On January 7, the National Library of China held a press conference announcing that the restoration project of the Qing Palace "Tianlu Linlang", which lasted for 8 years, was a complete success and was officially concluded.
Maybe some people still don't know, what is "Tianlu Linlang"?
is a book.
Is that a book, a set of books, or a room of books?
Like many Qing palace operas, the story begins with Qianlong.
The ancient Chinese royal family has always had a tradition of collecting and organizing books, which reached its peak in the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty.
The palace collections of this period were not only considerable in quantity, but also surpassed in quality in the previous dynasties.
After all, for the "old man Shiquan", the books must also be hidden.
Therefore, in the ninth year of his ascension (1744), Qianlong ordered the ministers to choose the best people in the secret collection of the inner government, and set up a storehouse in the Zhaoren Hall in the Forbidden City, and inscribed the plaque "Tianlu Linlang" with a royal pen. hanging in the hall.
This is the origin of "Tianlu Linlang".
In fact, among the Qing palaces, Zhaoren Hall is not the only place for collecting books. There are books in the Cabinet Library, Wenyuan Pavilion, Yingzao Hall, Qianqing Palace, Yangxin Hall, Wuying Hall, Map Room, and Fanglue Hall.
The special feature of "Tianlu Linlang" is that Qianlong selected old books of Song, Jin, Yuan and Ming editions from various collections, and made them from the essence.
After that, in the 40th year of Emperor Qianlong's reign (1775), the scholar Yu Minzhong was ordered to sort out and identify the books in the collection of "Tianlu Linlang", and compiled ten volumes of "The Imperial Book of Tianlu Linlang", which included 429 books.
Whether it is "Yongle Grand Ceremony" or "Siku Quanshu", these classics with familiar names to the public have always experienced various natural and man-made disasters in the history of hundreds of years, and "Tianlu Linlang" has not escaped this "rule".
For ancient books, natural disasters are often fires.
In October of the second year of Jiaqing (1797), there was a fire in the Qianqing Palace, along with the Zhaoren Palace, which was a side hall.
After the fire, the whereabouts of the books stored in the hall were unknown, and the Qing historical archives did not record the destruction of the "Tianlu Linlang" collection.
Until 1925, when the Qing Dynasty Aftermath Committee counted Zhaoren Hall, there was not a single book of "The Imperial Book of Tianlu Linlang", so it was speculated that the disaster had burned all "Tianlu Linlang".
After the fire, it was Emperor Qianlong's decree to rebuild the Qianqing Palace.
At the same time, Peng Yuanrui, who once led the editor-in-chief of the "Jin-ding Tianlu Linlang Bibliography", was ordered to compile the "Jian-ding Tianlu Linlang Bibliography" again. Lu Linlang".
This time, the bibliography was compiled in 20 volumes, which took only 7 months. It was compiled in the summer of the third year of Jiaqing, and a total of 664 rare books were included.
Peng Yuanrui inscribed at the end of the volume of the "Second Edition of the Bibliography of the Emperor Tianlu Linlang": "The first edition of the Song, Yuan, and Ming Dynasties has only one type of gold engraving; ."
According to natural disasters, "Tianlu Linlang" can still be reborn, but the dangers of modern China are like eggs, making the fate of ancient books and family and country as unpredictable.
Since the reign of Tongzhi in the Qing Dynasty, the imperial court began to send out the collection of books that were not repaired in the palace outside the palace, and the bookstores repaired and decorated them on their behalf.
During this period, some officials in the palace guarded and robbed themselves, resulting in the loss of books in the inner government, and a "royal-civilian" book collection market began to form, and many palace collections flowed into the hands of private bibliophiles.
By the end of the Qing Dynasty, less than half of the "Tianlu Linlang" in Zhaoren Hall had been kept. There were three reasons: first, Puyi transported it out of the palace in the name of rewarding companions; second, courtiers took advantage of Puyi's abdication to steal and exchange; third, Puyi rewarded ministers.
During the Puppet Manchukuo period, Puyi sold dozens of "Tianlu Linlang" collections for cash, and the rest followed him to the "Xiaobailou" in Changchun.
The storage conditions were poor, and Puyi himself did not care about the collection of books. For 14 years, many books in the collection did not take any moisture-proof and moth-proof measures, resulting in mildew, moth, and mutilation.
On the eve of Japan's surrender, when Puyi fled Changchun, this batch of books was looted by the surrounding people, and some of them flowed into the market again.
