Original title: Cultural fortress in the countercurrent: "Minutes of the Life Bookstore Meeting 1933-1945" | Reading day visa
The minutes of the Life Bookstore meeting are unique rare archival historical materials in the collection of Shanghai Taofen Memorial Museum, covering the period from 1933 to 1945, and have been preserved through the artillery fire of the Anti-Japanese War and the Liberation War. These archives are informative, self-contained, and relatively complete, and have been disclosed by means of all photocopying, without embellishment, abridgement, or obscuration. This volume is presented in its entirety in typography.
All the minutes of the meeting recorded the development process of Life Bookstore in detail, fully showing the extraordinary history of "a cultural fortress in the countercurrent" at many levels, such as hard work, relocation, adherence to cultural resistance, and unremitting pursuit of truth, and also presented its unique internal management system, institutionalized and humanized democratic management, unique corporate culture, etc.
Shanghai Taofen Memorial Museum edited "Minutes of the Life Bookstore Conference, 1933-1945", China Book Company, published in November 2022
The following is an excerpt from the preface to the Proceedings of the Living Bookstore Conference 1933-1945, published with the permission of the publisher.
In the history of modern Chinese publishing, the life bookstore founded by Zou Taofen, Xu Boxin and others has left a strong mark. In July 1932, when the nation was in crisis, Life Bookstore was established in Shanghai, the publishing center of the country at that time, and its predecessor was the book and newspaper agency department of Life Weekly, and the "Life" weekly edited by Taofen set a national circulation record of 155,000 copies of books and periodicals.
The Life Bookstore is a life publishing cooperative internally, and every staff member is the owner of the bookstore. The "Articles of Association of Cooperatives" drafted by Hu Yuzhi contains three principles: collectivization of management, democratization of management, and ownership of profits by all. With the main purpose of "promoting culture and serving society", Life Bookstore is committed to the publication of progressive books and periodicals. After the outbreak of the All-Out War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, it became an important force in the wartime cultural war of resistance, supplying the needs of wartime culture, and successively established 55 branches and offices throughout the country, publishing a large number of books and periodicals that publicized the progressive ideas of Marxism-Leninism, which played an indelible role in publicizing the anti-Japanese struggle and saving the country and promoting the development of progressive culture. Under the double destruction of the Japanese army invading China and the Kuomintang authorities, they carried out stubborn resistance and unyielding "bitter struggle", enlightening and inspiring a generation of Chinese to move towards the road of progress and revolution. Together with Xinzhi Bookstore and Reading Publishing House, Life Bookstore actively engaged in the work of propagating anti-Japanese resistance, popularizing revolutionary theory, calling for and educating the masses, and became a strong fortress of progressive culture. In October 1948, the three bookstores of Life, Reading and New Knowledge merged to form Life, Reading and New Knowledge Triple Bookstore, starting a new journey in the book industry.
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Founded in 1958, Shanghai Taofen Memorial Museum flows with the blood of Life Bookstore, and the original collection of "Life Bookstore Meeting Minutes" is a unique rare archival historical material, which has survived the artillery fire of the Anti-Japanese War and the Liberation War, as well as the seizure, seizure, closure and other persecution of the Kuomintang. When the museum was built, these precious archives were transferred to the Taofen Memorial Museum by the old Sanlian for collection. These archives have a large amount of information, self-contained system, and relatively complete preservation, and have high historical value and research value. To this end, since the 60th anniversary of its establishment in 2018, Taofen Memorial Museum has launched a photocopying and publishing plan for the collection of documents, and successively published four photocopies of "Life Bookstore Meeting Minutes 1933-1937", "Life Bookstore Meeting Minutes 1938-1939", "Life Bookstore Meeting Minutes 1939-1940" and "Life Bookstore Meeting Minutes 1940-1945" of "Taofen Memorial Museum Collection Literature Series". The first volume starts and ends from 1933 to 1937, from the first general meeting of the life bookstore after its establishment in Shanghai, to the full outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War and the move of the main store of the life bookstore to Hankou, recording the formation and improvement of the democratic management system in the early period of the life bookstore, the board of directors, personnel committee, supervision committee and other details; The second volume starts and ends on January 3, 1938, when the main store of Life Bookstore was moved to Hankou, and ended in April 1939, recording the temporary committee chaired by Zhang Zhongshi in place of the three organs of the Council, the Personnel Committee, and the Supervision Commission, and handled social affairs, business, and personnel during the special period of war and turmoil; The third volume, which runs from February 24, 1939 to May 8, 1940, records the adoption of the new constitution of the Life Publishing Cooperative, the election of a new governing body, the establishment of the "Outline of the Organization System", and other matters, showing that the bookstore was bombed by Japanese aircraft, the Kuomintang banned books, closed stores, and arrested people, and took multiple measures to achieve the work goal of "promoting popular culture, supplying the needs of the War of Resistance, and developing the spirit of service"; The fourth volume, which runs from May 29, 1940 to March 24, 1945, records the handling of social affairs, business, and personnel affairs under the dual pressure of the war and persecution and destruction by the Kuomintang authorities.
The minutes of the meeting of Life Bookstore record the development process of Life Bookstore in detail, fully showing the extraordinary history of "a cultural fortress in the countercurrent" such as hard work, through migration, adherence to cultural resistance, unremitting pursuit of truth, etc., and also presents its unique internal management system, institutionalized and humanized democratic management, unique corporate culture, etc., which not only have important value for the historical research of Taofen and Fanren and Life Bookstore, but also an important supplement to the research of publishing history in the same period. At the same time, through these yellowed papers and records with different handwriting, we can see the figures who go forward one after another, and a group of dusty bookstore fandoms, in the blazing years, in the difficult situation, still shouting with high morale: "The harder the more excited, the harder the harder!" This spirit is summed up by Taofen as "firm, open-minded, fair, responsible, hardworking, service, comradely love", that is, "life spirit", which is the soul of life bookstore, but also a character, which still exudes dazzling light and is worthy of learning, inheritance and development by contemporary publishers.
On the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the establishment of Life Bookstore, Shanghai Taofen Memorial Museum has launched a typeset version of "Life Bookstore Meeting Minutes 1933-1945" on the basis of the four published photocopies of "Life Bookstore Meeting Minutes" to facilitate further reading and research. May we follow these words with the marks of war through time and space, and understand the spirit of unremitting struggle of Zou Taofen, Xu Boxin, Hu Yuzhi, Zhang Zhongshi and other leaders and colleagues for the establishment and development of life bookstores, and for national independence and people's liberation!
We would like to thank Chen Dakai, Liu Dali and Zhou Zhenwei for their hard work in the identification of typography, and Jia Xuefei, Hu Zhengjuan and Wu Yanhong of China Book Company Shanghai for their efforts in editing, publishing and publicizing this book. I hope that the publication of typeset copies can drive more people closer to Taofen and life bookstores, and stimulate a new upsurge in the research of Taofen and life bookstores, publishing history and cultural history!