Zhongguo shuili yaoji congbian 中國水利要籍叢編

Zhongguo shuili yaoji congbian 中國水利要籍叢編 "Collectanea of Important Chinese Writings on River Conservancy" is a geographical series of collectanea (congshu 叢書) focusing on river conservancy. It was compiled during the years 1969-1970 by Shen Yunbian 沈雲龍 (1909-1987). The series includes five series with a total number of 50 texts from the Yuan 元 (1279-1368), Ming 明 (1368-1644) and Qing 清 (1644-1911) periods and the early Republican era (1911-1949).

The books in the series speak about hydraulic engineering, dam construction, the maintenance of canals, tools and implements used for river conservancy, and provide a large amount of maps of various problematic rivers and canals in China, particularly the Yellow River, Huai River 淮河, and the Grand Canal. A lot of texts have the character of local gazetteers, while others have a more jurisdictional character or belong to the genre of historiography.

Only four texts date from the pre-Qing time, thirty from the Qing, and a dozen or so from the Republican era. One book, namely Wu Bangqing's 吳邦慶 (1765-1848) Jifu hedao shuili congshu 畿輔河道水利叢書 is a series itself, including nine books, to that the real number of texts in Shen's collection amounts to 58. The series of Wu Bangqing consists of excerpts of other texts, like the Yixian qinwang shuchao 怡賢親王疏鈔 (from Jifu tongzhi 畿輔通志), Shuili yingtian tushuo 水利營田圖説 (from Huifu tongzhi 徽輔通志), or Zenong yaolu 澤農要錄 (with excerpts from the Qimin yaoshu 齊民要術 and other books).

Among the treatises and documents in Shen Yunlong's series, many are important for the history of water conservation during the late imperial period, but are rarely found in other collections. Such are Pan Shi'en's 潘世恩 (1769-1854) Xu xingshui jinjian 續行水金鑑, Kang Jitian's 康基田 (1732-1813) Hequ jiwen 河渠紀聞, Qiu Buzhou's 邱步洲 Hegong jianyao 河工簡要, Liu E's 劉鶚 (1857-1909) Lidai Huanghe bianqian tukao 歷代黃河變遷圖考 or the non-published writings of Pan Junwen 潘駿文 (d. 1893), Pan Fangbo yigao 潘方伯遺稿. The Republican texs Qingdai hechen zhuan 淸代河臣傳, a biographical collection of high officials responsible for river conservation, the sequel Zaixu xingshui jinjian 再續行水金鑑 and the illustrated history Gujin zhihe tushuo 古今治河圖說, are also very important.