Zhang Han (张瀚) had an official career that had spanned forty years and taken him all over the empire, from the Nanjing shipyards to Fujian, Shaanxi, Sichuan, and the capital. He was a man who knew many things. After retiring to Hangzhou, he tells us, “I spent long days at the Pine Window, writing things out as the brush goes, partly to examine into myself, and partly to pass down to those who come after me.” The result was his Dream Talk by the Pine Window (松窗梦语). There was a history of such works going back at least to the Song; they are generally categorized as biji or “brush records,” a genre so broad in name as to be almost useless, and they are usually miscellanies with no sense of organization. Zhang Han’s Pine Window, however, begins with a geographic overview of the empire based on his travels as an official, and runs neatly through the universe down to his dreams and examination of self. It thus is both a personal memoir and a comprehensive encyclopedia of knowledge. What does that suggest is worth passing down from a life? Is an official what he knows? If a memoir becomes an encyclopedia, does its writer disappear? And where does this lie in the Ming dynasty landscape of organized knowledge?

About the speaker:

Philip Kafalas is an associate professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures in the College, and a member of the faculty advisory committee for the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues. Kafalas published In Limpid Dream: Nostalgia and Zhang Dai’s Reminiscences of the Ming (2007). His teaching and research interests center on classical and pre-modern Chinese literature, as well as advanced modern Chinese language.