May 07 2007
Rare book booklist
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天津古籍出版社 Tianjin Ancient Book Publishing House published Zhou Shutao’s rare books booklist in 1985. He’s a major bibliophile in China. According to his second son 珏良 Jueliang, he began donating his collections to Beijing Library since 1951, then to Tianjin Library in 1957 and 1972 (His wife and children also donated numerous times after he passed away). This book consists bulk of his best find thoughtout China, 715 kinds in total that was donated to Beijing Library in 1952. To commemorate his ambitious effort preserving the rarest books within China and generosity, Beijing library prepared to publish an elaborated special booklist with who’s whos’ book postscripts. But political instadbilities caused the 30-year delay.
Those rarest books are clearly beyond my comprehension, what prompted me to write about it was due to: my disappointment of not allowed to see them when I visited BJL in 2003 - why would they want to limit the access to the resources? Libraries or librarians here in the US are more than happy to help you! Secondly the Time magazine’s blunder I talked about few months ago - just how much does the West understand China? Given the mighty status of Time, I often wondered out loud. This book is a good example of how Chinese treasure their calligraphy: the cover of the book is postscripted by Zhao Puchu, with several others inside the book (see below).
