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The Qingbao leichao 清稗類鈔 "Categorized anthology of petty matters from the Qing period" is an anthology of historiographical essays from the whole Qing period 清 (1644-1911) compiled by the early 20th century writer and poet Xu Ke 徐珂 (1869-1928). The book was finished in 1917 and published by the Shangwu yinshu press 商务印書館. This first edition was divided into 48 volumes in 8 series. A second edition from 1984 by the Zhonghua shuju press 中華書局 comprises 13 volumes. Xu Ke who, for some time, served the Yuan Shikai 袁世凱 government, has also written a lot of other, literary books like Xiaozilizhai wen 小自立齋文, Keyan 可言, Kangju biji 康居笔記, and has compiled the two series of the collectaneum Tiansuge congkan 天蘇閣叢刊.
The Qingbai leichao includes a large amount of inofficial historiographical sources, including parts of collected writings, "brush notes" style (biji 筆記) essays, stories and reports from the early Chinese newspapers. It imitates the collection Songbai leichao 宋稗类鈔 not only in the idea but also in the structure. It is divided into 92 chapters (the 1984 edition in 90 chapters) that each cover a specific encyclopedic theme, from astronomy and calendar to all aspects of statecraft like administrative geography, international relations, state rituals, educational system, military, judicional system, state offices, to human affairs like religion, matrimony, customs and habits, human character, language, handicrafts and professions, arts, literature, music, objects and tools, down to plants and animals. The whole collections includes 13,500 articles. It includes a preface by the compiler and one by the writer Zhu Zongyuan 諸宗元.
The content is extremely vast and includes all aspects of history, society, state, the arts and human life. It contains a lot of information on the Opium Wars, the Reform Movement of 1898 and the Revolution of 1911. The extracts and quotations from newspapers and gazettes are of special interest because they reflect the immediate reactions of society towards political matters and the discourses about contemporary issues, which are not dealt with in historiographic texts. The Qingbai leichao is not a historiographic work. That means that it does not evaluate the sources it makes use of. As a source book, nonetheless, it is a profound treasury. From this aspect, the old term yeshi 野史 "wild history" as something inofficial and therefore not reliable does not apply any more to the Qingbai leichao because it does not interprete history but only provides the historian with a lot of different sources. It is therefore a pity that the compiler did not pay more attention to an exact indicating of the origin of his sources. This is a weak point in the Qingbai leichao.
Sources:
Zhang Ronghua 張榮華 (1994). "Qingbai leichao 清稗類鈔", in: Zhongguo xueshu mingzhu tiyao 中國學術名著提要, Lishi 歷史, p. 473. Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe.
Zhao Hankun 趙含坤 (2005). Zhongguo leishu 中國類書, pp. 511-512. Shijiazhuang: Hebei renmin chubanshe.
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