The Treasure Room has cause to celebrate! This March a distinguished guest arrived there to begin work on a large project.

Antiques with academic value: The Harvard-Yenching Library was established in 1928 and is the largest East-Asian university library in the West. At present the East-Asian collections consist of some 800,000 volumes. Most of these are Chinese texts, which number around 450,000. Apart from the number of books in the collection occupying top place among all schools, Yenching's collection of precious Chinese books is also a matter of great pride.

China's ancient books have been through human and natural disasters with countless numbers having been destroyed and lost. There are no certain statistics concerning just how many still survive in the world today. Moreover, with there being much space for dispute over how antique works should be carefully determined and compared, it is even more difficult to put numbers on them. Nevertheless, it is generally thought that most precious Chinese books are in mainland China, with the main collections being in the Peking and Shanghai libraries, with a total of around 41,000 titles; Taiwan comes second with 14,000 in the National Central Library and National Palace Museum. Those precious books that have gone overseas are mostly in Japan and United States, with the richest collection being in the Library of Congress. Second to that comes the Harvard-Yenching Library.

Among the Harvard-Yenching Library's precious Chinese books there are around 1,400 Sung, Yuan and Ming dynasty publications. Ching imprints (up to the Chien-lung period, 1736-1796) are most, numbering some 2,000. If you count them by volume, then there are around 40,000 books. There are also 1,200 manuscripts, separately bound in 4,500 volumes. Apart from those works which were purchased directly from China, a large portion were bought from Japan at the end of World War Two.

Making records for precious books: The elderly Mr. Tai Lien, who is responsible for the Treasure Room, has an office separated from it by a wall. The heavy door of the Treasure Room is kept locked and users have to specially apply to be let in by Mr. Tai. That is not all, however, because there are four large windows in the wall separating the office from the book cache, so that Mr. Tai is separated from it only by glass and can take in hand any disturbances that occur within. Moreover, the most valuable of the precious books are not even in the book room but in a safe by Mr. Tai's side.

Such a rich collection and under such guard; there is only one matter of regret about Yenching's precious books collection--there is still no complete index. It is for this reason that while many people know the library has a rich collection, unless they go to Harvard they cannot know what it actually contains, let alone use it, which is something of a discount on its academic functions. In recent years, Princeton and Columbia have published catalogs of their antique book collections, which means that this older brother of the East-Asian libraries has come to lag even further behind.

How can this be? One of the reasons is finance. Head librarian Wu Wen-chin says: "The work of the library is comprehensive. When we arranged all our common Chinese and Japanese books, we edited a catalog of 72 volumes, which was a huge process that was only finished eight years ago. After that we began an automatic system, which requires a very big budget."

What is even more important is that it is difficult to get the right personnel. "Chinese precious books are the same as old Chinese paintings, there are many fakes. How to appraise them is a very special skill and requires a vast amount of learning. Moreover, we do not just want to make an index," says Wu Wen-chin. "For many years we could not find a suitable person who could do something up to standard."

Wu eventually found this person. In February last year he bumped into Shen Chin at Hong Kong's Chinese University, talked things over, and on his return to the United States raised the money. Shen Chin arrived at Harvard in March. He planned to spend two years, write 700,000 characters, and publish two volumes of what Wu Wen-chin describes as "something up to standard."

The able one comes forth: Before he came from mainland China to Hongkong, Shen Chin had the position of deputy manager of the special collection at the Shanghai Library. His teacher was the great expert on indexing, Ku Ting-lung, and he had already lived in the world of precious books for 30 years. He had been to examine the Harvard-Yenching Library seven years before and he now arrived back at his old haunt with even more time to browse. After five months had passed, he uttered a judgment similar to that made on his first visit: "Some good stuff!"

When the able come forth, things are inevitably different. On his arrival, Shen Chin made a tour of the Treasure Room and the classical bookshelves. Among the works he found in an underground room was a work by the Ching-dynasty author Weng Fang-kang. This work was published in the Taokuang period of the Ching dynasty (1821-1851) and has thus not seen as a precious book but put in the general Chinese collection.

"Although Weng Fang-kang's works were published in the Tao-kuang period, a very small number were printed." Shen Shu-yung, the famous Tung-chih period (1862-1875) expert on bronze and stone inscriptions, wrote an article in which he says he could only buy one of these books after trying hard for four years. So we can see that this work was already very rare in the Ching dynasty. But the value of this book in the Harvard-Yenching collection is over and above that of other existing copies of the same work," points out Shen Chin. As he opens the book, which has now been invited up to the third floor, you can see that there are a lot of rings and black marks on it, including an inscription at the end which records it was taken into the collection of a certain Yuan Sou in 1870.

