Addition and deletion of Bu Yi, Volume 5 of 6, by the old man Wild Crane, Qianlong edition, collection of the National Archives of Japan

Addition and deletion of Bu Yi, Volume 5 of 6, by the old man Wild Crane, Qianlong edition, collection of the National Archives of Japan

Qianlong collected the world's books, half of which were destroyed, and half of them were included in the "Four Libraries of the Whole Book". And not only destroyed the book, but also used it to make a big literary prison. So much so that "Kyushu is angry and thunderous, and all the horses are sad".

In fact, at that time, the Qing court collected a total of 12,237 kinds of books, in addition to being included and destroyed, those books that the compilers thought were of little value, only their names were preserved in the "Siku Quanshu General Catalogue", and there were 6,793 kinds of such works and 93,551 volumes, which was nearly twice as many as the works included in the "Siku Quanshu".

These books stored as bibliographies are not allowed to be retained and disseminated, although there is no explicit destruction and prohibition, but it is not allowed to collect, the reason why only a bibliography is kept, just to show that these books know it, there is no need to read it, in fact, there is really no necessity?

At the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the scientific and technological works were burned, and the Ming Dynasty's "Illustrated Description of Weapons" listed all kinds of firearms, with pictures and texts, describing the manufacture, use and power of weapons, but they were burned.

A series of works that determined China's science and technology, such as "Chongzhen Almanac" and "Heavenly Creations", were all destroyed, so that later generations of China did not know what science and technology were, and were poor and weak.

The sentence in "Illustrated Description of Weapons", "Those who are most afraid of China are also firearms" has become the biggest ridicule of the Manchu Qing Dynasty's "Siku Quanshu".