Mr. Zhao Wanli (1905-1980) was a well-known bibliographer, a researcher at the Beijing Library and the director of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, an honorary director of the Library Society of China, and a representative of the Third National People's Congress.
Mr. Zhao Wanli, also spelled Feiyun, also spelled Yundi, Shunyi, etc., was born on April 4, 1905 in Haining Xiaoyuan, Zhejiang. Xiaoyuan Garden is part of the famous Chen Ge Old Garden Anlan Garden, although it has been abandoned for a long time, there are still many flowers and trees at that time. In front of and behind the house, there are many peach trees and more than a dozen loquat trees, which cultivates his strong interest and deep love for plants. From elementary school, he collected plants everywhere and made specimens in sorts and divisions. Jiangnan is lush with grass and trees, accumulating year by year, and he can recognize many plants and can casually say their names. Hundreds of plant specimens he made as a teenager were later donated to Zhongshan Middle School in Haining County (which was razed to the ground during the anti-war fire).
Mr. Zhao Wanli (1905-1980)
Before entering school, he had learned more than a thousand words under the guidance of his mother and could recite dozens of Tang poems. At the age of seven, he entered Haining Dacai Primary School, worked very hard, and achieved good results. When he was in elementary school, he went to school very early every day, which aroused the suspicion of his grandfather. Once my grandfather followed and peeped, and saw that he was taking water from the cylinder after he arrived at the school and grinding ink to learn words. His compositions in his youth were excellent, and the teacher once wrote a long criticism after his essay "Haining Guan Chao" and praised him. After graduating from primary school, he was admitted to Jiaxing Zhejiang Provincial No. 2 Middle School with excellent results, and studied hard in school, ranking among the best in all subjects, especially devoted to Chinese literature and history. Once, on a rainy Sunday, he borrowed a copy of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms from someone else's house, happily carried the book home, wore spiked shoes on his feet, and accidentally slipped and fell, and his left eyebrow was broken, but the book was held high without defacement. After graduating from high school in 1921, he was admitted to the Department of Chinese of Southeast University, where he studied from Mr. Wu Qu'an (Mei) and studied songwriting. He is particularly fond of the creation of words, during which time he fills in a lot of words, and often walks around the table at home while chanting, repeatedly deliberating. Later, the study turned to opera, and the words were not much, and although some of the works retained were "less works", it can still be seen that their achievements are deep.
When he was a student, he lived very frugally, saving pocket money to buy books, and every time he came home, he brought back a lot of wire-bound books, and later his bedroom almost became a small library, and the accumulation of books was more and more orderly, and these books were all lost during the War of Resistance. In 1925, he went to Beijing, studied under Mr. Wang Guowei, and later served as a teaching assistant at the Institute of Chinese Studies of Tsinghua University. He had great respect for Mr. Wang and was very respectful. Mr. Wang is also very fond of this tall foot. He once attended Mr. Wang's school copy of the "Notes on the Water Classic", and Mr. Wang inscribed a long trek on the book. Under the guidance of Mr. Wang, he studied hard and concentrated, and since then he has covered a wider range of academic fields, laying the foundation in historiography, literature, jinshi, opera, catalogue editions and other aspects. Mr. Wang's strict attitude, seeking truth from facts, and meticulous style of study also made him deeply influenced. In the following decades of academic research work, he has always maintained a strict and realistic attitude. Since his youth, he has written and published more than a hundred articles, but the publication of the entire work is cautious and cautious, such as the book "Han Wei Southern and Northern Dynasties Epitaphs", which was finalized as early as 1936, and after repeated supplements and revisions, it was not published by the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences until 1956. His early papers were published in two early papers, "The Meaning of the Two Characters of Shu Yan Fang" (Guoxue Series, Vol. 1, No. 2, August 1923) and "The Transcription of the Fragments of the Heart Carved Dragon fragments written by Tang Dynasty" (Tsinghua Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1, June 1926).
