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The Kuaizi 蒯子 "Master Kuai" is a political treatise written by the early Han period 漢 (206 BCE-220 CE) politician Kuai Tong 蒯通. His actual name was Kuai Che 蒯徹, but historians changed his name to Tong because Emperor Wu 漢武帝 (r. 141-87 BCE) had the same personal name, Liu Che 劉徹. Kuai Tong might have hailed from the region of Yan 燕 (modern Hebei), but he was also known as a dialectician and coalition advisor from the state of Qi 齊. It is known that he has written 81 essays called Juanyong 雋永. The imperial bibliography Yiwenzhi 藝文志 in the official dynastic history Hanshu 漢書 mentions the 5 chapters long book Kuaizi, but not the Juanyong. It might be that both were the same book. The Kuaizi was already lost during the Tang period 唐 (618-907). The Qing period 清 (1644-1911) scholar Ma Guohan 馬國翰 collected statements about Kuai Tong from various historiographical sources and so compiled a short collection of (non-original) fragments that he published in his reprint series Yuhan shanfang yiji shu 玉函山房輯佚書 under the title of Kuaizi.
Source: Li Xueqin 李學勤, Lü Wenyu 呂文鬰 (1996). Siku da cidian 四庫大辭典, vol. 2, p. 1880. Changchun: Jilin daxue chubanshe.
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Chinese literature according to the four-category system
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