Zhu Taozhi. Photo courtesy of Zhang Yuyu
Dong Qichang's "Ethereal Cloud Smoke Map" and Zhu Tao's inscription, which was once stored by Zhu Tao.
There is a collection of Zhu Tao's name "Jiu Yun" and Tibetan seals.
There are inscriptions of Zhu Tao and tibetan seals. The pictures in this edition are all provided by Keizaburo except for the signature
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Zhu Taozhi, a native of Yongqing, Hebei, was a collector of the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China.
He has a rich collection, involving calligraphy and paintings, gold and stone rubbings, manuscripts, engravings, oracle bones and other fields, and there is no shortage of rare books, and he has exchanged loans with Luo Zhenyu and other collectors.
After his death, his collections were scattered at home and abroad, or kept in major museums and libraries at home and abroad, or collected by private collectors, and in recent years have had a wide impact on the collecting community.
At the same time, he was enthusiastic about local education and participated in the establishment of the modern school Yongqing Cunshi Middle School. This school is the historical starting point of secondary school education in Yongqing County and the predecessor of Yongqing County No. 1 Middle School, a key middle school in Hebei Province.
Perhaps because Zhu Taozhi has not been engaged in collecting for a long time, the name and seal of the collection are changeable, coupled with the turmoil in the world, Zhu's descendants moved to Beijing with their families, there are few historical materials, and most of the scholars' understanding and research of him start from the inscriptions he made for the collection. But researchers believe that Zhu Taozhi is indeed a modern collector in Hebei who deserves to continue to study.
Loans with Luo Zhenyu
One day in the spring of 1901, Zhu Taozhi, who lived in Yongqing (present-day Yongqing, Langfang), received a letter from Luo Zhenyu, an academic master and collector.
"Mr. Jiu Yue (Zhu Tao's number Jiu Yue) has a saying:
...... Zunzang actually had the Fang Renyu Monument, and he was surprised to hear it... A thousand prayers are given a record, a hundred friends are given, and there is no land for worship. junior...... Hated by the office, not to be seen by the gentleman. Regret it. I hereby present six kinds of humble carvings and three kinds of humble carvings, praying not to hesitate to give teachings, and to be blessed, and to give teachings when the time comes, without any prayer. Please do anything about this. Spring Cold, Virgin Guard.
Godmother Luo Zhenyu said goodbye. Twenty-nine days"
This year, Luo Zhenyu was 35 years old and Zhu Taozhi was 42 years old. In the letter, Luo Zhenyu borrowed a golden stone extension from him in a very respectful and humble tone and gave him an engraved book.
The book "Yongfeng Township Ren Hand Jane" records the past of Zhu Taozhi's correspondence with Luo Zhenyu and the borrowing of gifts.
It can be seen that in the collection circle of the late Qing Dynasty, Zhu Taozhi was already quite famous.
"Yongqing's pigs (Zhu) can't be killed, Yongqing's dreams (Meng)can't be done, and Yongqing's bells can't be struck." This is a local folk proverb in Yongqing.
The "Zhu" family, where Zhu Taozhi is located, is one of the three Wang clans of Yongqing Zhu, Meng, and Zhong.
The Zhu family has many meritorious names in their ancestors, and they abide by the cultivation and reading of the heirloom family and concurrently engage in industry. The branch families have Maode Hall, Shunde Hall, Huanxi Hall, Fuchang Hall and other hall numbers.
Zhu Taozhi was born in the ninth year of Xianfeng (1859) and belonged to the HuanxiTang clan.
He studied at Yongqing Yichang College in his early years, and his old learning skills were profound, especially in calligraphy.
This calligraphy skill is reflected in the inscriptions of Zhu Taozhi's many collections.
For example, Zhu Taozhi's inscription on the Diamond Sutra of Fu Shan, which he collected, was commented by the industry, "Few numbers, with a fine and clean pen, the knots are long, and the meaning of the northern monument is hidden."
In the eleventh year of Guangxu (1885), Zhu Taozhi entered Beijing to participate in the township examination and lived in Fayuan Temple, so he became acquainted with the celebrities in the capital and began to collect books and antiques extensively.
Today, there are few historical materials that directly record Zhu Taozhi, and the study of Zhu Taozhi comes more from the inscriptions on his collection of paintings and calligraphy.
Zhu Taozhi's birth year is calculated from his inscription, and the year of his death is still inconclusive.
He Baozhen, a bibliographer of the late Qing Dynasty, recorded that Yimotang, a bookstore specializing in inscriptions in Beijing Liulichang, sold Zhu Taozhi's collection of books in 1914. Some scholars have deduced from this that Zhu Taozhi died before 1914.
