Literary Records of the Examination (Complete Three Volumes)

Author: Zheng Weizhang
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 1999-01-01
Features: In the past, Ye Changchi spent seven years compiling the preliminary draft of Records of Book Collectors in Poetry (hereinafter referred to as Ye's Poetry). On the 17th day of the eighth month of the 16th year of the Guangxu reign (1890), he presented it to Pan Zuyin, Grand Secretary of the Imperial Secretariat and Minister of Revenue, for review. Pan was deeply impressed upon first sight and immediately wanted to have it published. Soon after, he fell seriously ill and, in his final moments, still urged the prompt completion of the final draft for publication. Several years after Pan's death, the six-volume edition was finally engraved and published by Jiang Biao. Several years later, Ye himself engraved the seven-volume supplemented edition. Wang Songwei called this book an "absolute masterpiece of the art world." Wu Yusheng remarked that it was a "creation unparalleled in over two hundred years, and as long as the text endures, this book will forever exist in the world." Why did Pan and others hold Ye's Poetry in such high regard? Because the development of Chinese civilization over thousands of years has always been inseparable from books! History is a long river, and any individual is merely a water molecule within it, fleeting in an instant. Only an unsinkable great ship, sailing from ancient times to the present and onward forever, truly endures. That ship is books! The Chinese nation is a people who love books, and thus, throughout history, generations of bibliophiles have emerged. Activities such as collecting, copying, collating, engraving, editing, cataloging, and annotating have become important historical endeavors in Chinese literature for thousands of years. Especially since the Qing Dynasty, these activities have been even more vibrant and have achieved remarkable accomplishments. Thousands of Chinese bibliophiles, or depriving themselves of necessities to buy books, or neglecting sleep and rest to diligently copy books, their eyes suffering from strain; or constantly reviewing and correcting texts with red and yellow ink, spending their days engrossed in scholarship without pause; or going bankrupt to engrave books, honoring the spirits of ancient scholars above and enlightening future generations below; or lining their shelves with thousands of volumes, meticulously annotating and cataloging each one; or enduring hardships to rescue ancient texts, preventing them from flowing to foreign lands. They loved books as if they were their lives, regarding hunger as food, cold as clothing, illness as medicine, and solitude as friendship. Some became so obsessed with the Song and Yuan dynasties that they reached a state of madness. All the tens of thousands of existing ancient books bear the fruits of their hard work and dedication. They have made immortal contributions to China's cultural prosperity. Their history is worthy of being recorded. However, apart from a few high-ranking officials and renowned scholars, most devoted their lives to books without seeking fame or fortune, so "their names were not mentioned by the knowledgeable, and when the books scattered, the world fell silent." Sun Qian, who exchanged books with Huang Yujì, Ye Wan, and Zhou Zaijun in the early Qing Dynasty, was forgotten by later generations when Quanzongweng visited Wu in the Qianlong era, leaving no trace of his legacy. Wu Qian lamented that the local annals of the Qianlong and Jiaqing eras did not include Ye Wan, saying, "It is a great regret." Qian Zeng, in Records of Diligent Reading, recorded the deeds of Ye Yi (Lin Zong), especially noting his hope that "this book would preserve his name for posterity." During the Kangxi and Yongzheng reigns, Zheng Yuanqing compiled Records of the Lake in 120 volumes, which were lost by the Jiaqing era, and Fan Kai found only one volume, compiling it into Records of Book Collectors in Wuxing, documenting sixteen bibliophiles in the region, marking the beginning of specialized works on bibliophiles. During the Jiaqing and Daoguang reigns, the great bibliophile Gu Guangqi wanted to record the "origins of figures and the schools of classics in Wu," believing it to be "a duty of those who love the past." Huang Pili wanted to "write brief biographies of each and compile them into a collection," considering it "also a responsibility of those who cherish antiquity." Chen Kui also wanted to "compile the origins of book collections from various families, serving as a record of the literature of the county." However, none of these projects were completed. In the late Qing Dynasty, Ding Shen imitated Zheng Yuanqing's Records of the Lake to compile Records of Book Collectors in Lin'an in four volumes, but it remained a specialized work focusing only on Hangzhou. As for a comprehensive compilation of bibliophiles across the country from ancient to modern times, none had been done before. It was not until the Guangxu era that Ye Changchi, a talented scholar from Suzhou, began to gather and compile the deeds of bibliophiles from the late Five Dynasties to the late Qing Dynasty, completing Records of Book Collectors in Poetry, which included 739 people, 329 of whom were from the Qing Dynasty. This marked the first time that the activities of bibliophiles since the Five Dynasties and Song Dynasty were outlined, truly a foundational work. Therefore, this book has been highly valued by the literary world for over a century. Liang Qichao and Chen Yuan both included it in important national studies bibliographies. Many later scholars followed, supplemented, and expanded upon it, such as Lun Ming, Liu Shengmu, Feng Xiong, Xu Shaoshi, Mo Boqi, Wang Dalong, Wang Jian, and Wu Zeyu, among whom are particularly noteworthy. Ye's Poetry laid the groundwork and made indelible contributions, but it also had shortcomings. Initially, Ye intended to "write a biography for each person," but due to the difficulty of organization, he followed the examples of Li Lei's Poems on Events of the Southern Song Dynasty and Shi Beiyans' Records of the Jin Source in Poetry, compiling it in the form of poetic annotations. It was neither literature nor historical biography. For each person or group of people, a poem was composed, followed by several historical records as notes. The poems were tasteless and useless, and the historical records were not, some brief and unclear, others lengthy and disorganized, making reading inconvenient. As a historical work, it could not be considered appropriate. Many entries lacked sufficient historical material, and a large number of famous bibliophiles were omitted, leaving much room for supplementation. Moreover, Ye's rule of not including living individuals meant that countless contemporaries and those of the past century were excluded. As for later works, some were lost, others remained bound by the poetic annotation style, some were casual notes with varying depths, and others were scattered across different sections, making them difficult to locate. Therefore, it was necessary to create a new style, supplement the omissions, continue the unfinished work, and compile a more systematic and comprehensive work. I am not knowledgeable enough, and my reading is far from thorough, but I take "wasting my middle years in the" as my motto, and thus I am determined to compile Comprehensive Records of Bibliophiles (Qing—Modern). Given its proximity to the present and its practical relevance, as well as being a period of vibrant literary activity, I have dedicated myself to this task for the past two decades (excluding a few years when my work changed). Through every season and every day, I have devoted myself to this pursuit, tirelessly compiling and editing from over 1,460 ancient texts, including collections, series, local annals, notes, diaries, genealogies, catalogs, annotations, and other genres, gathering abundant historical materials and organizing them into individual biographies. The hardships and joys of this endeavor are not for outsiders to speak of, nor do I need to speak of them. I believe that the tracing of the origins of classics and the revelation of the virtues of the unsung deserve no delay, so though it is arduous, it is still sweet, and though it is laborious, it is still joyful. As for the part before the Ming Dynasty, it still awaits completion.