Southern-Sòng chǔshì 處士 (untitled gentleman) and bǐjì author; zì Zhāolǐ 昭禮; born Jìngkāng 1 (1126), twelfth lunar month, first day; still alive in Qìngyuán 4 (1198), so b. 1126, d. after 1198. In some Sòng witnesses his given name is written 燀 (Chǎn); the Sìkù tíyào discusses the variance and prefers 煇 (Huī) on the authority of a fine YǐngSòng (shadow-Sòng) imprint. Self-styled “a man of Huáihǎi” 淮海人 — the family had moved from its ancestral residence on Hòuyángjiē 後洋街 in Qiántáng 錢塘 (Hángzhōu) to the Huái region, returning to Hángzhōu in his old age.
Parentage: the Sìkù tíyào identifies him as the son of [Zhōu] Bāngyàn 邦彥, presumably the famous Northern-Sòng cí-poet 周邦彥 (1057–1121). This identification is chronologically problematic — Zhōu Bāngyàn died in 1121, five or six years before Zhōu Huī was born — and modern Chinese reference works (Wikipedia, shidianguji) accordingly suggest that the father was a different person named Zhōu Bāng 周邦 (without the yàn), or that the late-Míng transmission corrupted the genealogy. The Sìkù tíyào itself separately notes that Zhōu Huī’s great-grandfather was zhōngbiǎo (cross-cousin) of Wáng Ānshí — a documented family link to the Northern-Sòng reform faction that does not depend on the Bāngyàn attribution.
Zhōu Huī’s name was entered in the Bóxué hóngcí 博學宏詞 examination roll (the Hóngcí high-level literary examination), but he apparently never took up office; Xú Sìdào 徐似道’s postface to the Qīngbō zázhì calls him a chǔshì. He travelled to the Jīn state — most plausibly as a low-ranking member of a Southern-Sòng embassy — and recorded his observations in the Biézhì attached to his main work. He maintained a private library of around ten thousand juàn and was personally acquainted with the writer and statesman Zhāng Guìmó 張貴謨 of Gǔkuò 古括, who supplied the preface to the Qīngbō zázhì in Shàoxī guǐchǒu (1193).
His sole surviving work is KR3l0067 Qīngbō zázhì 清波雜志 in 12 juàn with attached Biézhì 別志 in 3 juàn, composed at his Línān residence inside the Qīngbō (Clear-Wave) gate of the Southern-Sòng capital c. 1192–1194. The work is one of the principal Southern-Sòng bǐjì witnesses to Northern-Sòng court memory and the Xīníng-reform-faction perspective.
CBDB id 10185 records birth year 1126 (death year 0 = unknown). A homonymous entry (CBDB 35754) exists with no firm dates; not the same person.