The present paper analyzes what cultural phenomena are produced by the transmission of ancient works, and the editing and compilation of lost works. Adopting the perspective of a history of reading in a broad sense, it discusses Shangong qishi and how through different interpretations in different epochs, even editing anew, and adding a large number of sub-texts such as annotations and anecdotes, its genre shifted from its original function as personnel evaluation to that of miscellaneous history, anecdotes, and even lessons providing political wisdom. Shangong qishi, according to Shishuo xinyu, contains comments made by Shan Tao of the Western Jin Dynasty in recommending competent persons to serve as imperial officials. These comments then become a paradigm of personnel evaluation, called Shangong qishi by Shan’s contemporaries. While he was an official in the Ministry of Personnel, Ye Dehui of the late Qing Dynasty started editing Shangong qishi; judging from his epilogue and the public opinion which criticized the selection of officials and the academic atmosphere at the time, he had his own political reasons for doing so. Consequently, the paper demonstrates how this work became a cultural model through its transformation in the process of re-reading and transmission. At the same time, with the editing and compiling, authentic reactions to the author’s personal fortune and misfortune were added, which means that the editing of Shangong qishi is “a site of memory” allowing a variety of meanings to co-exist. It is a site where the original author, the compiler and Ye Dehui interweave history, memory and narration, and where such significations are positioned in an incessant state of interaction and interpenetration. Thus, we can understand the literati’s course of existence and struggle in the fissures of time at the interface of an old and a new age which Ye Dehui represented.