Xītáng jí 西塘集
The Xī-táng Collection by 鄭俠 (撰)
About the work
Xītáng jí 西塘集 in 9 juǎn preserves the prose of Zhèng Xiá 鄭俠 (1041–1119), the Yīngzōng-era jìnshì and minor official whose 1074 Liúmín tú 流民圖 (“Refugees Picture”) and accompanying memorial denouncing the Wáng Ānshí New Policies are the most celebrated single act of opposition under Shénzōng. The collection takes its title from his Fújiàn 福建 native locality. Juǎn 1 opens with the very documents that defined Zhèng’s reputation — the Jìn liúmín tú shū 進流民圖疏 and the Shū sānyuè èrshíliù yǐhòu shìmù 書三月二十六以後事目, the cardinal protest documents of 1074.
Tiyao
Abstract
Xītáng jí is the principal documentary witness to a major anti-xīn-fǎ episode. Zhèng Xiá’s 1074 memorial — accompanied by the Liúmín tú, a painted scroll showing displaced peasants wandering the roads in famine — is preserved as the opening text of the collection (juǎn 1). According to the Sòng shǐ and contemporary accounts (especially Sīmǎ Guāng 司馬光’s diary fragments), Shénzōng was sufficiently affected by the picture and memorial that he suspended the Green Sprouts and Hired-Service laws for a period and Wáng Ānshí was first dismissed (briefly) in 1074. Zhèng was demoted to Yīngzhōu (Guǎngdōng) and later to Liánzhōu 連州 for his persistence; the Liánzhōu and Yīngzhōu prefaces, jì 記 (記事-records), and míng (inscriptions) make up the documentary core of juǎn 3. The collection also preserves Zhèng’s correspondence, zìxù (style-name notifications) for friends and pupils, sacrificial prose for local cults, and a small body of poetry. The actual painting (Liúmín tú) is lost; the memorial-text in Xītáng jí is therefore the closest surviving witness to one of the canonical iconic episodes of Sòng political history. The work was preserved by Zhèng’s descendants in Fúqīng and re-edited in the Sòng; the present Sìkù recension descends from a Mǎ Yù 馬裕 family copy.
Wilkinson, Chinese History (§51, §62) treats the Liúmín tú episode as one of the standard test-cases for Sòng historiography of the New Policies. Modern sub-fields of Northern-Sòng political and economic history return repeatedly to Xītáng jí for the most circumstantial first-person account of the 1074 famine and its administrative response. Zhèng’s jì on the Wàngquètái 望闕臺 and on the Yīngzhōu prefectural cult are also key sources for the cultural geography of southern Guǎngdōng during Northern-Sòng exile-administration.
The dating bracket runs from the Liúmín tú memorial (1074) to Zhèng’s death (1119); most pieces are datable to either the post-1074 demotion period or the Yuánfú / Chóngníng second exile (post-1099).
Translations and research
- Smith, Paul Jakov. “Shen-tsung’s Reign and the New Policies of Wang An-shih.” In Cambridge History of China vol. 5 part 1 (2009), ch. 5. Treats the Liú-mín tú episode and Xī-táng jí memorial.
- Liú Zǐ-jiàn 劉子健 (James T.C. Liu). Reform in Sung China: Wang An-shih and his New Policies. Harvard, 1959. Standard English-language treatment of the New Policies and Zhèng’s protest.
- Sòng-shǐ j. 321 (biography). The 1991 Zhōng-huá shū-jú point-collated edition is the standard text.
- Jiāng-sū guǎng-líng gǔ-jí 江蘇廣陵古籍 Xī-táng jí (modern punctuated reprint).
Other points of interest
- The Liúmín tú itself does not survive, but the textual evidence of its memorial (preserved here) makes Xītáng jí the indispensable primary source for one of the most-cited episodes in Sòng political iconography.