The Annals is a succinct scribal record, with terse entries that record events such as the accessions, marriages, deaths, and funerals of rulers, battles fought, sacrificial records observed, natural disasters, and celestial phenomena believed to be of ritual significance.[1] The entries average only 10 characters in length; the longest entry in the entire work is only 47 characters long, and a number of the entries are only a single character long.[1] There are 11 entries that read simply *tung 螽 (pinyin: zhōng), meaning "a plague of insects" (probably locusts).[1]