A memoir of Kaifeng's streets, markets, festivals, food, theatres and guilds in the 1110s and 1120s, written by a refugee in the south. For 1200 it is background only: Kaifeng was then the Jin southern capital (Nanjing), and the city the Jin held was the one Meng describes, shrunk but with the same walls, canals and wards. Useful for the physical city and for what the Song of 1200 remembered and hoped to recover; it says nothing of the Jin.
About this source
- Title
- Dongjing menghua lu (東京夢華錄)
- Author
- Meng Yuanlao (孟元老)
- Author's dates
- about 1090 to 1150
- Written
- preface dated 1147
- Language
- Chinese
- Covers
- Kaifeng, the Northern Song capital, as it was before its fall to the Jurchen in 1126 and 1127
- Kind
- Geography
Included for Kaifeng background only. No complete free English translation.
Where to read it
Editions
- Yi Yongwen (ed.), Dongjing menghua lu jianzhu, Zhonghua Shuju (2006) (not freely online)
Translations
- Partial English translations in anthologies and articles (for example by S. H. West), under copyright; no complete English version (not freely online)