Along the Huayan Temple, up the stairs, quiet and solemn, through the panes of the wing room, tens of thousands of ancient books rest peacefully on the pavilion.
On the ground floor of the Tibetan Scripture Building, there is a quiet ear room, which is not open to the public on weekdays, and entering here is like entering another world.
It is the center for the restoration of rare books of ancient books in Huayan Temple, and one of the key protection units of ancient books in Chongqing.
Here, the "sleeping" ancient books that appear moldy, damaged, and insect-moths are revived through the hands of the restorers, and still maintain the imprint of time.
▲ Let the words circulate, let the ancient books shine
Classical Philology "Veteran"
Defined in time, books written or printed before 1912 and in the form of classical Chinese binding can be called ancient books.
Huayan Temple Tibetan Scripture Building was first built during the Kangxi Dynasty, restored during the Qianlong Period, three floors, located on the second floor of the Tibetan Scripture Building, huayan Buddhist museum currently collects various classics passed down from generation to generation in Huayan Temple.
There are about 50,000 ancient books in the temple collection, of which the number of rare books is thousands of volumes, whether it is the "Jiaxing Collection" engraved in the Ming Dynasty, or the "Dragon Collection" in the Qianlong Period, as well as the isolated or manuscript of the quotations of the senior monks and ancestors of the past, all of which are the heirloom treasures of the fine Chinese ancient books. In addition to Buddhist scriptures, it also includes a large number of Confucian classics, Taoist books, poetry collections, and even medicine, arithmetic, geography, history, alchemy and even small talking books, etc., with a wide variety of contents and extensive content, and it is also a precious historical document.
In 2010, Huayan Temple was selected as "Chongqing Ancient Books Key Protection Unit".
▲ Repairing ancient books is a meticulous task
"The collection of scriptures and famous calligraphy and paintings in the Scripture Building of Huayan Temple can be traced back to more than 400 years ago. Among them, more than half of the ancient books and paintings need to be repaired due to diseases such as insect moths, rat phagocytosis, flocculents, acidification, mildew, aging, broken threads, and defects. In 2010, Huayan Temple officially launched the rescue project of ancient books and paintings. Long Yingzhi, 37, is currently the head of the Huayan Temple Ancient Books And Rare Books Restoration Center and the deputy editor-in-chief of the editorial department of Huayan Wencong. While studying for a doctorate in classical philology at Sichuan University, Long Yingzhi followed her mentor, Professor Daniel Zhang, in the study of Buddhism in Chongqing. Due to the problem, he went to Huayan Temple many times to inquire about the information, and Long Yingzhi gradually became associated with this place.
In September last year, Long Yingzhi chose to come here to work and participate in the collation and restoration of the ancient books collected by the monastery. Long Yingzhi estimated that there were more than 500 ancient books that had been sorted out so far, but this was only a drop in the ocean of ancient books in the collection of Huayan Temple.
The Huayan Temple Ancient Books And Rare Books Restoration Center has two exhibition rooms, a finishing room and a restoration room. From 2010 to the present, the number of finishing and repairing personnel has gradually increased from one or two people who are not fixed to 5 now, of which 2 are tidying up and 3 are repairing, and about 30 volunteers have been recruited for the public to help.
The conservation of ancient books here is divided into two parts – collation and restoration. The ancient books that were cleaned out were first sent to the finishing room. There are two finishers, including Long Yingzhi, and a volunteer assistant Xu Jinghan who came from Nanjing.
On Long Yingzhi's workbench, there is a broken and yellowed book, the cover has traces of tin foil pulp, and the red paper attached to it is written with traditional brush characters "Ten Ancestors Ben xingjing", next to a "Kangxi Dictionary", and on the wall is pasted the "General Catalogue of the Four Libraries".
Long Yingzhi explained that this is to train volunteers how to classify ancient books according to the traditional four-part class method of "jing", "history", "sub", and "collection" of the Siku quanshu, such as "jingbu" including "yi class", "book class" and "poetry class" and other 10 categories.
Non-professionalism is not an obstacle to the collation and restoration of ancient books. In this center for the restoration of rare books, in addition to Long Yingzhi, who is a literature professional, other people who come to engage in the collation and restoration of ancient books and volunteers have different stories behind them. "Before coming here, some of them were teachers from major universities in Chongqing, some were porcelain appraisers, some were HR from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, some were office clerks, some were architectural designers, and some volunteers came from other places."
