According to the prefs. and the fanli (signed by the author), the work—a magistrate handbook by a private secretary—was based on notes taken in 1675 while Pan Biaocan was retired in a hermitage and written up by his relative by marriage (眷弟) Shen Guan (the author of the foreword); it was not published until 1684. Faulty manuscript copies had proliferated in between, hence the decision to engrave an authoritative text in spite of the author’s professed wish to keep in his trunk materials he regarded as “unreliable” (未能信). As far as it can be ascertained, both the page setting and the text itself are identical in all the eds. seen. The text is entirely punctuated (including the prefaces) and heavily underlined with various sorts of dots, the meaning of which is explained in the fanli. There are three main parts, each with a general intro. (引): finances (錢榖), justice (刑名), and “miscellaneous” (幾務), this last including entries on the magistrate’s behavior and career (from assuming his post down to the procedure for transfer and/or promotion) as well as on yamen organization and on general administration (irrigation, relief, baojia, and so on). The contents emphasize concreteness and practicality and introduce a number of models for forms, proclamations, etc. The proclamations are sometimes drafts written for one of the author’s magistrate employers, including Chen Chong 陳沖 in Wuxian 吳縣 (Jiangsu) in 1668, Shen Junsheng 沈駿聲 in Linfen 臨汾 (Shanxi) in 1682 (suggesting that the work, supposed to have been written in 1675, received additions after that date), Zhang Shijing 章士鯨 in Huolu 獲鹿 (Zhili), etc. The various types of documents are explained in very clear paragraphs appended to the examples and captioned with the word shi 釋. Each juan ends with a list of rare terms with the correct pronunciation. The author occasionally refers to earlier (Ming) handbooks, such as Chushi lu, Linmin baojing, Dulü peixi, Minglü jianshi [i.e. Wang Kentang’s Da Ming lü fuli jianshi] (qq.v.), and others. Of especial interest is the “Guide to Autopsies” (檢驗指南) that Pan inserted in the section on judicial administration (in j. 4), where he compiled a large amount of data from Xiyuan jilu (q.v.) and other such sources and enriched it with his own observations—a contribution that would prove quite influential in the development of forensic literature in the Qing, where Weixin bian is frequently cited as a source (see below, Will). Although Wu Kangzong, a muyou colleague of Pan’s, insists in his pref. that this is a “book to assist government” (佐治之書), not a “book to carry out government” (為治之書), Weixin bian can be regarded as one of the major early Qing standard magistrate handbooks—in his pref. Hu Wenyi calls it a “book to administer the people” (牧民書). Huang Liuhong, the author of the more famous Fuhui quanshu (q.v.), acknowledges it as a model. It is therefore surprising that so far no ed. posterior to 1704 has been located, although this date may not always correspond to the actual year of printing by the different publishers mentioned above, some of which seem to have used the same set of printing-blocks. For an anthology of administrative documents selected and edited by Pan Biaocan, see under Weixin bian erji.