Notebooks ( Biji ) and Shifting Boundaries of Knowledge in Eleventh-Century China

Christian de Pee

The Medieval Globe, Volume 3, Issue 1, 2017, pp. 129-167 (Article)

Published by Arc Humanities Press

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/758500

[ Access provided at 27 Sep 2021 00:19 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] NOTEBOOKS (BIJI) AND SHIFTING BOUNDARIES OF KNOWLEDGE IN ELEVENTH-CENTURY CHINA

CHRISTIAN DE PEE

The Twelve Fields are the cords by which heaven is divided, so one can­ not use the Twelve Fields to understand heaven. The Nine Continents are the mesh by which the earth is divided, so one cannot use the Nine Conti­ nents to understand the earth. The Seven Epitomes are the categories by which books are divided, so one cannot use the Seven Epitomes to under­

stand books. To understand heaven, one must understand progressions; clear,to understand maps and the books earth, lose one their must order: understand that is inevitable. distance; to understand books, one must understand classification. Alas! If the classification is not1

Zheng Qiao (1161 CE) to identify a distinct moment in the Chinese past when print­ ing technology caused a radical change in the production or the transfer of knowl­ It is difficult third century, scrolls of paper, wrapped in cloth, replaced knotted lattices of wood edge. Paper came into use as a writing material during the first century CE. In the or bamboo as the preferred form for books. Booklets of folded leaves existed side by side with scrolls during the eighth and ninth centuries before replacing them in the course of the tenth century.2 By that time, printing technology was already

Revolutions and to submit my essay to The Medi­eval Globe, and for her ever stimulating I thank Carol Symes for inviting me to participate in the Symposium on Medieval­ Media comments, encouragement, and friendship. I also thank the participants in the symposium for their comments, especially Elizabeth Oyler, Kai-wing Chow, Warren Brown, and Jessica The Medi­eval Globe. The Goldberg. The essay has also benefited from comments by Webb Keane, Dagmar Schäfer, essay is dedicated to my spouse, Lara Kusnetzky, who has long encouraged me to expand and Anna Shields, Angela Zito, and the two anonymous reviewers for publish a presentation I gave about the notebook as a marginal genre, at the 2005 annual meeting1 Tongzhi of the Association for Asian Studies. See Barrett, 2 , jiaochoulüe.1804.Woman Who Discovered Invention of Printing, Les Bibliothèques Concise Illustrated , 34–35; Brokaw, “Book History,” 253–54; Carter, History Scripture on the Ten Kings Science and Civilisation 3–8, 58–59; Drège, , 14; Luo Shubao, Printing and Publishing Zhongguo yinshua shi, , 136–39; Teiser, , 88–101; Tsien, , 1–132, 227–33; Twitchett, , 11–12; Zhang Xiumin, 4–7. 129–

The Medi­eval Globe 3.1 (2017) 10.17302/TMG.3-1.6 pp. 168 130 CHRISTIAN DE PEE

­ several centuries old. Invented sometime during the seventh century, woodblock cation of religious texts and ephemera: Buddhist spells and icons, calendars and printing during the Tang dynasty (618–907) was used primarily for the multipli almanacs, spirit money, prayers, amulets, medical handbooks, divination manuals, and so forth. The oldest surviving printed book is a copy of the Diamond Sutra (Jingang banruo boluomi jing 金剛般若波羅蜜經 ­ ters and intricate illustrations printed on a scroll of glued sheets of paper. ), dated 868, its distinct charac The complete Buddhist canon, the classical canon, and literary anthologies3

between the various courts that vied for power and prestige after the disintegra­ were first committed to print during the tenth century, in the cultural competition ­ ment printed encyclopaedias, histories, medical texts, materials for the imperial tion of the Tang Empire. During the Song dynasty (960–1279), the central govern examinations, and complete sets of the classical, Buddhist, and Daoist canons, incurring increasing competition from commercial printers in the course of the eleventh century. Of these eleventh-century printers at least one, Bi Sheng 畢昇 4

trays. The preferred form of printing, however, remained xylography. Tracing (d. 1051), experimented with movable type, made of baked clay and set in metal the reversed5 image of manuscript pages on planks of soft wood, woodblock carv­ ers reproduced pages with a pleasing, traditional layout that could combine with

3 See Barrett, Woman Who Discovered et passim Invention of Printing , ix–x, 42–85 ; Brokaw, “On the History of Les Bibliothèques, the Book,” 23; Brokaw, “Book History,” 254–55; Carter, , 38–59; Chia and Chūgoku shuppan De Weerdt, “Introduction,” 1–9; Drège, 265; Drège, “La Lecture,” 90–91; bunkashi, A Social History, Manifest in Words, Drège, “Des Effets,” 414–15; Edgren, “Southern Song Printing,” 5; Inoue, Teiser, Scripture on the Ten Kings, Science and Civilisation 95–97; McDermott, 9–13; Nugent, 39–47; Printing and Publishing, Zhongguo yinshua shi, 87–162; Tsien, , 132–54; Twitchett, , 4 13–26; Zhang Xiumin, 16–28.Invention of Printing Printing for Profit See Brokaw, “On the History of the Book,” 17–18, 23; Carter, Lost Books Books, Tales, and 68–74, 83–85; Chia, , 65–66; Chia and De Weerdt, “Introduction,” 9–11; Vernacular Culture Drège, “Des Effets,” 420–28; Dudbridge, , 1, 13–14; Dudbridge, Chūgoku shuppan bunkashi, , 5; Edgren, “Southern Song Printing,” 7; Egan, “To Count Grains,” 33–40; Concise Illustrated History Les Débuts Science and Civilisation, Fujieda, “Une Réconstruction,” 67; Inoue, 106–18; Luo Shubao, Printing and Publishing Zhongguo yinshua , 30–33; Pelliot, , 86–93; Tsien, shi Songdai chubanshi yanjiu 154–70; Twitchett, , 28–52, 60–62; Zhang Xiumin, See 5 , 30–156;Mengxi Zhou bitan Baorong, Invention ,of 58–90. Printing Concise Illustrated History Science and Civilisation, 18.8a–9a. Cf. Carter, , 212–18; Egan, “Shen Kuo Zhongguo yinshua shi Chats,” 138–39; Luo Shubao, , 59–60; Tsien, 201–3; Zhang Xiumin, , 529–41. The earliest surviving texts printed See Luo Shubao, Concise Illustrated History Zhongguo yinshua shi, with movable type were produced by the Xia Empire (1038–1227) in the twelfth century. Songdai chubanshi yanjiu , 61–62; Zhang Xiumin, 541–45; Zhou Baorong, , 177–80. biji 11th 131 notebooks ( ) and Shifting Boundaries of Knowledge in -Century China relative ease characters of different sizes, as well as text and illustrations. The enduring shape of these carved texts allowed printers to store them away 6after their blocks to another printer willing to invest in the paper, ink, and labour for an the first print run and to print a second run when demand resumed, or to rent out imprint of his own, perhaps with added materials, changes to the text, or substitu­ tions. The close resemblance of the woodblock print to manuscript—both in its 7 culture and print, between carvers and copyists, that maintained them in compe­ aesthetic and in its flexible production—created a continuity between manuscript tition, preference for one or the other often a matter of relative cost. Only in the sixteenth century did printed books begin to surpass the number of manuscripts8 in private libraries, and only in the nineteenth century, with the introduction of lithography, did printed texts become decisively cheaper than manuscript copies.9 evident that beginning in the eleventh century the availability of printed texts In spite of this prolonged coexistence of print and manuscript, however, it is transformed practices of reading and writing.10 Ye Mengde 葉夢得

(1077–1148), for example, observed around the year 1123: 6 Invention of Printing Chia, Printing for Profit A Social On the techniques of woodblock printing, see Carter, , 34–35; History Science and Civilisation , 24–62; Edgren, “Southern Song Printing,” 5–6; McDermott, See Barrett, 7 , 13–20; Tsien,Woman Who Discovered , 194–201. Commerce in Culture , 10–14; Brokaw, “On the History of the Book,” Religious Experience Home and the World, 1–11 et passim Printing and 9–10; Brokaw, , 13–18; Drège, “Des Effets,” 426–29; Dudbridge, Publishing , 75–93; He, ; Twitchett, See Barrett, 8 , 68–86.Woman Who Discovered Printing for Profit , 40, 131; Brokaw, “On the History of the Book,” Songdai cangshujia kao, 15–16; Chia, , 11–12, 40–42; Chia and De Weerdt, “Introduction,” 12–13; Dr9 ège, “La Lecture,” 101–2; Drège, “Des Effets,” 416–21; Pan, Commerce in Culture, 7–10. Printing for Profit See Brokaw, “On the History of the Book,” 24; Brokaw, 260–62, Publishing, Culture, and Power Les Bibliothèques 266–74; Cherniack, “Book Culture,” 44–45; Chia, , 11–13; Chow, Books, Tales, and Vernacular Culture Home and the , 1–2; Drège, , 266–68; Drège, “Des Effets,” World 409–12, 414–16; Dudbridge, , 8–9; He, A Social History , 97–98; McDermott, “Ascendance of the Imprint,” 24, 55–57, 60, 62–93; McDermott, in private libraries during the Song dynasty should be interpreted as evidence of the , 43–78. Robert Hymes has argued that the high percentage of manuscripts abundance of printed materials in the eleventh century, rather than the reverse, because bibliophiles sought to distinguish themselves by the quality and the rarity of their collection, which printing did not supply until the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644). See Hymes,10 “Sung Society,” 548–51. Printing for Profit Les Bibliothèques Cf. Brokaw, “On the History of the Book,” 23–34; Cherniack, “Book Culture,” 21, 27–35, biji 47–51, 56–82; Chia, , 8; Drège, , 170–71, 265; Drège, Chūgoku shuppan bunkashi “Book “La Lecture,” 102–3; Drège, “Des Effets,” 431; Fu, “The Flourishing of ,” 109–11; Hymes, “Sung Society,” 548–65; Inoue, , 111, 118–41; McDermott, 132 CHRISTIAN DE PEE Prior to the Tang, all books were manuscripts. The technology of print­ ing had not yet been invented, and collecting books was regarded with the utmost respect. There were not many people who owned books, but

thesuch strenuous collectors demands as there were of transmission possessed exquisite and copying, skill in scholars collation, too so were that their holdings frequently consisted entirely of authoritative texts. Due to

exquisitely precise in their recitation, whether from memory or from the page. During the Five Dynasties [907–978], Feng Dao [882–954] became the first to propose that the government carve, print, and publish the dynasty, the Records of the Grand Historian Shiji 史記 His- Six Classics. During the Chunhua reign period [990–994] of the present tory of the Former Han Qian Han shu 前漢書 History of [ , 91 BCE], the the Later Han Hou Han shu 後漢書 the authorities to be printed. [ From that point, 92 forward, CE], and more the and more books came to [be printed, and the literati, 445 noCE] longer were expendedin turn entrusted much care to ­ tion became negligent in proportion. The early imprints, however, were noton collecting. carefully corrected, As scholars and acquired they all bookscontained with errors. greater Now ease, that their our recita times have accepted imprints as the standard and transmitted manuscripts are gradually disappearing, it will become impossible to correct those errors. This is extremely regrettable.11

The increasing reliance of the imperial government on learned examinations for ­

the recruitment of officials, and the increasing participation of resourceful fami the canonical texts, the standard histories, and the principal literary anthologies, lies in those examinations, required the publication of ever larger impressions of as well as any number of commentaries, dictionaries, digests, collections of model essays, study guides, and other reference works.12 This shared curriculum created

Collecting,” 64 Manifest in Words et seq.

