Teach you to understand Song Dynasty notes and fiction

Author: Gao Tan Culture
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2007-01-01
Features: Notebooks are articles written spontaneously by people of the time, with scattered but all-encompassing themes, covering various aspects such as political systems, social news, and extraordinary events. Do you want to learn about the techniques of cockfighting in ancient times? Do you want to know how ancient people addressed their parents? Do you want to glimpse the face of secret religions in the Song Dynasty? "Notebooks" mean "spontaneous records," a casual and non-fixed-format genre. They vary in length and content, with few restrictions, and the number of notebooks passed down over the nearly 5,000 years of cultural evolution in China is undoubtedly immeasurable. In the Song Dynasty, which valued literature over martial arts and was weak and declining, active scholars left their "pens" everywhere. According to the "Bibliography of the Song History," Song Dynasty notebooks were quite numerous in both types and quantity, ranging from serious matters like formal political commentary to humorous satire like officialdom's petty intrigues, and even practical knowledge like astonishing technological insights, showing the rich and diverse content of notebooks. The notebooks selected and translated in this book are broadly categorized into six units: daily necessities and entertainment, recognizing extraordinary people, observing strange phenomena, appreciating artifacts, astonishing events, and targeting current issues. They include the works of famous Song Dynasty scholars such as Ouyang Xiu, Lu You, Sima Guang, and Shen Kuo, aiming to allow readers to piece together some aspects of Song Dynasty society by reading their writings.