Encyclopaedias and Handbooks (leishu lei 類書類)

Encyclopaedias and Handbooks (leishu lei 類書類) is a subcategory in traditional Chinese bibliographies and part of the category of Masters and Philosophers (zibu 子部). The Chinese term leishu designates a book explaining selected topics by quoting ancient literature talking about the respective theme. Most "encyclopaedias" are divided into chapters the sequence and content of which soon obtained a fixed character. They commonly begin with Heaven/sky and astronomy, geography, proceed to a wide range of themes on statecraft and human affairs and end with objects of daily life as well as zoology and botany. They quote from all kinds of literature, from the Confucian Classics, historiographical books and the "masters". While some leishu are general overviews, some leishu-type books focus on poetry or other topics. Quite a few authors went over from quotations to writing explanations of particular lemmata in verses and thus contributed to the development of textbooks written in verses to make learning easier. Apart from thematical arrangement, there is the option to arrange lemmata phonetically or according to the shape of characters.

The oldest book identified as a leishu was Cao Pi's 曹丕 (now lost) Huanglan 皇覽. Of the many Tang-period 唐 (618-907) encyclopaedias, the Beitang shuchao 北堂書鈔, Yiwen leiju 藝文類聚, Chuxueji 初學記 and Baishi liutie 白氏六貼 created the fundaments for the standard format of enyclopaedias. For modern scholars, leishu are of great importance because they usually quote from ancient texts. In this way, discrepancies in wording can be detected, and texts can be at least partially reconstructed that are long since lost. Song-period 宋 (960-1279) scholars produced a large amount of leishu of which the "four large encyclopaedias" (Song si da shu 宋四大書) are very famous. Of these, the Taiping guangji 太平廣記 is a thematically arranged collection of stories of the "strange", and the Wenyuan yinghua 文苑英華 a literary anthology. The most important Ming-period 明 (1368-1644) encyclopaedia is the Yongle dadian 永樂大典, Chinas largest encyclopaedia ever compiled. Only a few volumes survive unfortunately. The Kangxi Emperor 康熙 (r. 1661-1722) had the book Gujin tushu jicheng 古今圖書集成 compiled, the greatest collection of knowledge in the early 18th century.

The leishu section of the imperial series Siku quanshu 四庫全書 includes 65 books.