Southern Qi-which volume of the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government covered Southern Qi again?
Wang Yang felt rather disheartened.
The Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government came in abridged and complete editions, and the difference between them was like that between a miniature landscape and an entire garden. Wang Yang had read the abridged edition as a child, and naturally, Southern Qi had not been included. As an adult, he had read the complete edition. His family owned the China Book Company's 1956 edition, twenty volumes in all, but his main focus had been the Han and Tang dynasties. He had only worked his way through volume eight, reaching the eighteenth year of Emperor Wen of Song's Yuanjia Era, before jumping to volume twelve, which began with Chen and Sui. After reaching volume eighteen, he had skipped ahead again. Besides, from a historian's perspective, using the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government as the foundation of historical research was hardly the orthodox approach, so he had not thought much of skipping a few volumes. He could always fill in the gaps when he had time. How could he have imagined that one day he would transmigrate and actually need them?
There was a story about contemporary academia:
Someone studied lunar imagery in literature. If you asked him about the moon as a theme in German Expressionism, he would say he studied Chinese literature. If you asked him about lunar symbolism in the July Poetry School, he would say he studied ancient Chinese literature. If you asked him about forms of lunar description in Han Fu, he would say his field within ancient literature was Tang literature. If you switched to Tang fu, he would say he studied Tang poetry. If you asked him about the evolution of syntax in