Guixin zashi 癸辛雜識

Guixin zashi 癸辛雜識 "Miscellaneous news from Guixin [Street]" is a "brush notes" style (biji 筆記) collection of essays written by the Southern Song period 南宋 (1127-1279) scholar Zhou Mi 周密. It is 6 juan "scrolls" long and divided into 4 series (Qianji 前集, Houji 後集, Xuji 續集, and Bieji 別集). It was written in Zhou's house in Guixin Street 癸辛街 in Hangzhou 杭州 (modern Hangzhou, Zhejiang), hence the name of the collection. The collections describes a lot of contemporary persons, their stories and discussions and are based on conversations that Zhou Mi had on the sickbed with his visitors. A lot of stories can be serve as historiographical source of the life at the court of the Southern Song dynasty, similar to another writing by Zhou Mi, the book Qidong yeyu 齊東野語, but while the latter is mainly concerned with courts politics and ancient matters, the Guxin zashi more with personal affairs and literary remains. In the first collection, places in the gardens of Wuxing 吳興 (modern Suzhou 蘇州, Jiangsu) are described, the second gives an impression of the National University (taixue 太學) and includes information on the music in the capital Lin'an 臨安 (Hangzhou), in the third collection the reader finds a scene how Gong Kai 龔開 composed laudatory poems for Song Jiang 宋江 and his companions, and in the last collection it is told how Yang Ji 楊髠 desecrated the imperial tombs in Jiangnan 江南 (Nanjing 南京, Jiangsu).
There is a print included in the reprint series Baihai 稗海, in which the first collection is erroneously replaced by a part of the Qidong yeyu. The Guixin zashi can also be found in the series Jindai mishu 津逮秘書, Xuejin taoyuan 學津討原, and the Siku quanshu 四庫全書. A modern edition was published in 1988 by the Zhonga shuju press 中華書局, with annotations by Wu Qiming 吳企明.