Home Categories Science learning History of Book Collection in China

Chapter 35 Section 9 Famous bibliophiles and library buildings in the period of the Republic of China

After the founding of the Republic of China, with the introduction of western science education, the social outlook has changed a lot.First of all, under the circumstances of the invasion of foreign capital and the gradual disintegration of the feudal economy, many old book collectors who were bureaucrats, wealthy businessmen, and large landlords were on the verge of bankruptcy during the war and were unable to maintain their own library buildings.As Ye Changchi described in "Yuandulu Diary": Many people, due to "the decline of their families, used books to pay off their debts; or sold books for squandering; frustrated in their careers, they sold their books and confiscated them or asked for money, resulting in the scattering of books." .Secondly, with the development of social politics and economy and the emergence of public libraries, private collections have lost their original importance.Based on the above two reasons, private book collections have shrunk since the Republic of China.After the outbreak of the All-out War of Resistance Against Japan, many libraries were destroyed by Japanese artillery fire.After the Anti-Japanese War, the number of famous bibliophiles has been greatly reduced.

In the decades from the fall of the Qing Dynasty to 1949, there were also some famous bibliophiles in China, who made due contributions to the preservation of Chinese cultural classics.During the period of the Republic of China, the main book collectors and libraries included Miao Quansun (AD 1844-1919) and his Yifengtang, Li Shengduo (AD 1859-1935) and his Muxixuan, Fu Zengxiang (AD 1872-1949) and his The Tibetan Garden, Liang Qichao (AD 1873-1929) and his ice drinking room, Mo Bokui (AD 1878-1958) and his 500,000 volume building, Liu Chengqian (AD 1882-1963) and his Jia Yetang, Zhou Shutao (AD 1891-1984) and his Han Zaitang, Zheng Zhenduo (AD 1898-1958) and his Xidi Library, etc.Among the above-mentioned book collectors, Li Shengduo, Fu Zengxiang and Zheng Zhenduo are the most representative.

Li Shengduo, courtesy name Yan〔xi〕Qiao (Jiaowei), nicknamed Muzhai, was originally from Jiujiang, Jiangxi, and was born in Beijing.Li Shengduo's great-grandfather, Li Shu, was a tribute during the Daoguang period. He built the Muxi Pavilion in Jiujiang and collected 100,000 volumes of books.Grandfather Li Wen (氵昱) [yuyu] was the classics of Kuiwen Pavilion, and was in charge of the management of court books.His father, Li Mingchi (Chi Chi), was a member of the household department, Wailang, and served successively as the governor of Hunan and Fujian provinces. He liked to gather books all his life.Li Shengduo was a Jinshi during the Guangxu period. He served as the editor of the Imperial Academy and the general office of the Beijing Normal University, and later went to Japan, Belgium and other countries.He once served as the governor of Shanxi.After the Republic of China, he served as the president of the Senate and the chief of agriculture and commerce.Li Shengduo has read classics and history since he was a child, and he loves the study of catalogs and collations, so he became addicted to books.Li's Osmanthus Osmanthus Museum originally had a rich collection of high-quality books, and later acquired most of the collections of Yuan Fangying, a bibliophile from Xiangtan, in Woxuelu in Hunan.When I went to Japan as an envoy, because the old books were discarded after the Meiji Restoration in Japan, with the help of Han Shimada and Gin Kishida in Japan, I bought many books that were rare or long lost in China.When he was the minister of the Ministry of Education, the remaining manuscripts from the Dunhuang robbery were transported to Beijing, and he selected many fine works for collection.Based on the above reasons, there are nearly 300 kinds of Song and Yuan rare books in the collection of Li's Osmanthus Osmanthus Hall, among which are the engraved editions of "Historical Records Collection" and "Han Shu" in Jianyang in the early Southern Song Dynasty, and "Later Han Shu" and "Tong Dian" published by Jian'an Huang Shanfu. A large number of engraved editions of the Song and Yuan Dynasties, such as "Shuoyuan", are mostly orphaned at home and abroad; another outstanding feature of Muxixuan is that many of the collections are manuscripts of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and the transcriptions are neat, and many manuscripts retain the original appearance of the Song engravings.There are also some manuscripts of celebrities, such as Ji Guge Ying Song version "Xie Xuancheng Collection", Qian Zengshu Gutang Ying Song version "Cai Tiao Ji", etc., are rare books; Li also collects many manuscripts and celebrity proofreadings.There are manuscripts by Dai Zhen, Weng Fanggang, Jiao Xun, Ding Yan, Miao Quansun and others.There are school books of Qian Qianyi, Huang Pilie, Gu Guangqi, Zhou Xizan, Li Wentian and others.These are unmatched by other bibliophiles.

