Qianqingtang shumu 千頃堂書目

Qianqingtang shumu 千頃堂書目 "Catalogue of the Hall of One Thousand Acres" is a book catalogue of the library in the Qianqing Hall compiled during the early Qing period 清 (1644-1911) by Huang Yuji 黃虞稷 (1626-1692), courtesy name Yutai 俞邰, style Chuyuan 楮園, from Anping 安平 in the district of Jinjiang 晉江 close to Quanzhou 泉州, Fujian.

The library had been established by his father Huang Juzhong 黃居中 (1562-1644), who had served as an official of the Directorate of Education (guozijian 國子監) in the southern capital Nanjing. During the cataclysm of the disintegration of the Ming empire 明 (1368-1644) and the conquest of Nanjing in 1645 by the Manchus a lot of books went lost, but Huang Yuji tried to repurchase what had disappeared, and even enlarged the library of his father.

The catalogue is 32-juan long and is divided into the four traditional sections of literature, namely the Confucian Classics, historiographical works, Masters and philosophers, and belles-lettres. These are further divided into 49 categories.

For all books, Huang Yuji indicated the title, the author, and the length, and for some books also provided information about origin and content. The catalogue served for the compilation of the imperial bibliography Yiwen zhi 藝文志 (ch. 96-99) in the official dynastic history of the Ming period, Mingshi 明史. The greatest part of the more than 12,000 books listed in the catalogue were written during the Ming period, but there are also some earlier writings listed at the end of each category. These parts are very interesting because they can serve as a supplement for catalogues of Song-period 宋 (960-1279) writings.

The Qianqingtang shumu existed only in manuscript form (one copy now being stored in the Seikadō Library 靜嘉堂 in Tōkyō) before being included in the imperial series Siku quanshu 四庫全書. The first modern print was published in 1913 as a facsimile of this manuscript in the series Shiyuan congshu 適園叢書 and later by the Zhongguo Shudian Press 中國書店.