The author examines the hand scroll of Dong Qichang's "Ethereal Cloud Smoke Map" collected by Zhu Taozhi, and there are two inscriptions of Zhu Taozhi on it. One of them has an inscription time of "Jiayin New Year", and the second "also remembers" Zhu Taozhi wrote down himself "fifty and six years".
The year of "Jiayin" in the inscription is 1914, if Zhu Taozhi is 56 years old in this year, subtracting the imaginary year, it coincides with the birth of 1859.
It is inferred from this that in 1914 Zhu Taozhi may still be alive, and about 30 years of his life were devoted to the collection.
As a collector, Zhu Taozhi has a characteristic, the name, the name of the library, and the seal of the book are changeable.
There are many names of Zhu Tao, in addition to the famous Tamari and the character flood, there are also "Jiu Yun", "Jiu Dan", "Qinke", "Aurora First Mountain Tree", "Songguang Old Man", "and The Master of the Stone Residence", and so on.
Zhu Taozhi's study room also has multiple names. Such as "from BiYi", "HuanXitang", "Songguang", "Ziyang Jingshe", "and Stone Residence" and so on.
There are also many seals in Zhu Taozhi's collection, including more than 20 kinds of "Zhu Tao's Seal", "Tamari's Seal Letter", "Zhu Jiudan", "Jiudan Jianzang" and so on.
The name, the name of the library, and the seal of the collection are changeable, and he died in his fifties, and the collection is scattered, which may have influenced the attention and understanding of Zhu Taozhi in later generations.
In recent years, many of Zhu Taozhi's collections have attracted attention from the academic and collecting circles, and the research on this modern collector in Hebei is also increasing.
There is no shortage of rare book treasures in the collection
Zhu Taozhi's collection is extensive, with the largest number of collection manuscripts and golden stone tablets, the earliest of which is the Southern Song Dynasty manuscript, and the others are mainly Ming carved manuscripts and early Qing dynasty manuscripts.
After his death, his collection was collected by libraries and museums at home and abroad, and some of it went into the hands of private collectors.
There is no shortage of treasures in Zhu Taozhi's collection, many of which have become important auxiliary historical materials for academic research.
In 1909, Zhu Taozhi recorded the harvest of one of his book purchases in Beijing: "Five volumes of the "Collected Works of the River of the River", and twenty volumes of the bottom book of the Collected Poems of the River of the River (deleted but not engraved in Xian Zai)".
The River is the name of zhu yun, a philologist, collector and scholar in the early Qing Dynasty.
The 16 volumes of Zhu Yun's official engravings of the "Collected Works of the River" and the 20 volumes of the "Collected Poems of the River of The River" are in the collection of the National Library of China.
Zhu Tao's collection is a more precious manuscript before the collection of engravings.
One of the original volumes of the Collected Poems of the River, the Shimaya Collection, was introduced to Japan and is now in the Collection of HumanIties and Sciences of Kyoto University in Japan. Among them, there are 29 poems that were not included in the poetry collection when they were engraved, and many of them are also accompanied by Zhu Yun's creative handwriting, which has high historical value.
There are many collections of Zhu Taozhi in major libraries at home and abroad. The 36-volume ming jiajing inner house engraving of the "Daming Collection Ceremony" is in the Library of Congress of the United States. During the Kangxi Dynasty, Yao Peiqian's "Songgui Reading Hall Collection" and Zhu Xigeng's "Miscellaneous Works of Unseen Thoughts" were collected in the library of the Faculty of Letters of Tokyo Metropolitan University in Japan.
Ming Yongle's engravings of "Concertions of Famous Ministers of Past Dynasties" and "Collected Poems of Water Mirrors", Wanli inscribed "Continuation of Benzhou Shanren", Ming Zhengde's engravings of "Huangdun Cheng's Collected Writings", Ming Hongzhi's engravings of "Ishida Manuscripts (Shen Zhou)", and Qing manuscripts of "Tang Dynasty Edicts", etc., are hidden in the National Library of China.
In addition, the Library of Peking University and the Library of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences also have Zhu Taozhi's collection.
Some of Zhu Taozhi's collections are highly valued in later generations.
On December 2, 2014, at an autumn art auction in Beijing, the hand scroll of Li Xuxingletu by the court painter Zhou Dao during the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty was exhibited, which attracted the attention of the academic community, especially the red scholars.
The hand scrolls have Zhu Taozhi's Jianzang seal "Zhu Shi Jiudan Examination and Painting Seal", indicating that it was also Zhu Taozhi's collection.
There are multiple in-laws between Li Xu, Cao Yin and Kangxi, and the study of Li Xu is also an important topic in the current research of "Dream of the Red Chamber".
The scroll was eventually sold for $18.63 million, six times more than the valuation.