Li Shengduo Zhai has many names, and the collections are divided according to different types of books; Jianchutang collects the posthumous letters of Li's ancestors; Changshuku specializes in gold and stone; Liqing Pavilion specializes in calligraphy; Linlin Jiaguan is his book collection in the capital; Fanjiang Pavilion is the place where his works are preserved.Muxixuan is the general name of Li's collection of books.There are about eleven or twelve kinds of catalogs recording Li Shengduo's collection, among which the three volumes of "Li's Bibliography in Peking University Library Collection" edited by Zhao Wanli and Chang Zhiying are the most famous. The face of the book collection.There are about ten thousand kinds of books in Li's Muxixuan collection. In Li Shengduo's later years, his concubine sued the Tianjin District Court for the crime of "abandoning Mu Zhai and hurting" and claimed 50,000 yuan. Li had negotiated with the Beijing Library to transfer the collection of books. Beitu's funding was tight and failed. Li Shengduo passed away in 1935, and in 1939 his son sold all the books in Mu Xi Xuan to Peking University Library.

Fu Zengxiang, whose name is Runyuan (Uncle Yuan), is the owner of Shuangjian Building in Bieshu, a layman in Tibetan Garden, and an old man in Tibetan Garden.Born in Jiang'an County, Huzhou, Sichuan (now part of Yibin area).In the twenty-fourth year of Guangxu (AD 1898), he was a Jinshi and a scholar of the Hanlin Academy.During the Reform Movement of 1898 in the same year, he had close contacts with the reformers Liu Guangdi and Yang Rui.After the Revolution of 1911, she participated in politics, founded a women's normal school, and served as Minister of Education in Wang Shizhen's cabinet. During the "May 4th" Movement, she was dismissed because she resisted the order to dismiss Cai Yuanpei.Since then, Fu has devoted himself to the collection and collation of books, as well as research on bibliography and edition studies.He used to be the curator of the library of the Palace Museum.

Fu Zengxiang’s large-scale collection of ancient books began after the Revolution of 1911. When he went to Nanjing with Tang Shaoyi’s North-South Conference Peace Corps, he bought a Song version of "New Collection of Confucian Criticism and Ancient Prose" for the first time in his life. It was a pity that it was easily deleted, which inspired him to buy books.His ancestors originally had a Yuan publication "Zizhi Tongjian Yinzhu", and in 1916 he bought another Zhejiang edition in the second year of Shaoxing in the Southern Song Dynasty. He combined the two Song and Yuan editions as Shuangjian, and named his library building "Shuangjian Building".Later, the Fu family purchased the court manuscript "Hong Fan Zheng Jian" in the Chunxi period of the Southern Song Dynasty (AD 1174-1189) in the collection of Sheng Yu (yuyu), the royal family of the Qing Dynasty.This is the only and most complete manuscript of the court in the Southern Song Dynasty. It has been kept in the inner government and was exiled to the people in the early Republic of China. It is indeed a rare treasure.He saw this book in Shengjia in 1917. In the early spring of 1928, the book dealers decided to sell it at a high price, and Fu resolutely sold three boxes of ancient Japanese and Korean engraved editions in his collection to buy this book. In 1934, Fu Zengxiang bought the Song version "The Original Meaning of the Book of Changes" at an unprecedented high price of more than 10,000 yuan.In the 1920s and 1930s, Shuangjianlou bought about 10 Song books on average every year. In the "Shuangjianlou Rare Book Catalog" compiled and printed in 1929, there are about 180 kinds of Song and Yuan rare books.As a result, Fu Zengxiang became the leading bibliophile in Beijing and Tianjin. The large number of printed books in Song and Yuan Dynasties is one of the characteristics of Shuangjianlou.

