In this fast-paced era,
Pick up a book and read it quietly and intently,
Gradually it became a luxury.
There is such a documentary that allows us to re-enter the world of books and find that there are so many people who love books who spread the story of people and books.
The documentary has a very warm name: "But there are books."
After douban gave a high score of 9.2 in the first season, won the best TV documentary award at the 30th China Television Golden Eagle Awards, and was nominated for the best documentary series at the 26th Shanghai TV Festival Magnolia Award, the second season of "But There Are Books" was quietly launched. The first episode targeted the library and set a fire to a 98-year-old reader in Nanjing.
"Living Dictionary"
The library, the quietest corner of the city, but the most active thoughts, but there are books" Season 2, the first episode of the second season tells the story of a seemingly ordinary but skilled group of people who devote themselves to the library business out of love of books.
For example, Shen Xieyuan.
Every morning at 7 o'clock, the figure of Shen Xieyuan, a 98-year-old version cataloger, always appears on the bus to the Nanjing Library on time, and the documentary footage follows the old man from his home to the beginning of the bus.
On the fifth floor of the south figure, out of the elevator, turn to the left, is a long and deep corridor, full of camphor wood fragrance. At 9:00 a.m., Shen Xieyuan would appear here on time. With his hands behind his back, he paced slowly into the room, sat down in that familiar seat, and began the day's work.
Although it has been more than thirty years since his retirement, for Shen Xieyuan, his daily life now is not much different from before retirement. Of course, there is still a difference, he smiled and squinted: "You don't have to pay for it when you go out by bus!" ”
Shen Xieyuan, a 98-year-old version cataloger, is a veteran figure in the field of domestic version catalogology, and he has been dealing with ancient books all his life, and he is known as the "living dictionary of ancient books". Through the observation of the grid, avoidance, engraving, paper, font, and seal, he was always able to easily distinguish the version and authenticity of the ancient book. "It's not a blowing word, as soon as [the book] is taken up, I know what it is, the Ming Dynasty or the Qing Dynasty." Shen Xieyuan in front of the camera was radiant, completely without the twilight of the old man. For example, "The Western Han Dynasty Will Want", he knew at a glance that it was the Song Dynasty. "Because it was very frugal at that time, the government's official documents were not destroyed, but wasted and re-compiled into books."
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War in 1945, Shen Xieyuan, who was in his early twenties, entered the Suzhou American College, and after a semester, he was admitted to the Wuxi Traditional Chinese Studies College.
Originally built in 1920, Wuxi Sinology School was founded by Tang Wenzhi, a famous educator in modern China, and Qian Zhongshu's father, Qian Jibo, served as the provost here. At that time, the New Culture Movement was in full swing, but this academy-style school specialized in teaching students to read ancient books such as the Four Books, the Five Classics, the Records of History, and the Book of Han.
When Shen Xieyuan was in school, the school still taught students to study ancient books as the main course. New courses have also been added, such as "History of Chinese Literature", "History of Chinese Culture", and special books to read. Mr. Zhu Dongrun opened the "History of History", Mr. Feng Zhenxin opened "Lao Tzu", and Mr. Li Kasa opened the study of exegesis. Mr. Zhou Yibai was an opera expert, and because no one taught bibliography at that time, he opened bibliography. ”
After graduating from school, Shen Xieyuan went to work at the United Public Library in Shanghai, and at the end of 1949, he went to Wuxi and Beijing, dealing with ancient books. In 1955, he entered the Nanjing Library and spent his life dealing with beloved ancient books. "I think I'm so lucky!"
"Girlfriend"
"I work in the library, and I do two things, one is to catalog the line-bound books, and the other is to purchase and buy good ancient books."
Nanjing Library has a rich collection of 1.5 million ancient books, of which ten precious ancient books are known as the treasures of the top ten "town halls of Nantu", of which a volume of the Northern Song Dynasty "Greenhouse Bathing Monks' Sutra" and a volume of the Liao Dynasty's gold manuscript "Dafang Guangfo Hua YanJing" were purchased by Shen Xieyuan's hand.
"The Dafang Guangfo Hua Yan Jing is a written version of the Liao Dynasty. The Liao Dynasty banned books very strictly, and the engraved books of the Liao Dynasty, which have been handed down to today, are rare treasures, and it is even rarer to write them. This volume of Buddhist scriptures was made in 1035 AD by the monk Qiongxu for the blessing of the mother-in-law of the Liao Shengzong Yelü Longxu, and was written with pigments made from gold leaf grinding. Shen Xieyuan recalled happily, "This book was sold on the road, he said he wanted 500 yuan, he didn't know the actual value, I didn't counteroffer, take it immediately." Buying a book is like making a girlfriend, don't talk about it if you don't succeed, otherwise it won't be successful. Then the documentary barrage was a "hahaha" of "the old man is so cute".
