北遊集

Běiyóu jí 北遊集

Collection of the Journey North by 汪夢斗 (撰)

About the work

A small biéjí of two juàn recording Wāng Mèngdǒu’s 汪夢斗 journey of 1279 from his Jiāngnán home to the Yuán capital Dàdū 大都, where he had been summoned by Kublai Khan on the recommendation of the former Sòng minister Xiè Chāngyán 謝昌言. Wāng made the round trip (early 1279 to winter 1279) without accepting Yuán office and returned south; the poems compose a verse itinerary of the recently conquered north, written by a Sòng loyalist looking with a complicated eye at the geography of a vanished dynasty. The collection has appended at the end a small group of Xìngshān zhāigǎo 杏山摭稿 fragments — passages of Wāng’s lectures on the Classics — preserved by his descendants.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit: Běiyóu jí, in two juàn, was composed by Wāng Mèngdǒu of the Sòng. Mèngdǒu was hào Xìngshān 杏山, a man of Jīxī 績溪. In the Jǐngdìng 景定 reign-period he passed the míngjīng track in the Jiāngdōng cáo (Transport-Commissioner) examination and was appointed Acceptance Gentleman of the Carriage (Chéngjiéláng 承節郎) and Drafter-Manager of the Jiāngdōng Sīzhìgànguān 司制幹官. At the beginning of the Xiánchún 咸淳 reign he was transferred to the Bureau of History as Editing Reviser (編校). With Yè Lǐ 葉李 and others he submitted memorials impeaching Chancellor Jiǎ Sìdào 賈似道. When Lǐ and the others were convicted, Mèngdǒu likewise withdrew and went home. After the fall of the Sòng, Minister Xiè Chāngyán 謝昌言 recommended Mèngdǒu to Yuán Shìzǔ (Kublai), who specially summoned him to the capital; in the end he refused to accept office and was released home. This collection is the record of his journey north.

It contains a poem “Visiting Minister Xiè” 見謝尚書, which says: “you must indeed cherish a body of measureless worth” — clearly the author was not only severe with himself but also conveyed admonition by way of dàoyì 道義 to Chāngyán, wǎn’ér yán 婉而嚴 (gentle in form, but stern in substance). However, in the poem “Sent up to the former Chancellor Liú Gōng” 上故相留公詩 the prefatory note states that the duke (Liú Mèngyán 留夢炎) “entered the [Yuán] court and would not bend, and was titled Front Director Zhèngfèng Dàfū” — but we observe that Mèngyán surrendered to the Yuán in Déyòu 2 (1276), was held in contempt by Shìzǔ, and had even urged the killing of Wén Tiānxiáng 文天祥; how could he be said to have “entered the court and would not bend”?

The collection also has a “Song of the Southern Garden” 南園歌 written on the occasion of Wú Qián’s 呉潛 banishment to Xúnzhōu 循州. At the end of the poem several lines are appended which say: “Lǚwēng 履翁 [Wú Qián] returning to office a second time spoke forcefully of the several matters in which the wicked were misleading the state; Lǐhuáng [Lǐzōng] in the end could not be calm. It happened that [Jiǎ] Sìdào’s report of the cleansing of the Jiāngshàng (Yangtze front) was sent direct to the inner court; the emperor thereupon dismissed Qián from his chancellorship; only on the following day was Sìdào’s memorial put to the [public] outer office for review.” Examining the Sòngshǐ, however: Sìdào’s “Jiāngshàng pacified” report falls before the yǐyǒu 乙酉 day of the third month of Lǐzōng’s Jǐngdìng 1 (1260); Wú Qián’s dismissal falls on jǐyǒu 己酉 of the fourth month of that year. If Mèngdǒu were correct that only on the day after jǐyǒu was Sìdào’s memorial put out, then this would be nearly a month after yǐyǒu of the third month. But at that very moment the entire court and country were treating the Jīng–È victory as a marvellous feat — for the dispatch to have arrived at the inner court and then to have lain there for a month before being released outside is in striking conflict with the political situation. Possibly his descendants, gathering up scattered manuscripts, did not avoid introducing a counterfeit text into the body without careful examination?

The few selections from Xìngshān zhāigǎo 杏山摭稿 — Mèngdǒu’s discourses on the Classics — were compiled by his descendants and were originally appended at the end of his collection; we follow that arrangement.

