"Yongle Grand Ceremony": The Pearl Returns to Hepu
【narration】
Since its establishment in 1979, the National Library of China Press has gradually formed a professional publishing feature focusing on literature and history reference books and collating, photocopying and publishing of rare documents of past dynasties.
The book products of Guotu Club, especially some large-scale series of rare Chinese traditional documents, have become the key acquisition targets of major document collection institutions and academic research institutions at home and abroad.
At the same time, in recent years, China National Library has also achieved fruitful results in the compilation and publication of overseas Chinese books.
Among them, the return and reconstruction of the "Yongle Encyclopedia" collected overseas is quite representative.
In 2002, Guo Youling, the then president of the National Library of China, and Xu Shu, the editor-in-chief, visited the North American Library. They saw two volumes of the Yongle Encyclopedia collected by the Harvard-Yenching Library at Harvard University, and then saw the school's rare books. Library - One volume of "Yongle Grand Ceremony" by Kang Youwei inscribed and signed in the Houghton Library, I am delighted.
Prior to this, the National Library of China held a seminar to commemorate the 600th anniversary of the compilation of the "Yongle Canon" in response to the call of the old curator, Mr. Ren Jiyu.
Guotu decided to take the lead in publishing the 163 volumes of "Yongle Grand Ceremony" in the domestic collection by means of the original large-scale simulation photocopying. At the same time, it also hopes to successively find and photocopy and publish the overseas collections. The ultimate goal is to publish all the surviving 400-odd volumes. .
Therefore, Guo Youling and Xu Shu applied to Mr. Zheng Jiongwen, director of the Harvard-Yenching Library, to publish three volumes of "Yongle Dadian" in Harvard's collection.
After ten years of coordination by Mr. Zheng Jiongwen, this wish finally came true in May 2013.
The publication of the three volumes of the "Yongle Encyclopedia" in Harvard's collection became the beginning of the photocopying and publishing of the "Yongle Encyclopedia" overseas.
Since then, with the help of overseas collection institutions and people of insight, Princeton University East Asia Library has collected 2 volumes, Los Angeles Huntington Library has collected 1 volume, the British Library has 24 volumes, and Oxford University has collected 24 volumes. 19 volumes in the Deli Library, 5 volumes in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, etc. have been published successively.
According to the statistics of Professor Zhang Sheng from Beijing Normal University, the research expert of "Yongle Grand Ceremony", there are currently 434 copies of "Yongle Grand Ceremony" known to exist. Provided by Yujia document collection institutions.
Compared with the goal set by Mr. Ren Jiyu that year, the publishing task has been completed more than half.
As publishers, we are fortunate to struggle in the spring of the development of the ancient book business. Only by not forgetting our original intentions and keeping upright and innovating can we live up to this great era.
(Project team: reporters Chen Xue, Wang Meiying, Du Yu, Li Xiaodong, Zhou Hongshuang, Wang Simin reporter Xu Mengling)