The Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn Annals) is the official chronicle of the State of Lu, covering the period from 722 to 481 BCE. Traditionally attributed to Confucius, it is one of the revered Five Classics of Chinese literature.

The text is famously terse, recording events like accessions, wars, and natural disasters with minimal elaboration. However, it is historically significant for the theory of "praise and blame"—the belief that Confucius encoded subtle moral judgments into his precise choice of words. Because the text is so brief, it is almost always studied alongside the Zuo Zhuan, a commentary that provides the essential historical narrative.