A view of the façade of Yuhailou Library in Rui’an

Yuhailou Library, located at Rui’an in southeastern Zhejiang, is one of the famous ancient private libraries in Jiangnan or the south of the Yangtze River Delta. It was founded in 1889 by Sun Yiyan (1815-1894), a native of Rui’an and government official for decades. He retired to Rui’an and built this library to house the books he had collected. The library was meant for himself and for his son Sun Yirang (1848-1908).

The collection by the father and son amounted to about 90,000 books, including many regional literature, and rare and fine editions of ancient books. After Sun Yirang passed away, a large part of the rare and fine editions of ancient books went to the library of Hangzhou University. At present, Yuhailou has a collection of 30,000 books including 4,000 rare and fine editions of ancient books. The private library is famed for books personally annotated and edited by Sun Yiyan and Sun Yirang, regional literature, and rare and fine editions.

Today, what’s known as Yuhailou is an 8,000-square-meter compound comprising Yuhailou Library, the former residence of Sun Yirang, and Bai Jin Tao Zhai, which is an independent five-row structure flanked between the library and the residence. Bai Jin Tao Zhai was originally designed as a living section for guests and visitors. Later it was used as a space for the storage and display of several hundreds of ancient bricks of the Six Dynasties (317-589). Today, it showcases ancient bricks, tombstones, roof tiles, collected by Rui’an Ancient Objects Museum since its inception in 1956.

The compound is in ancient architectural style, with trees and flowers and a pond. The ancient buildings feature some inscriptions handwritten by high-ranking government officials of the Qing Dynasty and Guo Moruo, a famed scholar of the 20th-century China. The architecture presents a unique style in Wenzhou, a port city in the southeast of the province where there are many ancient houses. In the eye of modern architects, the style of Yuhailou is modest and unique and therefore can be compared to an only existing copy of a book. Professor Luo Zhewen (1924-2012), a prominent scholar of ancient architecture, considered Yuhailou as a national jewel.

Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Yuhailou has been well protected and has attracted hundreds of heavyweight scholars and experts to visit the ancient library. On the list of the domestic and international visitors are Guo Muoruo, Hu Qiaomu, Qi Yanming, Tian Jiaying, and Xu Jialu, and Xi Jinping.

Sun Yirang is now considered a landmark scholar of Yongjia School. As a master of ancient Confucian classics and philology, he spent about 20 years doing textual research and writing books at the library. The last 20 years in his life saw fierce interaction and confliction of the western and eastern cultures and ideologies as well as historical events such as the Sino-Japanese War from 1894 to 1895, the 100-Day Reform in 1898, and the Boxers Uprising in 1900. From the books in Yuhailou, one can assume that Sun Yirang was by no means a scholar who buried himself in ancient books. He bought over 2,600 books concerning new knowledge introduced from the west in the 1870s, years before Yuhailou was built. In 1908, three years before the Qing Dynasty disintegrated; he traveled to Shanghai and bought books from bookstores that had nothing to do with ancient Chinese classics. He concerned himself with international and domestic news and trends by reading magazines and newspapers at home.

In 1897, he made friends with Zhang Taiyan (1869-1936), a prominent scholar of ancient classics and revolutionary. Zhang Taiyan ran two magazines concerning ancient classics. Some articles were politically against the Qing. Sun published two articles in the magazines indicating his support of Zhang’s political stand.

A statue of Sun Yirang at Yuhailou Library

His father Sun Yiyan was an open-minded scholar. Even though the library was essentially built for his son Sun Yirang, he opened it to young scholars in the region. He said publicly, “those who have aptitude, who want to read our books, and abide by the rules of the library, can visit the library and read books here.” A list of sixteen dos and don’ts for readers and for the library administration was established with the inception of Yuhailou. The rules are still operative today.

Yuhailou was a cultural landmark of Wenzhou in the 19th century. The Sun family produced prominent figures of the regional culture of Wenzhou. They carried on the torch of Yongjia School started by a group of local scholars and opened up new thought in the last decades of the Qing Dynasty. The new thought focused on knowledge for changing China.

Scholastically, Sun Yirang was the first person who studied the characters on inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells of the Shang Dynasty (c. 1600-1046 BC). After reading a book titled Tie Yun Cang Gui published in 1903 by Liu E (1857--1909), a novelist and scholar, Sun fell in love with the book, which was the first collection of characters on animal bones and tortoise shells in China. The amazing discovery of the ancient inscriptions on bones and shells is a long story of the late Qing Dynasty and opened up a new discipline in the studies of philology. Sun spent two months studying the book at home; he shut himself up at Yuhailou writing a book expounding his study results of the ancient characters. The book deciphered 334 characters from the book by Liu E. Studies by other scholars later concluded that 185 of the 334 characters were correctly identified. After Sun Yirang finished the book, he made five copies and sent them respectively to Luo Zhenyu, Liu E, Duan Fang and other people. It was not published until 1917 when Luo Zhenyu raised funds and got it printed. 

In the wake of Sun Yirang’s demise in 1908, the library and the residence were distributed as assets to his five sons. Sun Mengjin was the third-generation curator of the library. In 1931 and 1935, he twice cataloged the collection of Yuhailou and published two books. Both were catalogs. One catalog has five volumes, listing 6,800 books in 131 series. The second book cataloged all the 462 titles by local authors of Wenzhou, including 34 titles published in the Ming Dynasty, 210 scribed copies, and more than 10 manuscripts.

The Sun Yirang Memorial Museum at Yuhailou Library

During World War Two, Sun Mengjin did all he could to protect the books from Japanese invaders. He left his wife and sons in Wenzhou and moved all the books to safe houses in southern part of the province. The collection was fortunate enough to escape bombings and came out of the war intact. Understanding he wasn’t able to keep the collection in his own hands, he decided to donate a large of the collection to institutions.

In 1947, Sun Mengjin donated 2,990 ancient books in 465 titles, 2,460 printing blocks of Yongjia Series, and 103 cultural objects to the Literature College of Zhejiang University. All the donations were cataloged and published in a book. Then the donations went to the Library of Hangzhou University. In 1951, Sun donated 22,000 books to Wenzhou Library, including 2,000 books published in the Ming Dynasty and annotated by his ancestors. In 1947 and 1972, he donated some books to Wenzhou Library and Beijing Library. He also donated 3,600 books to Rui’an Library.

In the current collection of Yuhailou, there are some only copies of books in the world. Since the founding of the People’s Republic, Yuhailou has been well preserved. Its collection has expanded. In recent years, the library has been refurbished seven times thanks to the funds allotted from the central, provincial and local governments.