But no matter who it is, there is a reverence for the collation and restoration of ancient books. In their view, the work of sorting out and restoring ancient books is not only a craft, but also a practice. A kind of spiritual grinding, let it tend to be quiet, focus on the unity of body and mind, and calmly do a good job.
▲ The restorer is repairing ancient books
Chongqing's climate is hot and humid, books are prone to mildew, insect moths, acidification, embrittlement, flocculent, adhesions and other damage, every once in a while, Long Yingzhi will take out the ancient books in the box to ventilate. The protection of ancient books is divided into three levels: "A and B C", which is the highest level of ancient books, placed in camphor wood boxes.
On the shelves are sachets of brassica, which is a unique spice of ancient book protectors to drive away beetles, and in addition to air conditioning, the room is also equipped with a dehumidifier, lime, and the temperature is constant at 16 °C-22 °C.
28-year-old returnee cross-border "novice"
The work plan of the finishing room is to sort out 80 books per day, and each person will sort out 40 books. The main task of the collator is to make a detailed registration of each ancient book, including the name of the ancient book, the category, the author, the date, the year, the place of publication, the type of edition, the number of volumes, and the current status and remarks of the ancient book.
At the table opposite Long Yingzhi was Song Yang, who was concentrating on registering a stack of ancient books.
The 28-year-old is the youngest ancient book finisher at the Huayan Temple's Rare Books Restoration Center. Song Yang, who wears black-rimmed glasses, opens the box when he talks about the restoration of ancient books.
Song Yang's hometown is in Shandong, he studied mathematics in college, and after graduation, he worked as an actuary in a state-owned enterprise in Jinan, and then went to the United Kingdom to study for a master's and doctoral degree, learning the hottest "artificial intelligence" at present. But since undergraduate, Song Yang has become fascinated by classical culture. At the end of last year, I saw the news of recruiting ancient book restorers here from the Internet, as if I heard the call of my heart, I resolutely came to Chongqing, originally wanted to do ancient book restoration work, because of his vision, he transferred to the finishing room to work.
This boring job in the eyes of others is very meaningful to Song Yang, there is a sense of mission, and every book he handles has a history of hundreds of years, which makes him dare not have the slightest tiredness.
Song Yang really enjoyed the job. He said that he has loved traditional culture since he was a child. "The previous job was just a job, and here it's not just a career, it's more about doing what you love inside. Doing what you love will provide inner energy like an engine, making your whole body and mind happy. ”
In Song Yang's view, this is a perfect opportunity to communicate face-to-face with ancient books, and the reading experience of Shi Hai's travels always feels the goodness and abundance behind traditional Chinese culture.
"Some of the historical stories we have read since childhood, here we have the privilege of reading the original works, and found that many meanings have been distorted in the process of dissemination. For example, the words that people often say "moderate" and "no queen is great" are not the meanings that many people understand in the original work. Song Yang recently compiled a copy of Mencius by Zhu Xi in the Qing Dynasty, which is very informative.
The finishers sometimes encounter some unexpected surprises. A few days ago, when Song Yang was sorting out ancient books, he found that there was a "Five Continents Map Rhyme" inside, recording the maps of European countries. According to the public release of information from the Internet, this is compiled by Zhang Shiying of the Two Lakes Academy during the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, and the Liang Guobang of Zizhou draws, and there are not many rare books in the country.
From the clip pages of ancient books, various "treasures" were also found, packed like a sealed pocket, and there were numbered labels on the bags, indicating the source. Specially stored in a rattan box.
When you open it, the historical atmosphere is overwhelming: there are contracts, medical prescription pieces, handwritten recipes, old stamps, a red note with vague handwriting... Just like salvaging fragments of life in the long river of time, some are lonely and gentle stories, and some convey human feelings, illuminating the shadows of readers who have silently existed in those long rivers of history.
▲ Old stamps
49-year-old repair "teacher"
Coming out of the finishing room, taking a few steps, and turning a corner, it is the ancient book restoration room. A tweezer, a brush, a reflector, a bowl of paste, a table.
Restorers Luo Ling and Wang Rong buried their heads in the case and repaired a broken page of ancient books. Light and shadow flowed in this quaint room, and they were in front of the console, often sitting for a day.
