"Sui Shi Guang Ji" Author: [Song] Chen Yuanliang Written/Edited by Xu Yimin Publisher: Zhonghua Book Company

Sui Shi Guang Ji has a total of 42 volumes. It is a book focusing on festivals and customs, covering agricultural production, daily life, sacrifices and prayers, clothing and food, entertainment and poetry, health care and treatment, and even historical allusions, myths and legends, and folk tales, hoping to gather all the information about heaven and earth.

Looking through the whole book, we will find that the life of ancient people was closely linked to the seasons. There were different activities in different seasons. In the first month of spring, there should be apricot blossom rain and peach blossom water. In midsummer, there should be yellow bird wind and cool beads. In the mid-autumn festival, there should be fat mandarin fish and chrysanthemum wine. In the last month of winter, there should be warm jade saddles and ice fish. It is charming, simple and interesting to read. The sense of picture comes naturally. Between the lines, it is like a picture scroll of ancient life.

"Collecting strange stories about festivals and customs, compiling them by hand and carefully, and being extensive but not complicated" is the best summary of this book. It is the most comprehensive folklore book in the history of my country and can be called a folk encyclopedia. And because it was written in the Song Dynasty, it preserves many contents of books that have been lost today, such as "Miscellaneous Records of Seasons", "Treasures of Four Seasons", "Records of Seasons under the Emperor", "Scholars' Talks", etc., which are extremely precious.

The author: Chen Yuanliang, who signed himself as "Guanghan Xianyi", is not recorded in historical records, and his birth and death dates are unknown. He never served as an official in his life, and was focused on copying books for fun. He successively compiled three books, "Bo Wen Lu", "Sui Shi Guang Ji" and "Shi Lin Guang Ji", which are extensively cited, voluminous and distinctive.

Proofreader: Xu Yimin, formerly an editor of Zhonghua Book Company, devoted his life to the compilation of ancient books. He has written many books, including Annotations to the Collected Works of Yu Zishan, Daily Notes of Siyitang, Biography of Tao Yuanming, Annotations to Youyang Zazu, and Examples of Compilation of Ancient Books. He also annotated Selected Quatrains of Song Dynasty with Ni Qixin, and edited Selected Essays of Chinese and Foreign Scholars (Volumes 1 and 2) with Yu Shaochu.