After 13 years of hard work, the Complete Records of Jiangsu Chronicles was released recently in Nanjing. This project, the largest provincial compilation of old records in China, is a microcosm of China’s increasing emphasis on the protection and utilization of ancient books.
After 13 years of hard work, the Complete Records of Jiangsu Chronicles was released recently in Nanjing. This project, the largest provincial compilation of old records in China, is a microcosm of China’s increasing emphasis on the protection and utilization of ancient books.
Since this year, “strengthening the protection and utilization of cultural relics and ancient books and the protection and inheritance of intangible cultural heritage” has been included in the government work report for the first time. The General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council also issued the Opinions on Promoting the Work of Ancient Books in the New Era. Xinhua News Agency reporters have recently conducted research in many places to explore how the protection and utilization of ancient books can be “old” and “new” in the new era.
Let the silent classics “move”
Entering the ancient book reading room of Shaanxi Normal University Library, the smell of camphor wood makes people calm. Open the bookcase, and arrange the wired books in order.
Nowadays, it is not difficult to consult ancient books anytime and anywhere with the help of digital technology. In September 2016, the “Chinese ancient book resource library” was put into operation, and 100000 ancient books and special digital resources were released, which was close to “zero threshold”.
Since 2021, the School of History and Culture of Shaanxi Normal University has developed an optical character recognition (OCR) system for ancient Chinese books, which greatly improves the efficiency of collating and sorting ancient books.
“It is time-consuming and labor-intensive to find data from the vast ancient books, so as to maximize the value of documents, and the digitization work should be accelerated.” Said Professor Takeda of Changsha, the library of Shaanxi Normal University.
Empowered by technology, precious non renewable cultural relics can not only stay in the cloud forever, but also “72 changes”.
A horizontally flowing “Thousand Miles Map of Rivers and Mountains” is marked with the names of “Sushui”, “Lianxi”, “Yushan”, and hundreds of Confucian scholars with flowing clothes are “on their way”. The track of their moving from one place to another represents their learning process and the school they belong to. This is the exhibit submitted by Ma Yuan, a student of the Visualization and Visual Computing Laboratory of Peking University, to the first “Peking University Digital Humanities Exhibition” – H5 exercise completed in JavaScript, named “Song Yuan Academic Case Inheritance Visualization System”.
“If it is not for professional research, few people would be interested in reading such a big book as Song Yuan Xue An. We want to attract young people to understand ancient books through a game like interface.” Ma Yuan said.
With technology, ancient books can not only move like a game, but also give researchers more power.
Open the “Smart Ancient Books Platform” of Zhejiang University, click the unfamiliar place names in the text, and the geographical positioning will pop out immediately; Click the year, stem and branch and other traditional calendars, and the corresponding modern Gregorian calendar date will be converted immediately; When encountering ancient official positions, allusions and difficult words, the background reference books are immediately related and displayed.
“The study of classical literature supported by intelligent technology is one of the important directions of ancient book research in the future. It helps to cultivate interdisciplinary talents and promote the transformation of academic achievements into cultural resources shared by the public,” said Professor Xu Yongming, Institute of Chinese Ancient Literature and Culture, Zhejiang University.
Let the “hot” out of the cold unique knowledge
The popularity of the documentary “But there are still books” has sparked the popularity of Mr. Shen Xieyuan, a 99 year old bibliographer of ancient books who still works eight or nine hours a day in Nanjing Library. In the face of the sudden “popularity”, the old man is still quite difficult to adapt.
Shen Xieyuan was the editor in chief of the sub section of the Catalogue of Rare Chinese Ancient Books, and was also an expert in version identification with an eye like a torch. Shen Xieyuan has purchased thousands of ancient books and rare copies in South Atlas for several decades. He bought two of the top ten precious ancient books of the “Treasure of Town Hall”.
Today, this 90 year old man is still racing against the clock. Not long ago, Shen Xieyuan completed more than 800000 words of the Shi Li Ju Preface and Postscript, which includes more than 800 books he collected from all over the world, as well as dozens of newly discovered “Huang Postscript”. Next, he will sort out Huang Pirie’s poetry anthology and chronicle.
