TERMBASES
This refers to historians or history books that record historical facts in an objective and truthful way based on evidences without covering up anything. Objectivity is the ultimate criterion for judging historians or history books in historiography.
This term refers to poetry that reflects social realities and major events of a historical period, thus possessing historical value. Some of the poems in The Book of Songs were about the realities of its time, which prompted Confucius（551-479 BC） to exclaim that “The Book of Songs enables one to understand society.” This means that he viewed The Book of Songs as using poetry to reflect history. Han dynasty scholars stressed the importance of poetry as a means of recording history. Subsequently, Chinese scholars of poetry believed that poetry should reflect reality through aesthetic means so as to provide aesthetic enjoyment, understanding as well as education. The poems of Tang poet Du Fu（712-770） are called “historical poetry” because they reflected what the country went through during the An Lushan-Shi Siming Rebellion and the author’s acute sense of sadness about the misery the country and its people suffered in times of national crisis.
According to the renowned historiographer Liu Zhiji （661-721）of the Tang Dynasty, those who study and write history must have three strengths, namely, the ability to compose historical works, rich knowledge of history and historical materials, and deep insight that enables them to analyze and evaluate history. Liu believed that deep insight in analyzing and commenting on history was the most important of the three qualifications.
The Six Confucian Classics are The Book of Changes, The Book of History, The Book of Songs, The Book of Rites, The Book of Music, and The Spring and Autumn Annals. An important proposition put forward by scholars of late imperial China was that those are all historical texts. According to these scholars, the Six Classics are all concerned with the social and political realities of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties rather than the teachings left by ancient sages. Zhang Xuecheng（1738-1801） of the Qing Dynasty was the representative scholar to systematically expound this proposition. This view challenged the sacred status of the classics of Confucianism and marked a self-conscious and independent trend in Chinese historiography.
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