"Yuan Sou is the hao name of Ho Shao-chi. Ho became a civil servant in the Tao-kuang period and was famous for a time for his study of calligraphy and bronze and stone inscriptions. He can be found in many Ching-dynasty books." Shen Chin flips through a dictionary of eminent Chinese and reads aloud: "Ho Shao-chi . . . hao name Yuan Sou . . . eminent in his generation for his tsao script."

"This book combines the efforts of two great masters of calligraphy and is extremely valuable," says Shen Chin with a smile. "1870 is the ninth year of the Tung-chih reign. Ho Shao-chi died in the twelfth year of Tung-chih at the age of 75. He nust, therefore, have read this book when he was 72."

Passing off fish eyes as pearls: "Examination and verification" are the basic tasks in assessing books; the assessment of value is directly influenced by how much work is put into it. Apart from this, assessing precious books must also take into account their form, typeface, carving, prohibited characters (e.g. the characters included in the emperor's name could not be used) and condition of the paper.

Locked away in Mr. Tai's safe there is a copy of the Erh-ya Chu-shuwhich is a cause for concern for Shen Chin due to a changing in the color of its paper. "People in earlier times would dye their paper, often using tea leaves or ocher," says Shen Chin. "This book's paper is very brittle and the colors are also not stable. Not only are the beginning and end different, but even each page varies in consistency. This is the typical mark of using tea leaves as a dye." From examining the form of the book he says that it cannot be from before the early Ming dynasty.

"Although it is hard to avoid passing fish eyes off as pearls, looking at it from the angle of the study of printed books, Harvard-Yenching has some rare things which might even be the only ones of their kind in the world." Accustomed to looking at precious books in mainland China, Shen Chin is not particularly impressed by Harvard-Yenching's being the second largest collection in the United States. Yet he is impressed by its rare treasures and the variety of its collection. "Harvard-Yenching's precious books could satisfy a small exhibition of Chinese books." Shen Chin carefully lists the collection: "Woodcuts from the Sung dynasty to the present, manuscripts from the Tang to the Ming and Ching; from black and white printing to color; from copper movable type to wood movable type. Everything is there that should be to give a display of the development of ancient Chinese books."

Japan and America, the lot of the vagrant: History and objects exist in a reciprocal relationship. The library's precious books are arranged by dynasty, with the Sung dynasty furthest in and the following dynasties arranged accordingly towards the front.

Strolling among the shelves is like going back through the torrent of history. Shen Chin pulls out books and explains them one by one.

"Liu-tu Chi Ching was printed in the eighth year of Yuan-feng (1078-1086) in the Northern Sung Dynasty and is the oldest precious book in Harvard-Yenching's collection," points out Shen Chin. This classic is put in a wooden box in the lid of which is an inscription of the name Ping Ching and the date 1905; the end of the scroll bears the seal "Three Sages Temple."

"Ping Ching is the tzu name of a famous Japanese sinologist, and the Three Sages Temple is a famous temple in Japan; the inscription also tells us it is from the year 19O5," he says of this book's vagrant life. "It is very obvious that it went from China to Japan, then crossed half the globe to come to America."

The written marks and stamps left by earlier people are usually the most elegant clues by which to trace the course travelled by old books. At the Mingdynasty shelves, Shen Chin points to a work by the Ming author Chang Ching-yu published in the Wan-li period (1573-1630) titled Tu Pien Hsin-Shu. "This also went to Japan," he says.

Centuries-old tricks: Tu Pien Hsin Shu is a book containing 24 ways of cheating, such as "changing silver cheating" and "adultery trickery," all of which are illustrated by case studies to create a kind of compendium of all the tricks in society at that time. The Tu Pien in the title of the book means "prevent cheating" so that if you read it you will become street wise and not easily tricked in future. The writing of this kind of book is colloquial for leisurely reading by a mass readership. Naturally, it would not have been bought by collectors or bear the marks of famous people, but its binding can divulge some secrets.

Originally Chinese string-bound books were fastened with two strings, while in Japan a single string was used. After the Tu Pien Hsin Shu arrived in Japan its cover was broken and it had to be rebound, unwittingly leaving a clue for later people.

Shen Chin points out, "From this book can be seen the attitudes of society four hundred years ago, which is of great value to people researching Ming society. As for students of book printing, because mainland China and Taiwan do not have the same book, and although Japan has reprints they are abridged and only have one fifth of the contents, there is probably only this one complete copy in the world."

Also from the Ming dynasty, the Hui-tung-kuan Chiao-cheng Sung Chu Chen Tsou-i in 150 scrolls is another of the library's treasures. At the end of each scroll is a red stamp reading "checked," revealing that it is a copy for proofreading. "Look, this character is not really the same as the other the colors here and here do not quite join up; this character is even upside down," says Shen Chin as he flips the pages. "All this tells us one thing: this book is printed with moveable type!"

