Jìngkāng Jìwén 靖康紀聞
Notes on the Jingkang Period by 丁特起
About the work
A diary-style account of the Jīngkāng crisis — the Jin siege and sack of Kaifeng (1125–1127) — composed by 丁特起 Dīng Tèqǐ (CBDB id 439011), an official who remained inside Kaifeng through the siege and its fall. The work covers events from the beginning of the first Jin advance in 1125 through the Jin occupation of Kaifeng, the abdication and capture of Emperors Huizong and Qinzong, and the establishment of the puppet Chǔ 楚 regime. A supplement (shíyí 拾遺) adds material not in the main text. It complements Li Gang’s Jìngkāng Chuánxìn Lù KR4k0027 by offering the perspective of a lower-ranking official who witnessed the occupation from within the city.
Tiyao
No tiyao found in source.
Abstract
丁特起 Dīng Tèqǐ (fl. 1126–1127; CBDB id 439011; no dates recorded) was a Song official present in Kaifeng during the Jingkang crisis. Unlike Li Gang, who directed the defense from a position of high authority, Ding Teqi was a more ordinary witness, and his account reflects the experience of officials and administrators who remained in the city through the occupation. His diary covers the period from the Jin invasion through the fall of Kaifeng and its aftermath, including the Jin installation of Zhāng Bāngchāng 張邦昌 as ruler of the puppet Chǔ dynasty.
The Jìngkāng Jìwén records the chaos of the final weeks — the breakdown of Song defenses, the Jin demands for ransom and hostages, the humiliation of the captured emperors — from an observer’s ground-level view. Together with Li Gang’s memoir and Lǐ Tiānmín’s Nán Zhēng Lù Huì KR4k0020, it forms the core first-person documentary cluster for the Jingkang catastrophe, one of the most traumatic events in Chinese dynastic history, comparable in cultural weight to the 1279 Mongol conquest of the Southern Song.
Translations and research
No dedicated English translation. For the Jingkang context:
- Mote, F. W. Imperial China, 900–1800. Harvard UP, 1999.
- Franke, Herbert. “The Chin Dynasty.” In The Cambridge History of China, vol. 6. Cambridge UP, 1994.
Links
- Wikidata: no dedicated entry located