In the 2011 "Mr. Ji Xianlin Collection" special session, the "King Ding Quan Tang Wen", which was sold at the highest transaction price of 4.945 million yuan, was also a collection of Zhu Tao.
The collecting community is mostly aware of Zhu Taozhi's good collection of manuscripts and gold stone tablets, but in recent years, research has found that Zhu Taozhi also collects oracle bones.
Some of the oracle bones collected by the Tsinghua University Library were once the collection of Zhu Taozhi's "Huan Xi Tang".
In 2006, the Library of Tsinghua University displayed some of its oracle bones on the Internet, and mentioned in the introduction that there are 1755 oracle bones and 233 animal bones in the museum, especially the pan's old collection "Huangxitang Hidden Turtle" is eye-catching.
Pan Zuyin was a famous collector in the Qing Dynasty, whose collection was mostly calligraphy, paintings and bronzes, and no oracle bones were collected. Moreover, Pan Zuyin died in 1890, and if the "Hidden Turtle of Huanxitang" was indeed hidden by the Pan clan, the oracle bone was discovered by Wang Yirong in 1899 and had to be re-examined.
This issue was concerned by scholars Ma Jifan and Xu Yihua of the Institute of History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 2017.
They found that in addition to the inscription "Huangxitang Hidden Turtle" on the exquisite wooden box where the oracle bones were collected, the words "Gengji Jiujiu Jiu" and "Aurora First Mountain Tree" were also engraved.
"Jiu Yun" and "Aurora First Mountain Tree" are all commonly used by Zhu Tao.
Through research, they confirmed that the old collector of the "Tao Xi Tang Hidden Turtle" hidden by Tsinghua University was not Pan Zuyin, but Zhu Taozhi.
Founded the first middle school in Yongqing
Zhu Taozhi once called himself, "Without his hobbies, he entertained himself with Golden Stone calligraphy and painting." In fact, this collector has always been passionate about local education and has made important contributions.
In 1905, the Qing government abolished the Imperial Examination and the Xingxue School, and the Yichang Academy, which was used as a county school, was discontinued.
In order to take over the county school and provide conditions for local students in Yongqing to continue their studies, Zhu Taozhi, as a township sage, founded the private Qi Zhi School shortly after the closure of his alma mater. The school was funded by Zhu Taozhi, who rented a school building in Yongqing City and hired Zhong Jizhai as a teacher.
In 1907, he conspired with the British missionary E Fangzhi to jointly establish a school using the indemnity of the Yongqing Gengzi teaching plan handed over by the British Chincha to E.
In 1908, based on the Qi Zhi Academy founded by Zhu Taozhi, a church site in Dongguan, Yongqing County, was leased and yongqing private Cunshi Primary School was established. The name "Cun Shi" means "because of the old wisdom of enlightenment, the new of the Cun Shi". A few months later, the school was changed to Yongqing Cunshi Middle School.
Yongqing Cunshi Middle School is the historical starting point of secondary education in Yongqing County and the predecessor of today's Yongqing County No. 1 Middle School.
In the history museum of Yongqing County No. 1 Middle School, a photo of the founder Zhu Taozhi hangs, which also tells the high standards and strict requirements of this modern new-style middle school at the beginning of its establishment.
The school implements the System of Decameron school promulgated by the Qing government, which is the first systematic system promulgated by the state in modern China to be implemented nationwide.
In the first year, 6 classes were enrolled, with more than 100 students. A, B and C are secondary school classes, and D, E and I are preparatory classes for secondary schools.
In terms of curriculum, there are Chinese, English, history, geography, mathematics, science, drawing, etc., and in 1933 and 1941, courses such as plants, animals, chemistry, civics and health, Japanese, and physical education were added.
The school also recruits management and teachers at high salaries, brings together many talents to teach at the school, and reduces tuition fees and implements wide access and strict exit for students.
At that time, the monthly salary of the school principal was 120 yuan, the monthly salary of science teachers was 70 yuan-80 yuan, and the monthly salary of Chinese teachers was 50-60 yuan.
During the two years of operation, the school did not charge tuition fees to students. By 1917, in the ten years since its establishment, the total tuition fee collected was only 688.5 yuan.
In the early days of the school, there was a shortage of teachers, and some teachers taught as many as 26 hours a week, and the principal also had to teach the lessons.
The first principal, The Englishman Gan Dehua, taught English, mathematics and science, and the second principal, Ma Baixi, taught English and mathematics at the same time, and until 1934, the then principal XuanYin Tan was still an English teacher.
At the beginning of the establishment of the school, the hardware support was strived to be complete. The school has 81 real estates, with instrument rooms, laboratories, for 15 groups of students to use in groups, and later built a 40 acres of sports field.