11 Shilin yanyu; Nugent, Invention, 1–4 of Printing Book of Changes (Yijing 8.116. Cf. Carter, , 95–96; Cherniack, “Book Culture,” Book of Documents (Shujing or Shangshu Book of Odes (Shijing Book of Rites (Lijing 48–50; Drège, “La Lecture,” 102–3. The “Six Classics” were the ), the the Book of Music (Yuejing Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu ), the ), the ), the phrase generically, however, as by the tenth century the Book of Rites was incomplete and ), and the ). Ye Mengde uses the Book of Music was lost. 12 On the expanding scope of the examinations, see Chaffee, Thorny Gates of Learning Elman, Cultural History of Civil Examinations Statesmen and Gentlemen, ; , 12–29; Hymes, Printing for Profit 29–61. On the importance of the examinations and the imperial government in the history of Competition over Content printing, see Brokaw, “On the History of the Book,” 17–18, 23; Chia, , 125; Lost Books Chia and De Weerdt, “Introduction,” 9–11; De Weerdt, , 1–22; Drège, “La Lecture,” 94–100; Drège, “Des Effets,” 420–28, 432; Dudbridge, , 1, 13–14; biji 11th 133 notebooks ( ) and Shifting Boundaries of Knowledge in -Century China a literate elite who held in common extensive repertoires of classical allusions, literary forms, and historical knowledge, as well as practices of study and compo­ sition. Private libraries during the Song may not have been larger than those of the Tang, but they were more numerous, and were spread more widely, to regions far distant from the capital. These libraries sustained virtual communities of learn­ 13

epigraphic materials, natural phenomena, and even the recondite allusions of con­ ing, dedicated to the elucidation of philological problems, historical questions, temporary poets, who themselves had relied on substantial libraries to compose their intricate works. 14 “Même si le manuscrit perdure largement,” Jean-Pierre ­ Drège has written about this period, “l’homme xylographique n’est certainement plus le même que l’homme scribal” (“Even if the manuscript largely persists, xylo The notebook (biji 筆記 15 graphic man is certainly distinct from scribal man”). of this culture of learning, manuscript, and print. ­ ) was a product and a record as well as an instrument 16 ­ As a genre defined by margin ginality of its varied content, and the indexical marginality of the typical title (e.g., ality—the symbolic marginality of its bibliographic classification, the iconic mar Records for Retirement to the Countryside Guitian lu 歸田錄 Talks with My Brush at Dream Brook Mengxi bitan 夢溪筆談 Conversation Matter from [ , 1067], Pingzhou Farm Pingzhou ketan 萍洲可談 ­ [ , 1087], modate materials that did not have a place in other, more established genres of [ , 1119])—the notebook could accom writing. history and17 political gossip, literary anecdotes and occasional criticism, and nar­ The notebooks of the Tang and the Five Dynasties collected unofficial

Chūgoku shuppan bunkashi Concise Illustrated History Les Débuts Edgren, “Southern Song Printing,” 7; Inoue, , 83–142; Luo Shubao, See Drège, 13 Les Bibliothèques, 30–33; Pelliot, , Chūgoku86–88. shuppan bunkashi A Social History , 170–71; Inoue, , 170–75; Songdai cangshujia kao, 2 et passim McDermott, “Ascendance of the Imprint,” 62–65; McDermott, , 49–51; Destruction McDermott, “Book Collecting,” 66–67; Pan, ; Tackett, 14 , 138. Writing of Weddings See Cherniack, “Book Culture”; de Pee, , 22–33; Egan, “To Annotated Collected Poems Count Grains,” 44–62. On the unprecedented publication of commentaries on works by of Huang [Tingjian] and Chen [Shidao] (Huang Chen shiji zhu 黃陳詩集注 任淵 contemporary authors, see the 1111 and 1155 prefaces to the 許尹, and the eleventh- and twelfth-century prefaces to annotated editions of the ) by Ren Yuan poems of Su Shi 蘇軾 Huang Tingjian shiji zhu Su Shi shiji and Xu Yin 15 (1037–1101). See , 1, 2–3; , 2831–34. 16 Drège, “DesPi-chi Effets,” 436. biji biji Cf. Djang, “ or Notebooks,” 44; Fu, “The Flourishing of ,” 114–16; Trauzettel, On marginality and generic instability, cf. Beebee, “Die17 klassische Skizze ( ),” 205–6, 229. Ideology of Genre , 32–66. I am grateful to Webb Keane for helping me think through the semiotic aspects of the notebook as a genre. 134 CHRISTIAN DE PEE ratives about anomalous events. the contents of notebooks beyond18 the incidents of the imperial capitals and the Authors of the eleventh century expanded achievements of the literate elite to encompass the newly travelled peripheries of the Song Empire and all the marginal matter contained within them: regional products, local customs, dialect expressions, unexplained natural phenomena,

foods, valuable commodities, uncommon virtue and extraordinary talent, the unusual geological formations, unidentified plants and unknown animals, strange insights of craftsmen and the wisdom of farmers, as well as omens, portents, anomalies, banter, puns, insults, deception, crime, and violence.19 Situated at the margins of written discourse, at the shifting boundaries of acceptable subject matter, the notebook mediated between periphery and centre, speech and writ­ ing, empirical observation and book learning, vernacular wisdom and classical

authority. Although some topics remained ever peripheral (e.g., anomalous events, object of newly established genres, such as the informal literary criticism gath­ ghosts and deities, violence), other subject matter in time became the legitimate shihua 詩話 pu 譜 ered in “remarks on poetry” ( ), the treatises on the connoisseurship of zhi 志 20 Perceived from the literate centre, the commodities collected in “catalogues” ( ), and the local customs and distant notebook might appear as an instrument of empire, turning the periphery into regions documented in “records” ( ). writing and into a commodity. But perceived from the periphery, the notebook recalls the enduring complementarity of speech and writing, of empirical knowl­ edge and book learning, and of manuscript and print.

18 Shifting Stories Religious Experience Dudbridge, Books, Tales, and Vernacular Culture Portrait of Five See Allen, ; Allen, “Oral Sources”; Dudbridge, ; Dynasties China City of Marvel and Transformation , 97–213; Dudbridge, Lidai biji gaishu ; Feng, “Chang’an and Narratives”; Feng, ; Literati Storytelling Rituals of Recruitment Halperin, “Heroes, Rogues, and Religion”; Liu Yeqiu, , 37–75; Manling Luo, Reed, Chinese Chronicles “What One Has Heard”; Manling Luo, ; Moore, ; ; Reed, “Motivation and Meaning”; Sanders, “I Read They Said”; klassische Skizze (biji Shields, “Gossip, Anecdote”; Shields, “The ‘Supplementary’ Historian?”; Trauzettel, “Die 19 ),” 221–28. See, for example, ( 20 Cf. Cong Zhang, “ToLiuyi’s Be ‘Erudite’,” Remarks 43–44.on Poetry Liuyi shihua 六一詩話 Record of Tea (Chalu 茶錄 A History of the Lute (Qin shi 琴史, , 1071–72) by Ouyang A History of Inkstones (Yan shi 硯史 Records Xiu; , 1049–64) by Cai Xiang, of a Forester at Guihai (Guihai yuheng zhi 桂海虞衡志 By Way of 1084) by Zhu Changwen, and , ca. 1100) by Mi Fu; Answer to Queries about the Land beyond the Mountains (Lingwai daida 嶺外代答 , 1175) by Fan Chengda, Zhou Qufei, and Record of Peripheral Peoples (Zhufan zhi 諸蕃志 , 1178) by , 1225) by Zhao Rugua. Cf. Cong Zhang, “To Be ‘Erudite’,” 61. biji 11th 135 notebooks ( ) and Shifting Boundaries of Knowledge in -Century China The Notebook as a Marginal Genre

歐陽修 Records for Retirement to the Countryside (Guitian lu 歸田錄 The notebook of Ouyang Xiu (1007–1072), notebook. The title places the author outside the capital and outside the struc­ , 1067), exemplifies the semiotic marginality of the

that the contents of the notebook defy the strictures of polite literature and clas­ tures of power, and draws attention to his declining years; the preface admits

that would otherwise contain their subject matter.21 Because the notebook was in sical learning; and the individual entries exceed the conventions of the genres the end an established genre, however, and not without its prestige, and because

Records for Retirement generates a series of paradoxes. Like the authors of other Ouyang Xiu was in fact not at all a negligible figure, the semiotic marginality of

to an attempt at resolving the irreducible contradictions of the genre. The uncon­ notebooks, Ouyang Xiu addresses these paradoxes with a playful irony, pretending ventionality of the notebook thus produces its own ironic conventions.22

RecordsIn the opening for Retirement lines of his to preface,the Countryside Ouyang isXiu comprised writes: of forgotten inci­

together with the residue of the banter and talk of the gentlemen of the dents at court, things that the official historians did not write down, myself with reading matter in my leisurely retirement. age that is fit to be recorded. These things I have written23 down to provide ­ ted by court historians (yishi 遺事, shiguan zhi suo bu ji 史官之所不記 Ouyang Xiu’s notebook, in other words, consists of excess matter—incidents omit leftovers of table talk (xiaotan zhi yu 笑談之餘 ) and the the decrepit author. The aged writer has recorded informal, unauthorized anec­ )—recorded for the private use of dotes that he recalls from his career at the centre of power, so that he may remem­ ber them in his rural seclusion. The remainder of the preface enhances this ironic self-deprecation by introducing an imaginary critic who berates the author for his

his indulgence in unimproving anecdote. The irony of the preface is evident from betrayal of his moral studies, for his ingratitude to the beneficent emperor, and for the virulence of the anonymous accusation, from the disproportion between the

