1.

I couldn't figure out why there existed such a strange obstacle that kept me away from the Prime Chamber. As far as common sense went, I was a scholar and the Chamber a library; I was born in Ningbo and so located was this Chamber. By all means I should have frequented it. But the matter of fact was that I had never stepped into it even once. I went back to live in Ningbo in the spring of 1976 to nurture some illness, moving in with my former teacher Mr. Sheng Zhongshu. Mr. Sheng was really keen in paving the way for me to do some reading in The Prime Chamber. However, we gave up because the check-in process was way too complicated and cumbersome and on top of all I lost my appetite to read at the time. Later the situation improved a great deal. Some of my friends in the circles of arts and culture in the City invited me to give a few lectures there. But I seemed to be running in and out of city in a hurry all the time thus never got a chance to set my foot onto the Prime Chamber.

Those days even Shanghai folks who had toured Ningbo were talking about their group tours of the Prime Chamber. Meanwhile, I had spent quite some time studying the copies of the collections and became quite familiar with the vicissitude of The Prime Chamber, Yet I had been there. The whole situation had become inexplicable. Until August in1980 when I was giving a talk in Ningbo, at the end of lecture I stammered a bit requesting the host to take me to the Chamber. By chance the host, Mr. Pei Minghai was the Deputy Chief of the Bureau of Culture of Ningbo City and the Prime Chamber was under his direct supervision. He was flabbergasted to learn that my life had such a giant hole in it. So he immediately decided that he would personally escort me to The Prime Chamber the very next day.

My misfortune didn’t end there as a typhoon landed that night. Suddenly, the whole city started to shake in the huge storm. Next morning when we got to the Prime Chamber as pre-arranged, we found an ocean that gobbled up the front, the back and the main courtyard of the structure. Tree leaves beaten down by the storm were tossed up and down on the restless flood water, heavy bricks from the thick wall seemed to radiate chilliness into the air.

The old gatekeeper was surprised to see the Bureau Chief with a guest under such ominous conditions. He rushed to arrange for some medium-sized high top rubber boots and umbrellas for us. But the water was too deep in the courtyard and ran into our boots the moment we stepped into it. We had no choice but took off all shoes and rolled up the pants. It was already cold in the wind and rain, the water under the feet sent quite a shiver up the spine. Just like that, Mr. Pei and I held onto each other, marching towards the Prime Chamber, staggering left and right. Tell me, Prime Chamber, why is it so hard for me to come to you? Even when I was right in front of you, you still managed to have wind, rain and flood as the final obstacle. I knew historically it was extremely difficult for scholars to enter the Prime Chamber to read books; perhaps, it was, indeed, Heaven's intention to hold such a severe ceremony for me to enter the Prime Chamber today, wasn't it?

The Prime Chamber was thus named because the founder derived the name from the phrase "Heaven’s Prime Chamber gives water." His intention was to ward off fire with water because fire had long been the primary worries of all book collectors. So during my first visit, the Heavens above really put on a show to let me understand real meaning of "Heaven’s Prime Chamber that gives water." The ceremony forced me into the most devoted form, off with all my scholarly pretensions and away with the casual manner of a tourist. I was even deprived of my shoes and stepped into the Holy Chamber bare-footed, with my back bent, knees crooked, body leaning forward in trembles. There was not going to be another visitor today. Wasn't this an extraordinary ceremony or what?

2.

That's right, this Chamber started out as a book storage. But it has evolved into a cultural miracle that came through some extreme hardship and sorrow.

The Chinese people as one of the most ancient civilizations created the astonishingly pictographic characters of unique beauty, and later silk and chained bamboo for writing, and logically and eventually paper and printing. All of those should have led, one would think, an ocean of books, to broadcast the vast civilization of the kingdoms of Hua and Xia all over the world with magnificent fanfare. Unfortunately, the raging fire of barbaric war-fares never ceased to burn and tear through the fine pages of books; vast ignorance continued to bite off fragile intelligence and learning. There was this great people who had created the best condition for book writing and printing but could never achieve that carefree state of mind to possess a magnificent number of books; instead, books have always been a rare and strange animal on such land through the ages. As a result, the spirit of a people has been scattered in chaos and self-survival mood, a spirit that can't figure out where it comes from, where it's going, and who it really is and what to do in this world.

