Cuī Zǐfāng 崔子方
Style names Yànzhí 彥直 and Bózhí 伯直 (he had two zì, attested in different sources). Sobriquet Xīchóu jūshì 西疇居士 (“the Reclusive Householder of the Western Field”). Native of Fúlíng 涪陵 (modern Chóngqìng) — the Sòng shǐ has no biography for him, and his career is reconstructed from scattered citations.
Active in the late Northern Sòng (Yuányòu 元祐 to Xuānhé 宣和 era, c. 1086–1126). In the Shàoshèng 紹聖 era (1094–1098) he submitted three petitions to the throne seeking the establishment of a Chūnqiū bóshì 春秋博士 chair — petitions that received no reply because Wáng Ānshí’s New-Policies dismissal of the Chūnqiū was then dominant. He thereupon retired to Liùhé 六合 county in Zhēnzhōu 真州 (modern Liùhé District, Nánjīng) and “shut his door” for over thirty years writing a Chūnqiū trilogy. Lǐ Xīnchuán’s Jiànyán yǐlái xìnián yào lù and Chén Zhènsūn’s Shū lù jiětí preserve this account; Zhū Zhèn 朱震 calls him “Dōngchuān cloth-clothes” (Dōngchuān bùyī 東川布衣) — a commoner who never took office.
Was a friend of Sū Shì 蘇軾 (1037–1101) and Huáng Tíngjiān 黃庭堅 (1045–1105); Huáng called him “an excellent Liùhé scholar” (Liùhé jiāshì 六合佳士). The Yǒnglè dàdiǎn citation of the Yízhēn zhì 儀真志 records that he wrote a Chá xiān tíng jì 茶仙亭記 for Zēng Bù 曾布 (Zēng Zǐkāi) when the latter was prefect of Chúzhōu 滁州, the inscription cut at the side of the Zuìwēng tíng 醉翁亭. (This is the source of Zhū Yízūn’s mistaken belief that Cuī himself held the Chúzhōu prefectship.)
His three Chūnqiū works survive (or partly survive):
- Chūnqiū jīng jiě 春秋經解 in 12 juan (KR1e0028) — the running commentary, recovered from Yǒnglè dàdiǎn.
- Chūnqiū běn lì 春秋本例 in 20 juan (KR1e0029) — the methodological treatise, surviving in Tōngzhìtáng jīngjiě print.
- Chūnqiū lì yào 春秋例要 in 1 juan — appended to KR1e0028 as fù lù.
The works emerged into circulation only after the southern crossing (1127), when Jiāng Duānyǒu 江端友 (1128) and Zhū Zhèn 朱震 (1136) successively memorialised the throne to obtain copies via Cuī’s grandson Cuī Ruò 崔若. Hú Ānguó’s KR1e0036 Chūnqiū zhuàn draws on Cuī’s day-month-item theory, transmitting it into the Hú-school Chūnqiū mainstream.
CBDB id 48194 records the name without lifedates.