Zhang Zhifu's biographical details are scant in publicly available sources; his name has come down to us together with his sole extant work, Zhangshi Keshu (The Book Worth Recording of the Zhang Family). As far as surviving catalogues show, this is the only title attributed to him, and it is classed among classic works. The word keshu in the title suggests that the contents consist of observations and miscellaneous notes deemed worth setting down, rather than a systematic treatise on the classics or history. Works of this kind tend to be composed of brief, itemized records concerning people's words and deeds, institutions and precedents, or social anecdotes; they are short in length yet dense in information, and offer material for understanding the intellectual interests and habits of record-keeping among scholars of the past. Since nothing definite is known about the author's dates, native place, or official career, our knowledge of him rests chiefly on this one surviving book. Precisely because sources are so scarce, readers are best advised to treat Zhangshi Keshu as a self-contained notebook text and to appreciate its value through its choice of subjects and style of writing, rather than insisting on reconstructing a complete biography of its author.
