3: Enduring Memory: Literary Genre and Temporal Layers of Nanjing in Banqiao Zaji and Qinhuai Guangji

This paper examines genre-specific modes of remembering in two biji 筆記 (notebooks), each composed in the shadow of dynastic collapse, that take up the pleasure quarter, not merely as a social or spatial site, but as a repository of cultural memory. While Yu Huai's 余懷 Banqiao zaji 板橋雜記 (Miscellaneous Records of the Plank Bridge, 1693) and Miao Quansun's 繆荃孫 Qinhuai guangji 秦淮廣紀 (Broad Records of Qinhuai, 1912) both evoke a shared geography and repertoire of figures, their divergent forms, a memoir and a sourcebook, shape how the past is recalled, mourned, and reconstructed.



Yu Huai memorializes the courtesans he claims to have known personally. Composed after the Ming-Qing transition, his writings are full of affective details, transforming the Qinhuai into a landscape of loss. The memoir genre allows Yu to fuse subjective voice with collective mourning, casting the pleasure quarters as a site where emotional memory and historical trauma converge. In contrast, Miao Quansun compiles biographies, poems, and anecdotes spanning centuries into an encyclopedic archive. Although Miao’s editorial voice is restrained, his compilation reflects a nostalgic desire to preserve a literary and social tradition under threat. The sourcebook genre allows him to stabilize a disintegrating past by textual means. These two works engage with the layered temporalities of Nanjing through genre-specific modes of remembering the Qinhuai pleasure quarters. Together, they illuminate how authors in pivotal historical junctures used literary form to negotiate a powerful textual memory of Nanjing.