21 For other examples of titles and prefaces that refer explicitly to the marginal status, obscure residence, and old age of the author, see Bei Meng suoyan Dongxuan bilu Longchuan lüezhi Mengxi bitan Pingzhou ketan Shaoshi wenjian lu Shengshui yantan lu Shilin yanyu ; ; Tieweishan congtan Zhushi. ; ; ; ; ; ; , cf. Egan, 22 ; Guitian lu The Problem of Beauty Zhongguo biji On the generic characteristics of Ouyang Xiu’s 23 Guitian, 63–72; lu Wu Liquan, The, 186–8. Problem of Beauty 3, as translated in Egan, , 65, with modifications. 136 CHRISTIAN DE PEE

accuser’s eloquence and Ouyang Xiu’s curt dismissal (“Everything of which you of an elaborate self-accusation followed by a denial, and from the paradox of an accuse me is true. But I am retiring, after all. Just you wait”), from the very device The 24 exculpatory preface affixed to a work allegedly intended for private perusal. generic apology, the futile attempt to resolve the inherent paradox of the notebook irony of the preface derives, in the end, from the impossibility of Ouyang Xiu’s as a genre. The marginality of the notebook offers a slippery foothold at the edge of the respectable written tradition, proffering legitimacy and withholding it at the same time: it offers a place for things that do not have a place in the authori­ tative tradition, a form for writing what should not be written. The increasing popularity of the notebook in the course of the Song dynasty never eliminated this paradox, but burdened the authors of notebooks with the obligation to compose ever more inventive apologetic prefaces. The contents of Records for Retirement25 to the Countryside ­ otic marginality announced by the title and the preface. The succession of brief confirm the semi ­ ventional, or in other ways off centre: hearsay and gossip, jokes and bons mots, prose entries record matters that are unauthorised, unofficial, improper, uncon accounts of extraordinary talent and eccentric behaviour, literary feats and techni­ cal skills, aberrant language and obscure precedents, rare commodities and inex­

court illustrates several forms of generic impropriety: plicable dispositions, errors and violence. An entry on the ritual music of the Song

24 shiguan 史官 The attentive reader will also notice the irony of Ouyang Xiu, one of the great historians a gesture that he repeats in his afterword. See Guitian lu of the age, contrasting his notebook with the writings of “official historians” ( ), 25 洪邁 3, 2.36–37. of the Records of Yi Jian (Yi Jian zhi 夷堅志 趙與時 See, for example, Hong Mai’s (1123–1202) prefaces to the successive instalments Records Made after the , 1161–after 1198) and Zhao Yushi’s Departure of Guests (Bin tui lu 賓退錄 Bintui lu (1175–1231) praise for the inventiveness of those prefaces in Hong Mai’s Record , 1224). See 8.87–90, and cf. Hymes, “Truth, Falsity,” 14–17; Inglis, , 23–55. Cf. also Zhang, “To Be ‘Erudite’,” 60–61. Although Zhang may be correct when she states that recording factual knowledge in notebooks required less strenuous defence in the course of the Southern Song, this does not mean that the notebook “ceased to be a marginal form of literary writing” (Zhang, Things “To Be ‘Erudite’,” 65), as it retained many other aspects of its semiotic marginality. For Heard during Official Travels (Youhuan jiwen 遊宦紀聞 example, the undated preface and 1232 colophon to Zhang Shinan’s (fl. 1228) , 1232), which Zhang offers as Youhuan jiwen evidence, still cite the author’s isolation and fading memory as the justification for his record of miscellaneous facts gathered in the peripheries of the empire; see the innovation and the paradoxes of Song-dynasty notebooks in the act of writing rather 3, 95. The present article differs from Zhang’s “To Be ‘Erudite’” mainly because it locates

than in the act of inquiry. biji 11th 137 notebooks ( ) and Shifting Boundaries of Knowledge in -Century China The sacrificial music of the Present Dynasty uses the tuning standard

and repertory of the [Later] Zhou [951–960 CE], devised by Wang tooPu [fl.high. 954]. Even During to the the present reign ofday, Emperor however, Taizu those [r. who960–976], discuss He music Xian find[933–988] the pitches lowered too highit by andone saysemitone that the because present he huangzhong deemed the tone pitches cor­ responds to the jiazhong 26 new musical system in which tone heof Antiquity.further lowered the pitches. Since the During the Jingyou reign [1034–1038], Li Zhao [fl. 1034] devised a

bribedchanges the caused bronze the casters pitches when to be they flat andwere the about performance to cast the of newthe songsbells, inducingto be out themof tune, to diminishthe Singers the of amount the Court of bronze of Imperial and thereby Sacrifices causing secretly the

harmoniously and in tune, and Zhao never realized what had happened. pitches to be slightly higher. As a result, the songs could be performed systems. This demonstrates the difficulty of assessing sound and devising musical pressed, while a low pitch sounds leisurely and unhurried. My musical systemZhao over always the years used will to tell make people, the hearts “A high of the pitch people sounds easier agitated and more and harmonious, and people and living things will grow to be larger and more

abundant.” Reader-in-waiting Wang Shu [997–1057], who was unusually short, once teased Zhao by saying, “When your musical system is finished,

will it make me taller?” Those who heard it thought it amusing,27 but even after Li Zhao finished his musical system, it was never used. ­

The successive changes in court music are the subject matter of official historiog inclusion in palace records. raphy, but the irregularity of28 the anecdotes in this entry disqualifies them from Everything in this set of anecdotes is unofficial, improper, and off centre. The musical system devised by Li Zhao is unfinished when first implemented, and is abandoned after its completion. The music Li Zhao 26 The difference between the huangzhong jiazhong of a minor third. (C) and (E flat) tones is the equivalent 27 Guitian lu ( 28 1.14–15. I am grateful toHistory Joseph of Lam the forSong correctingSong shi my宋史 translation of this entry. The “Treatise on Music” in the , 1345) summarizes Li Zhao’s criticism of Wang Pu’s music, describes the theories and instruments he devised, music was soon abolished, but it subsumes this episode within a longer narrative of repeated quotes the objections raised by scholars and officials against his reforms, and notes that his by Li Zhao’s critics, it never refers to the unsettling details that are the substance of Ouyang modifications to Song court music and, in spite of its extensive quotations from memorials Song shi

Xiu’s entry; see 126.1ab, 126.12b–127.4a. 138 CHRISTIAN DE PEE hears at court is not the music he devised, and he does not know it. Low-ranking singers have bribed low-ranking bronze casters to do their bidding, transacting an illicit economic exchange in the margins of imperial power. The tall talk of Li

hollow untruth of a boast, answered by the destabilizing semantic shift of a pun. Zhao and the short joke of Wang Shu are instances of uncentered language: the

what value the anecdotes possess resides in his commitment to the written page Ouyang Xiu cannot know about these irregularities except by gossip and hearsay; of this unauthorised knowledge. The most damaging implication of this cluster of anecdotes is that the pitch of Song imperial music, the base note of the ritual order, has always been arbitrary and wrong. The bribery, the vanity, the humour, and the disparagement of imperial music all prohibit the inclusion of this anecdote into Cumulative Rites of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices (Taichang yinge li 太常因革禮 official historiography or accounts of ritual protocol, such as the 29 But at the margins of the bibliographic order, the note­ ) that Ouyang Xiu himself edited in 1065. book accommodates these improprieties within its suspended conventions. In the of impropriety even from this collection (such as stories about divine retribution, afterword to his notebook, Ouyang Xiu explains that he has excluded certain types

this does not diminish the general marginality of the material he has selected, ghosts and deities, dreams and divination, sexual intimacy, and human error), but or of the notebook that the material constitutes. The contents of the Records for Retirement 30 reports that the original version of the notebook had been censored at the behest remained sufficiently provocative to lend credence to subsequent

31 of Emperor Shenzong (r. 1067–1085). 29 The Cumulative Rites of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices memorials, in which he expounds his exegetical and numerological reasoning, as well as quotes at length from Li Zhao’s from the memorials of his critics, and it describes the manufacture of Li Zhao’s instruments.

machinations or other improprieties. See Taichang yin’ge li Although it pays considerable attention to Li Zhao’s critics, the account does not hint at any anecdote unsuitable for inclusion in the Cumulative Rites, see Guitian lu Guitian lu 18.103–19.115. For another 1.17. Cf. 蔡襄 2.22–23, where Ouyang Xiu recounts a humorous anecdote about the gifts he offered to the Record of Collecting Antiquities (Ji gu lu 集估錄 calligrapher Cai Xiang (1012–1067) for writing out his (Ouyang Xiu’s) preface to the in that work itself. , 1063), an anecdote that cannot have a place 30 See Guitian lu The Problem of Beauty

31 2.36–37. Cf. Egan, Guitian, 68–69. lu Zhizhai shulu jieti Huizhu lu Qingbo zazhi Quwei jiuwen See the Siku quanshu preface, reproduced in 56, citing The Problem of Beauty 11.328; II.1.68–69; 8.350–51. See also 9.217. Cf. Egan, Chūgoku shuppan bunkashi Songdai chubanshi yanjiu , 71. On censorship of printed books during the Song, see Inoue, , 134–39; Zhou Baorong, , 105–18, 133–68. The contents of notebooks posed a fundamental challenge to imperial ideology because their critical inquiry into the nature of knowledge about the world juxtaposed biji 11th 139 notebooks ( ) and Shifting Boundaries of Knowledge in -Century China Records for Retirement to the Countryside dem­ onstrates that the miscellaneousness of the notebook does not preclude a precise The example of Ouyang Xiu’s varied contents of the notebook and helps recognize its negative characteristic— definition of the genre, as the semiotic motif of marginality lends coherence to the its inclusion of items that lack a place in other genres—as a positive attribute. That Song-dynasty bibliographies lack a separate category for notebooks and that they tend to divide notebooks across a number of different bibliographic categories does not invalidate this definition, because traditional bibliographies classified xiaoshuo texts by their contents rather than by their literary form. The semiotic definition of 小說 the notebook moreover matches the classic conception of “trivial works” ( ), the main category under which notebooks were classified during the Song. contain the totality of writing, but it was conceived as a taxonomy of knowledge, First, the traditional taxonomy of bibliographic classification was designed to not of literary form. division of literary 32genres, but bibliographies use only a few literary genres as Anthologies and collected works commonly observe a strict That bibliographers during the Song dynasty clas­ 33 categories of classification.

