Qianlong's "Tianlu Linlang" collection of books was repaired after the 80s and followed by the 60s

On January 7, the National Library of China held a press conference to announce the successful completion of the eight-year-old Qing Palace "Tianlu Linlang" restoration project.

Perhaps some people are not clear, what is "Tianlu Lingliang"? It's a book. Is that a book, a set of books, or a room full of books? Like many Qing palace dramas, the story begins with Qianlong.

Ancient Chinese royalty has always had a tradition of collecting and arranging books, which reached its peak during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty. The court collections of this period were not only considerable in quantity, but also of higher quality than those of previous dynasties. After all, for the "perfect old man", the book must also be hidden. Therefore, in the ninth year of his reign (1744), Qianlong ordered his ministers to select the best of the secret books of the Inner Palace, set up a shrine in the Zhaoren Hall in the Forbidden City, and wrote a plaque inscribed with the imperial pen "Tianlu Linlang" and hung it high in the hall.

This is the origin of "Heavenly Variety".

In fact, in the Qing Palace, the place where books are stored is not only the Zhaoren Hall, but also the Cabinet Treasury, Wenyuan Pavilion, Zaozao Hall, Qianqing Palace, Yangxin Hall, Wuying Hall, Youtu Room, And Strategy Hall and other places have their own books. The special feature of "Tianlu Linlang" is that Qianlong selected the old books of the Song, Jin, Yuan, and Ming editions in various collections of books, and made them up of the elite. After that, in the forty years of Qianlong (1775), the university scholar Yu Minzhong and others were entrusted with the order to sort out and appraise the books collected by "Tianlu Linlang" and compiled them into ten volumes of the "Bibliography of Tianlu Linlang" and 429 books.

Whether it is the "Yongle Canon" or the "Four Libraries of the Whole Book", these classics with familiar names have always experienced various natural and man-made disasters in the history of hundreds of years, and "Tianlu Linlang" has not escaped this "law".

For ancient texts, natural disasters are often fires. In October of the second year of Jiaqing (1797), the Qianqing Palace was in flames, along with the Zhaoren Hall, which was in ruins. After the fire, the whereabouts of the books hidden in the temple are also unknown, and the destruction of the "Tianlu Linlang" collection is not recorded in the Qing history archives. Until 1925, when the Qingmu Aftermath Committee counted the Shōjin Hall, there was not a single volume of the "Bibliography of The King's Ding Tianlu Linlang", so it was speculated that the disaster had burned down all the "Tianlu Linlang".

After the fire, Qianlong, who was already the Emperor Taishang, ordered the rebuilding of the Qianqing Palace. At the same time, Peng Yuanrui Fengyi, who had led the editor-in-chief of the "Bibliography of The Heavenly Lu Linlang of The King", once again compiled the "Later Compilation of the Bibliography of the Heavenly Lu Of the King", and the rare books in the palace were once again selected in a centralized manner, and then sorted out and collected in the Zhaoren Hall, still using the name of "Tianlu Linlang".

This time, the bibliography was compiled in twenty volumes, which took only 7 months, and was compiled in the summer of the third year of Jiaqing, including a total of 664 rare books. Peng Yuanrui wrote at the end of the volume of the "Later Edition of the Bibliography of The Heavenly Lu Of the King's Ding Tianlu": "The "Former Edition" of song, Yuan, and Ming, only one kind of gold carving; the "Later Edition" is complete with the five dynasties of Song, Liao, Jin, Yuan, and Ming. ”

Natural disasters are expected, and "Tianlu Linlang" can still be reborn, but the dangers of modern China are like eggs, making ancient books and the fate of the homeland as unpredictable.

Since the reign of the Qing Dynasty, the imperial court began to send the books in the palace that could not be repaired out of the palace, and the bookstore repaired and decorated it on its behalf. During this period, there were palace clerks who guarded and stole from themselves, resulting in the loss of books in the inner house, and also began to form a "royal-folk" book trading market, and many palace collections flowed into the hands of private bibliophiles.

By the end of the Qing Dynasty, less than half of the "Heavenly Lu Linlang" stored in the Zhaoren Hall was for three reasons: first, Puyi was transported out of the palace in the name of rewarding companion reading; second, the courtiers took advantage of Puyi's abdication to steal and exchange; and third, Puyi rewarded the ministers.

During the puppet Manchu period, Puyi once sold dozens of "Tianlu Linlang" books for cash, and the rest followed them to the "Little White Building" in Changchun. The storage conditions are simple, coupled with Puyi's own lack of concern for the collection of books, many books in the collection for up to 14 years, did not take any moisture-proof, moth-proof measures, mildew, erosion, mutilation. On the eve of Japan's surrender, when Puyi fled Changchun, this batch of books was robbed by surrounding personnel, and some of them flowed into the market again. The remaining collection of books was tossed around several times and eventually transported back to the Palace Museum.