Any intelligent person can feel the yearning for books in this race. All of them know intuitively that only books can serve as the central string that threads the long, long history together, providing the necessary coherence to a huge population thus preserving the seed of fire for a civilization to exist on such a vast land for such a long time. There have been a few scholars who took upon themselves to assiduously hand-copy books and dutifully collect books aside from their professional duty.

But how many books could a poor scholar collect in a lifetime? How could anyone be sure that their meager collection could withstand the wash of centuries of time? Especially since "A gentleman's pond of wealth normally dries up in five generations." If the fate of personal fame, family wealth, real estate and land often suffers such a fate, how could a few volumes of books be any different? The royal court, indeed, had their book collections. However, before the Qing Dynasty, none of the royal collections had any meaningful system, overall structure and well-thought out design. Naturally, most of them got destroyed during dynasty transitions. They were never reliable collections anyway. Under such circumstances, history bestowed the great book collection enterprise to some very special individuals. Such an individual must be an official for a long time thus accumulated enough cash to buy a great number of books; during the occupation of the offices he must move around thus had the opportunity to collect the editions scattered around the country; he must have very high level of cultural awareness and learning to equip himself with a swift sensitivity to recognize the value of certain books on the spot; he must possess a clear mind in management to ensure the necessary shrewd designs from library building to bookshelves and iron-clad rules of book-lending and fire protection; he must think and plot deep into the future and gave enough thought of how his offspring could continue to treasure and protect his prized collection. Only then that one person who possessed such ruthless and lofty requirements could become a famous book collector in all of China.

There had been quite a few book collectors in the past; sadly, most of their enterprises emaciated over with a few generations of time. Their names made quite a long list but their collections were long gone without even a single book left to be held. It's safe to say those names had largely come to symbolize a futile effort, a tragic wish that materialized temporarily but was eventually dashed into abyss.

Would there be another one? One would be enough. He could elevate the already harsh and lofty requirements into even higher grounds; he could grind management, storage, generational transfer and so on to its finest details. Whatever they might be! But please let there be one book house in this great land! Please, just one! Oh, Heavens, please lend some sympathy for China and the Chinese culture!

Eventually, this person appeared: Fan Qin, the founder of The Prime Chamber.

A scholar of the Qian Jia period of Qing Dynasty, Yuan Yuan, once marveled, "Mr. Fan's Prime Chamber, among all of the book houses in the country of the past several centuries since the Ming, is the only one still standing upright today."

This is to say that all the books produced during the hundreds of years of wide open Chinese cultural sphere from Ming to Qing were safely housed in a building well built.

Let's not grudge the long history preceding the Ming; let's not even mention those books left uncollected since the Ming. Let's just kneel down and kowtow to show our gratitude to this building, to express our great appreciation for its provision of shelter for a partial history of the spirit of a people, our people.

3.

Fan Qin was born in the Jia Jing period of the Ming Dynasty. He passed the royal examination and was recognized as an imperial scholar at the age of 27. He was decorated by the court as a royal official and held offices in many places, such as Shaanxi and Henan up North, Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan down the South, and Fujian and Jiangxi in the East. Finally he was elevated to be the deputy minister in the Ministry of Military Affairs; that was a rather high position. Those positions and offices really provided him with a great financial base and wide travel opportunities for his book collection efforts. During the times when cultural relics were scattered all over and market for such relics was not well-established, a preeminent official position provided the necessary authority to investigate and collect books. Whenever he was dispatched to a new office, he always paid paramount attention to the official and private editions of any publications, especially the ones ignored by other collectors, such as county records, official biographies, event records and even scholarly examination results and rankings, and local publications of poetry within small circles, things that would easily be viewed as passing clouds all became the good part of his collection. That kind of work required much more than collection enthusiasm and financial capability. The first impression of Mr. Fan may lead one to mistake him as an amateur who collected books as a hobby. Then quickly one realized that book collection ranked the highest in terms of priority in his entire life while his officialdom became only the side show or the necessary means for book collection. Only now history laid it bare in front of us how he carefully concealed his passion in his heart. It was like that the time had called for a book collector to step forward for China and he was conveniently placed on the dynasty's top position to fulfill such a duty thus was able to attend his personal aspiration.

