Tianyi Pavilion and the inheritance and development of ancient Chinese culture

One of the most important features of traditional Chinese culture is the continuous writing system that has been written for thousands of years and the system of classics that carry the written language. Ancient book culture is a concentrated embodiment of this characteristic, and it is also an important spiritual symbol of Chinese civilization. Tianyi Pavilion is the oldest existing library building in mainland China, and the Tianyi Pavilion collection is an excellent representative of China's ancient book culture. The existence of the book building and the book building are the unique characteristics of Tianyi Pavilion as a cultural relic of the book collection, symbolizing the tenacious vitality of Chinese ancient book culture and even Chinese civilization. Tianyi Pavilion is a living specimen of Ming Dynasty book culture and an important historical relic of the East Asian Chinese character cultural circle.

Historically, Tianyi Pavilion has made important contributions to the inheritance and development of ancient Chinese culture. As early as the founder of Tianyi Pavilion, Fan Qin, the Ming Dynasty scholar Yu Xian borrowed from Fan Qin the records of the three subjects of the Hongwu period that he had collected, which was used to compile the imperial examination classic "Huangming Jinshideng Scientific Examination". The historian Huang Zongxi once visited the building and compiled the important documents of the Ming Dynasty, "Ming Copy" and "Ming Wen Hai". The historian Quan Zuwang came to Tianyi Pavilion many times to consult books and inscriptions, and wrote the immortal articles in the "Anthology of the Pavilion". During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, the compilation of the "Four Libraries of the Whole Book", Fan's Tianyi Pavilion submitted a collection of more than 600 books, one of the four largest book collectors in the country, and the Qianlong Emperor rewarded Fan's assistance in repairing, and gave back two sets of copper engravings of "Pingding Huibu Victory Map" and "Pingding Liangjinchuan Battle Map" and 10,000 volumes of "Ancient and Modern Books Collection". During the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty, Fujian Province compiled the "Fujian Tongzhi" and borrowed more than 50 kinds of local documents from Tianyi Pavilion. The Tianyi Pavilion library building has also become the object of many official and private library buildings. For example, the famous "Four Libraries and Seven Pavilions" (Wenyuan Pavilion of the Forbidden City in the north, Wenjin Pavilion of the Summer Resort, Wenyuan Pavilion of the Old Summer Palace, Wensu Pavilion of the Shenyang Palace Museum and Hangzhou Wenlan Pavilion in the south, Wenhui Pavilion of Yangzhou, Wenzong Pavilion of Zhenjiang) are built in imitation of Tianyi Pavilion. Other library buildings such as Ningbo's local Lu's Baojing Building, Nanjing Gan's Jindai Building, Yangzhou Wu's Sea Measuring Building, etc., are all built in imitation of Tianyi Pavilion. It can be said that after the middle of the Qing Dynasty, Tianyi Pavilion has become a model of the world's library and an important carrier of Chinese book culture.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Tianyi Pavilion has played a more important role in the inheritance and development of China's ancient culture. On the one hand, Tianyi Pavilion has been best protected, and on the other hand, Tianyi Pavilion has become the representative of Ningbo's cultural relics management because of its important historical and cultural value. The protection and management of many cultural relics, including ancient books, in Ningbo are carried out in Tianyi Pavilion, and the work of ancient books is the most prominent. In the 1960s, under the extremely difficult economic situation, the state spent money to compile 107 kinds of Ming Dynasty Chronicles in the Tianyi Pavilion Collection into the "Selected Journals of the Ming Dynasty in the Tianyi Pavilion Collection" photocopied and published, which was a rare large-scale ancient book photocopying project in the country at that time, which greatly promoted the inheritance, utilization, research and development of Chinese ancient book culture (at present, all the ancient books of the Tianyi Pavilion collection of Fang Zhi were photocopied and published). Since then, Tianyi Pavilion has successively become a national key cultural relics protection unit (1982), the first batch of national key ancient book protection units (2008), the first batch of national ancient book restoration centers (2009), and a national first-class museum (2020), which has reached the highest level in terms of cultural relics, museums, ancient books and ancient book restoration, and Tianyi Pavilion's ancient book cultural inheritance and development work has been guaranteed by the best system.