Respectfully collated, tenth month of Qiánlóng 46 (1781). Chief-Compiler Officers Jì Yún 紀昀, Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅; Chief-Collation Officer Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

(Wāng Mèngdǒu’s own preface, also preserved in the front matter, dates the journey to jǐmǎo 己卯 (1279): “These poems together form one collection called Běiyóu jí. In this year, the first month, on the day wùchén 戊辰, I went to the capital; in winter, the tenth month, on bǐngshēn 丙申, I returned home. The boat and carriage covered nearly ten thousand lǐ; in all I was a guest for 270 days. From Wú I passed through Chǔ, into [former] Sòng, into Lǔ, into Qí, into Zhào, reaching Yān, going out by Yáng, through Xú, Qīng, Yǎn, Yù, Jì, all the way to Yōu — from Jiāngnán, by way of Huáinán and Hénán, to Hénánběi. I saw the Tàiháng and Chángshān; I crossed the Jiāng, the Huái, the Jǐ. Of the nine provinces of the Yǔgòng I trod six; of the twelve sectors of the Star-Cord I crossed seven; of the ten dào of the Táng I covered four or five; of the five sacred peaks I saw two; of the four great rivers, although I did not cross the Yellow River I traversed its current — this may truly be called ‘journeying north’… In the times of the still-intact Sòng’s flourishing, north was the limit at the Báigōu only; today, beyond the Huái and beyond the Báigōu — truly is this journey the limit of the north.” Signed “Xīn’ān 新安 Wāng Mèngdǒu”.)

Abstract

The Běiyóu jí is one of the most important Sòng-loyalist xíngjì 行紀 verse-collections of the immediate post-conquest period. Wāng Mèngdǒu was a míngjīng graduate who served briefly in the late Sòng bureaucracy and joined the failed Yè Lǐ–faction memorial against Jiǎ Sìdào in 1264; in 1279 — that is, in the very year of the destruction of the Sòng resistance at Yáshān 厓山 — he was summoned to Dàdū. The collection is securely dated by Wāng’s own preface to jǐmǎo 己卯: he left Jīxī in the first month of 1279, arrived in Dàdū some 270 days later, and returned home in the winter of 1279. He refused office under the new regime and the trip resulted in nothing but the present poems. The two juàn are organized as an itinerary of the conquered north, prefaced by Wāng’s own xù, and concluded with a few Xìngshān zhāigǎo fragments of his Classics-lectures preserved by descendants. The Sìkù editors flag two textual problems: a prefatory note to the “Sent up to the former Chancellor Liú Gōng” poem mis-describes Liú Mèngyán (a notorious early surrender to the Yuán) as having refused service, and the appended commentary to the “Southern Garden Song” gives a chronology of Wú Qián’s dismissal that conflicts with the Sòngshǐ. The editors suggest contamination during late-Sòng / Yuán transmission. The work is the principal source for Wāng’s biography, and one of the few surviving first-person Han-Chinese travel records of Dàdū in the immediate aftermath of the conquest. Composition can be bracketed tightly: 1279–early 1280 (the collection must have been compiled and prefaced after the return home in late 1279, but before Wāng’s death, which is not securely datable — fl. late 1270s–early 1280s). The catalog meta gives no dates; CBDB has Wāng Mèngdǒu (id 35267) without lifedates, which is followed here.

Translations and research

• Wāng Mèngdǒu’s journey to Dàdū is discussed briefly in Jennifer W. Jay, A Change in Dynasties: Loyalism in Thirteenth-Century China (Bellingham: Western Washington University, 1991), pp. 156–158, alongside other Sòng-loyalist travelers to the Yuán capital.
• Yáng Lìhuá 楊立華, “Wāng Mèngdǒu Běiyóu jí yánjiū” 汪夢斗《北遊集》研究, MA thesis, Ān-huī shī-fàn dà-xué, 2014 — analyzes the work as a xíng-jì hybrid of shī-shǐ (poetic history) and topography.
• Zhāng Wéigāng 張偉剛, “Wāng Mèngdǒu jí qí Běiyóu jí” 汪夢斗及其《北遊集》, Húběi shè-huì kē-xué 湖北社會科學 (2010, no. 4), pp. 110–113.
• The Quán Sòng shī 全宋詩 (Běijīng dà-xué chū-bǎn-shè edition) collects Wāng’s surviving poems in vol. 64.

Other points of interest

The genre of Běiyóu (Northern-Journey) verse-collection became something of a Sòng-loyalist mini-genre after the 1276 surrender: compare Wāng Yuánliàng’s 汪元量 Húshān lèigǎo 湖山類稿 / Shuǐyún jí 水雲集 (which records the captive Sòng court’s journey north) and other smaller works. Mèngdǒu’s collection is notable for being the record of a voluntary and single trip by a recommended scholar who refused office — a contrast to the captives’ itineraries, and a different angle on the same political moment.

Links

• WYG SKQS V1187.5, p449.
• CBDB person 35267 (Wāng Mèngdǒu)