This is a strange book that inspires both love and doubt. Love, because sixty images and sixty prophecies and hymns can sketch the contours of more than a thousand years of order and chaos, rise and fall, in the most economical strokes, reading like the solution to a puzzle; doubt, because the so-called "fulfillments" are mostly later readers backfilling vague texts with known history. For this reason, two attitudes are most to be avoided when reading Tui Bei Tu: one is to treat it as a divine oracle and match each image to events one by one; the other is to dismiss it as superstition and reject it wholesale. A better approach is to place it back in the intellectual soil that produced it—the image-number tradition of the Zhouyi, the portent and prophecy culture of the Han and Tang, and the history of popular transmission that persisted despite repeated bans from Song through Qing. Once this is clear, the hidden language and hexagrams in the book are no longer mysterious codes but a symbolic system by which ancients understood history and settled the human heart. The commonly available reader corresponding to this entry is mostly based on the Jin Shengtan annotated edition, with illustrations and explanations for each image, balancing original text and background. For first-time readers, it offers a relatively clear path into the book; for researchers, it is worth also consulting the painted Ming manuscript, the Dunhuang manuscript, and other materials and comparing variant readings, for only then does the truth of textual evolution emerge.
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Li Chunfeng is an author from ancient China whose life is poorly documented; publicly available information is limited, and his exact native place, dates of birth and death, and official career cannot be verified with certainty. Two of his works are currently held in the collection: Yisi Zhan and Tui Bei Tu. In terms of subject matter, Yisi Zhan is an ancient divination text concerned with astronomy, celestial phenomena, and the interpretation of omens, while Tui Bei Tu circulated in the form of prophetic verses accompanied by illustrations and carries a distinctly predictive character. Both books were widely circulated among the people and are often classified under fortune-telling and the occult arts; because of their obscure language and rich imagery, they have also drawn attention as objects of literary appreciation. Li Chunfeng's writing tends toward concision and restraint, making use of symbolism and suggestion, and his works have exerted a certain influence on later occult culture and popular literature.