In 1927, Mr. Wang sank himself in Kunming Lake, when he was very sad. This is not only out of the deep mourning of the friendship between teachers and students, but also because the death of Mr. Wang is a great loss to the Chinese academic community. He compiled the Catalogue of Mr. Wang Jing'an's Writings (Journal of the Chinese Library Association, Vol. 2, No. 5, April 1927), the Catalogue of Mr. Wang Guantang's School Editions (Guoxue Monthly, vol. 8, 9 and 10, October 1927), and the Annals of Mr. Wang Jing'an (Guoxue Series, Vol. 1, Vol. 3, April 1928). At the same time, he edited Mr. Wang's book into the "Testament of Mr. Wang Jing'an of Haining", which was published in 1928. Later, he left the Tsinghua Institute of Chinese Studies and worked in the Beihai Library, the predecessor of the Beijing Library, as the leader of the Chinese interview group and the leader of the rare book examination team, and worked in the Beijing Library for more than 50 years. When he arrived at the library, the director of the Rare Books Department was Mr. Xu Senyu. Elder Xu is a well-known contemporary editionist and cultural relics appraiser, who is knowledgeable and proficient in gold stones, calligraphy and painting, catalogs, editions, and even ceramics. In his work, he was greatly influenced by the guidance of Elder Xu, and with the rich collection of good books in the Beijing Library, he immersed himself in the old engravings of the Song and Yuan Dynasties and the fine copying of famous schools day by day, and gained valuable practical experience. With his outstanding comprehension ability and memory, coupled with the original foundation of governance, he has a deeper attainment in versionology, bibliography, and collation. At that time, the famous bibliophiles Fu Zengxiang, Zhou Shuhan and Zhang Yunliang were also experts in the study of edition bibliography, and because they had a common knowledge of ancient books, he and they were in a relationship with each other, pushing the edition identification to a new level.
From 1929 to 1949, in addition to his library work, he also served as a special researcher and communication researcher of the Institute of History and Linguistics of the Academia Sinica, and a special committee member of the Library and Archives of the Palace Museum. During this period, he also taught at several universities in Beijing, and successively held the positions of lecturer, associate professor and professor. He began teaching at Peking University in 1929 at the age of twenty-four. From 1929 to 1937 and from 1945 to 1950, he taught at Peking University. He taught at Tsinghua University from 1933 to 1937 and at Fu Jen University from 1933 to 1951. From 1942 to 1945, he taught at the University of China. He has taught courses in Chinese Historical Materials Bibliography, Bibliography, Collation Survey, Edition Studies, Chinese Carved Plate History, Chinese Opera History, Chinese Folk Literature, and Word History at the above universities.
Photo taken while working as an associate professor in the Department of History, Peking University (1931)
In his busy teaching and research work, he still regarded the work of the library as his main work, sorted out and cataloged the ancient books and rare books in the collection, and compiled the four volumes of the "Bibliography of Good Books of the Beiping Library", which was engraved and printed in 1933. At the same time, the research work of the Yongle Canon was carried out. During the Qianlong period, when compiling the Siku Quanshu, he adopted Zhu Yun's suggestion and compiled many precious materials from the Yongle Canon that had long been lost. Although only two or three percent of the existing Yongle Canons exist at that time, there are still many materials in it that are worth continuing to explore. He was well aware of the significance and weight of this work, and on the one hand, he tried to collect the existing Yongle Canon at home and abroad, or acquired, or copied, or solicited miniature reproductions of photographic books through interlibrary exchanges. From before liberation to the decades after the founding of the People's Republic of China, the vast majority of the surviving Yongle Canon was stored in the Beijing Library in various forms of books (in 1961, the Zhonghua Bookstore photocopied the Yongle Canon, and all of the materials of the Yongle Canon were used). On the other hand, from the 1930s onwards, under his initiative, he began to compile the index of the "Yongle Canon" citation card, so as to carry out the work of "Ji You", and successively compiled the "School Collection of Song Jinyuan Renzi", "Yuan Yi Tongzhi", "Analysis of the Law Zhi" and other Fang Zhi and anthology to be reorganized.
After 1928, he was responsible for editing the Beiping Library Journal, and from September 1933, he edited the Ta Kung Pao Book Supplement, and in addition to organizing manuscripts, he often wrote articles such as ancient book inscriptions and book reviews.
