Siku Quanshu: Lost and Bound

Today, we’ll talk about a digital project that recounts the creation of the most comprehensive book collection in Chinese history and the efforts to protect it from the ravages of war.

Transcript

Siku Quanshu: Lost and Bound

Today, we’ll talk about a digital project that recounts the creation of the most comprehensive book collection in Chinese history and the efforts to protect it from the ravages of war.

As the 2025 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit concluded last November in East China’s Zhejiang Province, the role of digital technologies in transforming cultural heritage preservation and transmission came into focus.

A new professional committee on the digitalization of cultural heritage was launched to promote cultural exchange and mutual learning through digital platforms. Discussions highlighted how AI, virtual reality and other digital tools are bringing new life to ancient cultural treasures.

At a sideline event, Zhejiang Library in Hangzhou presented a digital project developed in collaboration with Ant Group, Alibaba’s fin-tech arm. The project offers a mixed reality experience that allows users to witness the compilation of the Siku Quanshu, one of the most comprehensive book collections in Chinese history.

The Siku Quanshu, also known as the Complete Library in Four Sections, was compiled during the reign of Qing Dynasty Emperor Qianlong who lived from 1735 to 1796. The emperor initiated the project to preserve the vast body of Chinese classics accumulated since the pre-Qin period before 221 BCE. Beginning in 1772, the compilation took more than a decade to complete, with Emperor Qianlong personally overseeing the work.

The project was carried out by an editorial board of more than 360 scholars, led by the renowned writer Ji Yun. Another 3,800 scholars participated in transcription. In its complete form, the collection comprises about 3,500 works in 36,000 volumes, totaling roughly 800 million characters.

The Siku Quanshu is organized into four sections: Confucian classics, historical records, philosophical writings and literary and miscellaneous works. Each section was assigned a color corresponding to the four seasons: green for spring, red for summer, blue for autumn and taupe for winter, making navigation and reference easier.

After the compilation was completed, Emperor Qianlong ordered seven handwritten copies to be produced and stored in seven specially built libraries across the country. Four were placed in imperial palaces in the north for the emperor’s use, while three were located in the south for public access.

Only four of these copies have survived to the present day. They are housed at the National Library of China in Beijing, the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Gansu Provincial Library in Lanzhou, and Zhejiang Library. Among them, Zhejiang Library’s copy is the most complete.

This version was originally stored at Wenlan Pavilion near West Lake in Hangzhou. Built in 1784, the pavilion is itself a masterpiece of classical Chinese garden architecture. Set within a traditional courtyard, it is a wooden pavilion with a layered roof and double tiers of eaves, giving it a dignified appearance.

From the outside, the structure appears to have two stories, with the upper and lower levels forming a single large space. Inside, however, an additional mezzanine level was concealed, creating extra storage capacity. This design balanced visual elegance with practical efficiency and was particularly suited for housing books. A pond was also dug in front of the pavilion to provide water for fire prevention.

Craftsmen were commissioned to bind and box the volumes according to imperial standards. The books were shelved by category on different floors of the pavilion, with Confucian classics on the first floor, historical records on the second and philosophical and miscellaneous works on the third.

Emperor Qianlong issued an edict allowing the public to read and copy texts within the pavilion. As a result, Wenlan Pavilion functioned as a public library by the standards of its time.

As the Taiping Rebellion swept through Hangzhou in the 1860s, Wenlan Pavilion suffered extensive damage and its collection was dispersed. Many volumes were taken away, some by looters and others by book collectors.

Around that time, brothers Ding Shen and Ding Bing noticed a market vendor wrapping food in loose book pages. Recognizing an imperial seal on one of the pages, they realized the fragments came from the Siku Quanshu. As dedicated book collectors, the brothers began an effort to recover the lost texts. They tracked down missing volumes and repurchased what they could. They also secretly entered the abandoned Wenlan Pavilion with a small group and transported the remaining books to safety.

Although most of the recovered materials consisted of fragmentary chapters or incomplete volumes, they accounted for about one quarter of the original Wenlan Pavilion collection. Determined to restore the remaining three quarters, the Ding brothers sourced replacement texts from private libraries and hired craftsmen to hand copy the missing sections.

The restoration effort was later taken over by Zhejiang Library, which was founded in 1900. By the 1920s, the library had reassembled the entire collection. Since then, the Siku Quanshu has not only been a prized holding of the Zhejiang Library but also a symbol of continuity in China’s cultural preservation and transmission. 

In 1937, the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression broke out. Chen Xunci, then director of Zhejiang Library, decided to relocate the library’s most valuable holdings to protect them from the ravages of war.

Chen sought funding from the Ministry of Education to cover transportation costs but failed to secure support. He then turned to family and friends and even sold his own property to ensure the safety of the books.

Library staff worked around the clock for three days and nights, carefully packing the collection into 228 crates, 140 of which contained volumes of the Siku Quanshu. In August 1937, the library began its long and uncertain journey westward.

