China’s Song dynasty was an age of libraries, literati and learning. Where Ouyang Xiu was the shining star of the era who rescued lost manuscripts from oblivion, Sima Guang was his younger contemporary who loved books like an ascetic. Both men read for truth, but Sima read to understand the machinery of history itself.
Born in Guangshan, Henan, into a family of officials, Sima grew up in the company of scrolls. His father served in the civil service and he followed his father into the world of exams and study. There’s a story told in Chinese textbooks even today.
When Sima was a child, a playmate slipped into a large water jar and began to drown. Others froze in fear, but Sima picked up a stone and smashed the jar to let the water out.
It’s a parable Chinese children still learn under the title Sima Guang Breaks the Vat. It tells you everything about the man: calm under pressure, practical, and unwilling to wait for someone else to act.
But if he became a national hero, it was for his relationship with books.
Sima Guang read with a near-monastic focus. Records say he could lose himself so completely in study that he forgot hunger, heat or fatigue. When he began work on his monumental chronicle, he designed a “wake-up pillow” – a wooden block that would slide out from under his head if he nodded off. Few bibliophiles have ever taken sleeplessness so literally.
The Collector of Dynasties
Calling Sima Guang a bibliophile is no stretch. His life revolved around gathering, comparing and preserving texts. In his private library, he collected official histories, commentaries and rare manuscripts, many of which would later feed into his great work, the Zizhi Tongjian – The Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government.
He also compiled Leipian, an enormous dictionary of over 31,000 characters, expanding on earlier lexicons. It was both a linguistic and cultural feat, preserving many characters that might otherwise have vanished.
He wrote essays, memorials and short treatises, and kept notebooks of anecdotes and hearsay later known as Sushui Jiwen (Records of Rumors from Sushui), named after the river near his hometown. His contemporaries started to call him “Mr. Sushui” – it became shorthand for a man who knew everything and remembered even more.
The Mirror of History
In 1064, Sima Guang submitted to the emperor a five-volume timeline of China’s history from 403 BCE onward. That was just the start. With imperial support, he spent nearly two decades expanding it into a single, monumental work – the Zizhi Tongjian – a 294-volume chronological history covering more than a millennium, from the Warring States period to the Five Dynasties (403 BCE–959 CE).
He read through archives, compared court records and verified conflicting accounts with the zeal of a forensic scholar. The finished work, presented to Emperor Shenzong in 1084, became the model for all subsequent Chinese historiography. It wasn’t just a history book, it was a manual for rulers, a mirror in which emperors could see both their virtues and their follies.
Sima Guang once said, “The mirror shows us our face; history shows us our heart.” That line, simple as it sounds, captures the soul of his project.
Scholar Against the Tide
Sima Guang’s love of order and tradition also shaped his politics. He became the leading conservative voice against the radical reforms of Chancellor Wang Anshi, whose policies aimed to overhaul China’s economic system.
Sima believed such experiments endangered the balance of society. His memorials to the emperor, steeped in precedent, argued for stability over speed. When the reforming emperor died and the next ruler recalled him to power, Sima began reversing many of Wang’s policies.
He governed briefly, before his death in 1086 – exhausted from a life spent fighting both ignorance and impatience.
The Five Joys
Sima Guang did not leave behind any tomes, however, his thoughts linger to this day. In one of his writings, he lists what he calls The Five Joys:
“Long life, wealth, health — soundness of body and serenity of mind — love of integrity, and an end crowning the life.”
It’s the distilled philosophy of a man who read to refine his soul, not to inflate his intellect.
More than nine centuries later, Sima Guang remains proof that the greatest bibliophiles aren’t mere hoarders of paper. They are architects of memory, people who collect books not for display but for understanding .
For anyone who loves books, Sima Guang’s life stands as a quiet reminder: reading, at its best, is not escape. It’s endurance.
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