Printing for Profit: The Commercial Publishers of Jianyang, Fujian (11th-17th Centuries)

469 Pages·2003·33.705 MB·English

by  Lucille Chia

Printingfor Profit
The Commercial Publishers of
}ianyang, Fujian (11th-17th Centuries)
Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series 56

Printing for Profit
The Commercial Publishers of
}ianyang, Fujian (11th-17th Centuries)
Lucille Chia
Published by the Harvard University Asia Center
for the Harvard-Yenching Institute
Distributed by Harvard University Press
Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London, 2002
© 2002 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
Printed in the United States of America
The Harvard-Yenching Institute, founded in 1928 and headquartered at Harvard University, is a
foundation dedicated to the advancement of higher education in the humanities and social sci
ences in East and Southeast Asia. The Institute supports advanced research at Harvard by faculty
members of certain Asian universities and doctoral studies at Harvard and other universities by
junior faculty at the same universities. It also supports East Asian studies at Harvard through
contributions to the Harvard-Yenching Library and publication of the Harvard Journal of
Asiatic Studies and books on premodern East Asian history and literature.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chia, Lucille.
Printing for profit: the commercial publishers of Jianyang, Fujian (11th-17th centuries) I
Lucille Chia.
p. em. --(Harvard-Yenching Institute monograph series ; 56)
Includes bibliographic references and index.
ISBN 0-67 4-00955-X (alk. paper)
1. Printing industry--China--Jianyang Xian (Fujian Sheng) --History. 2. Book industries
and trade--China--]iany ang Xian (Fujian Sheng)--History. 3. China--History--960-1644.
I. Title: Commercial publishers of ]ianyang, Fujian, 11th-17th centuries. II. Title. III.
Series.
Z244.6.C6 C438 2002
338.4 '76862'0951245--dc21 2002027348
Index by the author
@ Printed on acid-free paper
Last number below indicates year of this printing
12 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02
To my Mother and Father
and to the memory of
Piet van der Loon