phenomena that confirmed imperial ideology (such as examples of imperial virtue, from the imperial order and from authoritative knowledge. To use a distinction proposed efficacious rituals, talented officials) with plain descriptions of phenomena that deviated by Pierre Bourdieu (Outline of a Theory doxa next to apparent deviations from doxa, in contrast to authoritative literary genres , 164–71): notebooks placed manifestations of which use writing in the service of orthodoxy. (“Doxa” is the experience of “the natural and social world … as self-evident” under the condition of “a quasi-perfect correspondence between the objective order and the subjective principles of organization.” “Orthodoxy,” Outline of a Theory by contrast, “aims, without ever entirely succeeding, at restoring the primal state of argument of notebooks tends to be implicit rather than explicit, and why authors of innocence of doxa”; see Bourdieu, , 164, 169.) This explains why the notebooks assume the persona of a decrepit figure in the margins of power rather than the authoritative persona of the righteous recluse. Marginality was the condition for writing; Elizabeth Oyler for pointing out the contrast between the marginal persona assumed by to challenge the imperial order in an authoritative voice might mean death. I thank and in the Chinese literary tradition. authors of Song notebooks and the authoritative figure of the recluse in Kamakura Japan 32 Cf. Drège, Les Bibliothèques Lost Books Books, Tales, and Vernacular Culture Portrait of Five Dynasties , 90–95; Dudbridge, , 62; Dudbridge, China , 3–7, 113–14, 192–97, 266–68; Dudbridge, 33 , 34–35.Shifting Stories Wen hsüan Crafting a Collection 呂祖謙 Cf. Allen, , 267–68; Hightower, “The ,” 144–63; Shields, Mirror of the Writing of Our Dynasty (Huangchao wenjian 皇朝文鑒 , 4–5. Of the four dozen genres anthologized in Lü Zuqian’s (1137–1181) the genre of biography (zhuan 傳 , 1177), for example, only the chronicle (biannian 編年 qijuzhu 起居注 ) corresponds to a bibliographic category. One might add ), the imperial diary ( ), and the encyclopaedia 140 CHRISTIAN DE PEE

zajia 雜家 zashi 雜史 sified notebooks under a number of different categories, such as “trivial works,” therefore does not disprove that authors and readers perceived the notebook “miscellaneous schools” ( ), and “miscellaneous histories” ( ),

accorded greater importance to differences in contents than to unity of form. For as a coherent, identifiable literary genre. It merely indicates that bibliographers

this reason, notebooks that collected political anecdotes for the benefit of future historians might be classified as “miscellaneous histories,” whereas notebooks zhuanji 傳記 that recorded mainly tales about ghosts and deities might be labelled “trivial were divided by their religious persuasion rather than united by their common works”—just as biographies of Buddhist monks and Daoist priests ( ) form. zhengshi 正史 contains34 both comprehensive chronicles such as the Records of the Grand Histo- Conversely, a category such as “standard histories” ( ) usually rian and dynastic histories such as the History of the Han, their ideological com­ patibility more important than their differences in literary and historiographical conventions. 35 Comprehensive Treatises (Tongzhi 通志 鄭樵 In the famous bibliographical essays in his living, changing conventions devised by writers and the rigid, posterior catego­ , 1161), Zheng Qiao (1104–1162) recognises this divide between the ries imposed by bibliographers, identifying it as one cause of the inconsistencies

36 in classification that confound users of catalogues and lead to the loss of books. across different bibliographic categories: For this reason, he protests specifically against the distribution of “trivial works”

(leishu 類書 notebook is a book-length work that conveys its sense by the individual arrangement of ) as bibliographic categories that coincide with literary genres. Because the notebook. its entries, it cannot be anthologised. Anthologised notebook entries would form another 34 Trivial Stories from North of the Meng (Bei Meng suoyan 北夢瑣言 晁公武 Zheng Qiao, for example, classifies 陳振孫 Record of Things Heard , 10th century) under “miscellaneous histories,” and Chao Gongwu and Seen in the Shao Family (Shaoshi wenjian lu 邵氏聞見錄 (d. 1171) and Chen Zhensun (ca. 1190–after 1249) both place though both these works combine political and historical accounts with anecdotes about , 1151) in that category, even fate, physiognomy, anomalies, and other matters found in texts that these same authors Tongzhi . Junzhai dushu zhi Zhizhai shulu jieti classify under “trivial works”; see yiwenlüe 1544; 6.272; see Tongzhi 5.145. For an example of the separation of Daoist and Buddhist biographies, zhuanji 傳記 Tongzhi yiwenlüe.5.1613–15, yiwenlüe.5.1640–42. Both these sections are separated in turn from the general section “Biographies and Records” ( ). See Cf. yiwenlüe.3.1559–70.35 Tongzhi See 36 Tongzhi jiaochoulue.1805. et seq. jiaochoulue.1804–6 biji 11th 141 notebooks ( ) and Shifting Boundaries of Knowledge in -Century China

and present have not been able to divide properly: biographies and There are five categories that the bibliographic classifications of past zhuanji 傳記 zajia xiaoshuo zashi gushi 故事, records [ ], miscellaneous philosophers [ ], trivial works categories[ ], canmiscellaneous be thrown together.histories Categories[ ], and such precedents as literary [ histories also: narratives]. Many of the books commonly classified under these wenshi 文史 shihua 37 [ ] and remarks on poetry [ ], too, should be merged. ­ cellaneous philosophers, trivial works, miscellaneous histories, and precedents is Although Zheng appears to argue that the distinction between biographies, mis arbitrary, examination of Zheng’s own bibliography in the Comprehensive Treatises

­ reveals that he makes uncommonly precise use of those five categories. Judging by the listed titles (an approach that Zheng Qiao himself discourages), his “biog raphies and records” includes only biographies (biographical anthologies and group biographies, further divided by categories of individuals), lists of names, with distinct philosophical views, anthologies of philosophical essays, and philo­ and records of anomalies; his “miscellaneous philosophers” contains only works

sophical encyclopaedias; his “miscellaneous histories” comprises only unofficial accounts of political incidents, conditions, and decisions. historical narratives (divided by historical period); and his “precedents” lists only works that other bibliographers have divided across those38 four categories, such as All the miscellaneous

For Zheng Qiao, in other words, collections of talk and miscellaneous notebooks and fictional narratives, Zheng Qiao collects in the category of “trivial knowledge,39 which include notebooks such as Records for Retirement and Talks works.” with My Brush, constitute a distinct category. 40 班固 History of the Han, matches well the Second, the enduring definition of “trivial works,” formulated by Ban Gu (32–92 CE) in the bibliographic treatise of his semiotic definition of the notebook as a marginal genre:

37 Tongzhi See 38 Tongzhi jiaochoulüe.1817. yiwenlüe.3.1559–70, yiwenlüe.6.1653–55, yiwenlüe.3.1539–45, yiwenlüe. books based only on their titles, see Tongzhi 3.1548–49. For Zheng Qiao’s warning against determining the bibliographic classification of See 39 Tongzhi Junzhai jiaochoulue.1809–10. dushu zhi See 40 Tongzhi yiwenlüe.6.1656–58. Cf. 13.543–602. yiwenlüe.6.1658. Ma Duanlin likewise reads Zheng Qiao’s observation about Wenxian tongkao the five bibliographical categories as an injunction to make more precise, better informed distinctions; see 195.1648a. Chen and Dudbridge interpret the passage Zhongguo biji xiaoshuo shi Lost Books in the opposite sense, as an admission of the arbitrariness and inadequacy of these five categories; see Chen, , 19; Dudbridge, , 63. 142 CHRISTIAN DE PEE ­ cials. These works comprise street talk and conversations in alleyways, The tradition of “trivial works” probably issues from low-ranking Kongzi offi 41 thatmatters are “heardworth contemplating, on the highroad but and he repeatedwho travels in thefar must lanes.” fear being [“Confucius,” trad. 551–479 BCE] said, “Even the byways Yet neither offer sights does he destroy them. The insights that villagers have attained42 based on some minordetained, knowledge and the gentlemanshould also therefore be written ignores down them.” and preserved, in case they contain one observation that is worth adopting—even if it derives from the discussions of woodcutters and madmen. 43 ­ doxes addressed in eleventh-century notebooks—the tensions between hearsay This characterization of “trivial works,” or “minor talk,” contains many of the para

­ and writing, between unverifiable rumour and authoritative text, between the cials—and frames them in a geographic metaphor of highroads and byways, of limited empirical knowledge of villagers and the universal moral learning of offi the universal and the local. Besides bibliographies, prefaces to notebooks also occasionally apply Ban Gu’s language and categories to notebooks of the eleventh Talks with My Brush at Dream Brook (Mengxi bitan 夢溪筆談 沈括 ­ century. In his 1305 preface to sual array of technical knowledge and natural observation, Chen Renzi 陳仁子 , 1087), a notebook by Shen Gua (1031–1095) that collects an unu ­ 李獻民 Comprehensive Records (fl. 1265–1305) compares that work to “the writings of Yu Chu and the low-rank from Cloud Studio44 (Yunzhai guanglu 雲齋廣錄 ing officials.” Li Xianmin’s (fl. 1111) preface to Records for Retirement and Shen Gua’s Talks with My Brush , 1111) characterises Ouyang Xiu’s

both as “trivial works” Besides its compatibility with traditional45 bibliographic categories, the semiotic that “glean the incidents of their period.” ­ passes a number of narrower characterisations of biji in the secondary literature definition of the notebook as a marginal genre has the advantage that it encom

41 Reference to Lunyu Analects of Confucius

42 Lunyu XVII.14. Cf. Waley, , 213. Analects of Confucius, 219. XIX.4, where the speaker is Zixia, one of Kongzi’s disciples. Cf. Ames and Rosemont, 43 Hanshu Strange Writing 馬端臨 Comprehensive Investigation of Records and 30.1745. Cf. Campany, , 132. Ma Duanlin (b. 1254) Documents (Wenxian tongkao 文獻通考 prefaces the section on “trivial works” of his Wenxian tongkao , ca. 1308) with this definition by Ban Gu; see preface.1b. On the nature of 44 Mengxi bitan 215.1755a. Talks with My Brush , cf. Egan, “Shen Kuo Chats”; preface.1. Cf. Fu,45 “AYunzhai Contextual guanglu and Taxonomic Study”;Qingxiang Holzman, zaji “Shen Kua,” 277–92. preface.7. biji 11th 143 notebooks ( ) and Shifting Boundaries of Knowledge in -Century China ­

without being less specific, and that it enables a more structural critique of the lit erary histories that attempt to fit the notebook into a linear development of reified 洪邁 genres. A number of scholars in past years have remarked on the marginal nature Records of Yi Jian 夷堅志 of the notebook and its contents. In his study of Hong Mai’s (1123–1202) that biji xiaoshuo (1161–after 1198), for example, Alister Inglis writes attached to works not because of what they were, but because of what they were (notebooks), “like [trivial works], is a residual category, a label Scholars have also recognised that the loose, accommodating form of the notebook46 enabled Song literati to pursue arguments and publish ideas prohibited not.” Some have noticed, more­ over, that the apparent miscellaneousness of notebooks47 sometimes belies a con­ by the stricter definition of more authoritative genres.

