This article examines ji 記 in received and excavated texts from the late Warring States, Qin, and Western Han periods. In pre-imperial texts, the word rarely appears, and when it does, it usually refers to records of historical events, precedents, or authoritative knowledge, but the word, in contrast to later periods, never means “note” or “letter.” By contrast, Western Han documents from the arid northwest regions contain many examples of texts that self-identify as ji. These ji are best characterized as less formal notes or letters that invited or required exchanges of items or information between people. The articles argues that this incorporation of ji into different kinds of administrative work gave the word a wider and subtler palette of meanings than it apparently enjoyed in the pre-imperial period, judging from the extant sources. The shift is echoed in descriptions of practices at the Western Han imperial court. Thus, a closer look at ji reminds us that administrative texts help us understand not only government operations, but also shifts in manuscript practices during the early empires.

This article examines the story of Shun's 舜 ascension to the throne. This story has drawn considerable attention throughout Chinese history because of its significance with regard to political succession. However, in this article, I shed light on a different dimension of the story: its relevance to the issue of contingency. I investigate four texts, two excavated and two transmitted: Qiongda yi shi 窮達以時 (Failure and Success Depend on Times), Tang Yu zhi dao 唐虞之道 (The Way of Yao and Shun), the Mengzi 孟子, and the Xunzi 荀子. At one extreme, Qiongda yi shi highlights that Shun became a king by pure chance, while at the other extreme, Xunzi interprets the event as a necessary one, emphasizing that Shun cannot but succeed Yao. The other two texts fall somewhere in between the two extremes. I use these four texts to showcase different ways of thinking about areas over which humans are believed to lack control. My claim is that these four texts offer different accounts of the same event—Shun's ascension—because they see the event from different perspectives: from a perspective of the chosen, from a perspective of the chooser, from a mise-en-scène, and from a perspective of not of this world, respectively. I argue that the diverse perspectives of these texts entail the different understandings of several related issues such as the degree of human control over the event, the important features of the event, and the content of the moral and political lessons that we draw from the event.

The Qin jiandu heji 秦簡牘合集 [Corpus of Qin documents written on bamboo and wood] is the result of a long-term teamwork and collaboration project, directed by Professor Chen Wei 陳偉 of Wuhan University. This publication provides a new, updated edition of seven collections of Qin documents, including those from Shuihudi 睡虎地 (Tomb 4 and 11), Longgang 龍崗 (Tomb 6), Haojiaping 郝家坪 (Tomb 50), Zhoujiatai 周家臺 (Tomb 30), Yueshan 嶽山 (Tomb 36), and Fangmatan 放馬灘 (Tomb 1). Although former editions have not become entirely useless for the various reasons evoked in this article, Qin jiandu heji should now be considered the new standard edition for any serious academic research on those materials.

This article introduces and translates an excavated text from the Juyan region here referred to as “Evaluating Swords.” Dating to the Han-Xin period, it instructs its reader on how make a general determination of the quality of steel swords based on a visual inspection. The introduction to the translation discusses the background of the text, its present condition, and the problems of orthography and usage that complicate its understanding. A transcription and additional textual and interpretive commentary accompany the English translation of the text.