Shen Xieyuan's book purchase experience also has regrets, "In the 1950s, we learned that an antique dealer in Shanghai had four years of writing by the Northern Wei Divine Turtle in his hand, and the other party opened the price, and our unit had no money and could not afford to buy it. Later, it was bought by the Shanghai Museum. ”
It is a pity that I can't afford it, but Shen Xieyuan doesn't mind it either. As an old Nantu who has a relationship with Nantu for more than 60 years, he feels that Nantu's current collection of ancient books, both in quantity and quality, is commendable. "At the end of the Qing Dynasty, There were four major library buildings in China, the Tieqin Bronze Sword Building, the Haiyuan Pavilion, the Eight Thousand Scrolls Building, and the Song Dynasty Building. The books of the Song Dynasty Building are now in the Shizuka Bunko in Japan, the Tetsugen Bronze Sword Building, the Haiyuan Pavilion in the National Library, and the Eight Thousand Scrolls Building is in the South Map.
In 1965, Zhu Wei donated the Li Ting collection born to nantu from his father Zhu Xi's ancestors. In 1991, we acquired most of the books in Suzhou Gu's GuoyunLou, including many rare Song and Yuan rare books and copied school books, with academic value and cultural relics value, comparable to the 8,000-volume lou collection. ”
More than ten years ago, Shen Xieyuan, who was over eighty years old at the time, began to embark on a new work, sorting out and compiling the "Shi Li Ju Inscription".
Huang Pilie, a native of Suzhou, was a famous bibliophile and collator in the Qing Dynasty, and was known as "the first person to collect books in five hundred years". In his life, he loved to write the trek (referring to the comments after books, articles, etc.), and most of the ancient books he commented on were of great value, and even made "huang bao" a proper noun. Since the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, several generations of scholars have sorted out the Huang Bao and compiled it into a book, but due to the limitations of the conditions, the version is incomplete, and there are many errors and omissions. Shen Xieyuan not only re-proofread the Huang Baoji of his predecessors, but also tried every means to search for the "Huang Bao" scattered everywhere that had not yet been discovered.
In 2020, he completed the more than 800,000-word "Shi Li Ju Inscription" and entered the second school stage. Then he also had to sort out Huang Pilie's poetry collection and Huang Pilie's chronology. "There is not enough time, except for eating and going to the toilet and drinking tea, sitting there for a day without moving." He smiled and said, "I don't want to live to be 100 years old, just live every day." ”
Out of the loop
In this episode of the library, in addition to Shen Xieyuan, there are also national librarians who are fluent in Japanese, English, French, Greek, Latin and other languages, and Gu Xiaojun, a learned "sweeping monk"; there is also a monk from the Ganzi Tibetan area of Sichuan Who built a public welfare library on the Tagong Grassland in his hometown, and a group of local children who love to read and write...
Sunrise and sunset,
The library welcomes a large number of people every day,
Provide readers with a quiet and comfortable world.
A netizen wrote a short comment:
Always for
Some pure persistence and tears in the eyes.
For a documentary that focuses on books and culture, "But there are still books" is out of the circle, and all kinds of hardships are known only to the creators.
Compared with most documentaries, "But There Are Books" is filmed by a group of protagonists who are not good at words, who are a group of people who deal with daily life and words and paper piles. In daily work, the protagonists may not be able to say a word for a day, and the filming of the documentary requires the creator to open the hearts of the respondents to the greatest extent, and the interview subjects with "social phobia" make it difficult to produce. Coupled with the fact that cultural documentaries are high and low in most people's impressions, books that may be difficult to read, and commentaries that are more obscure than the books themselves make this type of documentary a high probability of becoming a "ratings black hole".
In order to make "But There Are Books" accepted by more young people, the main creative team has thought of many ways, the addition of animation elements, the dubbing of actor Hu Ge, and the introduction of the B station's special bullet screen have increased the interaction between the audience and the main creative team and even the content itself. For example, in the episode of Shen Xieyuan, he said in the film that "I don't want to live to be 100 years old, as long as I live every day", which became a golden sentence and was filled with "public screens" by young audiences. The main creative team cut off the bullet screen with this sentence and posted it on Weibo. The background of this screenshot is the ancient bookshelf that Shen Lao has struggled for for decades and introduced for Nantu, one by one, neatly arranged.
But there are books.
A poem of the same name from the Polish poet Milosz,
The poem reads:
Even if the pages are torn,
Or the words are licked away by the roaring flames...
Books will be erected on the shelves,
Blessed to be born, from man,
It also stems from the sublime and the light.
"I feel honored if we do something that will attract more people back to their desks." Ye Shen said.
Look, that's what a reader looks like.
END