Acknowledgments
Like everyone entranced by the history of Chinese books, I have found
studying it an immensely satisfying but challenging endeavor because these
books can be frustratingly reticent about themselves. In the past fifteen years,
however, the study .oi Chinese books and printing has increasingly engaged
the efforts of scholars working on Chinese history, art history, literature, re
ligion, and science. Thanks to their persistence and imaginative approaches
in coaxing data out of Chinese manuscripts and imprints, we now under
stand more about Chinese book culture and have devised new ways to learn
even more.
In the course of my own work on the commercial publishers of ]ianyang,
I had the chance to learn from and be inspired by many of these scholars. A
number of them also provided useful suggestions on this manuscript or the
earlier dissertation. The book's imperfections arise from my obduracy in not
heeding sufficiently the advice offered and from my own limited knowledge
about so many of the topics I discuss.
First, I wish to thank my Ph.D. adviser, Robert Hymes, who helped teach
me the craft of a social historian and who provided comments on the disser
tation that still proved useful as I recast it into a book.
Cynthia Brokaw, who thoroughly critiqued both my dissertation and my
book manuscript, has surely earned an astronomical number of points in her
ledger of merits. Her continuing support and encouragement, as well as her
own work on and deep interest in Chinese books and publishing, have
viii Acknowledgments
helped to sustain my conviction about the value and fascination of learning
about the history of the Chinese book.
I thank Piet van der Loon for the trenchant comments and tips he gave
me out of his immense knowledge of Chinese literature in general and of
]ianyang publishing in particular. I dedicate this book to his memory and
hope that it does not fall too short of his expectations.
A number of scholars gave detailed and honest comments about my
work. To Kathryn Lowry and Karin Myhre, who generously took time out
from writing their own dissertations to offer suggestions about mine and to
send a variety of useful materials, I happily acknowledge my debt. In reading
my dissertation, ] oseph McDermott came up with many stimulating remarks
and posed some hard questions that cannot be easily answered, but the chal
lenge of addressing those issues have helped me rethink important aspects of
the history of the Chinese book, and of Chinese history in general. Thanks to
Joe, I expect to continue thinking about them for a long time to come. Mark
Halperin offered a very detailed reading of several chapters of the manu
script. In addition to thoughtful challenges to some of my arguments, he also
took the time and effort to catch a few howlers and to insist that I present my
arguments more stylishly. Beverly Bossler read the chapters on the Song and
Yuan with great care and reminded me to not to lose sight of the broader
historical issues to which books and printing were related. My colleague in
the Department of History at UC Riverside, Piotr Gorecki, a historian of me
dieval Europe, generously and valiantly read through much of the manu
script, and provided me with many penetrating comments. I learned to pay
close attention to all his remarks, including those solitary and eloquent ex
clamation points.
I also want to thank the scholars who have contributed greatly to my
continuing education in Chinese studies. To Soren Edgren with his vast
knowledge of Chinese rare books I am deeply grateful for taking the time
from his very busy schedule to read the entire dissertation and offer many
valuable insights on the traditional Chinese imprint. My many citations of
Anne McLaren's works merely hint at how much I have learned from her
about Ming literature. Each time I visit the Harvard-Yenching Rare Book
Collection, I enjoy the added benefit of learning more from its curator, Shen
]in i:k ?t, one of the leading experts on Chinese rare books. I am grateful to
Martin Heijdra not only because of his help as the guardian of the Gest Li
brary Rare Book Collection at Princeton, but because of his amazing knowl
edge of Chinese history, which he generously shares with anyone with the
good sense to listen. If my discussion on bamboo paper-making in Fujian in
this work sounds well-informed and interesting, it is due in large part to what
Acknowledgments ix
I have learned from Christian Daniels. I also thank Pan Jixing 1-j '15 £ for
sharing his expertise on traditional Chinese paper-making and wish that I
had asked him many more questions; I will do so the next time I see him.
During my research work in China, a number of scholars were particu
larly generous with their help. Fang Yanshou jj § ii, of the Zhu Xi Re
search Institute in Jianyang, shared with me his knowledge and experience in
finding and examining the genealogies of the publisher families described in
this work. I also wish to thank Di Chongde :j}c ft 1!, my adviser at the His
tory Institute of the Fujian Academy of Social Science, from whom I learned
much of both Chinese rare books and the history of the Minbei area. To
Professor Di I also owe my rudimentary skills in repairing and binding Chi
nese books and in seal-carving. Hou Zhenping f* J)lljl, of the History De
partment of Xiamen University, unhesitatingly supplied me with enough in
formation on Fujian blockcarvers of the Ming for another study.
Whatever clarity and smoothness of writing this book enjoys result in
large part from the efforts of my editor, John Ziemer. Like his other authors,
I count it my good fortune that my manuscript came under his attentive and
understanding care. Because of John, this book will not be known as the last
Mashaben.
I also wish to thank the Committee for Scholarly Communication with
China, which supported my dissertation research in China (1992-93), and
the Fulbright-Hays DDRA Program, which supported my work in Taiwan
and Japan (1993-94). In Tokyo, I was made welcome by the Toyo bunko, of
whom I was a Foreign Research Fellow. I thank Shiba Yoshinobu WT ~ ~ {§
for making this possible. In continuing my research after completing the dis
sertation in 1997, I received a Harvard-Yenching Library Travel Grant and a
Short-term Visiting Fellowship for the Princeton University Library, both of
which I gratefully acknowledge.
Finally, I thank the various libraries that gave permission for reproduc
tions of pages from Chinese rare books in their holdings: the Naikaku bunko,
the National Central Library in Taipei, the Seikado bunko, the National Diet
Library of Japan, the Hosa bunko, the Tenri Central Library, the British Li
brary, and the Wurttembergische Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart.
L.C.