Touxialu 投轄錄

Touxialu 投轄錄 "Records [causing the audience to stay without] throwing away their lynch-pins" is a collection of stories compiled during the Song period 宋 (960-1279) by Wang Mingqing 王明清 (c. 1127-c. 1201). While the commented bibliography Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 四庫全書總目提要 says that the Touxialu was written in Wang's late years, Yu Jiaxi 余嘉錫 (1884-1955; author of Siku tiyao bianzheng 四庫提要辨證) has found out that the preface is dated in his young years and is called his earliest book.

The short book Touxialu includes approximately forty fantastic stories of the chuanqi 傳奇 genre, which was still popular in the early Song period. In its conception, the book is very similar to contemporary collections like Xuanshizhi 宣室志 or Kuichezhi 睽車志, and differs significantly from Wang Mingqing's other book, Huichenlu 揮麈錄, which has a higher literary level. The title of the book is explained by the bibliographer Chen Zhensun 陳振孫 (Zhizhai shulu jieti 直齋書錄解題) as referring to a book whose stories were so fascinating that the auditorium, guests of the narrator, stayed with him even without him forcing them to do so by throwing the linch-pins of their carts (tou xia 投轄) into the well, as a proverb says.

The Touxialu is included in the series Siku quanshu 四庫全書, Shuofu 說郛, Wuchao xiaoshuo 五朝小說 and Songren xiaoshuo 宋人小說. In 1991, the Shanghai Guji Press 上海古籍出版社 published a modern edition in a joint version with the book Yuzhao xinzhi 玉照新志, with annotations by Wang Xinsen 汪新森 and Zhu Juru 朱菊如.