Other libraries
In addition to the National Library, there were still many other libraries in the ancient cultural city at that time, and the natural scale could not be compared. These small libraries, although small in scale, also have a rich collection of books, clean and quiet reading rooms, and there are not many readers, which are also good places for reading. Here I first think of the Hair Alley Library.
This name, first of all, to explain to the reader, Beijing's hutong names are strange, what does this "hair hutong" mean? The hair is thin and long, if this alley is like hair, how can the person walk in, maybe some people think that this is an exaggeration, the alley must be thin and long, in fact, I think wrong, this is a very wide and straight alley. On the west side of the road south of Xidan, outside the west entrance is along the South River. The so-called "Fa Fa Hu Tong Library" is actually the First Library of Beijing Municipal Government in that year, and the library site is on the north side of Xikou Road of Fa Fa Hu Tong.
The building of this library is an old-fashioned large courtyard house, the gate is at the east end of the south house, the entrance gate is opposite the shadow wall, turn to the left, a row of south rooms, is the communication room, the office building, etc., facing the big hanging flower door, on both sides of the hanging flower door, there is an iron shelf for storing bicycles. The screen door of the weeping flower door has been removed, and standing in front of the door can give you a panoramic view of the large courtyard inside. The east house of the courtyard is the newspaper reading room, the west house is the magazine reading room, the north house has five large rooms, there are corridors, it is a large reading room and a library, the library is in the backyard, the north house is in the middle, the back wall is open, connecting the library, and the front is the large counter of the library. On the construction equipment of the house, compared with the National Library on the North Sea, it is simply shabby and cannot be mentioned. However, its history is very early, before the establishment of the Beihai National Library, it opened to receive readers. Its predecessor was the "Beijing Normal Library Branch" and the "Beijing Normal Library" run by the Ministry of Education in the second year of the Republic of China, which were later merged into the "First Ordinary Library of beijing division". After 1928, Beijing was renamed "Beiping Special City", and the library was transferred to the Education Bureau of the Beiping Municipal Government. Became a municipal library to distinguish it from the National Library on the North Sea.
It is all the same thing, it is difficult for people to imagine such a library now, and in my memory, the wide corridor of the north house, the glass below, the large windows of Dongchang paper on the top, the rising sun shadow, the quiet atmosphere, now I think, it is still a lovely, as Tao Yuanmingshi said, "the virtual room is dusty" reading environment.
Now it is even more difficult for people to think that at that time, when entering this library was to buy reading coupons, two ordinary coupons, one news magazine coupon, one student coupon, ten rare book coupons, five four library coupons, and so on. But fortunately, when I was in middle school, I often went to this library to borrow books, and it no longer charged. And you can do a book loan card and lend the book out. I went two or three times a week with a few good classmates, rode my bike after class in the afternoon, borrowed the books I loved, and did read a lot of books in the past two or three years.
In addition to the Hair Hutong Library, there is also the Zhongshan Park Library, which is located in the rear hall of the main hall of the Shejitan Temple. It's also a great place to read a book, and there are very few people in normal times. The house is tall, south-facing, full of winter sunshine, refreshing summer air, behind which is a cypress forest, looking at the Forbidden City, the environment is good, and the Hair Hutong Library cannot be compared. There are Chinese 40,000 books in the collection, more than 1,000 books in foreign languages, as well as most of the books "Book Integration", "Four Series", "Universal Library" and so on, and the general readership is enough. It's called the Second Library. When visiting beihai in those years, on the hillside west of Qionghua Island, there was a house with a gallery, which looked extremely quiet from a distance, hanging a sign with white and black characters "Songpa Library", and usually very few people went, sitting in the window to read, you can enjoy the panorama of the National Library on the other side. This house is the "Fast Snow Hall" in Beihai, named after the Sanxi Hall that contains Wang Xizhi's "Fast Snow Time Qingti". At present, the Beijing Library still has Liang Qichao's manuscript on the fundraising of the Songpo Library, and originally wanted to donate 20 acres of land in Shanghai to build a shrine for Cai Yi, build a park and library, but after unsuccessfully, it was changed to Beijing. It is divided into one library, Chinese Library Kuaixue Hall; the second library, in Shihu Hutong, specializes in Western texts.
At that time, Li Muzhai, a famous bibliophile in Tianjin, famous Shengduo, died, and some of his books, in addition to the valuable book mortgagors, got to Beiping and set up a "Muzhai Library". It is not known who provided the funding. Because his books were very valuable, he originally wanted to sell them all to "Beitu", but Beitu gave up because of the lack of funds.
School Library
In addition to the National Peking Library and the Municipal First and Second Libraries, those who have been students are most impressed by the libraries of various schools. Famous primary and secondary schools have their own libraries. The private middle school I was in, in its golden age, also had a two-story library with gray brick and green windows, and during the summer vacation, I borrowed a copy of the yellow skin "Water Margin" from Rieter Books, which left a very deep impression on my childhood.