In recent years, the deeds of many ancient book researchers have become “hot”. Li Dejing, President of Dongba Cultural Research Institute, translated and sorted out Dongba ancient books; Du Weisheng, an ancient book restoration expert from the National Library, and others restored the Yongle Grand Ceremony; Zhang Yongquan, director of the Dunhuang Research Center of Zhejiang University, spliced and combined fragments of Dunhuang scattered around the world. More and more young people are also re creating around these ancient books on social platforms such as Tiktok and Station B, which has made the unpopular theme popular.
As a descendant of Shen Xieyuan, the young people in Nantou are also innovating. From the summer vacation in 2020, Han Chao and Shi Xingyu, members of the Historical Literature Department of the Museum, “translated” the words in the Suiyuan Food List of the Qing Dynasty into vivid dishes, such as pear fried chicken, pork, Jiang Shilang tofu, etc., attracting people to “urge the change” online.
“Ancient books have special charm in the eyes of foodies.” Shi Xingyu said, for example, in the Southern Song Dynasty, Shanjia Qinggong, which was mainly about vegetable recipes, was suitable for light food lovers; The recipes in Shi Xian Hong Mi in the Qing Dynasty focus on health preservation, which is suitable for the “health preserving coffee” that likes to soak wolfberry.
The classics of ancient books are attracting new attention and inspiring more young people.
Let the “Classic” of Millennium Ancient Books Brighten the Future
In April this year, the “Digital Museum of Chinese Traditional Villages” sponsored by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development went online, and the “Digital Memory of High Relocation” project was paid attention to.
Gaoqian Village, Xianju County, Taizhou City, Zhejiang Province, is a famous historical and cultural village in China, which has been passed on from generation to generation. The research team of Professor Feng Huiling from the School of Information Resources Management of Renmin University of China excavated scattered genealogies and local chronicles, compiled 10 stories with traditional Chinese values, collected multimedia around the spirit of traditional village culture, and built a digital panorama of ancient village culture.
“From plane reading to digital space reading, traditional philology also needs to carry out digital transformation, and enhance people’s understanding and perception of culture through various media.” Liang Jihong, director of the Digital Humanities Teaching and Research Office of Renmin University of China, said.
Facing the future, the Millennium Collection has assumed a new mission and is facing new topics.
——Cultivate more cross-border talents.
The medical work Compendium of Materia Medica is still a must for Chinese medicine desks today, and the encyclopedia Tiangong Kaiwu has been translated into many languages… Chinese ancient books have a huge and complex knowledge system, rich management experience, and life wisdom such as Chinese medicine, health preservation, clothing, diet, etc.
“The research and protection of ancient books are short of talents, especially cross-border talents.” Du Yiran, a classical philology major of Peking University, and others suggested that we should speed up the integration of related discipline resources, break the research barriers, and cultivate comprehensive talents for the cause of ancient books.
——We will further break the resource barrier.
In the past, different collection institutions “well water does not offend the river”. Nowadays, digitalization and publicity of ancient books not only benefit society, but also promote inheritance.
Xu Yongming hopes that the “Smart Ancient Books Platform” can change the paradigm of individual work in ancient books collation and allow professionals around the world to cooperate online. “It is very difficult for our generation to see such a huge project as Quanming Poems and Quanming Essays completed in the traditional mode. Only by using crowdsourcing technology can there be hope.”
——Share more widely.
In recent years, a number of Chinese ancient books scattered overseas have been returned to digital. For example, Sichuan University, the National Library of China, the University of California, Berkeley and other institutions have cooperated to carry out the project of “Chongguang in Chinese Classics”, and the first batch of them completed the digitization and publicity of 200000 pages of ancient books.
“We should not only collate the national heritage, but also make the past serve the present. We should make more Chinese ancient books available to the public and promote exchanges and mutual learning between Chinese culture and the world culture.” Zhou Tian, director of the Shaanxi Provincial Expert Committee on the Arrangement and Publishing of Ancient Books, lobbied. (Participating reporters: Wei Mengjia, Feng Yuan, Cai Xinyi) (end)