Abstract: Yijianzhi is a collection of anecdotes and tales compiled by the Song dynasty literatus Hong Mai. Most of the stories it contains were transmitted orally to Hong Mai by people he knew. Consequently, Hong Mai believed the stories to be reliable accounts of events that had actually happened. This article follows the methods of the British Sinologist Glen Dudbridge in viewing such stories as belonging to medieval China's "vernacular culture." Many of Yijianzhi's stories feature one or another type of women as their protagonist, and so the collection is a valuable source for the study of women of that period. This article pursues four approaches to using these stories: (1) to discover in them aspects of women's lives that are little known and not revealed in other Song dynasty materials; (2) to find representations of women that are at odds with what we find in other materials; (3) to explore aspects of women's lives that the stories broach only in an indirect or suppressed manner; and (4) to reflect on ways to deal with and interpret unclear or illogical stories. Particular stories are discussed in each of these four categories.

Key words: Yijianzhi, anecdote collections and tales, Song dynasty women, vernacular culture