At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the cabinet warehouse of the Forbidden City contained ancient books weighing 150,000 kilograms. Each of these ancient books records the long history and culture of China and carries the precious ideological wisdom of the ancients.
Every character and number in the ancient books was painstakingly composed by the ancient Chinese literati. Any of these ancient books is priceless in the current market in China and even the world.
However, the end of these 150,000 kilograms of ancient books was sold as waste paper, and finally sold at a price of 4,000 yuan of waste paper.
This is the famous "eight thousand sacks incident" in modern history, 150,000 kilograms of ancient books were stuffed into more than 8,000 sacks like waste paper, and finally sold for 4,000 silver dollars. Nowadays, billions cannot be bought back. Why have these ancient books not been properly kept? Who was the person who managed this batch of ancient books at that time?
Where did these ancient books end up? What do these ancient books record? In this article, we explore the ins and outs behind the "Eight Thousand Sack Incident" in the late Qing Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty.
The four ancient civilizations: ancient Babylon, ancient Egypt, ancient India, and China. These four ancient civilizations correspond to the Two Rivers Valley, the Nile River Basin, the Indus River Basin, and then the Yellow River Basin as we know it.
The four major river basins gave birth to the four prosperous ancient civilizations. Ancient civilizations all originated here. China was the first country in the world to create copper smelting technology, and it is also the first country in the world to have philosophical and military works.
In what way were these civilizations, cultures and creations first handed down? According to archaeological researchers, in ancient times, ancient people would use knotted ropes to record things, and they would also carve words or symbols on turtle backs, stones, and bamboo plates.
After a thousand years of development, in the first year of the Eastern Han Dynasty, China's Cai Lun completed the improvement of papermaking. People can use simple materials such as weeds, bark, and fishing nets to easily make paper that can be used for writing, which has greatly changed the way civilization is spread and recorded.
A thousand years of civilization, condensed into pages of historical classics. Although ancient books cannot breathe, they can travel through time and space and communicate with people of different eras. Ancient books have broken through the limitations of time and space and achieved the glorious mission of civilization integration.
However, because he could not speak, could not move, and did not even have the most basic escape movements, after thousands of years of war and chaos, the status quo of ancient books and cultural relics was also quite miserable.
It is said that at least 17 million artifacts in China have been lost around the world, and these lost artifacts are enough to cover the collections of 10 Forbidden City museums. The British Museum, the British Library, the Louvre Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA... All of them treasure more than 10,000 Cultural Relics of China.
At least these artifacts have been handed down. In China's war, countless cultural relics and ancient books were burned, buried, sold, and destroyed.
We often say that perhaps the most precious thing in the world is time. No amount of money can be exchanged for time. As a treasure of the dynasties and dynasties, ancient books and cultural relics are also the products of time condensation in disguise. Any ancient book records the wisdom of the people in ancient times, which cannot be exchanged for money flowing in the market.
But there is also another situation, that is, ancient books are treated as waste paper, shipped in sacks, and sold cheaply to bookstores and paper mills. This kind of stupid thing is what really happened.
The most boiling thing belonged to the "Eight Thousand Sack Incident" in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Ming Dynasty. This was something that happened at the beginning of the 20th century. On the east side of the Cabinet Lobby in the southeast corner of the Forbidden City, there is a warehouse called the Cabinet Treasury. This cabinet treasury is the central archive of the Qing Dynasty. According to legend, this place treasures the vast classics of Wenyuan Pavilion, and it is also a place to collect important documents of the Qing government court.
Many of these ancient books in Zijinge are orphaned and fragmented books of the Ming and Qing dynasties, which have important historical research value. However, the janitors guarding the Qing Dynasty at that time did not take these ancient books seriously, and when cleaning up the clutter, they discarded the ancient books everywhere. The librarian felt that he occupied the place and planned to burn these ancient books. This matter spread to the Qing Dynasty's faculties.
There was a counselor in the Faculty named Luo Zhenyu. After Luo Zhenyu heard about this, he went to the cabinet treasury to read it. This flip through could frighten Luo Zhenyu. These ancient books record many detailed materials before the Ming and Qing dynasties in China, including history books, hadiths, edicts, living notes and other books. Every ancient book has important historical reference value. Luo Zhenyu knew that these ancient books were priceless treasures, and he immediately went to the imperial court, requesting that these ancient books and archives be entrusted to him for safekeeping on the pretext of repairing the cabinet treasury.
At the same time, Luo Zhenyu also found Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Huguang, and told Zhang Zhidong the precious value of these ancient books. Zhang Zhidong was also a well-reasoned Qing Dynasty minister. Zhang Zhidong also intervened to a certain extent in this matter. Eventually, the imperial court played. Luo Zhenyu began to sort out and classify ancient books. After day and night, these ancient books were collected by Luo Zhenyu into 8,000 sacks.
At that time, the Qing government was corrupt and exuded decadence from the inside out. Where the imperial court had the leisure to worry about these books, and could promise Luo Zhenyu to sort them out, it could already be said that it was a practice of "extra-legal enlightenment", and putting them into sacks was also Luo Zhenyu's helpless move. Luo Zhenyu sent such more than 8,000 sacks of ancient books to the GuoziJian for preservation.
Subsequently, these ancient books are quietly placed in one place. The world outside the sack has turned upside down. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the country was in turmoil and strife. The Qing government was gradually hollowed out by the Western powers. Insurrectional revolutionary activities broke out all over China. These ancient books are also in the midst of war, where they can be protected from disasters. In 1912, the Qing government declared its demise. Qing Dynasty ministers died and fled. These ancient books have gradually been forgotten by the world. After the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution, these 8,000 sacks of ancient books fell into the hands of the Beiyang government.