After a day in the office, perhaps he had just closed a big case, put a corrupt official in jail, mediated some disputes among a few offices, straightened the tricky relationship between politics and finances, restored the reputation of the local government and returned the high honor to the royal court, so on and so forth. However, only he knew that all those added together couldn't match the weight of that sack of pale blue cloth of rather thin fabric, because in it he got the books he had been looking for and would put them into his travel pouch. The rustling sound he made while carefully thumbing through the book pages was a great deal more resounding in his heart than those drums and gongs to open the traffic for his official entourage during the day.

The choice Fan Qin made for his life touched upon a topic that has been dear in my heart lately -- a person's cultural consciousness based on character of high integrity, or vis-à-vis, a person's character of high integrity based on his cultural consciousness. Without such quality, he could never be so determined throughout the entire enterprise and he wouldn't be able to rise above conventional wisdom and place great value in things ignored by the ordinary minds. Mr. Fan once fought without blinking against Guo Xun who had family connection to the royal court and the center of power. As a result, he was sentenced to be caned in the royal court and put in prison for a period of time. Even after that, his office still wouldn't give an inch to the corrupting forces thus found himself in great odds with the Yan Family of high power and corruption. Yan Shifan wished to inflict some harm to Mr. Fan but his father Yan Song said, "Fan Qin had the guts to fight Guo Xun. Your blackmailing him will only add more fame to him." At the end, the Yan Family couldn't do a thing to Fan Qin. Those episodes were testimonial of the character and integrity that a successful book collector must possess.

From that perspective, we can now compare Fan Qin with other book collectors in history. Fan Qin's good friend Feng Fang was a master of calligraphy of his time and also a book collector. His calligraphy was better than Fan Qin's by leaps and bounds. One of the masters of calligraphy in Chinese history, Dong Qichang, had a great deal of respect for Feng and once put him alongside with another master Wen Zheng, by saying that the both of them were the Idols for ink pond creatures. There is no doubt that Feng Fang was a bright star in the history of Chinese calligraphy. He also surpassed Fan Qin in many other scholarly fields, such as his "The World According to Five Doctrines,” something Fan Qin had no business with at all. However, as a true artist and scholar, Feng Fang was too excitable, too naive, too out of touch, too inconsiderate of his environment, and too irresponsible of his action. At the beginning he was very determined as he sold out thousands of acres of good land in order to collect books and calligraphy pieces from past masters; his collection was already sizeable before Fan Qin's Prime Chamber even broke earth. But Mr. Feng knew nothing about human relationship; he had no idea that some of his students who spoke so respectfully of him were actually robbers and con artists in disguise; he was vaguely aware of the great threat of fire. Consequently, over 60% of his collection was robbed once he became old and feeble. A good portion was destroyed in a big fire. At the end he had to sell what was left of his collection wholesomely to Fan Qin. Fan Qin had neither the artistic brilliance of Feng Fang nor the glaring shortcomings of his personality. Fan Qin with his clear mind elevated the cultural brilliance which Feng Fang definitely possessed to social action. In comparison, the social personality of Fan Qin was much healthier, suitable for the management of such a cultural enterprise. Most pure artists and scholars lack the necessary social ability to be successful in this aspect.