On the second day, the books arrived in Fuyang, about 30 kilometers from Hangzhou. Zhao Kunliang, a newspaper editor, offered his ancestral home as temporary storage. The collection remained there for three months while the library raised funds and arranged transport for the next stage. Later, when Japanese troops attempted to extract information about the books’ whereabouts, they set fire to Zhao’s home, reducing the property to ashes.

In March 1938, with support from Zhu Kezhen, founder of modern Chinese meteorology and geography and then president of Zhejiang University, the books departed from Longquan in Zhejiang Province for their final destination, Guiyang in southwest China’s Guizhou Province. Zhu also dispatched professors and students to assist with transportation.

The books were transported mainly by truck or boat. When vehicles were unavailable, the crates were loaded onto carts and wheelbarrows, with laborers hired to move them. Along the most difficult sections of the route, librarians, professors and students carried part of the load themselves, shouldering volumes in their backpacks.

The journey spanned five provinces and more than 2,500 kilometers, with constant danger along the way. In one near disaster, a truck carrying 11 crates overturned while crossing a stream. The crates were taken to the nearest town, where the books were spread out to dry in the courtyard of a local temple. With the threat of war closing in, the partially dried books had to be repacked within two days.

The books finally arrived in Guiyang at the end of April 1938. A year later, following a surprise Japanese air raid on the city, the collection was moved again, this time to a karst cave north of Guiyang, where it remained safely stored for more than five years.

Librarians, professors and students took turns guarding and caring for the collection. The cave was dark and damp, making the books vulnerable to mold and insect damage. To preserve them, the caretakers aired the volumes outdoors on sunny days, placed lime and charcoal at the bottom of the crates to absorb moisture, and used camphor powder to deter insects.

Lü Weitao, an associate research fellow at the National Museum’s Collection Acquisition and Authentication Department, told The Context that the most moving aspect of the Siku Quanshu’s westward relocation lies in the role played by ordinary people. In both the past and present, he said, it is individuals who cherish and protect traditional Chinese culture.

In August 1945, the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression ended with Japan’s unconditional surrender. In July 1946, the Wenlan Pavilion collection of the Siku Quanshu finally returned to Hangzhou.

At its core, the westward journey of the Siku Quanshu is a story of people who risked everything to preserve the memory of a civilization. It is the story of a librarian who sold his own property, a newspaper editor who lost his ancestral home, and professors and students who refused to abandon the heavy crates that slowed their escape.

“This story stands as a model of how civil society can participate in preserving cultural heritage,” said Zhu Wanzhang, a research fellow at the Hong Kong Palace Museum. “It also shows that cultural inheritance is inseparable from the inheritance of national spirit.”

Today, the Siku Quanshu is housed in the rare book stacks of Zhejiang Library’s Ancient Texts Conservation Center, where temperature and humidity are strictly controlled and advanced measures are in place to prevent fire and insect damage.

Librarian Zhou Yudan explained that the center follows a preventive conservation approach, minimizing direct contact and intervention with the original texts. At the same time, damaged volumes are repaired in accordance with the principle of “repairing the old as old.”

In 2024, Zhejiang Library launched a collaborative project with Ant Group to reconnect the collection with the Wenlan Pavilion through digital technology. By the end of the year, an app had been released by which users can tour the pavilion with a virtual guide and browse more than 1,000 volumes of ancient texts online.

Wang Zeyang, an AI product operations expert at Ant Group, explained the integrated digital system behind the project is designed to appeal to younger audiences.

The first step was migrating the ancient texts into the digital world in clear and complete form. Centuries of wear had left the surviving volumes marked by stains, creases, fading and damage. Using multimodal recognition technology, the project team identified and processed these flaws, restoring the texts with high precision. 

With an accurate digital manuscript in place, the next challenge was building a digital pavilion to house it. Mixed reality technology made this possible. Different from augmented reality and virtual reality, mixed reality gives an overlayed view of the world where physical and digital elements can interact. While wearing lightweight mixed reality glasses, participants can watch the pavilion take shape right before their eyes.

Presentation alone, however, was not enough. Wang said the project aimed to create an interactive experience. By integrating large language models and intelligent interaction tools, participants can ask questions and receive instant responses. Based on users’ interests, the system can also recommend related reading materials, enabling personalized guided reading.

These efforts appeared to resonate with visitors. At the sideline event, one participant in his early 30s told The Context, “It’s so cool.” Still visibly excited, he added that the pavilion felt three dimensional, the books could be opened with a tap, and a virtual Ji Yun even greeted him.

In this way, modern technology dismantles the barrier between weighty history and engaging experience.

The westward journey of the Siku Quanshu now belongs to history, while a new journey in the digital world is just beginning. Across time and space, these two forms of preservation speak to each other with a shared spirit, allowing the torch of civilization to pass seamlessly from one generation to the next.

Well, that’s the end of our podcast. Our theme music is by the famous film score composer Roc Chen. We want to thank our writer Zhang Shu, translator Wang Yuyan, and copy editor JT. And thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, please tell a friend so they, too, can understand The Context.