Literary Records General Examination (Qing - Modern) (Full Three Volumes)

Author: Zheng Weizhang
Publisher:
Publishing Time: Not available
Features: In the past, Ye Changchi spent seven years compiling the preliminary draft of Records of Book Collectors in Verse (hereinafter referred to as Ye's Poem). On August 17, 1890, during the reign of Emperor Guangxu, he presented it to Pan Zuyin, Grand Guardian of the Imperial Clan and Minister of Revenue, for review. Pan was deeply impressed upon first seeing it and immediately wanted 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 described it as 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 Poem in such high regard? Because the development of Chinese civilization over thousands of years has always depended on books! History is a long river, and any individual is merely a water molecule in that river, fleeting and transient. Only an unsinkable great ship, sailing from ancient times to the present and onward forever, exists. That ship is books! The Chinese nation is a people who love books, and 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 active 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 strained; or constantly reviewing and collating books with red and yellow annotations, engrossed in bookwork all day; 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 books, meticulously annotating and cataloging each one; or enduring great hardships to rescue ancient books and prevent them from flowing to foreign lands. They loved books as if they were their lives, taking hunger as food, cold as clothing, illness as medicine, and solitude as companions. They were so devoted to books that they reached the point of obsession. All the tens of thousands of existing ancient books are imbued with their hard work and dedication. They have made immortal contributions to the prosperity of Chinese culture. Their history is worthy of being recorded. However, apart from a few high-ranking 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 silk scrolls scattered, the grass and weeds grew silent." In the early Qing Dynasty, Sun Qian, who borrowed and copied books with Huang Yujì, Ye Wan, and Zhou Zaijun, was forgotten by later generations when Quanzhou's Wan Zuowang visited Wu in the Qianlong era, as no one knew the details of his life. 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 Diligent Reading, 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 hidden." During the Kangxi and Yongzheng reigns, Zheng Yuanqing compiled The Records of Hu in 120 volumes, which were 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 write about "the origins of figures and the schools of classics in Wu," to "pass on the truth of literature." Huang Pili wanted to "write short biographies of each and compile them into a collection," believing that "this is also the duty of those who love the past." Chen Kui also wanted to "compile the origins of book collections from various families for the literature of our county," but 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 the bibliophiles of Hangzhou. As for compiling a comprehensive book on bibliophiles across the country, 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, writing Records of Book Collectors in Verse, which included a total of 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 pioneering work. Therefore, this book has been highly valued by the literary world for over a hundred years. Liang Qichao and Chen Yuan both listed it as one of the important works of Chinese studies. Many later scholars followed, supplemented, and expanded 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 Poem laid the foundation and made significant 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 the Southern Song Dynasty and Shi Beiyans' Records of the Jin Source in Verse, writing it in the form of poetic annotations. It was neither literature nor historical biography. 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 or coherent, sometimes too brief and unclear, or too lengthy and disorganized, making reading inconvenient. As a historical work, it cannot be considered appropriate. Many of those included lacked sufficient historical materials, and a large number of famous bibliophiles were omitted, leaving much room for supplementation. Moreover, Ye's rule of not including living people meant that there were countless contemporaries and those of the past century who could have been included. As for later works, some were lost, others still followed the poetic annotation style, some were casual notes, varying in depth, and some were scattered across different sections, making them difficult to find. Therefore, it is necessary to create a new style, supplement the omissions, continue the later entries, and compile a more systematic work. I am not knowledgeable, and my reading is not extensive, but I take "devoting my middle years to the chaos of literature" as my motto, and thus I am determined to write Comprehensive Records of Bibliophiles (Qing—Modern). This period is close to our time, highly practical, and a time of great activity in literary activities. Over the past twenty years (with a few years omitted due to changes in my work), I have devoted myself to this day and night, regardless of winter or summer. I have painstakingly collected and compiled materials from over 1,460 ancient books, including collections, series, local gazetteers, notes, diaries, chronicles, catalogs, annotations, and other types, organizing them into orderly biographies. The hardships and joys of this work are not something outsiders can understand, so why should I speak of them. I believe that the tracing of the origins of classics and the revelation of the hidden virtues of scholars are responsibilities I cannot shirk, so even though it is hard, it is still sweet, and even though it is laborious, it is still joyful. As for the part before the Ming Dynasty, it still awaits completion.