The rest of the collection was transported back to the Palace Museum after several rounds.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, part of the "Tianlu Linlang" collection of books still in the Forbidden City moved south along with other precious cultural relics in the palace. The difficulty of the process does not need to be repeated.
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, this batch of books was moved to Taiwan.
At the beginning of the founding of New China, with the strong support of the government, many of the lost "Tianlu Linlang" rare books were returned to the public collection.
All 205 volumes of "Tianlu Linlang" in the Palace Museum were handed over to the Rare Books and Special Collections Department of the Beijing Library (the predecessor of the National Library).
It was not until the 1950s that the displaced "Tianlu Linlang" finally settled down.
Chen Hongyan, deputy director of the National Library of Ancient Books, said that the National Library currently has 279 "Tianlu Linlang" collections, of which Song and Yuan block-printed editions account for a large proportion, and preserves the most precious large-scale books in the "Empressed Tianlu Linlang Bibliography". Some ancient books.
Since many of the "Tianlu Linlang" books were severely damaged, they were kept as unedited books for a long time.
It was not until April-June 2013 that the National Library of Ancient Books completed the cataloging of the unedited "Tianlu Linlang" ancient books, and conducted a preliminary investigation on the damage of the book during the cataloguing.
The survey results can be described as shocking: among the more than 270 volumes and more than 3,500 volumes of ancient books in the collection, about 10%, or more than 300 volumes, have serious problems such as paper decay, flocculation, adhesion, and disintegration of binding. salvage repair.
Although Guotu's rare book warehouse already has good constant temperature and humidity conditions, the mold, flocculation, adhesion and other paper diseases carried in damaged books will become more serious over time.
In 2007, the State Council issued the "Opinions on Further Strengthening the Protection of Ancient Books" and officially implemented the "Chinese Ancient Books Protection Plan", which is the first national ancient book protection project under the auspices of the government in my country's history.
On June 8, 2013, the former Ministry of Culture set up the "National Ancient Book Restoration Skills Training Center" in the National Library. While carrying out the restoration of ancient books, the restoration skills were taught by teachers and apprentices, and the talents of ancient book restoration were trained.
It was also in this year that the cataloging and damage investigation of the collection "Tianlu Linlang" was completed. In August of the same year, the "Tianlu Linlang" restoration project was launched.
The process of repair is also the process of cultivating talents.
Due to historical reasons, there are age gaps among the ancient book restorers in the National Library of China, and the age group spans directly from the post-60s to the post-80s.
Most of the young people are graduate students with a certain theoretical foundation and research ability.
Driven by the demonstration of experts with more than 35 years of restoration experience, they have mastered relatively comprehensive skills in practice in the face of "top-level teaching materials" such as "Tianlu Linlang", and carried out research at the same time.
The restoration project of "Tianlu Linlang" is another "important task" of the National Library after "Dunhuang Posthumous Letters" and "Zhaocheng Gold Collection". It is not only large in size, but also difficult.
The common feature of each collection is that it is precious, and the difference is that it is "broken in its own way". The restoration plan cannot be generalized, and each book needs to be "individualized".
According to Cui Zhibin, a young restorer of the National Library of Ancient Books, "Tianlu Linlang" also has a distinctive feature, that is, traces of previous restorations can be seen in most of the collections.
Under the guideline of "as old as the old", restorers face a new question - to keep or remove the remains of these "latecomers"?
After repeated discussions, they finally decided to strictly maintain the historical relics and leave objective evidence for future generations without affecting the current and future use quality and preservation life of the books.
However, there are also some special cases. For example, the predecessors repaired by improper methods such as "continuous patching and lining", which caused the leaves and paper to be wrinkled, hardened, and stuck together. Ancient books such as "Banma Characters" and "Mencius Sounds and Meanings" exist in such ancient books. condition.
The operation traces of predecessors are not conducive to the protection of ancient books. This restoration has carried out rectification. It is not a rigid copy of the principle of "repairing the old as the old, minimal intervention", but a specific analysis of specific problems. The goal is to prolong the preservation time of ancient books as much as possible.
Eight years later, the restoration of "Tianlu Linlang" has been completed, related exhibitions will be held, and related results will be published soon.
We no longer know how many wars, conflicts, and generations of preservation and restoration of these rare ancient books have gone through thousands of years before they appeared in front of us with a new look.
But as long as today's young people can still feel that they are cultivating things of their "own" and that they are communicating with their "own" culture, then the context will continue.
China Youth Daily, China Youth Daily reporter Jiang Xiaobin Source: China Youth Daily