A Ming loyalist who refused to pass the examinations and a philosopher concerned with practical studies (實政), Li Yong never was an official. This anthology of writings by model officials such as Zhen Dexiu (see under Xishan zhengxun), Zhang Yanghao (see under Weizheng zhonggao), Wang Yangming (see under Yangming xiansheng baojia fa), Lü Kun (see under Shizheng lu), and others, and of anecdotes about famous magistrates, all with comments by Li, is informed by his insistence on practical studies and care for serving the people. The preface writers insist that the fact Li Yong was a commoner with no administrative experience does in no way detract from the concreteness and immediate usefulness of his advice. The date of the text seems to be 1678. According to Guanzhong san Li nianpu (see below), 2/34a-b, when Ni Yongwu visited Li in Zhouzhi in 1697 (Ni had just been appointed Zhouzhi acting magistrate) Li showed him the work, which was by then 19 years old (this figure is not in Ni’s pref.), and he decided forthwith to have it printed. Li’s disciple Wang Xinjing (1656-1738) speaks of a text “15 years old” written by Li for his friends; if one accepts that Wang’s pref. should be dated 1693 (as it is in the 1875 and Quanji eds., and in san Li nianpu), this fits with Ni’s saying. (The date 癸卯/1723 in Xunmin tang congshu is obviously an error.) Wang also says that the original title was Mumin xuzhi 牧民須知, suggesting the influence of Yang Zhonghao’s Mumin zhonggao (see under Weizheng zhonggao), but friends changed it into the present Simu baojian; Wang claims that in the same year 1693 he copied all of Li Yong’s unpublished drafts and kept them “as a golden mirror for those of our party who become officials and serve the people” (留為吾黨出身加民者金鏡), at the same time regretting he had been unable to print and circulate them in the world. The year 1693 marked the completion of the engraving of Li Yong’s Erqu ji 二曲集 (26 j.), which had been started three years earlier with generous funding from two Shaanxi high officials and of which Wang Xinjing was the editor. Simu baojian clearly was one of the texts not included that Ni Yongwu wanted to publish in 1697. (The work is not mentioned in Hui Longsi’s nianpu [see below], which stops in 1689.)