Qing top-ranked graduate and provincial governor who ran Shaanxi and Huguang and sponsored the Continuation of the Comprehensive Mirror covering Song to Yuan
Mural guide
In an archive hall, tall wooden shelves hold scrolls and bound books with small tags, and one person climbs a ladder with their back turned; a long table in front holds an unrolled river map, a bronze lamp and a copper jug, with a city wall seen through the window.
Bi Yuan, courtesy name Xiangheng, styled Qiufan and calling himself the Hermit of Lingyan Hill, came from Zhenyang, present-day Taicang in Jiangsu. He took first place in the palace examination of 1760 and entered the Hanlin Academy, and from 1770 served as acting and then full governor of Shaanxi, where he compiled an illustrated gazetteer of the region's historic sites, Guanzhong shengji tuzhi. In 1788 he became governor-general of Huguang, a post he held for most of his remaining years apart from a spell of demotion to the Shandong governorship. Scholars on his staff, among them Shao Jinhan and Qian Daxin, helped him produce the 220-chapter Continuation of the Comprehensive Mirror (Xu Zizhi tongjian), which carries the chronicle through the Song, Liao, Jin and Yuan. He died in 1797 at his army camp in Chenzhou, Hunan, received no posthumous name, and two years later was stripped of his hereditary rank for failing to check the White Lotus rising in Hubei.
Compiled the Continuation of the Comprehensive Mirror
Qianlong years, Qing
The Continuation of the Comprehensive Mirror was compiled by Bi Yuan, who became a jinshi in 1760; the Draft History of the Qing says he placed first in the top class and was made a compiler. The work runs from the first year of Jianlong under Emperor Taizu of the Song, 960, to the twenty-seventh year of Zhizheng under Emperor Shun of the Yuan, 1367, and covers the rise and fall, order and disorder, of the Song, Liao, Jin and Yuan.
Qing