heavily in Imperial China 900–1800 (1999) for the Kuízhānggé and the Bāfǔ zǎixiàng; Hsiao Ch’i-ch’ing 蕭啟慶 used it throughout his studies of Yuán literati-officials; Christopher Atwood cites it for Mongol court ritual and the Sàdūlà circle.

The Sìkù compilers transcribed certain Mongol names per the Qīng re-Manchu-ization convention: 托克托 in this edition is to be read as Tuōtuō (Tuōktō); 寳格 = Bǎogé / Boγ-a; 薩都拉 = Sàdūlà (the Sìkù edition’s spelling, the standard Yuán texts give 薩都剌). The Qīng convention does not silently correct the Yuán originals — it is a competing transcription, and modern scholarship reverts to the Yuán forms.

Standard modern edition: Yú Dàjūn 余大鈞 (coll.), Shānjū xīnhuà in YuánMíng shǐliào bǐjì cóngkān 元明史料筆記叢刊 (Zhōnghuá shūjú 2006, paired with Kong Qí’s Zhìzhèng zhíjì 至正直記).

Translations and research

  • Franke, Herbert. 1956. Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte Chinas unter der Mongolenherrschaft: Das Shan-kü sin-hua des Yang Yü. Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 32.2. Wiesbaden: Steiner. — The standard scholarly Western-language treatment: full annotated German translation of the Shānjū xīn-huà, with extensive cross-reference to the Yuán-shǐ, Chuò-gēng-lù, and Cǎo-mù-zǐ. Recommended by Wilkinson §63 as the principal access-point.
  • Mote, Frederick W. Imperial China 900–1800 (HUP 1999). Cites the Shānjū xīn-huà for late-Yuán court institutions, the Kuí-zhāng-gé, and the Bā-fǔ zǎi-xiàng.
  • Hsiao Ch’i-ch’ing 蕭啟慶. Yuán-dài de shì-rén yǔ zhèng-zhì 元代的士人與政治 (Lián-jīng, 2007). Uses the work for Yuán literati-official networks.
  • Atwood, Christopher P. Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire (Facts on File 2004), s.vv. Toghto, Saduela, Kuizhangge. Cites Franke’s translation.
  • Chan Hok-lam 陳學霖. “Liu Ping-chung 劉秉忠 (1216–1274): A Buddhist-Taoist Statesman at the Court of Khubilai Khan.” TP 53 (1967). Cross-references Shānjū xīn-huà for thirteenth-century court institutional memory.

Other points of interest

Yáng Yú’s correction of 薩都剌 Sàdūlà’s Yuán gōngcí is one of the more revealing entries in Yuán bǐjì: it shows a Yuán court insider methodically picking apart a literatus’s stylized representation of court life on grounds of factual implausibility (no nocturnal carriage processions; no lotus in the north; no stone railings in the palace; the imperial water-course was patrolled and one could not water horses in it). The entry has been used in modern Yuán-poetry scholarship (Yoshikawa Kōjirō, Stephen West) as evidence for the gap between the imagined Yuán palace of cí poetry and the actual Yuán palace as administered.

The account of the deaths of Mǐfūrén and Chéncáirén at the Sòng surrender to the Mongols in 1276 — preserved here on the authority of Yáng Yú’s father, then serving as shūmì officer in the entourage that escorted the surrendered Sòng court to Shàngdū — is one of the few first-hand-derived accounts of the suicide of Sòng palace women, supplementing Zhōu Cǎochuāng’s Rìchāo and Yán Guāngdà’s Xùshǐsuǒshuō.

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