Study On Li Le’s "Miscellaneous Notes"

"Miscellaneous Notes" is a collection of nine volumes,followed by two volumes,a total of eleven volumes,written by Li Le.Li Le(1532-1618)with the word Yanhe,named Linchuan,was born in Tongxiang,Zhejiang,and was a scholar of Wuchen(1568)in Longqing.When Li Le was young,he worshipped Tang Shu as a teacher.After being a scholar in Longqing Wuchen,He worked as an official of Xingan County Magistrate,an official of Rite Branch,and an official of Fujian Provincial Department of Justice.He also prepared soldiers in Yanping for more than years,changed to tour Funing,and rose to the Donghe Road in Jiangxi Province for deliberation.Li Le resigned in Wanli eight years and lived in his hometown for more than forty years.Li Le’s teachers and friends are all high-ranking officials,including Tang Shu,Xu Jie,Geng Dingxiang,Mao Kun,Zhu Guozhen and others."Miscellaneous Notes" is a note made by Li Le when he lived in his hometown.It mainly records the deeds from Jiajing to Wanli in Ming Dynasty.The contents of the book mostly come from Li Le’s personal experience,reading experience and Li Le’s quotations from his books.The contents are true and reliable.Today’s popular version is the Ming Wanli engraving,and the editions collected by Xie Guozhen are probably the reprinted editions based on Wanli engraving during Qianlong period.The main contents of "Miscellaneous Notes" relate to government affairs,economy and people’s livelihood,people’s feelings and customs,ideology and culture,etc.In government affairs,it records rich courtiers’ deeds and official stories,exposes the drawbacks of the student system,and describes the course of the "popular uprising" incident;In terms of economy,it describes the development of agriculture and commerce,the promotion of merchants’ social status,the exploitation and profit of middlemen,and the situation of water transportation,river regulation and water conservancy in the middle and late Ming Dynasty;In terms of social customs,it is recorded that the wind of profit-seeking and luxury prevails in society,and the world is declining,and various social bad habits are rampant;In terms of ideology and culture,Neo-Confucianism was impacted,psychology began to rise,Buddhism and Taoism prevailed,and even harmed society.Therefore,Li Le advocated restoring ancient customs and attaching importance to family law."Miscellaneous Notes" is an extremely important work in Li Le’s writings,which has high historical value.It provides rich historical materials of social life before Wanli in Ming Dynasty,reflects the social changes in Huzhou area in the middle and late Ming Dynasty earlier,and it exposes all kinds of shortcomings of the society in the middle and late Ming Dynasty.It has widely collected the contents of other books and has the value of preserving documents.It is a relatively important literati’s notes in the middle and late Ming Dynasty.