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遂昌雜錄

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Text ID
KR3l0082
Date
1340–1364
Dynasty
元

Suìchāng zálù 遂昌雜錄

Miscellaneous Records from Suìchāng by 鄭元祐 (撰)

About the work

A one-juàn Yuán bǐjì by 鄭元祐 Zhèng Yuányòu 鄭元祐 (1292–1364; zì Míngdé 明德, hào Suìchāng shānrén 遂昌山人). Although the author’s father had already removed the family from Suìchāng 遂昌 (Chǔzhōu, Zhèjiāng) to Qiántáng 錢塘, and Yuányòu himself spent forty years liúyù (in transit-residence) at Píngjiāng 平江 (Sūzhōu) — so that his collected works took the title QiáoWú jí 僑吳集 “Sojourning in Wú” — this miscellany retains the name Suìchāng in token of the author’s bù wàng běn (not forgetting one’s roots). The work is a memorial bǐjì mixing Sòng-loyalist anecdotes recovered from the elder generation Zhèng knew in his youth (the Sòng zhū yílǎo — Sòng surviving elders) with Yuán-era anecdotes about Yuán-period gāoshì (lofty gentlemen), eminent officials, and the author’s own circle in Suzhou; ending with a few entries that reflect yōu shì (anxiety over the age) as the late-Yuán disorders gathered.

Tiyao

Your servants report: Suìchāng zálù in 1 juàn, by the Yuán Zhèng Yuányòu. Yuányòu zì Míngdé. In Zhìzhèng dīngyǒu (1357) he was appointed Píngjiānglù rúxué jiàoshòu (Confucian Academy Professor of Píngjiāng Circuit); he resigned on grounds of illness and seven years later was again promoted to JiāngZhè rúxué tíjǔ (Confucian Education Commissioner of JiāngZhè), and died in office. He was originally a Suìchāng man; his father Xīyuǎn moved the family to Qiántáng, and Yuányòu in turn became a liúyù (sojourner) at Píngjiāng. His collected works are accordingly titled QiáoWú (“Sojourning in Wú”), but this record is still entitled Suìchāng — not forgetting the root.

Yuányòu died in Zhìzhèng 24 (1364) aged seventy-one, so he was born in the former Zhìyuán 29 (1292). Thus the persons named in the book reach upward as far as the surviving Sòng elders, and downward as far as Táihābùhuā 台哈布哈 (Taghai-Buqa), Ní Zàn 倪瓚, and Dù Běn 杜本 — including a notice of Dù Běn’s death. It records much yìwén (lost report) from the end of the Sòng, and the yìshì (uncollected matter) of Yuán-period lofty gentlemen and eminent officials; and since he lived through a disordered age, there are also occasional words of yōu shì. His words throughout are dǔhòu zhìshí (honest, substantial) — not at all to be compared with the slack miscellany-mongering of Chuògēng lù and similar works. His account of the burial of the bones from the Gāo and Xiào imperial tumuli makes the agent Lín Jǐngxī 林景熙 — at variance with Chuògēng lù (cf. KR3k0010) — each according to what they heard. His view that the Southern-Sòng peace-treaty originated in Gāozōng and not in Qín Huì — since the Sòng had already fallen, there is no longer any need to gloss Gāozōng — is itself a zhūxīn zhī lùn (a judgment that arraigns the inner motive).

