Li Shan’s commentary on the Selected Writings appears in 304 of his works, ranging from the Xidufu, an excerpt from the Zuo Zhuan, to the Ritual Essay, Ji Qu Yuan Wen. The Zuo Zhuan records a wide range of topics, from the evolution of history to various rituals, social customs, astronomy and geography, rhymes, proverbs, and a variety of literature. Li Shan’s commentary on the Zuo Zhuan is based on the main text and its content, with citations centered on its main historical events and the origin of its words. On the question of Li Shan’s citation of the Zuo Zhuan notes, we can see through examination that Li Shan was not influenced by the political advocacy of the unification of the Five Classics, and that he took Du’s notes as his main focus and did not exclude the other Zuo Zhuan notes, and in accordance with what is stated in the text of the Selected Works, he thought that it conformed to the wording of the text and made appropriate use of the Fu Qian’s service of the pianist’s notes on the Zuo Zhuan as well as the notes of the other annotators. Among them, the author suspects that Li Shan should have referred to the text of Fu Qian’s “Jie Yi” and Jia Kui’s “ChunQiu ZuoShi JieGu”, while Ma Rong’s words can hardly be said to be a comment from Ma Rong’s “ChunQiu SanZhuan YiTongShuo”, but rather a text quoted from other documents of the time. The contents of Ma Rong’s commentaries in the “Selected Writings” can be found in Kong Yingda’s commentary, which is more detailed than the “Selected Writings” commentary. However, in terms of the “Selected Writings” commentary, especially nowadays, it can be regarded that the commentaries of Li Shan’s commentaries are within the scope of his old commentaries, and it is quite possible that Li Shan cited his old commentaries as commentaries on other works in the case of the same words in his old commentaries in the later years.

Li Shan’s work on Wenxuan is dominated by Zheng Xuan’s notes and supplemented by notes from other schools citing Lij’. The book is based on the book Liji and its various commentaries, including Huang Kan’s The Book of Liji’, Ma Rong’s The Book of Rites, LiJi Mingtang Yinyanglu, Kong Zi Sanchaoji, Ruan Chen’s Sanlitu, and Liji – Yili. It is more likely that Huang Kan’s note on the Book of Liji is not Li Shan’s original note, and Ma Rong’s note on the Book of Liji is an old note of his predecessor. It is possible that the relevant commentaries in The Book of Liji, Liji Mingtang Yinyanglu, and Kongzi Sanchaoji are not from his single-volume edition. The first of these is the Ruanchen’s Sanlitu, which was first seen in the Wenxian, Li’s notes, and later cited by others, and is suspected to be from the Ruanchen’s Sanlitu. The two commentaries on Li Ji - Yili, which are probably from Li Wei, are not from the original Li Wei book, but are cited by Li Shan from other documents and historical sources.

Li Shan annotated Shi Ji and wrote “Shi Ji Yue” with his annotation convention, mostly annotating characters and geography, and further citing Shi Ji when needed. According to the investigation of the Hukejia engraving printed by Zhonghua Shuju in 1977, the annotations of Shiji in Wenxuan Lis’ are Xuguang, Zhangyan, Peiyin, Wang Su, Wei Zhao, Xu Shen, Guo Pu, Qiao Zhou, He Xiu, Zan, Zheng Xuan, Ru Chun, Jinzhuo and Ying Shao. Most of these annotations can be found in Shiji Jijie. However, Xu Guang, Zhang Yan, Pei Yin, Wang Su and Wei Shao, their notes differ from those of today’s books. According to the collation of documents, Li Shan must have referred to the Tang Dynasty manuscript Shi Ji, the Nan Dynasty manuscript Shi Ji and Pei Yin’s Shiji Jijie when he quoted Shi Ji. In addition, there is the possibility of referring to Xu Guang’s ShiJi Yinyi. The Tang manuscript is close to the original annotation of Shiji. Therefore, we can find that Li Shan’s annotation preserved the annotation which is difficult to find today.

Lishan’s Annotations of Wenxuan play a significant role in the history of the study of Wenxuan, which is famous for its meticulous annotation, rigorous systems and extensive citation. Because Lishan lived in an early era, the abundant citations in the annotations can preserve a large number of the missed books and early appearances of existing books, which are of great value for the classic books's compilation and collation. On the basis of previous researches, this paper uses the methods of collation, analysis and induction to sort out the relevant citations of the classic books from Lishan's annoations. This paper adopts the structure of four parts, summarizes the specific style of Lishan’s citations and carries out an overall evaluation on the academic value. Firstly, Lishan had both widely cited and repeatedly cited the annotations for the same word in different works in Wenxuan. Secondly, when Lishan had a tendency to refer to the original texts of classic books but does not change the original appearances according to the Wenxuan’s work. Thirdly, most of the citations of classic books by Lishan are probably from the single editions that were widely circulated at that time. Fourth, Lishan mainly used the classic books to comment the works in Wenxuan. In this way, classic books can be study at the same time while reading literary works, which plays a certain role in enhancing the value of literary works in Wenxuan.