The school is rigorous in its management and strict in quality, unqualified students are not allowed to be promoted, and those who fail the graduation examination are not issued with graduation diplomas.
Under the standard of wide entry and strict exit, there were only 6 graduates of the first batch of secondary schools in 1913, 9 secondary school graduates in 1915, 6 graduates in 1916, and students who did not graduate were withdrawn if they did not repeat their grades.
Renowned for the quality of teaching, from 1929 onwards, students graduating from Cunshi Middle School were able to directly guarantee Yenching University. Many students from other places have come to Cunshi Middle School.
Therefore, Cunshi Middle School has cultivated a group of high-level students and sent many talents to Tsinghua, Yanjing, Nankai, Huiwen and other universities.
Historian Lei Haizong, anti-Japanese hero Hu Chunhang, Professor Wang Hongchen of peking university medical department, and Liu Junjie, former deputy commander of the Hebei Provincial Military Region, were all students who came out of Cunshi Middle School.
In the seventh year of the Republic of China (1918), Efangzhi, another founder of Cunshi Middle School, wrote in an article reviewing the development process of the school in the past ten years, "Fu Cunshi School has been open for ten years, and the results obtained by fu Cunshi School are half supported by Zhu Jun and his administrators, Chinese teaching, and half by ... The principal of the school is enthusiastic about drawing. ”
(This article was written with reference to two articles: "The Source of the Oracle Bone of Tsinghua University and Zhu Taozhi's People" and "The Deeds of Hebei Bibliophile Zhu Tao")
■Related
The descendants of the Zhu family are yongqing looking for roots
In the process of collecting and sorting out the historical materials of Zhu Tao, the author is also searching for the descendants of the Zhu family.
In 2019, by chance, I met Ms. Zhu Hong from Beijing. From the memories of her second brother, 86-year-old Mr. Zhu Weizeng, it is known that their family's ancestral home is Yongqing and is a descendant of the Zhu family.
Zhu Wei once wrote in a poetic memoir the four hall names of the Zhu family: Maode Hall, Shunde Hall, Huanxi Hall, and Fuchang Hall. However, there are several branches of the Yongqing Zhu family, and no one can say clearly now.
Zhu Weizeng and Zhu Hong belonged to the Zhu family's "Auxiliary Changtang" branch, and during the War of Resistance Against Japan, most of this branch moved to Beiping to settle down. After the founding of New China, the Zhu family gradually lost contact with the Yongqing family.
And the descendants of Zhu Taozhi's "Tan Xi Tang" have not yet heard from him. After Zhu Taozhi's death, his collection quickly flowed out, and it is thought that perhaps his descendants were in a very difficult situation at that time, or that the collector did not leave any descendants.
For a long time, Zhu Wei did not know whether Zhu Taozhi was the ancestor of their family or whether it was identified by Zhu Taozhi's Tao Xi Tang Seal.
However, the Zhu family's family style of reading well and keen on education has been passed down to this day. Only a dozen people in the Zhu family's "Fuchangtang" have become teachers and teach in universities and middle schools at home and abroad.
On June 16, 2019, 11 people from three generations of Zhu Hong's family went to Yongqing to find their roots.
The author contacted Mr. Xu Yanfeng, the inheritor of the Yongqing County National Intangible Cultural Heritage Project "Straw Carving Art", and took them to the courtyard of the Yongqing County Public Security Bureau, which is the former site of the Zhu Family Compound.
Mr. Xu Yanfeng still remembers the tall and spacious mansion gates and high stone steps of the Zhu family compound. According to Mr. Xu Yanfeng, the three old locust trees outside the walls of the Public Security Bureau are more than 100 years old, which should be planted by the ancestors of the Zhu family. Now it has become the only witness of the Zhu family compound.
Zhu Hong's family also went to Yongqing No. 1 Middle School, the "Cunshi Middle School" of that year. Zhu Hong's fathers studied here, and Zhu Hong's father, Zhu Ertian, also taught here.
What is even more precious is that the Zhu family also preserves a silver medal that Zhu Hongbo Zhu Erzhun won the first place in English speech when he was studying at "Cunshi Middle School", the front of the medal is engraved with the words "first place", and the back is clearly engraved with the words "Jingzhao Yongqing Cunshi Middle School", "English Speech Prize" and "Autumn of the Fourteenth Year of the Republic of China (1925)".
This medal has also become a precious object of historical and cultural examination of Yongqing No. 1 Middle School.
The Zhu family's journey to find their roots is just one of the many family roots stories in China. War has left people uprooted, and peace has brought people back to their homeland.
We love this land at all times.
Text by Keizaburo
Source: Hebei Daily