Talks with My Brush not only records preliminary obser­ sistent theme, a systematic inquiry, or even a sustained argument. Ronald Egan, for example, finds that vations about anomalous phenomena that Shen Gua could not “fit into a larger scheme of understanding,” but that its juxtaposition of paradoxical realities points multivalent than that commonly perceived through eyes conditioned by conven­ to an emergent vision of “a kind of human world that was far more complex and

48 tional Confucian and Buddhist values.” Robert Hymes, finally, has commented on 46 Hong Mai’s Record, 109. Cf. de Pee, Writing of Weddings Books, Tales, and Vernacular Culture Hong Mai’s Inglis, , 6–8; Dudbridge, , 113; Inglis, Record, 121; Luo, “What One Has Heard,” Zhongguo biji 26; Reed, “Motivation and Meaning,” 145; Trauzettel, “Die klassische Skizze,” 222–28; Wu unconventional miscellaneousness of notebooks has preserved materials for modern times Liquan, , 186; Cong Zhang, “To Be ‘Erudite’,” 65. Scholars have also noted that the Pi-chi that would otherwise have been lost. See, for example, Alimov, “Preliminary Observations,” Changing Gods 44–46, 48; Alimov, “Lofty Judgments,” 36; Djang, “ or Notebooks,” 42–44; Halperin, Lidai biji gaishu “Heroes, Rogues, and Religion,” 415–16; Hansen, , 17; Hargett, “Sketches,” 565; Liu47 Yeqiu, , 10; Ma, “Pi-chi,” 651; Smith,The “Impressions,” Problem of 71–72. Beauty See Bol, “A Literary Miscellany,” 127–28; Egan, , 71; Hargett, Strange Writing “Sketches,” 561–63; Tao and Lin, “‘Biji xiaoshuo’ yu biji yanjiu,” 114–15; Cong Zhang, “To Be ‘Erudite’,”48 46. Cf. Campany, , 168, 199–200. Superfluous Things Egan, “Shen Kuo Chats,” 151, 145. Cf. Bol, “A Literary Miscellany,” 128–47, 151; Clunas, , 38 (“little attention seems to have been paid to the extent, if any, to which their loose, baggy form might profitably be treated as a structure embodying a coherent Tung-p’o Chih-lin viewpoint”); Egan, “Shen Kuo Chats,” 145–50; Eng, “Laughter in a Dismal Setting,” 224–34; Fu, “A Contextual and Taxonomic Study,” 6–13; Hatch, “ ,” 286; Hymes, studies characterize Song notebooks more generally as a scholarly genre that functions as “Gossip as History,” 1–11; Manling Luo, “What One Has Heard,” 23–24, 26–27, 34. Other a repository of information for future compilations, as a collection of conversation matter,

Zhongguo biji xiaoshuo shi Pi-chi or as a genre of literati expression. See Alimov, “Preliminary Observations,” 39; Chen Flourishing of biji Lidai biji gaishu Wenxin, , 365–76; Djang, “ or Notebooks,” 40–41; Fu, “The ,” 107–9; Hargett, “Sketches,” 561–64; Liu Yeqiu, , 2–4, Ma, 144 CHRISTIAN DE PEE the social and discursive mediation accomplished by the notebook, arguing that, biji

“some important part of the function of in Song … was to put matters heard in 49 ­ conversation into writing.” dinates these several arguments by placing the shifting boundaries of acceptable An understanding of the notebook as a marginal genre encompasses and coor

bibliographic taxonomy, the notebook brought empirical knowledge into writing, content in relation to a stable centre of knowledge and power. At the edge of the moved unexplained phenomena toward systematic analysis, collected scattered anecdotes for future historical narratives, and offered up regional difference for

discursive and ideological unification. The marginality of notebooks does not Records for threaten the stable centre of established genres; rather, it implies, complements, Retirement 李肇 Supplement to the and produces that centre. As Ouyang Xiu writes in his afterword to History of the State (Guoshi bu 國史補 , quoting Li Zhao’s (fl. 827) preface to the events, probed the order of things, enlightened doubt or misconception, exhibited , 820s): “When my sources recorded true

The recognition of the notebook as a instruction and moral warning, dignified regional customs, or provided matter for coherent, useful, meaningful genre of course50 makes nonsense of linear histories talk and amusement, I wrote them down.”

and function depend on later, transcendent genres of writing such as the autobio­ that present the notebook as a deficient, transitional form whose true meaning

51 graphical memoir, the fictional short story, or the novel.

Zhongguo biji “Pi-chi,” 650–51; Trauzettel, “Die klassische Skizze,” 205–6, 211, 229; Wu Liquan, 49 , 163–70; Zhang Hui, “Sanlun Song biji,” 88. Hymes, “Gossip as History,” 22. Cf. Jack Chen, “Introduction,” 3–4, 13; Egan, “Shen Kuo Chats,”50 Guitian 136–39, lu 149. Tang guoshi bu The Problem of Beauty 2.36, quoting 3. Cf. Shields 2014, 113. Cf. also Egan, 51 , 68–69. Zhongguo biji xiaoshuo shi Lidai biji gaishu Miao, Biji xiaoshuo shi Zhongguo biji See, for example, Chen Wenxin, ; Liu Yeqiu, ; Shifting ; Wu Liquan, ; Zhang Hui, “Shilun Nan Bei Song”; Stories Strange Writing Religious Experience Zhang Hui, “Sanlun Song biji.” For criticisms of such linear narratives, see Allen, Dudbridge, Books, Tales, and Vernacular Culture , 4–11; Campany, , 163–64; Dudbridge, , 16–17; , 195–97; Owen, “Postface,” 218; Tao and entries into distinct subgenres also presumes that a structuralist taxonomy underlies the Liu, “‘Biji xiaoshuo’ yu biji yanjiu,” 107, 109. The attempt to divide notebooks or notebook Zhongguo biji xiaoshuo shi biji Lidai practical, situated use of genres by Song literati. See Alimov, “Preliminary Observations,” 46; biji gaishu Biji xiaoshuo shi Zhongguo biji Chen Wenxin, ; Fu, “The Flourishing of ,” 104; Liu Yeqiu, , 3; Miao, , 10; Wu Liquan, , 102–3. biji 11th 145 notebooks ( ) and Shifting Boundaries of Knowledge in -Century China The Notebook and the Writing of the Eleventh-Century Empire The empire of the Song dynasty in the eleventh century bore little resemblance to the realm the Tang house had ruled two centuries earlier. The regions south of the Yangzi River had seemed alien in their landscape and foreign in their customs But by the eleventh century, the majority of the population lived south of the rivers,52 in a to the officials who had been sent there in exile during the ninth century. fertile land whose rice paddies and abundant produce fed a growing population of craftsmen and merchants in the proliferating market towns and cities of the capital at Kaifeng in the North. The southern population moreover dominated South, as well as large standing armies and numerous officials in the metropolitan the imperial examinations, whose53 graduates came to surpass in prestige and in authority the remnant old families of the Tang and the Five Dynasties. The suc­ cessive kingdoms and empires that during the tenth century had contested54 with one another the legacy of the Tang, had established an infrastructure of roads, waterways, ports, and institutions of learning that now sustained a growing popu­ lation, a growing economy, and a growing southern elite. The total population 55 million around 1100. To balance the expanding volume of the economy, the increased from an estimated 50 to 60 million in the ninth century to some 100 government minted unprecedented56 numbers of bronze coins and printed the

57 world’s first paper money. And along the efficient waterways and busy roads of this industrious empire travelled also the imperial officials responsible for the every three years, these men served in a succession of posts across the expanse of management and equitable distribution of this wealth. Evaluated and reappointed

52 The Sinitic Encounter The Vermilion Bird. See de Pee, “Nature’s Capital,” 184–85. Cf. Clark, , 28–32; Schafer, 53 See, for example, Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past Commerce and Society. ; Lamouroux, “Crise politique”; See Chaffee, McDermott54 and Shiba,Thorny “Economic Gates of Learning Change”; Shiba, Printing for Profit Rituals of Recruitment Destruction Cai Xiang ji , 129–56; Chia, , 71–73; Moore, Daoxiang xiansheng Zou Zhonggong wenji Changxing ji Gongshi ji , 116–18; Tackett, , 3, 9–10, 218–42. See also 29.509–10; 2.12b; 25.23b; 34.411–12.55 56 See Mostern, “The Usurper’s Empty Names.” Zhongguo renkou shi See Hymes, “The Song Dynasty,” 338; McDermott and Shiba, “Economic Change,” 325–29; See, for example, Elvin, Wu57 Songdi, The, 350–52.Pattern of the Chinese Past Fountain of Fortune Money and Credit , 149; Von Glahn, , 43–47; Von Glahn, “Revisiting the Song,” 159; Yang, , 38. 146 CHRISTIAN DE PEE the empire, sharing their experiences with colleagues, in government compounds and in roadside hostels, in letters and in printed manuals. This new empire—with its voluminous currency and58 commercial cities, its long-distance trade and multiplying commodities, its locks and watermills, its

printed texts and irrigation works—required a reassessment of the relationship century did not doubt the universal wisdom of the ancient canon, they were often between the present and hallowed antiquity. Although the officials of the eleventh uncertain how to apply to a dynamic, commercial empire the precepts that had

confounding, busy appearance of the contemporary world the enduring patterns been formulated during a simpler time, and had difficulty recognising behind the that the ancients had discerned. unprecedented complexity that 59confronted them could be reduced to a limited In time, however, they grew confident that the number of universal principles. The movement of people, goods, and money, though unprecedented in volume, ensured the healthful distribution of resources

among60 the subjects of the realm, “exchanging what they had for what they had not,” and therefore must accord with the beneficent patterns of nature: Making the Bian River in effect its southeastern throat. A myriad ships come north to feed the capital city, The receptive intestine of the thousand-mile realm. And the million armored soldiers are thus sustained,