Book breaking, washing books, supplementing books, folding pages, spraying water, mixing paste, filling holes, cutting pages, flattening, pounding books... These tasks are the most basic and tedious parts of the restoration of ancient books.
Luo Ling came in December last year, and over the past few months, the tinkering techniques have become more and more skillful, she fiddles with the yellowed pages on the board, uses a brush to take the thin paste at hand, glues the worms and moths on the pages, and takes the spare paper in the basket with the other hand, tears out a small roll, dips the paste, and holds it on the back of the hole. After that, little by little, the excess parts of the patch paper are gently twisted down with tweezers.
Like Luo Ling, another restorer, Wang Rong, was also doing her own work, except for the occasional exchange of work matters, the two rarely talked, and both of them were brought out by "Feng Teacher".
▲ Restorers Luo Ling and Wang Rong buried their heads in the case and repaired a page of broken ancient books.
The 39-year-old Feng Xianmei is the longest-time "teacher" here. Before doing this line, Feng Xianmei was doing clothing sales, a chance to come here to learn to repair ancient books, a do is more than 8 years, last year because of physical reasons to leave, occasionally come to help.
The previous teacher "Miaojue" took her for a while, and then followed a layman to learn for a period of time, from repair to binding. "It was very difficult at first, but then I got used to doing it, and I felt very peaceful inside."
▲Repaired page
What are the tricks of the "resurrection" ancient texts?
How long does it take to be a full-fledged restorer?
Feng Xianmei feels that the repair work is a technical work, it is necessary to seriously study and lay a good foundation, and it is necessary to accumulate experience over time, and the trick is "good eyes, sit still".
An ancient book full of holes needs to go through more than 20 complex processes such as book opening, numbering, sorting, supplementing, folding pages, cutting pages, spraying water and flattening, and pounding books.
"The ancient book restorer is like a doctor of books, relying on the bold and meticulous craftsmanship of the restorer." Feng Xianmei said.
There are more than 20 kinds of tools required for restoration: workbenches, stickers, book presses, paper cutters, paddle pens, brown brushes, tweezers, small needle cones, iron awls, knives, pen boats, bamboo screwdrivers, rulers, watering cans, pointed pliers, wooden hammers, hammers, towels, etc.
When restoring ancient books, in order to achieve standardization, certain operating procedures must be followed. It is roughly divided into several steps, first to register book information, establish a restoration file; then to analyze the book, uncover the book cover, book leaf, and paper. Make paste, repair book leaves, spray water to flatten, fold leaves, fence, pound flatten and protect pages, punch holes under paper twisting, grind flat, load the feet, load the book cover, hit the eye, thread the book, paste bookmarks.
Repair is divided into dry patch and wet patch. The dry repair method is mainly for ancient books with less damage, and the process is simpler; the wet repair method is usually to repair the pages that are seriously damaged and decayed, which is much more complicated.
In order to restore the style of ancient books to the greatest extent, the restoration of ancient books should be "repaired as old", and paper is an important link. Feng Xianmei said that the rice paper used to find the paper supplement in Zhejiang needs to be similar to the original paper in color, thickness and texture.
Ancient books that are seriously damaged should be restored one by one with tweezers, and those that cannot be directly glued must also be re-pasted and bound with good paper.
"The pace of supplementing the book in the first year was very slow, and it took several hours to make up a page. Panic, nervousness, fear of destroying ancient books. "Three years later, Feng Xianmei's repair speed increased, a 100-page ancient book, if it is only slightly damaged, it takes a month to repair, if the damage is serious, it takes two months, or even longer."
Feng Xianmei believes that it takes at least three years to train a mature restorer. "This work is a matter of immeasurable merit. I loved it, and I would insist on taking them with me when my body allowed. Feng Xianmei is now moving to the suburbs, and it takes a long time to come over, but he will still find time to bring the new restorers to do things together.
"Ancient books are 'resurrected' through restoration, and future generations can understand and feel the heritage of traditional history and culture from them." Feng Xianmei said.
Although this group of people who sort out and restore ancient books in Jiulongpo come from the north and south of the world, they have a common passion for traditional culture and ancient book restoration, and the "Longyingzhi" who restore ancient books in Jiulongpo hopes that more knowledgeable and enthusiastic people will join this team, so that more ancient books will be revitalized and more excellent traditional culture can be continued.
Upstream news reporter Wang Yufeng correspondent Wu Jiang