On the eve of the liberation of Beijing in 1948, the Kuomintang authorities plotted to smuggle away the rare books and rare books of The Northern Map. He was restless day and night for this reason, and he tried his best to delay, and finally this attempt of the Kuomintang authorities failed to succeed. Shortly after the liberation of Beijing in 1949, the North China People's Government sent more than 4,300 volumes of gold engraved scriptures collected by the soldiers of the Eighth Route Army to Guangsheng Temple in Zhaocheng County, Shanxi Province, and sent them to Beijing for preservation. He was extremely touched by this, and personally wrote an explanation to hold the exhibition "Zhao Cheng Jinzang" to publicize the policy and spirit of the party and the people's government to attach importance to cultural heritage and actively protect cultural relics. He tried in many ways, from inviting skilled framers to visiting and asking for the necessary cotton paper for mounting, and took various specific measures to do a good job in the mounting and renovation of "Zhao Chengzang", so that this Tibetan scripture could be renovated and restored and survived for a long time. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he was pleased to see the new life of the motherland, his spirit was invigorated, he studied hard, and demanded progress. It actively supported the measures promulgated by the State Council at that time to protect cultural relics and prohibit the export of precious cultural relics and books. Later, under the leadership of the Cultural Relics Bureau of the Ministry of Culture, he assisted Zheng Zhenduo, Wang Yeqiu and other leading comrades to do a lot of work on the investigation, protection and collection and appraisal of books and cultural relics in various places. For example, in 1950, under the leadership of Comrade Dong Biwu, he participated in the work of the East China Working Group. In 1963, a bibliophile living in Macau wanted to sell his collection, and there were many foreign admirers at that time. When the Ministry of Culture learned of this news, it immediately asked him to go to the appraisal and buy back the batch of books in a timely manner, including eight kinds of Song carved books, fifteen kinds of Yuan carved books, eight kinds of Huang Pilie's school books, as well as Bao Tingbo, Chen Yu's school books, and Ming copper movable type prints, so that such a batch of rare books would be saved from being exiled abroad. After his investigation and appraisal of rare and ancient books recovered by Hong Kong and Macao, there are several batches. In addition, he also did his best to either come forward on his own or assist the comrades in the museum, and collected many rare books and manuscripts of famous artists, such as the manuscripts of Wang Guowei, Liang Qichao, Wu Han and others, and the classical operas collected and proofread by Wu Mei.
One of the four special collections of the National Library of China, "Zhao Cheng Jinzang"
In 1959, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, he presided over the compilation of the "Bibliography of Good Books in beijing library", which compiled a large number of rare books and ancient books newly collected since the founding of the People's Republic of China, including a small number of rare books that were collected into Tibet after the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and before the founding of the People's Republic of China, into eight volumes of bibliography, which were published by the Zhonghua Bookstore. At the same time, he is the chief editor of the "Chinese Engraving Catalogue", which is arranged in the form of plates according to the engraving era and the engraving area, and systematically introduces the origin and development of engraving and printing in China, which is finely printed and published by the Cultural Relics Publishing House. Use these two books as a gift for the tenth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.
In 1964, he was elected as a deputy to the Third National People's Congress, and worked harder, and his collection of good books on Beitu was regarded as an important part of the cultural treasure house of the Chinese nation, from the collation and cataloguing of each book to the registration, storage, and shelf. He personally inquired about and pointed out the decoration of rare books, put forward the principle of "the whole old as the old", and urged excellence. This principle is based on the traditional techniques of book decoration and decoration in previous dynasties. His love for library is evident in his concern for books on the one hand, and his emphasis on the training of professionals on the other hand, and he expects to be followed by others. Since the mid-1950s, he has given lectures to comrades in the museum, mainly in bibliography, and has successively lectured on the bibliography of historical materials and the bibliography of the collection department, systematically describing the historical works of the past dynasties, the history books of different genres, and combining the knowledge of editions, introducing the source of engravings of various historical books, the advantages and disadvantages of existing editions, and so on. The same is roughly true of the teaching of collective bibliography. Originally planned to teach the bibliography of the Ministry of Economics from 1966 onwards, it was discontinued due to the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
During the ten years of catastrophe, he was brutally persecuted by the "Gang of Four", so that he was bedridden for a long time. In June 1980, he died of a serious illness at the age of 75.
"Collected Essays of Mr. Zhao Wanli", National Library Press, 2018
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