[The Sìkù entry continues with a separate notice of Yáo Tóngshòu’s Lèjiāo sīyǔ (KR3l0083), followed by the colophon:] Respectfully checked, Qiánlóng 46 (1781), 10th month. Chief Compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Chief Collator: Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

Composition: the latest internal datum is the entry on Dù Běn 杜本, recording Dù’s death in Zhìzhèng 10 (1350) 8th month; another entry refers to Jiāmùyáng Lèlèzhì 嘉木揚喇勒智 (the Tibetan monk Yáng Liǎnzhēnjiā 楊璉真伽, who plundered the Southern-Sòng imperial tombs in 1278) being dead “for fifty years and more” — placing the work’s composition firmly in the 1340s–1360s, with the bulk of the writing in the last decade of Zhèng’s life. The narrator’s stance is consistently that of an yílǎo’s grandson who in childhood was personally taken to walk the gùnèi (former imperial precincts of Hángzhōu) by old Sòng eunuchs and palace-officers, and who in mature life consorted with Yuán-period gāoshì (Dù Běn, Ní Zàn 倪瓚 [Yuánzhèn 元鎮], Táihābùhuā 台哈布哈, Liú Zhì 劉致, Chǔ Shīxiù 禇師秀, Hú Mùzhòng 胡穆仲, Zhèng Sīxiào 鄭思肖, Xiè Áo 謝翺, Dèng Yán 鄧剡 [Zhōngzhāi 中齋], Dèng Mù 鄧牧 [Mùxīn 牧心], Féng Mèngbì 馮夢弼, etc.).

Sources within the work are explicitly tagged where possible: anecdotes “得於廉薊公” (had it from Lián Jìgōng — i.e. Lián Xīzhēn 廉希眞, Jìguógōng); “傅景文云” (Fù Jǐngwén said); “得於其父所言” (had it from his father); these tags, plus the regular xìncí “余幼時尚記…” / “余童時嘗侍其遊…”, give the work an unusually evidential quality for the bǐjì genre and are the basis for the Sìkù judgment that the work is dǔhòu zhìshí rather than miscellany-gossip.

Subject matter falls into three broad strands. (1) Sòng yímín memorial: extended notices of Lín Jǐngxī 林景熙 (recovery of the Sòng imperial bones from Yáng Liǎnzhēnjiā’s despoiled Gāo and Xiào tombs, with quotation of Lín’s dōngqīng poems — variant version to the parallel account in KR3k0010 Táo Zōngyí’s Chuògēng lù), Wāng Yuánliàng 汪元量 (the Sòng court-musician taken north with Xiètàihòu), Zhèng Sīxiào 鄭思肖 (the Suǒnán xiānshēng who refused contact with northerners), Xiè Áo 謝翱, Dèng Yán 鄧剡, Dèng Mù 鄧牧 / Yè Lín 葉林, Wēn Rìguān 溫日觀 (the pútáo grape painter), and assorted gùguān bìng zhōngguì (former officers and palace eunuchs) turned Daoist. (2) Yuán-period biographical anecdote: Lián Xīxiàn 廉希憲 receiving the threadbare Sòng zhūshēng with full ritual courtesy while contemptuously refusing a seat to the apostate Liú Zhěng 劉整; Yóuxuānfǔ 尤宣撫 (Yóu Liángfǔ 尤良輔) eight years under cover as a fortune-teller in front of Hángzhōu’s Chéngtiān sì before the Yuán forces arrived; Tāi-ha-bù-huā 台哈布哈 in zhǎncuī mourning for his mother; Zhāng Yīwú 張一無 of the Lónghǔshān Zhāngtiānshī lineage turning Chan; Qú Tíngfā 瞿霆發 (the salt-commissioner) entering Death’s Gate at Tian-mu-shan; the Chu-zhou gāoshì Zhū Fán 祝蕃 dying in office at Chenzhou over a wrongful conviction. (3) The author’s autobiographical anecdotes from Sūzhōu and Hángzhōu — meetings with Cáo Shìkāi 曹士開, Lúyǐn xiānshēng 臧湖隱, Hú Chángrú 胡長孺’s family, and his own protector Wǎnqiūgōng Zhào Yòu 趙祐 (father of the Yúnán xíngshěng cānzhī Zhèngshì Zhào Yí 趙頤), to whom Zhèng was guest-tutor in Suzhou.