Another book collector in the league of Fan Qin was his own nephew, Fan Dache. Fan Dache was duly influenced by his uncle from an early age thus grew up not unlike his uncle. For example, he was a capable official thus was dispatched overseas for official duties a few times. Still, in his heart he was a passionate book lover. He was a good scholar thus possessed a healthy judgment in terms of cultural values of a book; he really collected quite a few treasures during his days. His book collection was duly influenced by his uncle both positively and negatively. It was said that once he had an unpleasant experience when he tried to borrow books from his uncle as the uncle wouldn’t let books go out of his hand easily. This episode bothered Fan Dache to the point that he became determined to build his own book house in quiet competition against his uncle. After a few years when the building was built, he invited his uncle as his guest frequently to the book house. He even placed some highly rare books on the top of the desks purposefully so his uncle could browse them at will. Whenever this happened, Fan Qin just brushed it off with a smile. The difference between the two book collectors manifested right there. The youth was doing a good job in his undertaking but he was motivated by his competitive spirit, which was self-centered somewhat. This mindset predetermined that his aim was limited: he was satisfied with a decent building that housed some editions beyond his uncle’s collection. As it turned out, the younger Fan’s newer book house disappeared after only a few generations, within the realm of good logic, so it seemed. On the other hand, the Prime Chamber stayed erected with the support of a mysterious power.

In actuality, this structure reflected the extraordinary spirit, passion and talent of the collector, Fan Qin. Such determination and perseverance may have come across to many as cold, severe and even inhumane. But that spirit has been the backbone of why the Prime Chamber survived till today.

4.

The real trouble for a book collector starts after his life is over. Thus Fan Qin was confronted with the question of how to make his determination and inner strength as part of the integral heritage of his family. It’s not inaccurate to state that the truly remarkable story of the Prime Chamber started when Fan Qin died. I can’t say whether it has been an honor or great misery of many centuries for the Fan clan to keep this structure alive.

When he was 80, Fan Qin realized that he had reached the end of his life. He gathered his older son and his second daughter-in-law (as his second son had passed before him) to arrange issues of inheriting. The old man at his death bed posed a rather steep challenge to his children. He divided his possession into two portions: one consisted of ten thousand taels of silver and the other the library. Each family could only take one or the other.

That was a strange way to divide one’s possession to the children. The ten thousand taels of silver came as instant cash for immediate enjoyment while the house of books had no value of enjoyment but an extraordinary burden to carry on. The demeanor of Father Fan’s life made it amply clear that none of the books could be sold. On the top of that, it’s a rather sizeable expenditure to maintain the collection year in and year out. Why didn’t Old Fan divide the cash sum and the responsibility for the book house into two equal halves for each family? Why did he separate the rights and responsibility so thoroughly for his children to choose?

I believed that the old man had thought about this for many years as how to divide his possessions for his children. The difficult question was also one for himself: either one of his children took on the hard-work of his book collecting enterprise without any self-consideration for one’s self or all his effort shall evaporate into thin air after death took over his life. So he purposefully made his will rather stern and unreasonable, making it no profit at all for whomever willing to take on the book collecting enterprise. He was fully aware that any deceit now would mushroom its effect in the matter of generations to eventually lead his collection to suffer the same fate as many others before his. He didn’t have any intention to belittle the family who wished to inherit the ten thousand taels of silver as long as they were honest to the old Fan that they didn’t have the confidence to take over such a horrific task of epic proportions. This honesty served the old man better than any false vow taken in the front of a dying father. On the other hand, Fan Qin was dying to hear the words that he had waited for a few decades in his life. The old man feared no death but he had fears in his eyes when he looked into the eyes of his children.

His older son, Fan Dachong, immediately expressed his wish to inherit his father’s book house. He also decided to allocate portions of the best land he had as the maintenance insurance for the book house.

