Fine 12th-century books to go under hammer in Beijing
Song Dynasty (960-1179) witnessed a booming of activities involving art and culture. For example, Lou Ji, a scholar-official from the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), compiled a dictionary of selected characters from two noteworthy writings of history, Han Shu (Book of Han) by Ban Gu and Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian) by Sima Qian. Lou's work featured those characters seldomly used in his time and included their pronunciations, meanings and references.