Nowadays, private book collection has become a fashion, and more and more people are trying to build their own private libraries. A hundred years ago, there was a private library established by an Australian in Wangfujing, Beijing - the "Asia Library".
?The foreigner who built the library in Wangfujing
George Ernest Morrison was born in Victoria, Australia, in 1862. In 1897, he served as the editor-in-chief of The Times in London. Chinese journalists came to Beijing, worked in China for more than 20 years, visited more than 10 provinces in China, and became out-and-out "China hands." In March 1912, after Yuan Shikai took office as the President of the Republic of China, he hired Morrison as a political adviser to the Republic of China government.
From the beginning of his tenure as "The Times" reporter in China, Morrison keenly discovered that in Beijing, a city with profound cultural heritage, except for a few private book collectors, there is no decent library. , especially the shortage of natural science books, which is extremely unbecoming of a capital city with an ancient civilization. So he used various channels to start collecting books in a planned and systematic way. In just a few years, he built his own library in the residence of the emperor's relative, Purun, in Wangfujing. After the library was completed, it was called the "Morrison Library".
Morrison had good intentions in running the library. Many books at that time were very expensive, and Morrison sometimes had to go into debt to buy these books. Through his unremitting efforts, the library has grown in size and reputation. It contains more than 24,000 books, documents, and historical materials, as well as more than 110 kinds of newspapers and periodicals, and more than 1,000 albums and picture materials. These books come from more than a dozen countries, including China, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, the Netherlands, and Italy, and their content covers not only China, but also Central Asian countries, Japan, India, Myanmar, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Siam ( Today's Thailand), Annam (now Vietnam) and other countries, the categories include politics, economy, military, diplomacy, religion, history, geography, literature, law, art, geology, minerals, medicine, entertainment, etc., and scholars at that time conducted in-depth research on Asia It was a great help, and the "Asia Library" got its name from it.
Morrison did not have a monopoly on these spiritual wealth. He very much welcomed Chinese intellectuals to come to the "Asian Library" to read, and also accepted European and American scholars to come here to engage in Oriental studies. Some foreign visitors benefited a lot. After returning home, they vigorously promoted the library in the media, making Morrison and his "Asian Library" famous overseas. Surviving the ordeal to this day
In June 1916, Yuan Shikai died amid scolding, and Morrison served successively for President Li Yuanhong, Feng Guozhang and Prime Minister Duan Qirui. But as he grew older, his health deteriorated, so he wanted to return to England for treatment, but he couldn't let go of the "Asian Library". After some consideration, Morrison decided to sell the "Asian Library" and expressed his willingness to sell the library to the Chinese government, academic groups or individuals. However, China was in turmoil at that time, and no one in the Beiyang government, which was busy striving for power, cared about and paid attention to cultural undertakings, and people of insight were short of money and unable to purchase them. The news spread to the United States, and famous universities knew the value of the "Asian Library" and contacted each other to acquire it. Harvard University, Yale University and the University of California were the most active and competed for offers. The University of California's offer was as high as 35,000 pounds, which was a large sum at the time. However, Morrison's greatest wish was to keep the library in China, or at least in Asia, so he put forward three conditions when selling the "Chinese Library": the collection of books must be preserved permanently; the library must use "Morris" In the name of "Xunwenku"; it provides convenience for scholars to read. In the end, the "Asia Library" was acquired by the Japanese Mitsubishi conglomerate Koyata Iwasaki at a high price of 35,000 pounds. Iwasaki's father has always cherished Eastern culture, and was especially fond of Chinese historical books. He once purchased old Chinese rare books at high prices. He established the "Jingjiatang Library" mainly focusing on Chinese books from the Song and Yuan Dynasties, with a collection of 250,000 books.
The books in the "China Library" were transported by rail from Beijing to Dagu, Tianjin. From Dagu, they were loaded onto the mail ship "Takasago Maru" and arrived in Yokohama, Japan in September 1918. However, the book collection encountered a disaster just after it was moved to Japan. In September 1918, a storm hit Fukagawa, Japan. The Iwasaki Villa in Fukagawa, where books were temporarily stored, was flooded, and most of the books were soaked by sea water. Iwasaki summoned experts from all walks of life to carry out emergency rescue. After multiple processes such as washing, drying, and modification, most of the books were restored, but there were still some books that could not be repaired and had to be discarded.
The huge loss made Iwasaki deeply saddened. In the following years, he replenished his library and successively purchased books about China, Japan, Central Asia, Persia, India and Southeast Asian countries. Nearly 50,000 volumes were collected from the Japanese journalist Tetsunobu Watanabe, including a complete set of "Shuntian Times" published in Beijing in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China. In this way, the "Asia Library" not only made up for the lost number of books, but also added more than 31,000 pieces of various books and materials on the original basis. In view of the rapid expansion of the library's size beyond the original content of the "Asia Library", Iwasaki decided to rename the library "Toyo Bunko".
In 1922, Iwasaki built a new "Oriental Library" in Tokyo and organized experts to systematically organize the library.
While the vast renovation project was underway, in 1923, an 8.2-magnitude earthquake occurred in the Kanto region, and the urban area of ??Tokyo was almost razed to the ground. Surprisingly, the Oriental Library was not seriously damaged and the books were relatively intact. Today, these books are still preserved and have become important materials for scholars to study the history of China and Asia.