On November 18th, the academic seminar on "Crossing the Cloud Building and Jiangnan Culture" was held in Suzhou. The organizer, Suzhou Archives, announced at the meeting that by October 2021, all the archives of Guoyunlou have been sorted out and proofread or photocopied and published, with a total of 30 volumes of 18 kinds. Among them, "Friends and Friends of Guoyunlou Xinzha" is the last work about the Archives of Guoyunlou compiled by the Suzhou Archives, which was recently published by Shanghai Wenhui Publishing House.
GuoyunLou is a business card of Suzhou culture. In the late Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, Guoyunlou enjoyed the reputation of "the first in Jiangnan" with the wealth of its collection. Nowadays, the calligraphy and painting treasures of Guoyunlou have been collected by the Palace Museum, Shanghai Museum, Suzhou Museum, Nanjing Library and other institutions, but the study of Guoyunlou is in the ascendant.
Archival collation and publication took ten years
In October 2021, all the archives of Guoyunlou were sorted out and proofread or photocopied and published. This is exactly 10 years since the Archives of the Cloud Tower were recruited into the museum. From the collection of archives to the collation and publication, Shen Huiying, a research librarian at the Suzhou Municipal Archives, has been deeply involved in it, and she has a lot of feelings about these 10 years.
In January 2000, Shen Huiying, who had been working in the Suzhou Municipal Archives for fifteen years, was transferred to the Storage and Utilization Office, and after having a certain understanding of the collection, she deeply felt that the archives mainly composed of the archives of party and government organs could not fully reflect the characteristics of Suzhou's famous historical and cultural city, so she became interested in the Suzhou cultural family. In 2010, after taking charge of the collection of archives, after many communications with Mr. Gu Duhuan, she collected a number of precious archives such as Gu Wenbin's diary, family letters, annals, and friends and friends' letters into the museum.
"These archives involve the whole process of Gu Wenbin's father and son's collection of calligraphy and paintings and the construction of the Cloud Tower and the Private Garden Garden, as well as family development, children's education, gentry travel, official ecology, and social exchanges, which have important historical research value." Shen Huiying introduced to reporters. Because of this, after the archives enter the library, the collation work is also carried out simultaneously.
In 2012 and 2013, Gu Wenbin's manuscripts of "Diary of Guoyunlou" and "Eunuch You Hongxue" (Gu Wenbin's family book) were successively collected into the museum. We immediately organized intern students and comrades in the business office to start the entry and point school work. "The Diary of The Cloud Building" and the "Book of the Family of the Cloud Building" (point school book) are the first two works to be sorted out and published. The collation of letters involves the identification of authors, time and contents, which is boring and difficult, and it is very difficult, especially when sorting out the letters of Gui Pan Youpeng in Yunlou. "Some of the payments only have a name, character or number, and no surname, and need to examine the relationship between the author and the recipient in detail. For example, pan's letter, there is a letter that does not specify the time, but the letter mentions the fact that the old sixth of the Weng family has obtained the middle title, so it is judged that the time of the letter is six years of Xianfeng, because The sixth of The old Man is Weng Tonggong, and he is six in the family. ”
The publication of Guo Yunlou's diary and family letters immediately attracted the attention of the academic community. At the academic seminar on "Guoyunlou and Jiangnan Culture", the papers submitted by Professor Fan Jinmin of Nanjing University and Professor Kan Hongliu of the Institute of Qing History of Chinese University all used these two books as research centers.
"Archives are the true records of history, and the ultimate purpose of archives is to develop and utilize them, provide first-hand information for all sectors of society to carry out research, and realize the sharing of archival resources." Shen Huiying told reporters that in order to let the academic community make better use of the Yunlou archives for various studies, the Suzhou Municipal Archives has systematically sorted out and published the "Essence of the Handwritten Books of the Masters of the Past Generations of the Yunlou" series of books. This series of books took 3 years to publish, a total of 13 kinds of 21 volumes, a total of Gu Wenbin, Gu Cheng, Gu Linshi, Gu Gongrou, Gu Gongshuo over the Cloud Building four generations of manuscripts. Later, "Wu Yun Xinzha" and "Guipan Youpeng Xinzha" (five volumes) also appeared one after another. By October 2021, all the archives of Guoyunlou have been sorted out and proofread or photocopied and published, with a total of 30 volumes of 18 kinds.
Why did the cloud building become the cloud building
Such a large and rich archive has been sorted out and published, so that the picture of cultural life in modern Suzhou can be more vividly restored as a possibility, attracting many scholars to join the work of Yunlou research, and finally making the cultural research of Yunlou become a prominent study in recent years.
There are many collectors in the late Qing Dynasty, how can Guoyunlou stand out and become the "first in Jiangnan"?
