This book is a study of the Wang shi jianwen lu (Things seen and heard by Wang, p. 4) and Yutang xianhua (Table talk from the Hanlin Academy), two works written by Wang Renyu. Dudbridge treats these anecdotal works as personal memoirs and establishes them as first-hand sources for a historical period for whose understanding one usually has to rely on texts compiled during the Song dynasty. The book is not a record of the Five Dynasties in the strict sense, but consists of what are mainly personal recollections of a member of the bureaucratic elite who served the Former Shu, as well as four of the Five Dynasties.
Dudbridge uses entries from the Wangshi jianwenlu in the Taiping guangji, a Korean text entitled T'ae p'yong kwang ki sang chol, and from the Yongle dadian (p. 251). For Yutang xianhua entries he additionally relies on the Leishuo and a restored version of the text based on available fragments, compiled by Pu Xiangming. Both texts are also available in the Wudai shishu huibian (Hangzhou, 2004), in vol. 4 (Wangshi jianwen lu) and Vol. 10 (Yutang xianhua), respectively, which may offer easier access to the reader interested in following Dudbridge's translations.
The main text consists of 191 pages and is organized into nine chapters. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to Wang Renyu and his writings (pp. 1–38), while chapter 2 stresses the importance of Wang's texts as originating from oral communications. The following seven chapters deal with seven major topics. Chapter 3 describes the metaphysical world Wang and his contemporaries imagined, chapter 4 records military conflicts, chapter 5 is on the state of the Former Shu where Wang started his career, chapter 6 contains information on the decline of the Former Shu, chapter 7 brings together information on the Khitan, chapter 8 is on music, and chapter 9 gives information on the natural environment. These chapters are followed by a complete translation of the epitaph by Li Fang for Wang Renyu (Appendix A), abstracts of entries in Wang's works (Appendix B), listings of Wang's works in catalogues of the Song in Chinese (Appendix C), and a short note on musical notation (Appendix D).
The bibliography includes more recent works on the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period with the exception of, among others, Peter Lorge (ed.), Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (Hong Kong, 2011). Titles listed in the bibliography are not necessarily referred to in the footnotes of the main text.
The organization of the book is reminiscent of Dudbridge's Religious Experience and Lay Society in T'ang China: A Reading of Tai Fu's “Kuang-i chi” (Cambridge, 1996). In the main text he refers to abstracts of the entries in the original texts by numbers. This facilitates reading the text, but it also means that one has to flip through the appendix to find the abstract of the entry in question.
Dudbridge is interested in how his subject Wang Renyu observed his social, bureaucratic, cultural, and natural surroundings. He does not discuss distinctions between the northern “dynasties” and the southern “kingdoms”, of which the Former Shu was a part, and thus applies the term “Five Dynasties” to the whole period. That is debatable given that, for instance, Denis Twitchett and Paul J. Smith (eds), The Cambridge History of China, vol. 5, part 1: The Sung Dynasty and Its Precursors, 907–1279 (Cambridge, 2009), offer the histories of the dynasties and kingdoms in two different chapters. A more substantial discussion of early Song official historiography, only briefly referred to on pp. 1–2, and its impact on modern history writing, would have been beneficial for the reader's understanding of the context as well as the value of Wang's text. After all, Dudbridge refers to Song sources throughout the book.
Similarly Dudbridge largely ignores questions relating to political legitimacy that the same sources established in different degrees for northern and southern regimes, because Wang Renyu obviously was not at all interested in reporting on them (p. 3).
The alternative portrait that Dudbridge presents has to be understood in terms of Wang's personal observations, which for Dudbridge possess a distinctly “true” tinge. As much as one would like to subscribe to this point of view, Wang's experiences are subjective, and may not have been shared more generally by his contemporaries living under Liao rule or in any of the southern states, for example. The divergent attitudes of scholar-officials towards their environments is attested by Wang Dingbao, a northern refugee at the Southern Han court (917–971) whose experiences compelled him to compile a history of Tang examinations which has been thoroughly examined by Oliver Moore in Rituals of Recruitment in Tang China: Reading an Annual Programme in the Collected Statements by Wang Dingbao (870–940), (Leiden, 2004).
Only ten years older than Wang Renyu, his interest was completely historical, but it happens that the younger man was similarly interested in the Tang. One could attribute this to the psychological state of mind of Wang Dingbao on the one hand, who decried the “loss” of the Tang dynasty, while Wang Renyu, on the other hand, adjusted more easily to the circumstances. However, Dudbridge has not included Wang Renyu's work on Tang history, the Kaiyuan Tianbao yishi (Things handed down from Kaiyuan and Tianbao), in the present study.
Dudbridge lets his subject Wang speak with his own voice, which offers a unique glimpse into the world of thought of an official in the first half of the tenth century who managed to survive a number of regime changes. Like his contemporary, Feng Dao, Wang Renyu had no scruples about serving successive dynasties and as such is another example that serving one emperor only is an idea expressed in the Northern Song.
Aside from the minor criticisms stated above, the great insights and the meticulous translations, the elegant writing and the research that went into this book make it a most welcome addition to the growing body of studies on the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. Though not written for an audience with a general interest in the middle period of Chinese history, it is a must read for any scholar interested in the Five Dynasties period.