The people’s hearts love and cherish this flowing water,61 Which offers to them more than cloth, rice, and grain. ­

In the 1040s, eulogists began to praise officials who had perceived such univer ­ sal principles within the apparent disorder, officials whose combination of moral cal texts and to build irrigation networks, to solve murder cases and to adjust local scholarship and technical knowledge had enabled them equally to explain canoni

The 62notebook contributed to the writing of this empire by providing a place finance. for matters that had not been put into writing before. The symbolic and indexical

58 See Cong Zhang, Transformative Journeys. On the limited geographic mobility of the Tang elite, see Tackett, Destruction See, for example, 59 Jiayou ji, 58–59, 97–106, 168–86. 60 Shangshu 5.114–17. Cf.The Bol Shoo2015. King 61 Fa tan ji 5.1b, as translated by Legge, , 78. 62 1.14a. 俞獻卿 Chang 劉敞 Gongshi ji See, for example, the funerary inscription for Yu Xianqing (970–1045) by Liu Yaozuo 陳堯佐 Ouyang Xiu quanji (1019–1068) in 53.637–38, and the funerary inscription for Chen (963–1044) by Ouyang Xiu in 20.325. biji 11th 147 notebooks ( ) and Shifting Boundaries of Knowledge in -Century China marginality of the genre enabled the notebook to offer an iconic representation of the expanded empire, accommodating not only the peripheral subject matter of previous notebooks, such as political gossip, literary criticism, and anomalies, but also entries about the geology and products of peripheral regions, the dialects and customs of different parts of the realm, and the practical skills and oral wis­ dom of commoners. The authors of notebooks wrote down their observations 63 ­ onomies and explain them by general principles. The notebook thus performed a about such matters in hopes that future readers might place them into fitting tax translatio in two stages, mediating between the physical world and writing as well as between writing and genre. Subjects that remained marginal to the established genres of the literary canon, such as anomalies, humour, and violence, continued to be the exclusive matter of notebooks, but subjects that achieved legitimacy in the written tradition, such as literary anecdotes and the connoisseurship of com­ shi- hua pu modities, became the topic of new genres such as the “remarks on poetry” ( That notebooks constituted64 part of a general transformation of literary geog­ ) and the “catalogue” ( ). raphies and the literati tradition during the eleventh century is suggested also by the prominence of several authors of famous notebooks in the transformation of inherited literary genres, in the invention of new genres, and in the extension of Records for Retire- ment to the Countryside ­ literati learning to technical subjects. Ouyang Xiu, the author of ship, Tree Peonies of Luoyang (Luoyang mudan ji 洛陽牡丹記 , also wrote the first treatise on commodity connoisseur Liuyi shihua 六一詩話 ­ , 1030s), the first Record of Collecting Antiquities (Ji gu lu 集估錄 “remarks on poetry” ( , 1071–72), and one of the first anti 薛居正 History of the Five Dynasties65 quarian catalogues, the , 1063). (Wudai shi 五代史 He also rewrote Xue Juzheng’s (912–981) (guwen 古文 , 974) to transform that work into a model of Ancient Prose ) and to impose on it a new ethos of bounded territories and absolute

63

To use the language of Webb Keane, the semiotic ideology of the notebook helped convert potential material signs into actual material signs; see Keane, “Semiotics.” Notebooks are also a good example of writing as “iconic augmentation,” in which “the inscription of discourse [i.e., Interpretation Theory the transformation of speech into writing] is the transcription of the world, and transcription is64 not reduplication, but metamorphosis”; Ricoeur, , 40, 42. On the unassimilability of violence to the written tradition, see West 2006. On the Brown’s essay in this volume. Cf. also Dagognet, Écriture et iconographie et passim connection between political geography and the transformation of literary genres, cf. Warren Intertexts Encyclopaedism , 7–12 ; for the reference to Muhanna’s dissertation. Hanks, , 133–64; Muhanna, , 40, 98. I am grateful to Jonathan Brack 65 See Ouyang Xiu quanji Writing of Weddings The Problem of Beauty 75.1096–1103, 128.1949–57, 134.2061–143.2327. Cf. de Pee, , 45–50; de Pee, “Wards of Words,” 109–10; Egan, , 7–161. 148 CHRISTIAN DE PEE loyalty. Song Qi 宋祁 Notebook of Mr. Song Jingwen (Song Jingwen66 gong biji 宋景文公筆記 ­ (998–1061), author of the , ca. 1061), possessed a detailed knowl urban streetscape in poetry. Su Shi 蘇軾 edge of historical philology and music, and was one of the first to represent the 67 ­ (1036–1101), whose notebook was put together posthumously from entries that he had collected in sacks, acquired a last his transformation of the song lyric into a legitimate written genre. Fan Zhen 范 ing reputation for his hydraulic improvements in the city of Hangzou as well as for 鎮 Matters Recorded in the Eastern Studio68 (Dongzhai jishi 東齋記事 (1007–1088), the author of music. Shen Gua, the author of Talks with my Brush, compiled an atlas and wrote , 1080s), distinguished himself by his technical understanding of monographic treatises on astronomy, music, and medicine. For such men, the productive marginality of the notebook facilitated the translation69 of unconven­ tional knowledge and peripheral subjects into writing, thereby to make them ­ ble genres of literature. available for subsequent assimilation into enduring forms of knowledge and sta Notebooks that arrange their entries into a taxonomic hierarchy of titled sec­ tions explicate this process of attaching marginal subjects to stable centres of knowledge and writing. Records for Leisurely Conversations on the Banks of the Sheng (Shengshui yantan lu 澠水燕談錄 王闢之 ­ , 1095) by Wang Pizhi (1031–after dide 帝德 ­ 1095), for example, ranks its entries in a moral and geographic hierarchy of seven danglun 讜論 mingchen 名臣 teen categories, beginning with “Imperial Virtue” ( ), “Outspoken Remon (zhi ren 知人 stration” ( ), “Famous Ministers” ( ), and “Knowing Men” shuhua 書畫 shizhi 事誌 ­ , i.e., the ability to recognize men of talent and virtue), and ending with zalu 雜錄 tannüe 談謔 “Calligraphy and Painting” ( ), “Notes on Objects” ( 70 ), “Miscel laneous Records” ( ), and “Talk and Banter” ( ). In his preface, Wang Pizhi explains (much like Ouyang Xiu) that on the eve of his retirement he has 66 See Davis, Historical Records Unbounded Loyalty See 67 Jingwen ji , xliii–lxxvii; Standen, , 59–63. See 68 Dongpo zhilin. Cf. de LuanchengPee, “Nature’s ji Capital,” 188–92.Su Shi wenji The Problem of Beauty ; II.22.1416–18; 11.379–80, 30.863–72, Tung-p’o Chih-lin 31.901–2. Cf. Ashmore, “The Banquet’s Aftermath”; Egan, , 280–302; See Hatch,69 “Changxing ji ,” 280–88. 70 16.26b–28a; Egan, “Shen Kuo Chats,” 139–40; Holzman, “Shen Kua,” 275. Although Wang Pizhi states in his preface that “the entries take the order in which I originally recorded them, and therefore do not follow any determinate sequence,” the manuscript copy of a Song edition that was consulted by Huang Yaofu in the eighteenth century must have been divided into these same seventeen categories, as Huang compares Shengshui the number of entries in this manuscript to the number of entries mentioned in Wang Pizhi’s yantan lu preface, but makes no mention of any rearrangement of their sequence. See , 139. biji 11th 149 notebooks ( ) and Shifting Boundaries of Knowledge in -Century China

copied out stories and observations from his official career so that he may use them “in leisurely conversations with farmers and woodcutters” on the banks of the Man Sheng River (in northeast Shandong province), and as “matter to entertain myself Zhongxing 滿中行 71 on the field and at the desk, or when I lean on my stick in satisfied boredom.” (fl. 1067–1089), who read an early version of Wang’s notebook in 1089, emphasises in his colophon the moral propriety of the work, finding improvingOf the severalmatter evenhundred in the entries trifling he categories has recorded, that close the thegreat volume: majority pro­ mote loyalty and duty, honours conduct and probity, and omits unedify­ ing talk about strange occurrences and absurd things. Even the entries about the composition of poetry and about talk and banter, although they may appear trivial, all exhibit a lesson. Simply by reading the book, one may understand how the author made his selections. 72 The early categories in Records for Leisurely Conversations establish the stable centre of knowledge, power, and virtue by recounting anecdotes that show impe­ rial governance in its ideal form. Emperors demonstrate their wisdom and virtue by adhering to the spirit of ritual and law, modifying precedent only to express

good. an especially fervent dedication to worthy officials, moral justice, and the public from 73wise rulers. Frank remonstrations from officials of all ranks receive unbiased attention and heavenly retribution74 by their unyielding commitment to moral principle. Upright officials achieve imperial recognition, general fame, 75­

Men of unusual insight confirm the efficacy of the imperial examinations by pre the roster of graduates. ­ dicting the rank that talented men of their acquaintance will eventually attain on serves anecdotes about76 uncommon skill in poetry, calligraphy, and painting, and In the latter categories of his notebook, Wang Pizhi pre notes about matters peripheral to the moral economy of the empire. 77

Although, as Man Zhongxing writes, Wang Pizhi rarely loses sight of inherent ­ moral truth, this truth becomes strange and subsidiary in the final categories of miliar plants, rare trees, exotic animals, unusual rocks, strange geological forma­ his notebook. “Notes on Objects” collects miscellaneous knowledge about unfa

71 Shengshui yantan lu

72 3. 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid., 1.1–5. 75 Ibid., 1.5–8. 76 Ibid., 2.10–22. 77 Ibid., 3.27–28. For anecdotes about poetry, calligraphy, and painting, see ibid., 7.83–92. 150 CHRISTIAN DE PEE tions, numinous place-names, ancient artefacts, ingenious craftsmanship, regional character, and the inferior constitution of eunuchs, musicians, and actors, most of these things connected with the peripheries of the empire:

