Tangzhiyan 唐摭言

Tangzhiyan 唐摭言 "Collected stories from the Tang" is a collection of short stories from the Tang period 唐 (618-907) written by the Five Dynasties period 五代 (907-960) scholar Wang Dingbao 王定保 (870-940). He came from Nanchang南昌 (modern Nanchang, Jiangxi) and was 容管巡官. When the Tang empire disintegrated, he served the Southern Han dynasty 南漢 as 甯遠節度使 and then 中書侍郎. The book is 15 juan "scrolls" long and reports mainly stories about the state examination system. Because it is very detailed in this matter, the Tangzhiyan can serve as a historiographical source. It also included a lot of quotations from the writings of more than one hundred poets and scholars, which can not be found in other sources. The Song period 宋 (960-1279) scholar Ji Yougong 計有功 therefore used the Tangzhiyan extensively for his anthology Tangshi jishi 唐詩紀事.
The Tangzhiyan was for a long time only circulating in the shape of manuscripts. The oldest preserved copy is owned by the Beijing Library 北京圖書館. The Tangzhiyan is to the found in the reprint series Baihai 稗海, Yayutang congshu 雅雨堂藏書, Xuejin taoyuan 學津討原 and Siku quanshu 四庫全書. In 1978 the Shanghai guji press 上海古籍出版社 published a modern version which includes Jiang Guangxu's 蔣光煦 text-critical annotations Tangzhiyan jiaokanji 唐摭言校勘記.