Leishu in the context of "Complete Classics Collection of Ancient China"

Chinese encyclopedias comprise both Chinese language encyclopedias and foreign language ones about China or Chinese topics. There is a type of native Chinese reference work called leishu (lit. "categorized writings") that is sometimes translated as "encyclopedia", but although these collections of quotations from classic texts are expansively "encyclopedic", a leishu is more accurately described as a "compendium" or "anthology". The long history of Chinese leishu encyclopedias began with the (222 CE) Huanglan ("Emperor's Mirror") leishu and continues with online encyclopedias such as Baidu Baike and Chinese Wikipedia.

The Taiping Yulan, translated as the Imperial Reader or Readings of the Taiping Era, is a massive Chinese leishu encyclopedia compiled by a team of scholars from 977 to 983. It was commissioned by the imperial court of the Song dynasty during the first era of the reign of Emperor Taizong. It is divided into 1,000 volumes and 55 sections, which consisted of about 4.7 million Chinese characters. It included citations from about 2,579 different kinds of documents spanning from books, poetry, odes, proverbs, steles to miscellaneous works. After its completion, the Emperor Taizong is said to have finished reading it within a year, going through 3 volumes per day. It is considered one of the Four Great Books of Song.

The team who compiled the Taiping Yulan includes: Tang Yue (湯悅), Zhang Wei (張洎), Xu Xuan (徐鉉), Song Bai (宋白), Xu Yongbin (徐用賓), Chen E (陳鄂), Wu Shu (吳淑), Shu Ya (舒雅), Lü Wenzhong (吕文仲), Ruan Sidao (阮思道), Hu Meng (扈蒙), Li Fang (李昉), and others.

The Huanglan or Imperial Mirror was one of the oldest Chinese encyclopedias or leishu "classified dictionary". Cao Pi, the first emperor of the Wei, ordered its compilation upon his accession to the throne in 220 and it was completed in 222. The purpose of the Huanglan was to provide the emperor and ministers of state with conveniently arranged summaries of all that was known at the time. Complete versions of the Huanglan existed until the Song dynasty (960-1279), when it became a mostly lost work, although some fragments did survive in other encyclopedias and anthologies. The Huanglan was the prototype of the classified encyclopedia and served as a model for later ones such as the (624) Tang Yiwen Leiju and the (1408) Ming Yongle dadian.

The Yiwen Leiju, or translated as Encyclopedia of Literary Collections, is a Chinese leishu encyclopedia completed by Ouyang Xun in 624 under the Tang dynasty. Other contributors include Linghu Defen and Chen Shuda.

Yiwen Leiju is divided into 47 sections and many subsections, covering a vast number of subjects and including many quotations from older works, which are well cited.

The Yongle Encyclopedia (English: /jɒŋlə/) or Yongle Dadian (traditional Chinese: 永樂大典; simplified Chinese: 永乐大典; pinyin: Yǒnglè Dàdiǎn; Wade–Giles: Yung-lo Ta-tien; lit. 'Great Canon of Yongle') is a Chinese leishu encyclopedia commissioned by the Yongle Emperor (r. 1402–1424) of the Ming dynasty in 1403 and completed by 1408. It comprised 22,937 manuscript rolls in 11,095 volumes. Fewer than 400 volumes survive today, comprising about 800 rolls, or 3.5% of the original work.

Most of the text was lost during the latter half of the 19th century, in the midst of events including the Second Opium War and the Boxer Rebellion. Its sheer scope and size made it the world's largest general encyclopedia, until it was surpassed by Wikipedia in late 2007, nearly six centuries later.