Fu Zengxiang often lingers in Beijing Liulichang and Longfu Temple Book Shop, also often set foot in Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangsu, Shanghai and other places, and even went to Dongying Japan to visit books.Every time you know that a rare book is sold, you must get it; if you don’t have enough money, you must see it.Books are often borrowed for collation.Often short of funds, they are forced to borrow money to collect books or sell old ones for new ones.He also had close contact with contemporary bibliophiles Sheng Yu, Zhang Yuanji, Dong Kang, Zhang Yu, Ye Dehui, Yuan Kewen, Tao Xiang, Zhou Shutao, Miao Quansun, etc., exchanging information and visiting books on his behalf.The book "Zhang Yuanji and Fu Zengxiang's Discussion on Books and Chidots" published by the Commercial Press records the two people's discussions on visiting books, collecting books, printing books, and borrowing books, expressing their profound cultural accomplishments, professional knowledge and their desire to protect the traditional culture of the motherland. Virtue, can be called Wenyuan Jiahua.

Fu Zengxiang is also good at school books.After resigning, he settled in Beijing.The new residence has the prestige of mountains, rocks, flowers and trees. It was named Tibetan Garden after Su Dongpo's sentence "ten thousand people are like a sea hiding in one body".Just as Yu Jiaxi said in "The Preface to the Sequel to the Inscriptions of Tibetan Garden Group Books": "In my spare time, I always take the old and new printed editions, and I am correcting them myself. I don't get rid of the red and yellow, and the 矻 [kuku] 矻 is poor day and night. The schools are all tens of thousands. The remaining volumes." Since Fu Zengxiang is an expert, "the books he has corrected in his life will not be lightly revised in the old ones, nor will they be distorted, so as to obtain the true face of the ancients."He stipulated that there should be 30 pages of school books every day, and if the day was not enough, he would make up at night.Beginning in 1943, he began to collate the 1,000-volume "Wen Yuan Ying Hua".The famous bibliophile Lun Ming praised him in "Book Collection Chronicle Poems Since 1911":

In order to promote traditional culture, Fu Zengxiang also did a lot of work to disseminate classics.He used his own collection of rare books as the base, collated with reference to other fine books, and raised funds to publish books such as "Shuangjianlou Series", "Complete Books of Shuxians" and "Zhouyi Zhengyi".He also provided more than 30 rare ancient books for the photocopying and publishing of Hanfen Building's "Sibu Series" of the Commercial Press. When the "Twenty-Four Histories of Patina" was photocopied, quite a few original copies were taken from Shuangjianlou, which made these rare copies widely circulated.

Fu Zengxiang is a bibliographer with outstanding achievements in modern times. Every time he gets a book, he writes an inscription and postscript; Evidence of version identification.Fu Zengxiang’s works on bibliography include: Inscriptions of Cangyuan Qunshu, 580 articles in 20 volumes; Bibliography of Shuangjianlou Rare Books in four volumes, recording 1,287 rare books collected before 1929; , describing 51 kinds of books collected in 1930; four volumes (manuscripts) of "The Bibliography of Rare Books Collected in the Tibetan Garden", describing 280 kinds of books collected after 1931.There is also "Catalogue of Secret Books of Song, Jin and Yuan Dynasties Collected in Shuangjianlou" (manuscript), which describes 169 rare and rare books.What is particularly worth mentioning is the 19 volumes of "Zangyuan Qunshujingyanlu" published in 1983, which records the author's precious collection of books that he has seen during his visits, purchases, and readings for decades. There are more than 4,500 kinds and millions of words , is a masterpiece of bibliography.