What is the Beiyang Government? That's where the geese have to pull out their hairs. At first, the Beiyang government felt that the 8,000 sacks of ancient books were like chicken ribs, had no practical value, and were neither gold bars nor silver dollars, so they discarded them as a piece of tatters. Later, the Beiyang government had some problems with its finances.
Gradually, some people in the Beiyang government set their sights on this batch of ancient books. Everything that can be sold is sold, and these 8,000 sacks of "waste paper" are worth a few dollars? Therefore, the Beiyang government sent people to sell these precious ancient books to a paper mill.
The 150,000 kilograms of precious ancient books written by the ancients were finally sold for only 4,000 silver dollars. At that time, Luo Zhenyu heard the news and was heartbroken. He sorted out ancient books all his life, studied ancient scrolls all his life, and never heard of selling ancient books as waste paper.
Luo Zhenyu couldn't bear it, exhausted all his life savings, and chased these ancient books back. It is worth mentioning that the cost of transporting these ancient books alone is not something that an ordinary family can afford. What's more, where these 8,000 sacks of ancient books are placed is also a problem.
The act of the ancient writer Luo Zhenyu in abandoning his wealth and protecting ancient books was really the first courage of the literati. However, what is slightly disappointing is that although Luo Zhenyu loves books, within a few years, his life has also encountered some problems.
He did not have the ability to continue to protect these ancient books, but he could not bear to let the ancient books drift away again. He sold these ancient books to a collector named Li Shengduo. Collectors are at least more kind to ancient books than paper mills.
During this period of time when Li Shengduo collected ancient books, he also reclassified them. Later, Li Shengduo transferred some of these ancient books to Puyi and other friends. These ancient books have also lost a lot in the process of this turbulent displacement.
A large part of it has been lost to the people. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the National Institute of Chinese Studies in History and Language re-explored the whereabouts of ancient books. In the end, only the remaining 3 million books were found.
These only remaining precious cultural relics are now properly placed in the Chinese Historical Archives. After a hundred years of great changes, 150,000 kilograms of ancient books have "lost a lot of weight", and finally found a home to live in. At the China Historical Archives, Chinese scholars of ancient literature have carefully sorted out, categorized, and technically restored damaged pages of ancient books. Turning over the pages of broken ancient books, pages of ancient texts that are soaked through the paper, recording the life of the ancients hundreds or even thousands of years ago and the vicissitudes of the times.
The current status of these ancient books is lamentable. They are like the shabby China, constantly grinding and eroding in the waves of the times. Finally, it was touched and repaired by the fingers of the archive staff, and it was revived. This "eight thousand sack incident" is only a microcosm of China's ancient cultural relics. China's historical documents are vast as smoke, and there have been many incidents of ancient chinese loss in history. The most tragic of these was the burning of the Old Summer Palace in 1860 by the British and French forces.
Many precious porcelain and cultural relics in China were seized by these robbers in Britain and France. The relics that could not be taken away, or could not be taken away, were burned to ashes by the robbers. Today, the Fontainebleau Palace Garden in France has a collection of 30,000 precious Chinese cultural relics, which are piled up with treasures like heaven, and the source of the treasures is the Chinese Yuanmingyuan. After the criminal acts of the British and French coalition forces, the Eight-Power Coalition once again embarked on the road of invading China.
In 1900, Chinese cultural relics were once again destroyed. Many invaders were unaware of the value of Chinese cultural relics. For example, Gu Kaizhi's "Female History Proverbs" of the Eastern Jin Dynasty of China was truncated in three sections in the British Museum, and hundreds of Chinese paintings and calligraphy were placed in the museum warehouse without any protective measures, until they were moldy and insect moths.
During the Republic of China period, the Western powers pried open the door of extortion from western China. The Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes in China were plundered, and the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes preserved a very rich collection of scriptures and documents at that time, but they were all transported to their home countries by the invaders in tons and tons. When the Japanese army invaded China, the Japanese invaders not only killed lives on the land of China, but also did not spare China's precious historical relics.
In 1932, more than a dozen colleges and universities in the Shanghai area were destroyed by the Japanese invaders, and nearly 40,000 books in the Song and Ming dynasties were destroyed by the Japanese army. The Oriental Library was crowned "Asia's First Library" before it was destroyed. But after the Japanese invasion, a torch burned the Oriental Library to rubble. More than 500,000 books, thousands of years of cultural classics, a fire, all burned. In 1932, the puppet state of Manchukuo was established, and the Japanese puppet army burned books in the northeast, and 6.5 million books and archives disappeared from the world.
According to incomplete statistics, the Japanese army caused China's literature resources, and nearly 30 million copies were destroyed. In the inheritance of ancient Chinese books and documents for thousands of years, they cannot escape the fate of the enemy's fire. Throughout history, Chinese cultural relics have provided us with precious historical wisdom, told us historical stories one after another, guided us to move forward towards the road of truth, goodness and beauty, and guided the vigorous development of literature, art, etiquette, medicine, and politics.
But there are also a large part of Chinese cultural relics, such as those we have talked about, that cannot escape the fate of destruction. The fate of these ancient books shows us the horrors of war, and also warns us that we should remember history, not forget the national shame, and strive to inherit Chinese culture and carry forward the Chinese spirit in the process of silent development. In this way, we can give a strong counterattack when the invaders invade.