Literary Records of the Examination (Qing - Modern)

Author: Zheng Weizhang
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 1999-06-01
Features: Xie Yechang spent seven years compiling the preliminary draft of Records of Book Collectors in Poetry (hereinafter referred to as Ye's Poetry). On August 17, 1890, during 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 a "masterpiece of the art world," while 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 remain 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 depended on books! History is like a long river, and any individual is merely a drop of water in it, fleeting in an instant. Only an unsinkable great ship, sailing from ancient times to the present and onward forever, truly endures. And that ship is books! The Chinese nation is one that loves books, which is why throughout history, generations of bibliophiles have emerged. Activities such as collecting, copying, collating, engraving, editing, cataloging, and annotating have become important historical events 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 becoming dim from exhaustion; or constantly reviewing and correcting books, day and night; or going bankrupt to engrave books, honoring the spirits of ancient scholars above and benefiting future generations below; or lining their shelves with thousands of volumes, meticulously annotating and cataloging each one; or enduring great hardships to rescue ancient books and prevent them from leaving the country. They loved books as if they were their lives, regarding hunger as food, cold as clothing, illness as medicine, and solitude as friendship. Some even became obsessed with the Song and Yuan dynasties, to the point of folly. All the tens of thousands of existing ancient books are imbued with their hard work and dedication. They have made immortal contributions to Chinese culture and deserve to be remembered in history. However, except for a few high officials and renowned scholars, most people 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 became silent." Sun Qian, who exchanged books with Huang Yujì, Ye Wan, and Zhou Zaijun during the early Qing Dynasty, was forgotten by later generations when Quanzhou's Wan Zuowang visited Wu in the Qianlong era. Wu Qian lamented that the local gazetteers of the Qianlong and Jiaqing eras did not include Ye Wan, saying, "It is a great." Qian Jingsheng, in Notes on Book Collecting, recorded the deeds of Ye Yi (Lin Zong), especially noting his hope that "this book would be passed down so that names would not be forgotten." During the Kangxi and Yongzheng reigns, Zheng Yuanqing compiled The Records of Hu in 120 volumes, which was lost by the Jiaqing era, and Fan Kai found only one volume, compiling it into The Records of Wu Xing Book Collectors, documenting sixteen bibliophiles in Wu Xing, 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 short biographies of each and compile them into a collection," considering it "also a responsibility of those who cherish ancient books." Chen Kui also wanted to "compile the origins of book collections from various families for the benefit of local culture." However, none of these projects were completed. In the late Qing Dynasty, Ding Shen imitated Zheng Yuanqing's The Records of Hu to compile The Records of Wu Lin Book Collectors in four volumes, but it was merely a specialized work on book collectors in 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. For over a century, this book has been highly valued by the literary world. Liang Qichao and Chen Yuan both listed it as an important work in the study of Chinese classics. 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 deserves great credit. However, 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 Ke's Poems on Miscellaneous Events of the Southern Song Dynasty and Shi Beiyan's Records of Jin Origins in Poetry, compiling it in the form of poetic annotations—neither literature nor historical accounts. For each person or group of people, he wrote a poem, followed by several historical notes. The poems were tasteless and useless, and the notes were not, sometimes too brief to be clear or too lengthy and disorganized, making reading inconvenient. As a historical work, it cannot be considered appropriate. Many entries lack 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 many contemporaries and those of the past century were left out. As for later works, some were lost, others still followed the poetic annotation style, some were mere notes, varying in depth and scattered across different sections, making them difficult to find. Therefore, it is 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, but I take "devoting my middle years to the chaos of literature" as my motto, and thus I have the ambition to write Comprehensive Records of Bibliophiles (Qing—Modern), as this period is close to our time, highly practical, and a time of great activity in bibliophilic endeavors. For twenty years (with a few exceptions due to changes in my work), I have devoted myself to this task, day and night, in all seasons, without rest. I have diligently compiled and annotated from over 1,460 ancient texts, including collections, series, local gazetteers, notes, diaries, chronicles, catalogs, annotations, and other categories, gathering rich historical materials and organizing them into individual biographies. The hardships and joys of this work 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 merits of the unsung deserve my efforts, so even though it is hard, I find it sweet, and even though it is laborious, I find it joyful. As for the part before the Ming Dynasty, it still awaits completion.