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The Guiqianzhi 歸潛志 "Memories in Retirement" is a privetly written history of the last years of the Jin dynasty 金 (1115-1234) and Mongols' conquest of northern China. The author is Liu Qi 劉祁 whose father was an official in the central government of the Jin empire. Li started writing down his memories of the Jin court after the conquest of the capital Kaifeng 開封 (modern Kaifeng, Henan) in order to remember the old days and the many persons he had met. His book is 14 juan "scrolls" long.
In the first ten chapters Liu Qi describes the life of the Jin court as he had observed it. The eleventh chapter gives an account of the Mongol siege of Kaifeng 開封, the southern capital of the Jin empire, the twelfth chapter describes how general Cui Li 崔立 surrendered to the Mongols. He also tries to find reasons for the downfall of the Jin dynasty. In the last chapters Liu Qi collects a lot of quotations from other persons, and also some poems by contemporaries.
Liu Qi's Guiqianzhi is an earnest account of the last decade of the dynasty that ruled over northern China as opponent to the glorious Song dynasty 宋 (960-1279) in the south of China. When the official dynastic history of the Jin dynasty, the Jinshi 金史, was compiled under the direction of the Mongolian Toqto 脫脫, the compilers made extensive use of the internal material provided by Liu Qi's memories, like assessments of the Jin government's military system, the influence of eunuchs on the central government, or the behaviour of the chief minister during the court's flight from Kaifeng. Other writers like Li Zhichun 李之純, Zhao Bingwen 趙秉文, or Wang Yu 王郁 also relied on the memories of Liu Qi. His book has nevertheless traditionally been categorized as novel, not as history, probably because of its loose arrangement.
Source: Cui Wenyin 崔文印 (1992). "Guiqianzhi 歸潛志", in: Zhongguo da baike quanshu 中國大百科全書, Zhongguo lishi 中國歷史, vol. 1, pp. 276277. Beijing/Shanghai: Zhongguo da baike quanshu chubanshe.
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