If you think about it, China gave birth to such a great bibliophile, and I also want to thank the Nanyang Persuasion Association held in Nanjing during the Republic of China. There are many records that Liu Chenggan went to participate in this meeting, accidentally passed by the old book street, remembered that his father was compiling books, so he began to buy books here, the specific details are different in different books. Recently, I have read Liu Chenggan's "Eighty Self-Narration of the Old Man of Jiaye" written by Liu Chenggan in his later years, which has nearly 10,000 words, which is Liu Chenggan's own nearly life experience written by himself, which also talks about his initial experience of collecting books. The original saying goes like this: "Yu Zhi is interested in collecting books, and when xuan tong Gengshu, he will persuade The Nanyang Persuasion Association to go to Jinling, and when he encounters a good book, he will have a good heart, and he will start to do it a little." In xinhai, collectors have scattered more, and there is no shortage of Song Yuanjia and celebrity fine banknotes, which are not stingy to buy. In more than ten years, it accumulated to 500,000 copies. ”
Plaque inscribed by the Emperor
Holding the pillar couplet, sentence by sentence to book
Half a million volumes, what a collection of books, in this sense, Liu Chenggan may be the largest number of private bibliophiles in China, but I can still read some questions from his conversation above, such as he said, "When you have a good book, your heart is good", before that, he was completely layman on ancient books, so how did he know which are good books and which are ordinary books? In my own experience, from the time I began to buy books, to be able to understand what a good book is, it has gone through about ten years, of course, I dare not say how much I know about ancient books to this day, but Liu Chenggan, a person who never collects books, accidentally traveled to other places for meetings, passed by the old bookstore, and was able to understand which books were good books in it.
Liu Chenggan in his youth
The old man of Jiaye took a photo at the age of eighty
Regarding his experience of collecting books, in the "Jiayetang Collection Secretary", Liu Chenggan also has such a saying: "Traced back to Xuantong Gengjiao, the Nanyang Persuasion Association was held in Jinling, and the treasures were gathered, and people competed for it." Yu Du walked to various bookstores in the Yuanjing Realm, read through the books, and returned for two years. The more the day, the bookjar brought the book to sell, and he had the ambition to gather books. In terms of time, this statement predates the "Eighty Self-Narration", when Liu Chenggan liked books, where he liked books, these two points are exactly the same, but the paragraph about his reading should be detailed in later records, because the specific location is pointed out here, that is, the famous old book street in Nanjing. He said that he "read a lot of books" here, and since then he has bought back a large number of books, because he bought a lot of books, the next day many booksellers came to him to sell books, and for this reason, he had the idea of "gathering books by yourself". This differs slightly from what he said in his later years, mainly in the phrase "slightly elaborated". Of course, the unreliability of memory is a kind of general knowledge, and so is myself, not to mention that an eighty-year-old man came to write a memoir, and I felt a little nitpicky.
Liu Chenggan's handwriting
Jiayetang Library is located in Nanxun Town, Huzhou City, Zhejiang Province. Over the past ten years, I have visited Jiayetang several times, and every time I come here, I will be shocked by its gas place, although the quality of its collection of books can not be compared with the four major library buildings, but in terms of overall scale, especially the professionalism of the library building, it is far above the four major library buildings. With the understanding of Liu Chenggan, I have great admiration for him, I feel that from his lifetime to today, people have a huge misunderstanding and prejudice against him, and I always show my dissatisfaction with this unfair treatment, and I really hope that someone will rewrite a biography of Liu Chenggan and seriously show his book collection and deeds.
An old collection taken out of a bookcase
Because jiayetang came too many times, Jiayetang was not included in my initial search plan, but because of my preference for him, when I came to Huzhou this time, I felt that Jiayetang was missing, like i was missing a big thing that had not been done. In the past, when I came to Jiayetang, I was a tourist and followed the established tour route to see the flowers, but this time I wanted to enter the library building and see the details of it. Fortunately, now that I have met Mr. Zheng Zongnan, the manager of Jiayetang, after he asked the leader for approval, I finally had to enter the building under the leadership of Zheng Zongnan.
Ingenious railings
The old keys are still in use today
Looking through Liu Chenggan's old collection in Jiaye Hall, experiencing the Jingye of Zhou Zimei and other management personnel for the collection of books in Jiaye Hall, although most of the rare books have been divided into various mansions, the remaining ordinary books still far exceed the quality of ancient books collected by general libraries, especially in terms of books, most of them are first-time prints. Now there is a popular saying that Liu Chenggan bought books, whether good or bad, it was not easy to see the books sent by someone by boat, so he bought them all, nominally praising Liu Chenggan for having sympathy, but in fact, he said that he did not understand books and had no vision, and the situation of reading books proved that this statement was just a hypothesis.
Interior view of Jiaye Hall: The silence in the grandeur
Unfortunately, there are too few people who can now collect books on a large scale and seriously, and I and Brother Zheng sighed that the ancient book industry today is "less known to the whole society, and who listens to the broken strings", and he advised me that there is no need to be so pessimistic, because he saw that a data from Taiwan was quoted in an article by Teacher Wu Ge, saying that there are more than 10,000 people in China who are interested in ancient books. I doubt this statistic, but I hope so, even though on average only one in more than 10,000 people likes ancient books.
Jiayetang employees
In the ancient book market for more than twenty years, I can often see the old collection of Jiayetang, and I myself have bought no less than a hundred, although I have long known that Liu Chenggan has been selling books to the outside world in his later years, so many books are not scattered after death, but sold by his own hands, or at his own behest. But I think that book sellers have a common characteristic, because they are in a hurry to change money, so most of the sellers are the best books in the collection, and most of the books that are left in the hands at the end are ordinary books. But now in the old collection of Jiayetang that appears on the market, the top things are all returned to different public libraries, the most common books are left in the building, and most of the books that appear on the market are mid-range products in between, so how are these mid-range books scattered? I asked Brother Zheng about this question.
View of the courtyard of Jiaye Hall
He told me that before the books of Jiayetang returned to the Zhejiang Provincial Library, first of all, they were managed by the Jiaxing Municipal Library, and the Jiaxing Municipal Library sent the librarian Wu Loting to take over, he lived in Jiayetang for several years, during which many of the books in Jiayetang appeared on the market, for this matter Wu Loting resigned and went back, and never came to Jiayetang again, but whether the lost books were really related to Wu Loting, the above did not make a conclusive conclusion, in short, the matter was over. Regarding this story of Wu Rongting, I had vaguely heard some of it before, and once when I met with Fan Xiao and my brother, I also talked about this topic, and the answer that Fan Brother told me was some other theory. I think these things are still clear, because many things in that era, as well as special historical reasons, cannot be judged by ordinary views of good and bad.