Casual Records of the Nenggai Studio


The biji Nenggai zhai manlu was written by Wu Zeng during the Song Dynasty. Wu Zeng was patronised by the politician Qin Hui, and the text correspondingly often glorifies Qin Hui. Published in year twenty-seven of the Shaoxing reign of the Southern Song, the work originally comprised around twenty booklets.

Contents

The current edition comprises eighteen themed juan arranged in thirteen chapters; a humorous section has been lost. Many of the themes were conventional to notebooks of the time. They include:
  • 1: The beginning of things, part 1
  • 2: The beginning of things, part 2
  • 3: Correction of errors, part 1
  • 4: Correction of errors, part 2
  • 5: Correction of errors, part 3
  • 6: Events, part 1
  • 7: Events, part 2
  • 8: 沿襲
  • 9: Geography, including geographical changes since antiquity
  • 10: Discussions
  • 11: Records of poetry, situating poetry in its social contexts
  • 12: 記事, part 1
  • 13: 記事, part 2
  • 14: Records and Writings, Similarities
  • 15: Regional things, including the wonders of nature found in different places.
  • 16: Yuefu poems, part 1
  • 17: Yuefu poems, part 2
  • 18: Spirits and ghosts, including supernatural wonders
The text often constitutes text-critical study and contains a great deal of literary material from the Tang and Song dynasties. It is also an important source for the history of Chinese eating and drinking culture, especially the Tang and Song dynasties, and of the Pearl Temple.

Reception

It appears that, perhaps because Wu Zeng fell into political disfavour, Casual Records of the Nenggai Studio fell out of print from the Yuan period, if not before. However, Ming period scholars found texts of the work and it returned to circulation.

Editions

The work is included in many old book collections and also in the book series on Chinese eating and drinking culture called Zhongguo pengren guji congkan.