Fengchuang xiaodu 楓窗小牘

Fengchuang xiaodu 楓窗小牘 "Petty documents from the maple window", also written 楓窻小牘, is a biji 筆記 "brush notes" style book written by the Song period 宋 (960-1279) scholars Yuan Jiong 袁絅 and Yuan Yi 袁頤 (the latter probably supplementing it). Both persons are not recorded in historiographic sources, and there is nothing known about their lives. The 2 juan "scrolls" long book includes a lot of stories of the Northern Song 北宋 (960-1126) capital Bianjing 汴京 (modern Kaifeng 開封, Henan), with a description of its temples and shrines, the city wall, the canals and the inhabitants. The information in the Fengchuang xiaodu is quite reliable, and it can serve as a source on the history of the social and urban history of the Song period. It was nevertheless classified as a novella (xiaoshuo 小說) by the compilers of the imperial reprint series Siku quanshu 四庫全書. The text is also to be found in the series Baoyantang miji 寶顏堂秘笈, Tang-Song congshu 唐宋叢書, Shuofu 說郛, Gujin shuobu congshu 古今說部叢書, Shuoku 說庫, Congshu jicheng chubian 叢書集成初編 and Baihai 稗海. In the latter the author is called Baisui yuweng 百歲寓翁.