In the land of the Khitanspili [i.e., the Liao Empire, 916–1125, encompassing present Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, and part delicacy,of Siberia] and lives the the Khitans . In dig shape holes it inresembles the ground a large to catch rat, butthese its animals,legs are soshort, that and they it may is extremely offer them fat. as In food that to country their ruler. it is Nobodyconsidered below the the utmost rank of Duke or Grand Councilor is allowed to taste them. Sometimes they are

brought them to the capital and have cooked them and offered them to fed with goat’s milk. In recent years, caitiff ambassadors have sometimes ambassadors to that country are all served this animal, but people of the the throne. Officials of our present dynasty who are commissioned as

78 Middle Kingdom do not care for its flavor.

Southwest of the prefectural seat of Qingzhou [present Yidu, in northeast­ larsShandong were erectedprovince] to thereconstruct are only a bridge mountains. across Throughthis water, these but mountainsevery year inthreads the sixth the orYang seventh River, monthhemmed the in water by two in walls.the mountains In an earlier would period, surge pil in

resulting in the destruction of the bridge. The prefecture found it a hate­ a spring flood, and the water would do battle with the pillars, generally

ponderedful nuisance. how When he might Xia, Duke strengthen of Ying [i.e.,the bridge. Xia Song, By 985–1051] chance he servedfound anas Prefect of Qingzhou during the Mingdao reign period [in 1032–1033], he proved knowledgeable and intelligent. This soldier piled up large boul­ unemployed soldier who had been in charge of fortifications, and who

theders bridge to secure still the has banks, not been then destroyed. fitted together During several the Qingli dozen reign tree periodtrunks to form a flying bridge, without pillars. Now, more than fifty years later,

Canal[1041–1048], was repeatedly when Chendestroyed, Xiliang often [1000–1065] causing the served loss of as government prefect of Sùzhou [present Sùzhou, Anhui province], the bridge across the Bian

ships and inflicting harm on the people. He therefore ordered builders to copy the flying bridge that had been devised in Qingzhou. Now, all bridges on the Bian Canal are flying bridges, highly convenient79 for all the traffic. In colloquial speech they are called “rainbow bridges.”

78

79 Ibid., 8.100. Science and Civilisation Ibid., 8.100–1. Cf. Needham, , 162–65. biji 11th 151 notebooks ( ) and Shifting Boundaries of Knowledge in -Century China ­ ject (e.g., the identifying characteristics, literary mentions, local uses, and medici­ Many of the entries under “Notes on Objects” discuss multiple aspects of their sub ­

nal properties of the coconut), but some concentrate specifically on connoisseur specialised manuals and catalogues. ship (of ink and inkstones, of tea, and80 of zithers), occasionally with reference to The section of “Miscellaneous Records” both by its placement toward the end of the volume and by the variety of excess exemplifies the connection between miscellaneousness and semiotic marginality

in Kaifeng, the skills of southern pearl divers, evidence of meteor rains, missed that characterises its contents. It records matters such as a thirteen-bay tower opportunities to recover the prefectures lost to the Liao Empire, poems with pre­

most isolated jurisdictions in the realm, a political downfall caused by a meaning­ dictive power, a skilled archer caned by his mother, the identification of the two

less robbery, a popular and efficacious shrine abandoned after a fight about its profits, and a false miracle staged to draw patrons to a distant monastery. Even wholesome, commendable qualities are made sinister by their manifestation in unlikely subjects or places, or by their awkward or violent consequences: a family of inexplicable longevity, apt compositions by officials from the Goryeo kingdom (918–1392, located on the Korean peninsula), the destruction of an illicit shrine sensitivity to moral judgment, or the mysterious sudden growth of edible matter inhabited by foxes, intelligent and loyal actions of dogs, an official with an extreme Records for Leisurely Conversations

during two famines. The final section of , “Talk the put-downs, insults, puns, and ridicule it collects made their original audience and Banter,” maintains this tension between moral action and its context. Although

­ “fall over with laughter,” and although Wang Pizhi betrays a certain admiration for son, whether to censure impropriety or to mortify vanity: quick wit, nearly all of the examples he recounts in this section point a moral les

dynasty, excelled in the study of the Rites Ritual Canon IllustratedNie ChongyiSanli [10th tu century], who lived during the early years of the a wide circulation, and the emperor decreed. After that he wrotea copy the of it should be placed in the [ lecture, ca. hall 960] of the and Directorate presented ofit toEducation. the throne, Guo it Zhongshu achieved

耳 repeated three times: 聶 [d. 977] once made fun of Nie’s surname [which is written with the 貴 聵 character for “ear” ] with a poem: “When he 龍 聾 approaches elevated rank [ ], he becomes completely deaf [ ],/ When 聰 ­ he grasps the soaring dragon [ ], his ears start ringing [ ]./ Although he may have three ears,/ His understanding still isn’t keen [ ].” Chon gyi said, “Your servant is not good at making poems, so give me leave to

80 See Shengshui yantan lu

8.105; 8.97–98, 8.100, 8.102; 8.99; 8.103, 8.104. 152 CHRISTIAN DE PEE

respond with a couplet, and please do not laugh at me: ‘Having three ears characters of Guo Zhongshu’s 郭忠恕 given name, both of which are writ­ is still better than being two-faced’” [lit. “having two hearts,” a pun on the also possessed this clever skill at banter. ten with the character for “heart” at the81 bottom]. It is delightful that he

Pizhi’s Records for Leisurely Conversations, their contents are nonetheless informed Although most eleventh-century notebooks lack the explicit categories of Wang by similar moral taxonomies and by the same moral geography. Many notebooks Records for Leisurely Conversations, beginning with anecdotes about imperial virtue and wor­ follow implicitly the hierarchical arrangement exemplified by Wang’s thy ministers, and ending with violence, anomalies, and banter. The expectation of such an implicit arrangement is evident, for example, in a Ming82-dynasty preface to Dongpo’s Forest of Notes (Dongpo zhilin 東坡志林 Shi never edited the notebook entries that he had collected in sacks on loose slips , 1101), by Su Shi. Because Su of paper, his Forest of Notes The preface 83 does not have a determinate sequence. a familiar taxonomy: to a 1595 imprint of his notebook, however, summarises the contents according to Mr. Dongpo’s Forest of Notes

, in five fascicles, is comprised entirely of records about things that [Su Shi] experienced in person during the­ twenty [twelve?] years of the Yuanyou [1086–1094] and Shaosheng [1094–1098] reign periods. Each of its entries is finished and compre administrativehensive, whether boundaries, it discusses or dreamsthe meritorious and strange deeds occurrences, of famous or officials, deities or the efficacious policies of peaceful governance, or geography and words, humorous banter and dissolute behavior. and immortals and mantic techniques, fragmented84 sayings and isolated

81 Shengshui yantan lu 10.122. 82 See, for example, Bei Meng suoyan Dongxuan bilu Qingxiang zaji Shaoshi wenjian lu Shilin yanyu Tieweishan congtan ; ; ; ; ; . Given the common occurrence and flexibility of this from the Imperial Reader of the Taiping Era (Taiping yulan 太平御覽 Extensive hierarchical scheme of cosmic virtue, it seems unlikely that the scheme derives specifically Records of the Taiping Era (Taiping guangji 太平廣記 , 984) or the , 978) as some scholars propose. biji See Bretelle-Establet and Chemla, “Qu’était-ce qu’écrire,” 13–15; Fu, “A Contextual and Taxonomic83 Study,”Tung-p’o 6–9, 11–13;Chih-lin Fu, “The Flourishing of ,” 106.

84 Cf.Dongpo Hatch, zhilin “ ,” 282. ershi nian 二十年 shi’er nian 十二年 1595 preface.1. “Twenty years” ( ) appears to be a mistake for “twelve years” ( ), the actual duration of the period mentioned. biji 11th 153 notebooks ( ) and Shifting Boundaries of Knowledge in -Century China Even in notebooks without any apparent arrangement, one may discover stretches of this moral taxonomy in certain passages. But the semiotic moral geography of the notebook is implicit in all entries, regardless of their arrangement. Houshan’s Collected Talk (Houshan tancong 後山談叢 陳師道 In , 1101), Chen Shidao entries by plunging his reader directly into the frightful confusion at court during (1052–1101) defies every expectation of a hierarchical arrangement of his ­ dotes about frugal and upright ministers with accounts of corruption and factional the Liao invasions of 1004–1005. The remainder of the first fascicle matches anec ­

strife. Still, the fifth fascicle contains a series of anecdotes about the righteous Taken as a whole, moreover, Houshan’s Collected Talk presents a consistent 85if ness of Emperor Taizu and the perspicacity of Emperor Renzong (r. 1022–1063).

century notebooks. The second fascicle collects observations and anecdotes about unsystematic reflection on the themes and topics familiar from other eleventh- arts, crafts, and connoisseurship, and about the transfer of skills between different arts, enabled by general principles shared between them:

learnt how to handle his brush after seeing porters with shoulder poles Administrator Zhang [i.e., the famous calligrapher Zhang Xu, c. 658–748]­ ing General Cao perform the sword dance. Things cannot bestow human maneuver for the right of way, and he acquired his spirit from watch 86 Theskill; third skill fascicle comes offers from additional understanding examples things of such for oneself.transferred skills, but it also contains entries about anomalies, local traditions, medicine and natural observa­ tion, politics, imperial wisdom, and virtuous governance:

Because the groundwater in Western Zhe [the western and northwestern part of present Zhejiang province] is high, the region suffers when it rains Easternduring the Zhe spring the ground and the is summer.high and Aarid, local and proverb it dries says, as soon “When as thesummer rains pass.is dry, Therefore, get ready ifto the sheave; farmers when get rainautumn in spring, is dry, they get readyplow immediately, to leave.” In but often they do not get enough.

the child surpasses the mother, when it remains cool during the warm A proverb in Yingzhou [present Fuyang, Anhui province] says, “When­

season, and when the water retreats and the fish hide—all these condi tions are harbingers of a great flood.” The people of Yingzhou call an early

85 See Houshan tancong

86 Lidai minghua5.65–66. ji Billeter, The Chinese Art Ibid., 2.30. Cf. 9.176–77. On Zhang Xu, calligraphy, and dance, see , 176–82. 154 CHRISTIAN DE PEE

after day until it can increase no more, and if the water then stabilizes flood the “mother” and a later flood the “child.” When the water rises day

greatbefore numbers, returning, to andthe pointthis second where floodpeople is who greater live thanon the the banks first, get then bored the child has surpassed the mother. After a flood, fish generally appear in

withFurrows eating freshon farmland fish. But can when be eitherthe water horizontal retreats or and vertical. the fish The do peo not­ appear, they are said to be “hiding.” unsuitable for rice paddies, because it doesn’t retain water. ple call this “upstanding land” and “horizontal land.” Upstanding land is

the Thebelly family of the of present Xu Anshi jie [1058–1084]drum. owns a zun wine vessel inscribed to Bo Wu [of the Spring and Autumn period, 770–475 BCE]. It resembles­

