Chinese classic texts or canonical texts or simply dianji (典籍) refers to the Chinese texts which originated before the imperial unification by the Qin dynasty in 221 BC, particularly the "Four Books and Five Classics" of the Neo-Confucian tradition, themselves a customary abridgment of the "Thirteen Classics". All of these pre-Qin texts were written in either Old or Classical Chinese. All three canons are collectively known as the Classics.
The Qianlong Emperor, also known by his temple name Emperor Gaozong of Qing, personal name Hongli, was the fifth emperor of the Qing dynasty and the fourth Qing emperor to rule over China proper. He reigned officially from 1735 until his abdication in 1796, but retained ultimate power subsequently until his death in 1799, making him one of the longest-reigning monarchs in history as well as one of the longest-lived.
The Yongle Encyclopedia or Yongle Dadian is a largely-lost Chinese leishu encyclopedia commissioned by the Yongle Emperor of the Ming dynasty in 1403 and completed by 1408. It comprised 22,937 manuscript rolls or chapters, in 11,095 volumes. Fewer than 400 volumes survive today, comprising about 800 chapters (rolls), or 3.5 percent of the original work.
Huangdi Neijing, literally the Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor or Esoteric Scripture of the Yellow Emperor, is an ancient Chinese medical text or group of texts that has been treated as a fundamental doctrinal source for Chinese medicine for more than two millennia. The work comprises two texts—each of eighty-one chapters or treatises in a question-and-answer format between the mythical Yellow Emperor and six of his equally legendary ministers.
Dai Zhen was a Chinese philosopher of the Qing dynasty. Hailing from Xiuning, Anhui Dai was a versatile scholar who made great contributions to mathematics, geography, phonology and philosophy. His philosophical and philological critiques of Neo-Confucianism continue to be influential. In 1733, Dai was recruited by scholar Ji Yun to be one of the editors of the official encyclopedia and collection of books, Siku Quanshu.
The History of Ming is the final official Chinese history included in the Twenty-Four Histories. It consists of 332 volumes and covers the history of the Ming dynasty from 1368 to 1644. It was written by a number of officials commissioned by the court of Qing dynasty, with Zhang Tingyu as the lead editor. The compilation started in the era of the Shunzhi Emperor and was completed in 1739 in the era of the Qianlong Emperor, though most of the volumes were written in the era of the Kangxi Emperor.
The leishu is a genre of reference books historically compiled in China and other East Asian countries. The term is generally translated as "encyclopedia", although the leishu are quite different from the modern notion of encyclopedia.
CrossAsia is an internet portal offering access to printed and electronic resources concerning Asian studies to individuals affiliated to a German institution which is part of the Blauer Leihverkehr. CrossAsia is being created and supervised by the East Asia Department of Berlin State Library, until 2015 the responsible library for East- and Southeast Asia (6,25) within the special research collection programme of the German Research Foundation. Information is presented as well in Latin as in Asian script.
Chinese encyclopedias comprise both Chinese language encyclopedias and foreign language ones about China or Chinese topics. There is a type of native Chinese reference work called leishu that is sometimes translated as "encyclopedia", but although these collections of quotations from classic texts are expansively "encyclopedic", a leishu is more accurately described as a "compendium" or "anthology". The long history of Chinese encyclopedias began with the Huanglanleishu and continues with online encyclopedias such as the Baike Encyclopedia.
Complete Tang Poems is the largest collection of Tang poetry, containing some 49,000 lyric poems by more than twenty-two hundred poets. In 1705, it was commissioned at the direction of the Qing dynasty Kangxi Emperor and published under his name. The Complete Tang Poems is the major reservoir of surviving Tang dynasty poems, from which the pre-eminent shorter anthology, Three Hundred Tang Poems, is largely drawn.
Ji Yun, also known as Ji Xiaolan or Ji Chunfan was a Chinese philosopher, politician, and writer. He was an influential scholar of Qing dynasty China and many anecdotes have been recorded about him. Ji Yun left behind a book entitled Notes of the Thatched Abode of Close Observations (閱微草堂筆記) and another book named Wenda Gong Yiji, which was edited by later generations. He was often mentioned with Yuan Mei as the "Nan Yuan Bei Ji".
Jigu suanjing was the work of early Tang dynasty calendarist and mathematician Wang Xiaotong, written some time before the year 626, when he presented his work to the Emperor. Jigu Suanjing was included as one of the requisite texts for Imperial examination; the amount of time required for the study of Jigu Suanjing was three years, the same as for The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art and Haidao Suanjing.
The Ten Computational Canons was a collection of ten Chinese mathematical works, compiled by early Tang dynasty mathematician Li Chunfeng (602–670), as the official mathematical texts for imperial examinations in mathematics.
The Siku Quanshu Zongmu Tiyao, or the Annotated Bibliography of the Four Treasuries, is an annotated catalog of the thousands of works that were considered for inclusion in the Siku Quanshu. Work for the 200-chapter catalog began in 1773 and was completed in 1798. The Annotated Bibliography of the Four Treasuries is the largest pre-modern Chinese book catalog. It contains bibliographic notices on all 3,461 works that were included in the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries, as well as shorter notes on 6,793 works that were not included in the imperial library but listed only by title. Thousands of books are omitted from the catalog, including the almost 3,000 works that were destroyed by the Qing because they were considered to be anti-Manchu. The notices themselves were written by many hands, but the final drafts were edited by chief editor Ji Yun. The content of the annotated catalog reflects the strength of Han learning in Qing scholarly circles.
The Yunji qiqian is a anthology of the (1016) Taoist Canon, which the Taoist scholar-official Zhang Junfang compiled for Emperor Zhenzong of Song. The Yunji qiqian records many early Taoist texts that have been lost since the 11th century, and is an important resource for understanding medieval Taoism.
The Yuanhe Xingzuan is an imperial Tang dynasty register of the genealogies of China's prominent families. It was compiled by Lin Bao (林寶), on the order of Emperor Xianzong, whose era name was Yuanhe. The book was completed in 812 and records 1,232 surnames.
Jiangnan, formerly romanized as Kiangnan, was a historical province of the early Qing dynasty of China. Its capital was Jiangning, from which it is sometimes known as Nanjing or Nanking Province. Established in 1645 during the Qing conquest of Ming, it administered the area of the earlier Ming province of Nanzhili, reaching from north of the Huai River—at the time the course of the Yellow River—to south of the Yangtze River in East China. Its territory was later divided into the separate provinces of Jiangsu and Anhui during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (1736–1795), although the exact timing is disputed. Under the Republic and People's Republic of China, an area of Jiangsu also became the provincial-level municipality of Shanghai.
The High Qing era, or simply the High Qing, refers to the golden age of the Qing dynasty between 1683 and 1799. China was ruled by the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong Emperors in this period, during which the prosperity and power of the empire grew to new heights.
Zhu Yun was a preeminent Qing scholar and official who had profound influence on the Imperial Library in Four Treasures project and academia of the time.
The Wenlan Pavilion, also known as the Imperial Wenlan Library, Imperial Library or Wenlan Ge, is a library and garden located in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. The library was one of the seven major collections of books built by the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing dynasty to house the Siku Quanshu and the only surviving one among the southern collections.
