Victor Cunrui Xiong’s translation of Liu Zhiji’s Shitong (A Thorough Exploration in Historiography) is yet one more sign that we are at the dawn of a new age of translation that will lay the groundwork for the next century of Sinology in the West. Shitong is the oldest extant work of Chinese critical historiography, so the translation is also a profound contribution to the field of Chinese historiography, which has had a few notable advances in the English-language world in the last decade or so.Footnote 1 Liu Zhiji (661–721) was a Tang court historian who argued that by his own time only the historical traditions of the Zuozhuan and The History of the Han, of the six earlier traditions of history writing, were still active, that is to say, the “Chronological” and the “Annals-Biographies” forms (xxxiv). He was extremely skeptical of even the classics and was willing to point to faults in works attributed to Confucius’ editorship, like the Chunqiu and the Shangshu. In twenty “books” with many subsections, Liu discusses several hundred different texts and critiques the respective accounts and methodologies employed in them.
Professor Xiong’s work is important on many levels beyond simply that of a first-class piece of scholarship and translation. The University of Washington Press is owed a debt of gratitude for publishing the translation with the original text alongside it, amplifying the scholarly value of the resulting book and setting a high standard for future dual-language publications. The book itself weighs in at 1,041 pages (no, I did not actually weigh it in pounds), physically manifesting its monumentality. It will no doubt become a standard work on all Sinologists’ bookshelves.
Professor Xiong provides an introduction laying out the early history of Chinese historiography from texts ascribed to the Shang and Zhou up the Tang dynasty, followed by an overview of historiographical thinking. Both of these short sections are valuable in themselves, and they establish the critical place of the Shitong in Chinese historiography. The remaining sections of the translator’s introduction discuss the work’s reception in its day, its arguments, and later reevaluations of its value. Professor Xiong is careful to present the strengths and weaknesses of the work. Liu Zhiji’s arguments and criticisms of his predecessors were not universally accepted, and for good reason. He took strong, even radical, positions on history writing and historians that established him as a distinct voice in historiography. Unbeknownst to Liu, the Shitong would survive as the oldest extant work on historiography in later dynasties. Indeed, he was concerned that the book would be forgotten, since educated men in his own time were not just ambivalent but extremely critical of it. Only a few men saw its value, forcing Liu to write a defense of the work, “Interpretation of Ignorance” (xxix). The main reason that the Shitong was preserved was that after Liu’s disgrace and death, Emperor Xuanzong ordered a copy to be made and presented to the court. The emperor was impressed with the work and gave Liu a posthumous appointment and title.
Perhaps because of its extreme positions on history, the Shitong attracted contrarians over the succeeding centuries. While several Tang, Song, and Ming historians took the time to criticize Liu and detail the mistakes he made in the Shitong, Professor Xiong argues that others like Ouyang Xiu, were strongly influenced by it (xliii). I am not fully convinced by this argument with respect to writing style, given the many other factors that drove Ouyang Xiu’s stylistic choices, but it does apply to the “Hereditary Houses” and “Astronomy” sections in the histories. What is clear, and what makes the Shitong so valuable in its accessible translated form, is that most or virtually all serious historians at least read the Shitong. It was not a book that could be ignored.
Liu Zhiji himself served in government beginning in 699, having received his jinshi degree in 680. He was appointed to the Historiography Bureau in 702 shortly before Wu Zetian fell from power in 705. Professor Xiong suggests that Liu’s joy at his access to historical documents was tempered by his low evaluation of the other officials. This reading is based upon Liu’s 708 letter of resignation. Liu expressed considerable disgust with his colleagues in the letter, but as Miao Xiaojing has pointed out, it would be a mistake to read the letter or its later revision transparently.Footnote 2 The Shitong and Liu’s resignation letter were written in a time of great political uncertainty. Liu was trying to distinguish himself as an upstanding and objective historian unconnected to the recently overthrown Wu Zetian, Empress Wei, Princess Taiping, and their political faction. He in fact expressed great respect for several of the other historians who worked in the Historiography Bureau in other writings. Liu’s letter, like the Shitong itself, has also to be read in its literary context. As Liu himself discussed, the stylistic and literary qualities of history writing were critically important.
What then was Liu’s vision of history writing and historians? He believed that a good historian had to have three things: talent, knowledge, and insight. Talent was the ability to write history well, in contrast to writing literature. That capability was only valuable when coupled with extensive knowledge of history. Either of these qualities by itself was sterile. He did not, however, define what he meant by “insight” (xxvi–xxvii), an odd omission when setting out an overall critique of historians as a class. Much of the thrust of Liu’s argument was that histories written by groups were inferior to those written by an accomplished individual. In this sense we can see how someone like Ouyang Xiu and later individual historians would find Liu’s views sympathetic. Writing history as part of a committee within a bureaucracy was a recipe for indecision, incoherence, and delay, Liu wrote (341–343). As a genre, good history reflected the vision, perhaps that elusive “insight,” of an individual.
Liu’s resignation letter was rejected or at least ignored, and its effect on his status is unknown. The letter had probably circulated among his acquaintances before being submitted, and it may not have been taken very seriously in its avowed purpose of resigning. He remained employed at the Historiography Bureau and produced the Shitong in 710. The letter itself was appended to the Shitong in 713, though it is unknown how much it was changed from its original form beyond the addition of an introductory and concluding paragraph. As with so many autobiographical letters, particularly those of historians self-consciously constructing their qualifications as historians—Sima Qian’s Ren’an shu being Exhibit A—Liu’s account of his circumstances cannot be read as a simple statement of fact.
Fundamentally, the Shitong tries to define history-writing as a genre distinct from literature while not giving historians a pass on poor writing. Liu writes in his discussion of the “Narration of Events”: “Alas, aren’t talented historians extremely hard to find? That being so, within a book written by a single author, there are varying contents, ranging from good to bad and fine to coarse” (209). Liu goes on to critique Sima Qian and Ban Gu, pointing out that some sections of their works were good and others not. However, he writes, “if the language of an event is ugly, its history tends to be inferior. If the event itself is beautiful, the writing about it tends to be artful.” (209). Although many historians have been aware of the difficulty of writing elegant accounts of unpleasant events, Liu Zhiji chose to highlight it, though only as a critique without suggesting a solution.
The Shitong is long and dense. Without this excellent translation with extensive notes and supplementary comments very few people would casually engage with it. There are four main reasons for investing the time to read this translation. First, Shitong is the earliest extant study of Chinese historiography, and the first extant historiography in any language. Second, it was read by all serious historians in China since the Tang dynasty. Third, Professor Xiong’s translation with accompanying notes is an example of Sinology at its very best. And fourth, Liu Zhiji was such a cantankerous critic that he often makes a modern historian look credulous and kind. We must recognize that there were always both supporters and severe critics of the histories and great historians among the educated class in premodern China.
Professor Xiong has completed a mammoth task with skill and a vast amount of work. Liu Zhiji was a foundational thinker in China on the nature of history though his work was controversial enough to never achieve “classical” status. While some pre-modern readers thought he was very insightful, others were less impressed. This is in many ways what makes this translation so valuable. Up until now most translated works have been classics or works of central importance that were unquestioned cultural artifacts. With his translation of the Shitong Professor Xiong has opened the door to easily read a book that was not quite so central or classic. In so doing, we can begin to see a future Sinology that engages with a broader range of texts, and dare we hope, a future when non-Sinologists no longer have an excuse to ignore the vast corpus of Chinese works written after the Qin founded the empire.