This not only requires the Gu family, the owner of the Cloud Building, to have a penchant for collecting calligraphy and paintings and have a keen appreciation, but also to have sufficient financial support. Professor Fan Jinmin of Nanjing University found from the archives of Guoyunlou that although Gu's collection began in the eighth year of Daoguang (1828), it was not outstanding at first, and its reputation was not loud; until Gu Wenbin reinstated him as a Daoist in Ningshaotai, Zhejiang Province, from the tenth year of Tongzhi (1871), after having a rich income, Guoyunlou made up for the old and made up for the new, picked up the missing pieces, and continued to add a lot of treasures, which created the reputation of "the first collector in Jiangnan".
"Gu Wenbin's collection of clouds can reach this peak, and the most powerful person is due to the fact that he has laid a solid economic strength with the lack of Ning Shaotai Daoists. In the middle and late Qing Dynasty, the most beautiful official shortage, the lack of Daoist officers is the customs road, the coastal customs road, Shanghai is the most, Ningshao, Deng Laiqing is second. The unique advantage of financial resources is the biggest advantage of the collecting world. At high prices, sellers from all over the world have also given priority to selling, so that the Gu family can receive famous treasures that ordinary people cannot buy from time to time. Fan Jinmin said.
Gu Wenbin regarded Mi Xiaokai's thousand-character text as the most precious treasure in the world, and he let his son fully satisfy the seller's asking price, "that is, according to him five hundred yuan, there is no need to be stingy." In order to buy Wang Shimin's huge banner, he wrote to his son: "The huge book of smokers is particularly rare, no matter how much the asking price, it must be purchased as a degree." "Many of the famous works of the Cloud Building were snapped up and stored without counting the price.
Shen Huiying is the collator of the archives of the Cloud Tower, and also the first batch of researchers of the Archives of the Cloud Tower. In the book "The Secret of the Archives of The Cloud Building", Shen Huiying used the archives and related documents to restore the construction history of the Cloud Tower.
As a cultural landmark in Jiangnan, "the Cloud Tower has gone through a long period of time from its conception to its birth, to be precise, first there was the name of the Cloud Tower, and then there was the Cloud Tower, which was 12 years apart." Shen Huiying said that the completion of the Guoyun Building refers to the structure of the four-sided building of The ZhengLan family in the same year of Gu Wenbin's Hangzhou. Four-sided building "four sides of the patio is very wide, all surrounded by Taihu Lake stone, chisel pond two places", the cloister pavilion dotted between, very Su-style garden characteristics, Gu Wenbin felt that the four-sided building and his heart and mind to build the cloud building is generally the same, so let his son Gu Cheng to visit Hangzhou, Gu Cheng returned to Suzhou after buying land to buy a house, built a cloud tower, Gun Nunnery and Yi Garden. Two years later, Gu Wenbin resigned and returned to his hometown and presided over the Cloud Tower.
According to the archives of the Yunlou, Gu Wenbin went from resigning from the official to driving Hexi and presided over the Yunlou for a total of 14 years. In the past 14 years, he has searched for a large number of fine calligraphy and paintings, of which the fine calligraphy and paintings have been written in the book "Records of Paintings and Calligraphy of Guoyunlou" personally approved by him: 246 pieces of rare calligraphy and paintings of the Tang, Song, Ming and Qing dynasties, 58 pieces of calligraphy works including "Mi-inscribed Chu G Lan Ting Scroll" and "Su Wenzhong Sacrifice Huang Ji Dao Scroll", "Shi Juran Haiye Picture Scroll" and "Tang Zi Wei Wang Jizhi Out of the Mountain Map" (that is, "Wang Gong Bai Xiang Tu", also known as "Wang Wen Ke Out of the Mountain Map") and other painting works.
In 1889, Gu Wenbin died. Gu Wenbin's descendants scrupulously abide by the ancestral precepts and pass on the poetry to their families. The GuoyunLou was passed to the hands of the grandchild Gu Linshi, reaching the heyday of collection. At that time, there were thousands of fine calligraphy and paintings from the Song and Yuan dynasties, and according to Gu Linshi's "Records of Continued Calligraphy and Painting in the Cloud Building", there were 113 high-grade rare calligraphy and painting works.
The efforts of the Gu family for generations have made Guoyunlou enjoy the reputation of "the first in Jiangnan" with the wealth of its collection.
Participating experts. From left to right, they are Wang Han, Fan Jinmin and Shen Huiying.
Jiangnan culture in the Cloud Building
With the advent of the Guoyunlou Archives, the research angles of the Guoyunlou are becoming more and more diverse. At the academic seminar on the 18th, Gu Wenbin's literary and painting trade in the Northern Liuli Factory, the musical instruments received by Guoyunlou, the hand scroll of Yuan monk Xue'an in the Collection of Guoyunlou, the "Book of Han Chang Lishan Stone Scrolls", and Wu Changshuo in the archives of Guoyunlou were warmly discussed by the participating scholars. The "Jiangnan culture" in the archives of The Cloud Building has also received the attention of scholars.