As an ancient civilization that has been continuous for thousands of years, the basic carrier of Chinese civilization is the continuous Chinese classics for thousands of years. As the oldest existing library building in China, Tianyi Pavilion can best reflect the continuous inheritance spirit of Chinese ancient book culture. From Fan Qin's founding of Tianyi Pavilion to his son Fan Dachong's inheritance of Tianyi Pavilion and the establishment of a system in which Tianyi Pavilion is jointly managed by his descendants, that is, the so-called "generation does not divide books"; great-grandson Fan Guangwen added a pond pavilion to Tianyi Pavilion and supplemented the collection of books; great-grandson Fan Guangxie repaired Tianyi Pavilion and guided the scholar Huang Zongxi to climb the building to read books, and copied more than 100 books in Tianyi Pavilion for Jiaxing Fuxue; the eighth grandson Fan Maozhu guarded the pavilion in a good way and submitted the collection of books to assist in the revision of the "Four Libraries Quanshu"; and the tenth grandson Fan Bangdian compiled the "Tianyi Pavilion Bibliography" Published; the 10th Sun Fan Bangsui united with his clansmen to try to recover the stolen pavilion books during the Taiping War; the 12th Sun Fan Yusen and Fan Yingyi went to the government to capture the book thieves in the early years of the Republic of China; the 13th Sun Fan Luqi participated in the committee to rebuild the Tianyi Pavilion, led the clansmen to cooperate with all walks of life to protect the Tianyi Pavilion and its collection, and transferred the Tianyi Pavilion collection to Longquan County and Qingyuan County in southern Zhejiang Province during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression for safekeeping, so that the collection of books was not lost and the classics were restored. From Fan Qin to Fan Luqi, Tianyi Pavilion book collection inheritance thirteen generations, after more than 400 years of ups and downs, during which it has endured countless wars, turmoil, and the pavilion book has been robbed several times. The arduous inheritance and guardianship of the bibliophile family is the fundamental reason for the continuous continuation of Chinese classics and the continuation of Chinese civilization to this day.

Tianyi Pavilion has not only become an outstanding representative of the inheritance and development of Chinese ancient book culture with the unique feature of the oldest existing library in China, but also has important and unique value in its collection of ancient books. As early as the 1930s, Zhao Wanli, who was a newcomer to the edition bibliography at that time and later became a generation of masters, pointed out in the article "Reorganizing the Collection of Fan's Tianyi Pavilion" that "the reason why Tianyi Pavilion is great is that it can preserve the direct historical materials of Zhu Ming's generation", which simply and directly points out the greatest value and most important feature of the Tianyi Pavilion collection. For example, there were 435 kinds of local chronicles of the Ming Dynasty in Tianyi Pavilion, which was more than the records of the "History of the Ming Dynasty, Art and Literature"; there are 271 kinds of existing records, of which more than 60% are unique books. For example, there are 370 kinds of imperial examination records of the Ming Dynasty in Tianyi Pavilion, of which more than 90% are unique books, and most of the imperial examination records of the Ming Dynasty in major libraries at home and abroad are also scattered books of Tianyi Pavilion. There are also books on the political system of the Ming Dynasty, such as "Ship Administration", "Liu Dongshan Zhaoyou", "Wuding Marquis Guo Xun Zhao", etc., which are also unique books. These important and precious documents, including the aforementioned local chronicles, have been collated and photocopied and published by Tianyi Pavilion one after another.

On the surface, Zhao Wanli's sentence is mainly from the perspective of "historical materials", that is, he mainly focuses on the content of documents, but in fact, he also has a considerable understanding of the physical value of the Tianyi Pavilion collection, but he does not fully discuss it. Tianyi Pavilion book preservation pavilion for more than 400 years, the physical form has hardly been systematically changed, like an archaeological treasure discovered, the authenticity of its cultural relics is extremely rare in the existing ancient books, the only comparable is probably the Dunhuang testament. The Dunhuang testament is still in the era of writing, and the Tianyi Pavilion collection can be called the Dunhuang testament in the printing era, and the value of the study of editions and book history is incalculable. To illustrate just one example, most of the books in the original collection of Tianyi Pavilion were packed with backs, and there were very few with threads, which can show that in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, where Fan Qin lived, Chinese books were probably still mainly bound by traditional bags, and the thread bindings were in the form of early binding. The emergence of thread binding is an important progress in the book binding process, and the reason why most of the existing ancient books before the middle of the Ming Dynasty are thread bound is mostly the result of later modifications.

The significance of Tianyi Pavilion for the inheritance and development of Chinese ancient book culture is also reflected in the fact that it has even changed the pattern of Chinese ancient book collection, especially rare book collection, to a certain extent. According to the statistics of the most authoritative bibliography of rare books in Chinese mainland, the ten institutions with the largest collection of rare books are: National Library of China, Shanghai Library, Nanjing Library, Peking University Library, Zhejiang Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences Library, Fudan University Library, Palace Museum Library, Tianyi Pavilion Museum and Tsinghua University Library. These 10 book collection institutions are distributed in 5 cities, in addition to the two municipalities directly under the central government of Beijing and Shanghai, that is, Nanjing and Hangzhou, the provincial capitals of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, and only Ningbo, which is the location of Tianyi Pavilion, is not directly under the central government and non-provincial capitals. With its unique existence, Tianyi Pavilion has made the seaside town of Ningbo one of the top 10 cities with rare book collections.

When culture is prosperous, the country is prosperous, and when culture is strong, the nation is strong. The creative transformation and innovative development of China's excellent traditional culture is the only way to rejuvenate the country and strengthen the nation through culture. Ancient books are the most important carrier of traditional culture, and Tianyi Pavilion is an important symbol of ancient book culture. Strengthening the research and development of Tianyi Pavilion and the important cultural value contained in Tianyi Pavilion and its collection is an inevitable choice to promote the inheritance and development of Chinese ancient book culture.