Houshan tancong 後山談叢

Houshan tancong 後山談叢 is a "brush-notes-style" (biji 筆記) book written during the Northern Song period 北宋 (960-1126) by Chen Shidao 陳師道 (1053－1101), courtesy name Lüchang 字履 or Wuji 無己, style Houshan Xiansheng 後山先生, from Pengcheng 彭城 (today's Xuzhou 徐州, Jiangsu). Chen was famous for his poetry and is named as one of the Disciples (Su men liu junzi 蘇門六君子) of Su Dongpo 蘇東坡 (Shu Shi 蘇軾, 1037-1101), to which also Huang Tingjian 黃庭堅 (1045-1105), Qin Guan 秦觀 (1049-1100), Zhang Lai 張來 (1054-1114), Chao Buzhi 晁補之 (1053-1110), and Li Jian 李薦 (1059-1109) belong. The Tang-period 唐 (618-907) master Du Fu 杜甫 (712-770) inspired Chen's poetry, but his style is close to Huang Tingjian's works. Chen was an educational instructor in Lizhou 棣州 (modern Xuzhou) and later proofreader in the Palace Library (bishusheng zhengzi 祕書省正字). His collected writings are called Houshan ji 後山集. Of these, the poetry critique Houshan shihua 後山詩話, is most important.

Some scholars attributed the authorship of the 4-juan-long Houshan tancong to Lu You 陸游 (1125-1210), as a kind of precursor of his Laoxue'an biji 老學庵筆記, but Yu Jiaxi 余嘉錫 (1884-1955) demonstrated that Chen's disciple Wei Yan 魏衍 explicitly mentions both the shihua, and the tancong, as writings of Chen Shidao. In the bibliographical chapters of the official dynastic history Songshi 宋史 (202-209 Yiwen zhi 藝文志), the Houshan tancaong is found in the section of biographies (zhuanji lei 傳記類), with the title Houshan Jushi congtan 後山居士叢談.

Chen's book includes 271 brief chapters on a wide range of political issues, including border defence matters, court events, or stories about writers. Some parts of the book also deal with painting. The writing style of Chen Shidao is clear and lucid but still elegant, and the book can thus be rated as a good piece of literature. The content of the stories cannot be entirely relied on, as Hong Mai 洪邁 (1123-1202) says in his Rongzhai suibi 容齋隨筆.

The text is found in the series Siku quanshu 四庫全書, Baoyantang miji 寶顏堂秘笈, Tang-Song congshu 唐宋叢書, Shuofu 說郛, Xuehai leibian 學海類編 and Congshu jicheng chubian 叢書集成初編. In 1989 the Shanghai Guji Press 上海古籍出版社 published a modern annotated version in a joint edition with Zhu Yu's 朱彧 (early 12th cent.) Pingzhou ketan 萍州可談.