Shen Huiying told reporters that Guoyunlou, Gen'an and Yiyuan are themselves a Su-style garden building and part of Jiangnan culture; and the archives of Guoyunlou also retain a large amount of Jiangnan cultural information, such as calligraphy and painting collections, friends and friends, and even garden historical materials, "Suzhou classical gardens are representatives of Jiangnan gardens, and 9 have been selected into the World Cultural Heritage List." Among them, the sale and repair of the four gardens of the Humble Administrator's Garden, the Lingering Garden, the Coupling Garden, and the Master of Nets Garden are mentioned in Gu's diary and family letters, and these precious historical materials correct some errors in the history of Suzhou gardens. For example, on May 1 of the second year of Guangxu, Sheng Xuanhuai's father, Sheng Kang, signed a contract at Gu Wenbin's home and bought the Lingering Garden from Cheng Woyun, a wealthy merchant in Suzhou, for the price of "5,650 gold", with Gu Wenbin as the intermediary. The Master of Nets Garden and the Coupling Garden were bought and repaired by Gu Wenbin's friends Li Hongyi and Shen Bingcheng respectively, especially the Coupling Garden belongs to the major renovation, and the Yi Garden was jointly built by Gu Wenbin and Gu Cheng's father and son and invited the painter Ren Xuan to participate in the design, which is a Qing Dynasty garden that integrates Jiangnan Gardens. Whether a friend buys a garden or builds a garden by himself, Gu Wenbin's diary and family letters are recorded. ”
Wang Han, associate professor of the History Department of Soochow University, told reporters that the ancestor of the Gu clan of Guoyunlou was a Merchant jia of Hui nationality, who moved to Suzhou at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty. They have grown from a resident into Suzhou urban society and rose to become a Jiangnan cultural family under the infiltration of Jiangnan culture.
Teacher Wang Han found from historical documents that after the Gu family moved to Suzhou, in the past few hundred years, the residence has moved from the relatively deserted and low cost of living peach blossom dock to the convenient water and land environment and the "collection of sifang department stores", and finally moved to the iron bottle lane in the central urban area of Suzhou; with the change of residence, Gu's occupation has also changed from "accountant" to a merchant who runs oil shops and cloth numbers, and then to a local gentry. At the time of the Ming and Qing dynasties, Suzhou was the economic and cultural center of southeast China, under the influence of the general environment, the Gu family gradually became a businessman and a Confucian from a simple "worker", to Gu Wenbin's generation, young to teach, dedicated to the industry, and finally completed the transformation from "businessman" to "scholar", well integrated into the Suzhou urban society.
Teacher Wang Han said that whether it is Gu Wenbin's examination of the imperial examination or the inheritance of several generations of Guoyun lou owners after that, behind it there are Jiangnan cultural factors of chongwen re-teaching and poetry.
In addition, "As a collector, Gu Wenbin has cultivated the way of learning for his descendants through 'Tibetan governance'; he has also interacted with the local social elites of Suzhou through 'Tibetan friends', so that Jiangnan culture can be well exchanged and inherited; and through 'Tibet to rule the world', he has assisted local governments to rationally handle local affairs in Suzhou." In the book "Unveiling the Secret of the Archives of the Cloud Building", Shen Huiying also wrote: Before Gu Wenbin's death, a group of friends such as Wu Yun, Li Hongyi, Shen Bingcheng, Pan Zengwei frequently visited the Cloud Tower to enjoy calligraphy and painting; the Gu family often held music parties, painting parties, poetry meetings, piano meetings and other activities at home. They are all rich in five cars, good at calligraphy, good at appreciation, fond of collecting, and have similar interests. They took turns to do the East, sometimes tasting tea and drinking, discussing current politics, sometimes chanting poems against each other, asking each other for inscriptions, and sometimes tasting garden scenery and appreciating calligraphy and paintings.
The three-bay two-story building became one of the most active cultural activity centers in Jiangnan in the late Qing Dynasty.
Gu Wenbin crosses the butterfly diagram
In the first half of the last century, wars were frequent. The Gu family temporarily stored some calligraphy and painting elsewhere, and some of the calligraphy and painting were buried in an iron box, which finally allowed the national treasure to be preserved. Today, most of the Collection of Guoyunlou has been acquired by institutions such as the Suzhou Museum, the Shanghai Museum and the Nanjing Library. As Gu Duhuan said: "We always believe that these collections are not the private property of the Gu family, we are only custodians, not owners... Being able to return to the country is the best destination for them. ”
Gu Wenbin took the name "Over the Cloud Building", which means Su Dongpo's words: "Calligraphy and painting are only smoke clouds passing through the eyes." "Nowadays, the spiritual homes of Suzhou literati - Guoyunlou and Yiyuan have been restored, the calligraphy and paintings of Guoyunlou are also hidden in public cultural service institutions, and the archives of Guoyunlou have been all sorted out and published, and with the deepening of the study of archives, the history and spirit of Suzhou Gujia and Guoyunlou will also be highly restored." Over the eyes, never turned into a cloud of smoke.
Intern Zhang Bojin Yangzi Evening News/ Purple Cow News reporter Zang Lei
Source: Purple Cow News