Fu Zengxiang loved books, bought books, collected books, and read books all his life, but he didn't keep them secret with precious rare books and rare goods.He believed that these precious cultural relics should be preserved by the state. In 1947, Fu Zengxiang donated 373 books, about 4,300 volumes, to the National Peking Library. The clear and refined engravings, famous transcripts, prestigious schools and Fu's own school copies were all donated to the Beijing Library, and the current version was donated to Sichuan University in his hometown. In 1950, Fu Zhongmo, the eldest son of the Fu family, donated 480 books, about 3,500 volumes, to the Beijing Library.It fully expresses his great spirit of loving the motherland and Chinese culture. Zheng Zhenduo, named Xidi, often signed Ren [niu twist] Qiu, a layman in Youfang, was born in Changle, Fujian. In 1917, he joined the Beijing Railway Management School of the Ministry of Railways. During the "May 4th" Movement, he co-organized the "New Society" magazine with Geng Jizhi and Xu Dishan. In 1920, he initiated the organization of the Literature Research Association. He joined the Commercial Press in 1923 and was the editor-in-chief of "Novel Monthly". In 1934, he served as the dean of the School of Arts of Jinan University in Shanghai. He stayed in Shanghai during the Anti-Japanese War and was engaged in the work of rescuing documents.After liberation, he served as director of the Institute of Archeology and Literature of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, and vice minister of the Ministry of Culture. In October 1958, he led a Chinese cultural delegation to visit abroad and died in a plane crash. Zheng Zhenduo liked to collect books since he was a child. Whenever he saw a classmate buy a good book, he would borrow it and copy it. He regards collecting books as a joy in life.After working as an adult, he pays great attention to buying and collecting books. He has a collection of foreign books and ancient books.By the time he was 34 in 1932, he had collected more than 20,000 books.He deposited most of his books in the Shanghai Kaiming Bookstore library. During the "January 28th Incident", the collection of books stored in Kaiming Bookstore was destroyed by the war.Zheng Zhenduo's strong patriotism was touched by witnessing that the country's thousand-year-old literature was either destroyed in the flames of war, or was thrown into the furnace as waste paper, or was bought by outsiders.So he concealed his name, lived in seclusion in Shanghai, and worked under the iron heel of the Japanese invaders to collect and protect the literature of the motherland.In the first four years, he dealt with the enemy with his own strength, and in the next four years, he participated in the book collection work of the "Document Preservation Comrades Association" organized by Jiang Fucong, Ye Gongchuo and others.The enemy hunted him everywhere, but he showed no fear, but said righteously: "I want to take a part of the burden of preserving national literature on my shoulders, and I will never let it go." ("Catalogue of Requesting Books").Once, he saw more than 70 bundles of ancient books in a second-hand bookstore, with a total of more than 5,000 volumes. When they were sold to paper merchants as waste paper, he bought these books with his only 6,000 yuan. Monthly food money, this is a huge feat." In the first four years, he used his reputation and strength to attract scholars from the north and the south, and preserved many ancient books and documents in Shanxi, Pingjin, Guangdong and Hankou.He said: "No important thing has ever escaped my attention. I can get what I want. At that time, the people of Manchukuo were buying books, the enemy was buying books, buying books, but what I wanted to buy Things will never go to them." ("Seeking Book Catalogue") Zheng Zhenduo collected books for the nation during the eight years of the Anti-Japanese War, and he did buy many precious rare books, such as the school version of "Ancient and Modern Zaju" copied by Maiwangguan. Yuan and Ming Dynasty dramas have been successively collected by Qian Qianyi, Qian Zeng, Ji Zhenyi, He Huang, Gu Shan, Huang Pilie, Wang Shizhong, Zhao Zongjian, Ding Zuyin and other famous bibliophiles. When Suzhou was occupied in 1937, the book was scattered, and the bookseller was limited to three days to sell ten thousand gold. He borrowed money everywhere and finally bought the book. It is in this spirit that Zheng Zhenduo collected rare Chinese ancient books.Zheng's collection of books, including Chinese and foreign languages, has a total of 17,000 kinds and nearly 100,000 volumes, including 7,500 kinds of ancient books. After Zheng Zhenduo's unfortunate death, his wife Gao Junzhen and his son Zheng Erkang donated all the Xidi collections to the Beijing Library, which just reflected Zheng Zhenduo's great wish to preserve literature for the motherland during his lifetime.
Notes:
Press "Left Key ←" to return to the previous chapter; Press "Right Key →" to enter the next chapter; Press "Space Bar" to scroll down.
Chapters
Chapters
Setting
Setting
Add
Return
Book