Random Notes from Qianlu

1. You may first read chapters on familiar figures such as the death of Zhang Zongchang and Feng Yuxiang to build interest before reading the whole book.
2. Consulting relevant biographies and historical background while reading helps distinguish subjective elements in the anecdotes.
3. Read the book's accounts alongside official histories or other memoirs to appreciate narrative differences under different standpoints.
4. Suitable as fragmented reading before bed or during commutes; reading two or three anecdotes at a time is enough.

Yilin Press focuses mainly on translated foreign literature. Its current catalogue of 318 titles covers common categories such as mystery and detective fiction, foreign literature, world classics, biography, and social novels. Representative books include The Complete Sherlock Holmes 2: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Pride and Prejudice, To the Lighthouse, The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, and Lives of the Artists: Michelangelo, often presented in bilingual or English-language editions that serve both original-text reading and language learning. Its author resources include foreign writers such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, and Romain Rolland, as well as translators including Li Jiazhen, Gao Fen, and Ma Ye. The catalogue also includes Chinese works such as Li Jieren's Ripples Across Stagnant Water. The press shows a concentrated publishing strength in foreign classics and bilingual readers; given limited public information, this overview is based only on catalogue data.