Moveable type not the mainstream: Although China discovered moveable-typeface printing 400 years before the West, until modern photolithography techniques came from the West, moveable typeface printing never became mainstream. The main reason for this was that although moveable type can be used repeatedly, every time you reuse a character it has to be remounted. Books were not distributed on the large scale of today but usually only printed in small numbers and reprinted if there was a market. Breaking up and arranging the moveable characters was all wasteful, unlike carved printing which, although initially costly, could be kept and used as needed and in the long-term looked more profitable.

But it was also because of this that the number of works in moveable print are limited and valuable. The most representative of moveable type books is the Ku Chin Tu-shu Chi-cheng, which consists in its entirety of 5,020 pages bound in 522 boxes. Sixty-four of these were printed, along with a dummy copy. Today there are only 9 complete copies preserved. The library has always had one of these copies and it bears the seal of the Chien-lung emperor to show that it is a palace version.

The aspirations of former times: As you pass along the bookshelves, you not only see the process of the development of Chinese books but also the ups and downs of eight centuries of history d the aspiration of collectors to hobnob with the ancients.

The Ming Chu-ming-jen Chih-tu consist of more than 600 letters written by famous Ming-dynasty writers to a certain Fang Tai-ku, among which there is even an inscription by Chi Chi-kuang. Is that not from the period of fighting the Japanese!

Pao Lu was a record of guns written by the Chin official Ting Ji-chang, but is only a manuscript that was not published. It includes discussions of how to make all kinds of guns and cannon. Ting Ji-chang was an important figure in the modernization movement and one of the late Ching scholars who tried to hold back the flood. That was the time when the ships of the Powers were using their superior firepower to invade--a dark period in Chinese history!

A whole case of books purchased from Chi Ju-shan, the teacher of Mei Lan-fang, consists entirely of Ming and Ching publications of dramas and novels, which are of great value for research. Among them there are many proscribed works, such as the Chiao Chuang novels, banned for calling the Ching soldiers "gangsters," and the San Chao Chuan, prohibited for its obscenity. It seems that every book has been conscientiously inscribed by Chi Ju-shan and stamped after reading with the seal "Read by Ju-shan." On opening the cover your eyes are struck by another stamp reading "for the everlasting use of my descendants." Ju-shan has not been dead more than 20 years and these books have already been sold to the library to suffer the addition of another striking stamp which reads "Harvard-Yenching Library Collection."

For the everlasting use of descendants: The stamp reads "Harvard-Yenching Library Collection." More than 40,000 books have crossed the world to be brought together in the Chinese precious books collection here. They have fortunately made it through centuries of natural disasters, human tragedies and wars.... Having landed they now have a safe haven for the foreseeable future and will not have to be subjected to such wandering again.

The next step then is to step onto the stage and come face to face with people. Shen Chin says: "Now I do not only want to publish an index recording the basic information about the books, but to supply more about their contents and give a good introduction to each book."

He carefully examines the background of every book's author and collector for his own use in assessment, and also writes it out for the reference of researchers using precious books. "I hope to let researchers find important things more easily and not pass by anything useful," he says. "After all, it is not easy for all these precious books to have made it down to today!"

[Picture Caption]

The stone lions at the library door are its trademarks.

Tai Lien is responsible for the Treasure Room and has been associated with antique books for fourteen years.

A precious two colored book from the Ming dynasty, when block-printing technology was making great advances.

The Ten Bamboo Manual was the ultimate in traditional block printing and gives the impression of being painted without the slightest trace of the printing process to be seen.

A reproduction ot the New Testament given by the Catholic church to the Empress Dowager on her sixtieth birthday.

Already steeped in the world of precious books for thirty years, Shen Chin wants to produce a bibliography of the Harvard-Yenching collection. (photo by Lu Huey-fen)

As far as is known, this is the only surviving copy of the Hsuan-hsuan Ching Ming-dynasty book on the board game go.

Tai Lien is responsible for the Treasure Room and has been associated with antique books for fourteen years.

A precious two colored book from the Ming dynasty, when block-printing technology was making great advances.

The Ten Bamboo Manual was the ultimate in traditional block printing and gives the impression of being painted without the slightest trace of the printing process to be seen.

A reproduction ot the New Testament given by the Catholic church to the Empress Dowager on her sixtieth birthday.

Already steeped in the world of precious books for thirty years, Shen Chin wants to produce a bibliography of the Harvard-Yenching collection. （photo by Lu Huey-fen）

As far as is known, this is the only surviving copy of the Hsuan-hsuan Ching Ming-dynasty book on the board game go.