Jinyao choubi 金軺籌筆

Jinyao choubi 金軺籌筆 is a biji "brush notes"-style history of the negotiations on the border between China and Russia in 1880. The author of this book of 4 juan is not known, but quite probably belonged to the entourage of Zeng Jize 曾紀澤 (1839-1890), who was in 1880 dispatched to negotiate the return of the Ili region to China.

The treaty had been drafted by Chonghou 崇厚 (1827-1893). Zeng had diplomatic experience as an ambassador to Great Britain and France. During half a year's time he met ten times with the Russian Foreign Minister Nicholas de Giers (Nikolaj Karlovich Girs, Ch. Ge'ersi 格爾斯, 1820-1895) and the embassador Eugene Bützow (Evgenij Karlovich Bjutsov, Eugene de Bützow, Ch. Buce 布策 1837-1904). As a result, the Chinese-Russian Treatise on Ili (Zhong-E Yili tiaoyue 中俄伊犁條約, Ru. Договор об Илийском крае) of 1881, also called Treaty of Saint Petersburg, was concluded, as well as the statutes for border-trade (Zhong-E lulu tongshang zhangcheng 中俄陸路通商章程). A preliminary agreement between the two powers was called Treaty of Livadia (Liwajiya tiaoyue 里瓦幾亞條約, Ru. Ливадийский договор).

The book Jinyao choubi records the wording of several of the negotiations between the two sides. It was printed many times by various publishers. The most widespread are a print from 1887, the edition in the series Xiafanghuzhai yudi congchao 小方壺齋輿地叢抄, and a print from 1896 that bears the title Zhong-E jiaoshe ji 中俄交涉記. A print from the Republican period (1912-1949) is titled Yili dingyue Zhong-E tanhua lu 伊犁定約中俄談話錄.