During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, some of the "Tianlu Linlang" books that still exist in the Forbidden City were moved south along with other precious cultural relics in the palace, and the difficulty of the process does not need to be repeated. After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the collection was moved to Taiwan.

At the beginning of the founding of New China, the government vigorously supported it, and many of the scattered "Tianlu Linlang" rare books were collected into the public collection. All 205 parts of the "Tianlu Linlang" collection of the Palace Museum were transferred to the Special Collection Department of Rare Books of the Beijing Library (the predecessor of the National Library). It was not until the 1950s that the turbulent and displaced "Heavenly Lu Ling" finally settled down.

Chen Hongyan, deputy director of the National Library of Ancient Books, introduced that the National Library now has 279 "Tianlu Linlang", of which the Song and Yuan inscriptions account for a relatively large proportion, and preserves most of the most precious ancient books in the "Later Compilation of the Catalogue of Tianlu Linlang of the King".

Due to the serious damage in the "Tianlu Linliang" book, it was kept as an unedited book for a long time. It was not until April-June 2013 that the Guotu Ancient Books Museum completed the catalog of the uncopied "Tianlu Linlang" ancient books, and conducted a preliminary investigation of the damage of the book in the catalog.

The results of the investigation can be described as shocking: of the more than 270 books and more than 3,500 ancient books in the museum's collection, about 10%, that is, more than 300 volumes, have serious problems such as paper decay, flocculation, adhesion, binding disintegration, etc., according to the standards issued by the ministry, it is a first-class damage and urgently needs rescue repair.

Although the rare book warehouse of the national map already has good constant temperature and humidity conditions, the mold carried in the damaged books and paper diseases such as flocculation and adhesion will become more and more serious over time.

In 2007, the State Council issued the Opinions on Further Strengthening the Protection of Ancient Books, officially implementing the "Chinese Ancient Books Protection Plan", which was the first national ancient book protection project in the history of the mainland under the auspices of the government. On June 8, 2013, the former Ministry of Culture set up a "National Ancient Book Restoration Technique Transmission Center" in the National Library of China to carry out the restoration of ancient books and to cultivate ancient book restoration talents by means of teachers and apprentices. It was also in this year that the cataloguing and damage investigation of the collection "Tianlu Linlang" was completed, and in August of the same year, the "Tianlu Linlang" restoration project was launched.

The process of restoration is also the process of cultivating talents. Due to historical reasons, there is a fault in the age of the conservators of ancient books in the National Library, and the age group directly crosses from the post-60s to the post-80s. Most of the young people graduate with master's degrees, with certain theoretical foundation and research ability. Driven by the demonstration of experts with more than 35 years of restoration experience, they have mastered relatively comprehensive skills in practice in the face of "top teaching materials" such as "Tianlu Linliang", and carried out research at the same time.

The "Tianlu Linlang" restoration project is another "heavy responsibility" of the National Library after the "Dunhuang Testament" and the "Zhao Cheng Golden Collection", which is not only large in size, but also difficult. The common feature of each book collection is preciousness, the difference is that it is "broken with a thousand advantages", the restoration plan cannot be generalized, and each book needs to be "personalized" customized.

Cui Zhibin, a young restorer at the National Library of Ancient Books, introduced that another significant feature of "Tianlu Linlang" is that most of the collections can see traces of previous restorations. Under the guiding principle of "old as old", restorers face a new problem – to preserve or erase the remains of these "latecomers"? After repeated discussions, they finally decided to strictly maintain historical relics and leave objective evidence for future generations of situations that do not affect the current and future use quality and preservation life of books.

However, there are also some special cases, for example, the predecessors have repaired in improper ways such as "even patching with lining", resulting in folds, knots and adhesions of the leaf paper, which exists in ancient books such as "Ban Ma Zi Class" and "Mencius Yinyi". The operation traces of the predecessors are not conducive to the protection of ancient books, and this restoration has been rectified, not rigidly copying the principles of "the whole old as old, the least intervention", etc., but to analyze specific problems, the goal is to extend the preservation time of ancient books as much as possible.

Eight years have passed, the restoration of "Tianlu Linlang" has been completed, related exhibitions will be held soon, and relevant achievements will be published soon. We no longer know how many wars and chaos these ancient books have gone through over thousands of years, and how many generations have been preserved and restored before they can appear in front of us in a new way. But as long as today's young people can still feel that this is cultivating "their own" things, this is cultural exchanges with "their own", then the context is endless.

Reporter: Jiang Xiaobin