At that time, the most famous middle school library was the public Library of Shida Affiliated Middle School, and the private ones were the Library of Kongde Middle School and Huiwen Middle School. When the Library of the Affiliated Middle School of Shida University was established in the first year of the Republic of China, it received a large number of books from the old five-city school in the late Qing Dynasty, and since then, the school has been relatively fixed in terms of funds, close to the Liuli Factory, where the books are supplied, and it also knows how to buy books, so the number of new and old books is increasing, and in the period of the ancient city of culture, as a middle school library, it has been remarkable.
Among its teachers are also famous bibliophiles. Lun Zheru's "Chronicle Poems of the Book Collection Since Xinhai" has a poetic record, the poem is not recorded, and his poem is written after the poem:
"Tianjin Zhang Shaoyuan, as a teacher of the attached middle school of Normal University for more than twenty years, the school is close to the Liuli Factory, jun class is to visit the book, the bookstore people are all with Junxi, said That Mr. Zhang is humble and sincere, has desires, and would rather depreciate the price with it, so as to accumulate wealth and run his own fine house. Yun Shuai Ying number house, elegant and tidy, good books are not lacking, Yu everything borrowed from reading. ”
The library of Comte Middle School, among the middle schools at that time, was the most special. Because it is the place where Ma Yuqing, Qian Xuan and several gentlemen can study, they have worked hard to run. The ninth record of the "Old Record of Peking University Feelings" in the "Zhitang Retrospective Record" of the old man of Zhitang said:
"Ma Yuqing, Yuqing was in class at Peking University on February 19, 2004, and died in the lecture hall with cerebral hemorrhage... I met Yu Qing for about ten years in the Republic of China, but it wasn't until fourteen years, when I served as a two-class teacher in the middle school of Kong De School, that we met often. At that time, Xuan Tong and Yin Mo were doing Chinese language homework, I was an essay reader, I once told students a "Mencius", "Yan Family Training" and several "Dongpo Rulers", yuqing was the status of the general affairs officer, sitting in his office all day, and was buying books for the Kongde Library, surrounded by old books, often negotiating with the bookmakers... In the winter of 22 years, he returned to Beiping to take charge of the Kongde Library..."
A famous professor at Peking University is in charge of a middle school library, and it is difficult for people to imagine it now. Naturally, he is in charge, and he has the final say. Rather than "demotion", "decentralization" or something else. The library's collection and level are conceivable.
The Library of Huiwen Middle School, because it is run by the church, has a very long history, far exceeding the National Peking Library. It was founded in the Guangxu Decade, 1884 in the Gregorian calendar. At that time, Huiwen School had been established for fourteen years. After 1888, Dr. Li Ande, a Westerner, served as the principal, and because the Qing government had begun to promote Western studies, the school changed its name to HuiWen Academy and purchased a lot of Western books. Gengzi was burned down, and liu Hailan became the principal and rebuilt. According to the regulations of the Faculty at the end of the Qing Dynasty, it was once changed to Huiwen University. The library is also university-sized. However, it was later merged with Yenching University, and many books were taken away by Yenching. During the cultural ancient city period, this old qualified library had only a general collection of books.
University library, the best scenery is the Tsinghua University Library, figure-eight machine brick building, completely American,marble steps and railings and other stone materials, are precious Italian stone. There are three floors under the high steps, walk up the steps, stand in front of the door, look back, feel relaxed, Wanshou Mountain is close at hand, verdant and patting the face. The Western Mountain went from deep to shallow, heavy and far away, and in the middle of nowhere, it had already passed the Lotus Peak of Tanzhu Temple.
Tsinghua has always been well funded, buying books every year, chinese and foreign famous books, rich collections, cultural ancient city period, Qian Daosun has been the director of Tsinghua Library. Professor Hua Luogeng was a staff member in the library at that time, reading in the library with amateurs, solving the "three major problems of the world", and later became a famous professor and a famous mathematician. When Mr. Xie Gang was alive, he told me a story about the Tsinghua Library: when he was studying at the Institute of Traditional Chinese Studies, one day someone said that the illustration of Pan Jinlian's grape rack in the library's "Golden Bottle plum words" was stolen and torn off. After a few days, he accidentally flipped through the photo of a classmate's girlfriend, looked at the back, and was surprised, it turned out that the picture was pasted on the back. - Speaking of which, this is all the business of the ancients. I didn't go to school at Tsinghua, but I went to the Tsinghua Library a few times, but it was already after the vicissitudes, when I was studying at Peking University. At that time, the equipment fund of Tsinghua Library was 20% of the annual budget of 1.2 million, that is, 240,000 silver dollars.
