Victor's Pursuit of Serenity Last Chapter

Zhang Xuecheng also proposed to establish a local chronicle department, that is, to set up a special official agency in prefectures and counties to compile local chronicles. Let us quote a large section of his idea:

"For the documents of the six departments, a general outline can be taken, and a copy can be recorded and kept; for officials and teachers, when they leave office, the good and bad deeds they have done in their daily lives can be recorded from beginning to end; among the subordinates, if a family compiles their genealogy, or someone writes their biography, a copy must be submitted; for the school teachers, public opinion must be verified and kept in the records; for the subordinates, if there are classics and history, poems and essays, they must submit a copy after discussion and compilation, and keep it in the records, and also record the departmental items; if there is any construction of government offices, city walls, schools, temples, dams and bridges, it must be reported to the records, and the details can be submitted; inscriptions on gold and stone, and private speeches, the originals must be polished and kept in the records; banquets, banquets, readings and lectures, and all other activities must record the official ranks and names of the people at the time, and record what they heard and saw."

From this passage, we can see the general idea of   how the ancients collected information. Today, the local history and chronicle offices have a lot of Zhang Xuecheng's legacy. The work is hard and the number of staff is not small. Why are the new chronicles they compile so boring? I think the author of the local chronicle is very important. The county chronicles of the Ming Dynasty are often not as good as those of the Qing Dynasty, because many outstanding scholars in the Qing Dynasty regarded writing local chronicles as a personal event. These people were highly educated and their chronicles were naturally outstanding. In the Ming Dynasty, few great scholars participated in the matter, so the county had to invite local Confucian scholars. If this was a well-educated person, the people in the county were lucky. Unfortunately, such luck is not always available. The writers are often half-baked private tutors who sit there every day copying here and there to cheat some pig heads to eat.

In Zhang Xuecheng's idea, after the historical records section had accumulated the data, "they would find someone who was good at literature and history, and edit them into a book." He may not have realized the importance of this point. Nowadays, few new chronicles do this. They are all staff members of the historical records office, each in charge of a subject, and they put together a book, which is called collective editing. Therefore, we cannot see personal opinions, historical sense, or the author's intentions in the chronicles. I have never seen a good book written by a group, and this is not only the case for local chronicles. I only hope that in the future there will be a new chronicle written by one person, which is better to be partial and useful than to be correct and irrelevant.

I had the honor of seeing the local chronicle office in the county once. The office is located in the most remote corner of the government building. Even the sign on the door seems smaller than other offices (in fact, they are the same size). The staff inside are polite and courteous. Most of their equipment and furniture are worn out, which seems to be thrown here after being used by other departments. According to them, the annual funds are not enough. They ride bicycles to various places to collect information. They have to smile and the other party may not pay attention to them. Maybe this is not a common situation.