In the west of Yuehu Lake in Ningbo, there is a quaint building. It is the Tianyi Pavilion, which was built in Fan Qin in the 40th year of Jiajing in Ming Dynasty (156 1) and has the reputation of "Jiangnan Bookstore". It is the oldest existing library in China.

Books are the carrier of culture and the symbol of cultural development. Zhejiang has a long history of book collection. Collecting books has become a great hobby of literati. Huang Zongxi lamented in "The Book Secretary of Tianyi Pavilion": "It is difficult to study, especially to collect books. It will be difficult to hide for a long time! " According to the statistics of modern Wu Han, from the Jin Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, there were 359 private book collectors in Zhejiang, and there were 180 famous libraries. However, due to fire, water, soldiers and other reasons, few people can really "hide for a long time", such as the morning star. Therefore, Tianyi Pavilion is a pearl in the cultural history of China.

Fan Qin was honored as "Fan Sima" by later generations. He was a scholar in Jiajing period of Ming Dynasty, and traveled to China for most of his life. Finally, he became the right assistant minister of the Ministry of War. As an honest and frank man, he once contradicted Hou Guoxun of Wuding, was in power in the ruling and opposition parties, suffered unjust imprisonment and was punished by court aides. Later, he offended Yan Shifan, a powerful minister, because he enforced the law impartially. However, what made Fan Qin famous in history was the library he left to future generations. "Yin County Records" records that Fan Qin's "collection of sexual love books started from a pavilion, and he bought different books at home and abroad, which was listed as four. You Shanshou said that neither the classics nor the collected works of ancestors poets have been handed down. East Zhejiang bibliophiles, with Tianyi Pavilion as the priority, have a large number of meritorious documents. "

Fan Qin loves books. Wherever he goes, he always collects local ancient books and tries his best to buy them or hire someone to record them. Many of his books were acquired by Feng Fang, another bibliophile at that time. Famous scholars Wang Shizhen and Fan Qin admired each other and agreed to exchange money books. As a result, Fan Qin increased a lot of paper money, and finally the number of books reached more than 70,000 volumes.

Fan Qin Library was originally named "Dongming Caotang", and Tianyi Pavilion was built by Li Hou after his resignation. According to scholars in the Qing Dynasty, at the beginning of the pavilion, Fan Qin was overjoyed to get a stone carving of Tian Yichi, a Taoist priest in Longhu Mountain. He thought it was consistent with the meaning of "the sky is full of water" ... 60% of the land ",so he named the pavilion" Tianyi ". In front of the building is tianyi pool, which stores water for fire prevention. The exhibition hall is divided into two floors. The upper library is a big room with bookshelves in the middle. There are six rooms on the lower floor. This design means "six places in one place". The reputation of Tianyi Pavilion spread far and wide, so that even Emperor Qianlong, who wrote and edited Sikuquanshu, was "not ashamed to ask questions" and ordered people to come and ask for drawings, imitating the structure of Tianyi Pavilion and building its seven pavilions in north and south.

Of course, Tianyi Pavilion survived for more than 400 years mainly because Fan Qin and his descendants took strict protective measures. Ruan Yuan once recorded that there was a small pool stone in front of Tianyi Pavilion, which was far from the market. It is wide and quiet, and it can last for a long time, and people who set off fireworks are not allowed to enter. " The library is far from the house, and there are strict fire prevention measures to protect Tianyi Pavilion from fire. However, countless people burned down the ancient libraries in China with fire. Qian's Jiangyun Building is an example. Cao Rong's "Bibliography of Jiang Yunlou" records: One day, "he was playing upstairs with milk in the middle of the night, cut the candle, accidentally fell into the paper pile, and then burned it. Zongbo started from downstairs, and the flames were overwhelming. He hurried out. In a blink of an eye, the book is exhausted. "

Fan Qin and his successors made some specific bans to protect books. For example, it is forbidden to use books to get down the ladder, and don't open the door before the sun comes in every house. Children who enter the cabinet without reason will be punished for not offering sacrifices for three times (that is, participating in ancestor worship); Those who bring relatives and friends into the cupboard without permission and open bookcases without permission will be punished for one year without offering sacrifices; Lending books to other rooms and his surname at will be punished for three years without offering sacrifices; Therefore, those who make sacrifices will never refuse to make sacrifices.

Fan Qin's nephew Fan Dache likes reading. "We get paid every month, so we can gather books", and we are also good at recognizing editions. The first edition, the original edition, the fake edition and the paper are clear at a glance, so people call it "a collection of unique elegance". He borrowed books from Tianyi Pavilion and was often rejected. Therefore, he worked hard to collect rare books at home, and built "West Garden" and "Woyun Mountain Room" to collect books. Every time I get a wonderful book, I will prepare a banquet and invite my uncle to watch it. Every time Fan Qin saw his nephew buy a book that Tianyi Pavilion didn't have, he was so envious that he couldn't put it down and often "left silently". Really two generations of bookworms.

Such a "bookworm" certainly has more than one surname. In this folk story, the protagonist is a woman named Qian: during Jiaqing period, Qian, the niece of Ningbo magistrate, heard that Tianyi Pavilion had a large collection of books, and one of them was light green, but it was not very dry. For 300 years, books have not increased. The book-loving woman was fascinated, so she embroidered hundreds of books and asked the prefect to marry Fan Bangzhu, a descendant of Fan, and let her go to the pavilion to read and watch. Unexpectedly, the clan rules prohibit women from entering the cabinet. Qian Yunxiu was so depressed that she got sick and finally hated it. Before he died, he begged her husband: "You are like a pity concubine, and I will bury my eyes around the pavilion."

According to historical records, Mr. Huang Lizhou (Zong Xi), the founder of East Zhejiang School, was the first person to ban the cabinet. Because Mr. Li Zhou's morality and articles were admired by people at that time, Fan's room let him board the library. He read a lot of rare books, "taking those notes that are not widely circulated as reference books". In the following more than 100 years, famous scholars such as Xu, Quan, Qian Daxin, Ruan Yuan, Xue Fucheng and Miao were fortunate enough to join the cabinet.

Today, we read Ruan Yuan's couplet "There is only one library in the world" in the Qing Dynasty, and we can't help but think of the hundreds of years' hard journey of Fan Qin, a bibliophile of Jiahui's descendants, Fan's descendants who inherited his achievements, and Tianyi Pavilion. According to legend, Fan Qin lived with Shu Ge in his later years until he was 83 years old. On his deathbed, he divided his fortune into two parts, one part was all the books of Tianyi Pavilion, and the other part was twelve thousand pieces of silver. Son Dachong chose thousands of books from Tianyi Pavilion to develop his father's career. Tianyi Pavilion arrived at Fan Qin's eighth grandson Fan, just as Emperor Qianlong wrote a suicide note to interview the world for compiling Sikuquanshu, and Tianyi Pavilion was selected among them. Fan presented 638 kinds of precious ancient books, but none of them were returned later. In his later years, Tianyi Pavilion suffered again. By the early 1950s, there were only 13000 books left.

Zhejiang Ningbo tianyige library