Yenching University Library, once entering the gate across the bridge and Huabiao is, is a large roof palace-like building, which was in the cultural ancient city at that time, but also a very generous library, it has its own money, but also on behalf of the American "Harvard" to buy books, there is a "Harvard Yenching Society" organization, and once set up a "Institute of Chinese Studies", more than 10,000 US dollars a month to buy line-bound books, the dollar value at that time was fifteen to twenty times the current US dollar. Tens of thousands of dollars, equal to thirty thousand silver dollars, so before and after the purchase of a lot of rare books, people collect about 400,000 copies. Mr. Gu Qiqian, the honorary director of Shanghai Library, graduated from Yanjing Research Institute that year and later purchased ancient books in Yanda Library. At that time, the book shops in LiuliChang regarded the Yanda Library as the best patron, and there were more than a dozen books sent every day (the first letter of each ancient book, or the first volume) for review, and each family had ten kinds of books, that is, hundreds of books, and the books placed left and right in front of and behind the seats were really sitting in the book city. The old man is still very excited to say it.
I studied there for a year at Hepingmen Outer Normal University, and the library on my left hand when I entered the door was built by Mr. Deng Cuiying when he was the principal. The doorway has several columns, also a Romanesque building, square, two floors, a library below, a reading room upstairs. No more than two hundred square meters in size, such a library is small for a university of thousands of people. Enter the door with a large dressing mirror, the stairs on both sides are very steep, go up a small circle of corridors to enter the reading room, the borrowing place is in a corner, square counter. The collection of books is general, only for the reference of students. Lin Haiyin, a famous female writer in Taiwan, is said to have worked here when she fell.
At that time, the Peking University Library was very famous, Mr. Li Dazhao once served as the librarian, but that was already a very old saying in the period of the cultural ancient city, let alone now? According to the "Letters from Jiang Menglin to He Dong" contained in the "Selected Letters of Hu Shi", "After taking office, I made every effort to plan, and successively completed two libraries and geological museums, with a fee of more than 200,000 to 300,000 yuan..." The library mentioned here was completed in the early 1930s. It is the library that enters the west gate of the North University Office in the south entrance of Songzhu Temple, a light gray building with three floors in the middle, two floors on both sides, and a library at the back.
On the left and right sides of the entrance gate are two large reading rooms, and on the front is the counter of the library. Two sides of the staircase, the men's and women's restrooms at the corner, and then turn into the middle staircase to the second floor, and the left and right sides are also two large reading rooms. There is a newspaper reading office on the front of the second floor. The four reading rooms are divided into literature and history, science and technology, foreign languages, periodicals, the same pattern, the same size, facing south are five large steel windows, the north wall is a row of three feet high glass door bookcases, enlarged books, not locked, read at will, such as the foreign language reading room, then placed the entire set of "Encyclopedia Britannica", at the entrance, on the top of the bookcase, spread out the "Merriam-Webster Dictionary"; Chinese literature and history cabinet is placed "Four Series", "World Library", "New Literature Series" and so on.
Two rows of large tables made of imported wood in the room, the table lamps are fixed on the table, the frosted glass cover is fully sealed, the light bulbs are not exposed, the light is soft and radiant, enough for four people to illuminate, each table, four lights, full, or crowded, but always sat dissatisfied, because here is only the college of arts and sciences more people, the law school is farther away, and there is a library, rarely come here.
This library is rich in books and the equipment is completely First Class Americanized. The Selected Letters of Hu Shi contains a letter written to Mao Zishui in April of the 24th year of the Republic of China:
"What I mean by Mr. Menglin is that I really want to put this new Peking University library on top of a new organization and new efficiency—in short, it is to 'Americanize.'" This is beyond reproach, as we are convinced that the library is the number one in the world with the United States. Mr. Menglin and I absolutely believe in your knowledge and judgment of books, believe that you are loyal to this work, and love this work. But you're a person who hasn't 'Americanized,' and you're not very suitable for running this library. I know that Mr. Menglin is quite anxious about this matter. Although I have not talked to him in detail recently, I know that he has plans to reorganize the library, and he wants to borrow a person who specializes in library management from the Beiping Library to do this reform, and this person is probably Yan Wenyujun. I am also in favor of this. For personal reasons, you'd better go back to the history department, concentrate on the history and geography of science, and make some academic achievements in two or three years. At the same time, you can also be a master member of the reorganized library committee, using your love of books and familiarity with books to help organize this new library, so I advise you to resign as director so that Mr. Menglin can let go of this reform plan. ”
But then the director of the Peking University Library has been Mao Zishui, until he left Peking University for Taiwan, that is, from the early 1930s to the end of the 1940s, probably this letter did not work. However, from this letter, it can be seen that the Intention of Peking University Library at that time was to operate the library.
About author:Deng Yunxiang, scientific name Deng Yunjun (1924.8.28---- 1999.2.9) is a native of Donghenan Town, Lingqiu, Shanxi Province. The elder of the Shanghai Red Academy, together with Wei Shaochang, Xu Gongshi and Xu Fuming, is known as the Four Elders of Shanghai Red Studies. As a teenager, he studied at Xicheng Middle School in Beijing, Normal University and private Chinese university. He graduated from the Department of Chinese of Peking University in 1947. He has taught at Shanxi Datong Middle School and Tianjin Middle School. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he worked in the Central Fuel Industry Department in Beijing. Since October 1953, he has been teaching at Suzhou Electric School and Nanjing Electric School. In January 1956, he taught at Shanghai Electric Power Institute until his retirement in 1993.