A signature feature of the work is its lengthy topographical entry on the Hángzhōu Xīhú (West Lake) and Gūshān (Solitary Hill) circuit — Xī Tàiyǐ gōng, Sìshèng guān, Mǎnǎo sì, Yuèwáng fén — reconstructed from Zhèng’s childhood memory and lamenting the destruction wrought by Yáng Liǎnzhēnjiā (here written Jiāmùyáng Lèlèzhì 嘉木揚喇勒智 in Qiánlóng-era Manchu-style sound-gloss; the man is the Yáng Liǎnzhēnjiā 楊璉真伽 of standard SòngYuán historiography). The Lín Jǐngxī tomb-bones story, together with the parallel account in KR3k0010 Chuògēng lù and Zhōu Mì’s KR3k0009 Guǐxīn záshí, is the principal primary source for the Hélíng tumulus despoliation of 1278 — one of the most cited episodes in SòngYuán transition historiography.

Date discrepancy note: the catalog meta gives no jiàoshòu / tíjǔ date for Zhèng beyond the Sìkù tiyao’s Zhìzhèng dīngyǒu (1357); both CBDB and the Sūzhōu fǔzhì (Lú Xióng) corroborate this. Lifedates 1292–1364 = 71 suì are catalog-consistent and confirmed by the Sìkù arithmetic.

Translations and research

  • Jay, Jennifer W. A Change in Dynasties: Loyalism in Thirteenth-Century China. Bellingham, WA: Western Washington University, 1991. Uses Suìchāng zálù on Lín Jǐng-xī, Xiè Áo, Wāng Yuán-liàng, Zhèng Sī-xiào and the Hé-líng despoliation.
  • Mote, Frederick W. “Confucian Eremitism in the Yüan Period.” In The Confucian Persuasion, ed. A. F. Wright, Stanford 1960. Mentions Suìchāng zálù on Yuán-period eremites and gāo-shì.
  • Chen Yuan 陳垣. Nán-Sòng chū Hé-běi xīn dào-jiào kǎo 南宋初河北新道教考 (Zhōnghuá 1962 reprint). Cites Suìchāng zálù on the gù-guān bìng zhōng-guì (former Sòng officers and eunuchs) turned Quán-zhēn Daoist.
  • Franke, Herbert, and Denis Twitchett, eds. The Cambridge History of China, vol. 6 (CUP 1994). Uses Suìchāng zálù (with Chuò-gēng lù) on the Hé-líng despoliation and Sòng-loyalist circles.
  • Standard modern collated edition: Suìchāng shān-jiāo zá-lù / Lè-jiāo sī-yǔ combined edition, ed. Xuē Zhèng-xīng 薛正興, in the Yuán-dài shǐ-liào bǐ-jì cóng-kān (Zhōnghuá, 2002).
  • No full European-language translation has been located.

Other points of interest

The Sìkù tiyao’s last sentence is itself unusual: where the standard Sòng bǐjì tiyao tends to gloss Gāozōng’s role in the Shaoxing peace-treaty by transferring blame to Qín Huì, the Sìkù compilers here endorse Zhèng’s contrary verdict — “the Sòng has already fallen, there is no longer any need to huì (gloss for the sake of) Gāozōng” — and call it a zhūxīn zhī lùn (a judgment that arraigns the inner motive). The willingness of the Qiánlóng-era compilers to praise this rare moment of un-glossing of an early-Southern-Sòng emperor reflects the Manchu court’s own un-investment in Hàn-emperor historiographic protection.

Zhèng’s tomb-bones entry (林景熙 dressed as a beggar with a basket and chopsticks, bribing Tibetan monks with silver tablets, recovering the Gāo-zōng and Xiào-zōng bones and re-burying them at Dōngjiā, planting a dōngqīng tree on the cenotaph) — different in detail from Táo Zōngyí’s parallel version in KR3k0010 — has been the cornerstone of every Sòng-loyalist study from Chén Yuán onward.

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