The metal bell in the possession of the family of Zhou Yang, House hold Provisioner to [the Prince of?] Panyi [according to its inscription] has a volume of 10 dou and weighs 38 jin. But by current measurements, it holds only 3 dou and 4 sheng [22.5 liters] of water, and weighs only 19 jin [11.4 kilograms]. A proverb says, “In farming one fears a dry autumn as in life one dreads a poor old age.” Another proverb says, “When summer is dry, get ready to sheave; when autumn is dry, get ready to leave.” If it does not rain between Retiring Heat [August 23–24] and White Dew [September famine.8], the rice will not ripen even if it is in bloom. When the groundwater of the Wu87 region fails to accumulate, one disaster is sufficient to cause a Fascicles four through six exhibit the same variety as the third fascicle, as they take up a series of repeating themes: the limitations of human knowledge and ­

talent imposed by fate, violence, and unreason; truth and appearance; ritual com plications; music and painting; natural observation, empirical knowledge, and unexplained natural phenomena; medicine and technology; imperial virtue and effective governance; anomalies, regional traditions, factionalism, failure, banter, into an explicit hierarchy of categories, his notebook uses the same semiotic clas­ and jokes. In other words, although Chen Shidao has not organized his entries Records for Leisurely Conversations ­ ble centre of virtue and knowledge to an uncertain periphery of violence and sification as Wang Pizhi’s . It juxtaposes a sta unexplained phenomena. By collecting exemplary deeds, local knowledge, the insights of talented men, evidence of general principles, and unexplained phe­

nomena that will fit patterns to be discerned by later generations, he hopes to

87 Houshan tancong

3.44–45. biji 11th 155 notebooks ( ) and Shifting Boundaries of Knowledge in -Century China

periphery to the centre. contribute to the conquest of ignorance by knowledge and the assimilation of the Other eleventh-century authors similarly use the semiotic marginality of the notebook to transfer empirical knowledge of the periphery toward the written Matters Recorded in the Eastern Studio, for example, Fan Zhen wrote up not only his memories of court politics and his ideas about music, authority of the centre. In but also his recollections of the useful knowledge about local products, customs,

The loose entries gathered by Su Shi and printed posthumously in Dongpo’s Forest88 and technologies he had gathered during his official travels, especially in Sichuan. of Notes include records about local wisdom, medical knowledge, literary criti­ cism, physiognomy and divination, architecture, the technology of salt production in Sichuan, and irrigation projects on the Bian Canal. Shen Gua’s Talks with My Brush at Dream Brook collects detailed observations about natural phenomena, ­

music, astronomy, government, literary techniques, painting and calligraphy, car errors, wit and banter, foreigners, and rebels. Zhu Yu’s Conversation Matter from pentry, chess, arithmetic, medicine, antiques, and geology, as well as anomalies, Pingzhou Farm creates the impression that the89 complexity of a newly intercon­ nected world exceeds the established precedents of the Song court, as the violence ­

of factionalism defeats justice; misprints and misinterpretation afflict literary crit icism and the imperial examinations; maritime trade and foreign quarters require and animals, bizarre foods, and frivolous commodities into circulation. separate regulations; and travel and prodigious commerce bring strange plants

new or marginal to literati interests, but because their subject matter lacked a Notebooks required apologetic prefaces, not because their subject matter was place in the written tradition. Neither the prefaces nor the contents of eleventh- century notebooks hint that it was inappropriate for literati to tell ghost stories,

to recount court anecdotes, to discuss fine stationery, to collect antiques, or to This paradoxical situation—that literati lacked genres to write about topics of inquire about technology. The difficulty lay in putting these subjects into writing. personal interest and professional importance—was the result of a discrepancy between the symbolic value of inherited traditions and the use value of current interests and preferences. This discrepancy explains the consistent irony of the apologetic prefaces as well as the attraction of this marginal genre for famous Talks with My Brush authors and numerous readers. As Ronald Egan writes about Shen Gua’s : “a large percentage of his material … fell outside the conventional 88 See Dongzhai jishi preface.1. 89

Cf. Egan, “Shen Kuo Chats”; Fu, “A Contextual and Taxonomic Study”; Holzman, “Shen Kua,” 277–92. 156 CHRISTIAN DE PEE

­ boundaries of what historians and literati wrote about” and yet it was “widely and ished.90 By its marginality, the notebook created a place in writing for subjects that eagerly read,” causing it to survive while Shen Gua’s more conventional works per lay outside the literary tradition. Similar to the locks newly built on rivers and canals, notebooks admitted empirical knowledge and oral wisdom into writing and, having increased their subjects by classical prose, made them available for more elevated treatment.91

Conclusion Eleventh-century notebooks are records and products as well as instruments of Song-dynasty print culture. Shen Gua’s Talks with My Brush contains the old­ est known description of printing with movable type in world history, and other notebooks preserve rare observations about the changes created by printing in

culture that is the occasional subject of their contents, as the authors offered their practices of reading and writing. At the same time, notebooks presume the print miscellaneous observations as a contribution to the intellectual endeavours of their time. They increased the knowledge of their readers by preserving anec­ dotes of historical interest and by recording facts of practical value, but they also wrote down matters whose meaning or explanation was unknown, in hopes that future readers might discover their hidden principle. The paradoxes the authors addressed in their prefaces in fact extended to the notebook as a printed object, since the commercial value of their commoditized knowledge offered proof of a regime of use value that competed with the traditional hierarchy of symbolic value. By accommodating subjects that lacked a place in authoritative genres of ­ versation into classical prose and, in this provisional form, made them available writing, moreover, notebooks translated conventional topics of inquiry and con for new literary genres (besides encouraging their continued circulation in the

table talk of literati throughout the empire). ­ Finally, the notebook suggests a figure for the history of printing in China. Scholars have attempted to fit the notebook into universalised European nar endeavoured to write the history of woodblock printing in China by the univer­ ratives of scientific development and the birth of fiction, just as scholars have salised European standards of the letterpress and the victory of print over manu­ ­

script. If one understands genre as a matter of practical use rather than as a rei

90

91 Egan, “Shen Kuo Chats,” 150, 151. Science and Civilisation On the invention of locks during the Song dynasty, see Needham, “China and the Invention”; Needham, , 350–55. biji 11th 157 notebooks ( ) and Shifting Boundaries of Knowledge in -Century China

coherent genre that served a distinct practical function, its contents both diverse fied transcendental phenomenon, it becomes apparent that the notebook was a and changing, as the boundaries of legitimate written discourse shifted over time.92 ­ Woodblock printing, similarly, served distinct practical uses, its flexibility book. Because xylography developed consistently by the exploitation of principles as defining of its advantages as miscellaneousness is characteristic of the note that had long been familiar, one must assume that the pace of its development was determined by demand rather than by sudden invention, and that the print­ ing industry of the sixteenth century grew by the size of the readership rather

­ than the other way around. If officials during the Song dynasty despaired of all als discovered that they could earn a livelihood by retailing feathers or by selling the schemes that merchants devised to make a profit, and if enterprising individu ants to farmers who grew oranges, booksellers certainly would have anticipated

of increasing their sales. the marginal improvements by Ming-dynasty printers if they had been confident inherent characteristic of93 a useful technology rather than as an incidental attri­ If one understands the flexibility of xylography as an

of printing in China prohibits exceptionalist accounts of printing in Europe but bute of a deficient technique, one must conclude that, on the one hand, the history that, on the other hand, the history of printing in Europe may reveal very little about the history and the uses of printing in China. 94

92 Cf. Beebee, Ideology of Genre Intertexts See 93 Ducheng jishi Jilei; Hanks,bian , 133–64.Chinese Civilization Commerce and Society 100; 3.112. Cf. Ebrey, , 184; Shiba, Cf. Barrett, 94 Woman, 89–90. Who Discovered Invention of Printing , 26, 140; Blair, “Afterword,” 359; Carter, , 31–32; Chartier, “Gutenberg Revisited,” 1–5. Joseph Dane has argued that the disproportionate attention given to “monuments” such as the Gutenberg Bible has obscured The Myth of Print Culture the fluidity of texts and the difficulty of defining a “book” in the early history of printing in Europe; see Dane, , 57–58, 32–75. 158 CHRISTIAN DE PEE Bibliography

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Zhongzhou guji chubanshe, 2003. 168 CHRISTIAN DE PEE Christian de Pee

([email protected]) is an Associate Professor of History at the Uni­versity­ of Michigan, specialized in the history of the Middle Period of Chinese space, and self-representation has taken concrete form in a book about wedding history (800–1400 CE). His general interest in the relationship between text, time, ritual and in articles about ritual manuals, archaeology, writing and gender, histo­

in eleventh-century China, with the working title Losing the Way in the City: Urban riography, and cities. He is currently completing an intellectual history of the city Space, Subjectivity, and Intellectual Crisis in Middle-Period China, 800–1100.

Abstract when printing technology caused a radical change in the production or the trans­ Although it is difficult to identify a distinct moment in the Chinese past fer of knowledge, it is evident that beginning in the eleventh century the avail­ ability of printed texts transformed practices of reading and writing. The note­ book (biji 筆記

) was a product and a record as well as an instrument of these new practices of learning. As a genre defined by marginality—the symbolic marginality the indexical marginality of the typical title—the notebook could accommodate of its bibliographic classification, the iconic marginality of its varied content, and materials that did not have a place in other, more established genres of writing. Situated at the margins of written discourse, at the shifting boundaries of accept­ able subject matter, the notebook mediated between periphery and centre, speech and writing, empirical observation and book learning, vernacular wisdom and classical authority. Perceived from the literate centre, the notebook might appear as an instrument of empire, turning the periphery into writing and into a com­ modity, but perceived from the periphery, the notebook recalls the enduring com­ plementarity of speech and writing, of empirical knowledge and book learning, and of manuscript and print.

Keywords Notebooks, biji, Song dynasty, genre, semiotics, marginality, printing, manuscript, Guitian lu, Shengshui yantan lu, Houshan tancong