A short (24 folios) elementary handbook for beginning magistrates, based on the author’s own experience. According to Bichang’s postf., he wrote it in 1848 at age 71; he insists on the plainness of his advice. There is no mulu and the entries, which have no caption, succeed one another without apparent order or logic. Yet the text contains much valuable and detailed information of a practical and extremely concrete nature. It discusses the most basic topics, such as population registers (門戶冊), rules for the tribunal (堂規), levying taxes, dealing with judicial cases, river conservancy, famine relief (with a plate representing a gruel distribution center), arresting bandits, and local defense. In his pref. to Huang Fuchen’s Dai Zhili zongdu quanyu muling wen (q.v.), a text inspired by Bichang’s treatise that he wrote in Huang’s name, Bichang’s son Hengfu 恒福 says that he printed and distributed his father’s treatise wherever he was posted; Gao Yingyuan’s colophon confirms that the text was distributed in all the prefectures and counties of Shanxi and Henan, where Hengfu was governor.