Person
Liu Xinqi
Author of a lost Giao Chau ky that existed before 527; its passage about a woman named Trieu Au survives because the Song-dynasty encyclopedia Thai Binh ngu lam quoted it.
At a glance
- Dates
- His book existed before 527, because the Thuy kinh chu, the work of a man who died that year, cites it by name1
- Role
- Author of the Giao Chau ky, a book about one region, now lost; its passage on Trieu Au gives the name, the breasts, the clogs with gold on them and the young men2
Life
The old chronicles say
Liu Xinqi wrote a Giao Chau ky, a record of Giao Chau. That book is lost, but it existed before 527, because the Thuy kinh chu, the work of a man who died that year, cites it by name. The passage about the woman survives because the Song-dynasty encyclopedia Thai Binh ngu lam, compiled in 983, quoted it: Trieu Au was a girl of Quan An district, in Cuu Chan commandery, with breasts several feet long; she took no husband, went into the hills and gathered a band of bandits, then attacked the commandery, always wore clogs with gold on them, and carried on affairs with young men; the regional inspector Luc Dan, a man of Wu commandery, put her down. This is the voice of someone on the side of the state describing a rebel. The passage gives no year.12
The clogs in that passage have a story of their own. The character that describes them is a rare one, and three different places in the same encyclopedia quote it in three different spellings. A Qing-dynasty scholar who gathered up the fragments of Liu Xinqi’s book had to note: it is not known which is right. Only two things are certain: there is a word for gold, and there is a word for clogs.2
Mentioned in
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