The Family Instructions of Master Yan is the first work on family instructions in Chinese history with rich content of great magnitude. It was composed by Yan Zhitui of the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Born into a noble family, Yan was a well-learnt, diligent and smart person with rich social experience. In his opinion, educating children is an important and serious subject for parents. So he wrote the book based on his personal experience, ideas and knowledge to advise later generations on their behavior.

The book contains 20 chapters, giving advice to later generations on various aspects in the form of family instructions. It covers a wide range of subjects, including self cultivation, personality nurturing, family managing, learning and ways of life etc. The book also includes Yan Zhitui's unique views on social politics, ideology and culture, ethics, morality, folk customs and a series of other issues. With Confucianism at the core of educational thoughts, Yan Zhitui held that family education should begin with antenatal training. He also put forward some suggestions to improve the way scholar-officials were educated at that time.

The Family Instructions of Master Yan is a work with cultural richness, reflecting the excellent culture of ancient China. It serves as good reference for later generations in terms of family ethics and moral cultivation. In addition, the book draws comparison between nobles of the Southern and Northern Dynasties in terms of prevailing customs, ways of learning, languages and arts. As such, it is of high academic value in the research of the study of ancient classic & archive and the history of the Southern and Northern Dynasties. Meanwhile, the intelligent approaches and speculative exploration adopted by the author under the special political circumstances are of great cognitive value to later generations.