Just like that, an endless relay race thus started. Many years late, Fan Dachong installed his will and his son did his, too … Each will was written with more and more restrictions. The initial motivation of the book collection had become more and more a distant idea. While the family started to branch out into many, so how did they ensure that each family branch maintained the exact demeanor after their ancestor the old Fan Qin? This is, indeed, a hard question for all of us to ponder over. In the olden days, all the cultural enterprises that must endure the passage of time were somehow bestowed to some individual families. But families were constantly going through the process of breaking-up, multiplying and branching out. It was a bit beyond the realm of reason and even nature of life to ask one’s children’s children to accept an obdurate task that takes lifelong devotions and sacrifices. It must feel terribly imposed up for a child to inherit the inspiration of an ancestor of many centuries ago. It’s not hard to imagine the Prime Chamber has become a family altar of worship for many of the Fan children, for they only knew all-out maintenance and protection with no questions asked. Today, many of us would lavish the Fans with high praises for their remarkable achievement and marvel at their great cultural consciousness for generations ongoing. But I can also imagine that there must be some unrecorded family feuds and psychological warfare and tragedy within the family. For them to live under the shadow of this great book house, they deserve a great deal of sympathy from all of us.

It was inevitable that children of the Fan clan would become curious: what the heck was stored in this mysterious building? What books were there? Why couldn’t we take some out and read them? Friends and relatives came and inquired frequently: your family had always guarded such a secret building, what was up there and why couldn’t we go in and take a look?

The old Fan Qin and his children had anticipated such those scenarios ahead of time. They knew that a book house could be gnawed away to its final collapse; therefore, they had implemented protection measures from the beginning. The Fans had a rather strict family punishment. The worst punishment was to forbid any offender from attending the family ancestor worshipping ceremony, the worst embarrassment for a Fan offspring. It’s a “Yellow Card” raised, worse than whipping or caning. It was written clearly: any family member who enter the Chamber without permission shall be forbidden from attending ancestor worshipping ceremony three times; any family member who leads a friend or relative into the Chamber to open book shelves shall be disallowed to Worshipping Ceremony for a year; anyone who lends books out to other non-Fan families shall be kept away from the Ceremony for three years. For repeated offense, there was this lifelong banishment from the family ancestor worshipping ceremony.

Here I ought to mention a story that saddens me every time I think about it. During the reign of Emperor Jia Qing, the Mayor of Ningbo had a niece, Miss Qian Xiuyun, who for her love of books and poetry wished very much to visit the Primer Chamber to satisfy her reading appetite. So much so, she actually requested a go-between to arrange her marriage to the Fan family. Modern sociologists may find fault with the young woman whether she was marrying books or a man. To me, in a society when she had no say in her own marriage, it is rather moving to see her choose books over money and power as the main goal of her marriage. She had no idea, however, that even after being married to the Fan family, she was still forbidden to enter the book building. One explanation was that the Fans forbid all female members of the family to get into the book collect. Another theory is that she married was into a branch of the family which didn’t represent the main branch. The result, though, was the same: Qian Xiuyun never got a chance to read a single book in the Prime Chamber till her death as sadness reigned her entire life.

Today when I looked up at this structure called the Prime Chamber, I could see the saddened eyes of Qian Xiuyun. I felt that there should be a great fiction written, depicting not another ordinary tragedy of marriage but an epic story, one that a young woman who lived in a feudalistic society that lacked solely of humanistic flavor fought a long and hard battle to satisfy her innate thirst for cultural nourishment through books but lost.

From the perspective of the Fan family, to prohibit entrance to the building and touch of the books was really necessary. A small crack of the rules could lead to a huge break of the whole enterprise. On the other hand, to forbid entrance and book reading forever seems to diminish the meaning of having this great library. Such a problem often put the Fan family into a state of perplexity.

The Fans had a family rule: no matter how many families branched out of the main family, a consensus must be reached by all the households in order to open the door to the Prime Chamber. The keys to the library gate, bookshelves were in the hands of different houses of the family. If one key was absent, nobody could get into the book collection. So, here is the confusion. If any one of the family members had the power to refuse a visitor, every one must be thinking through the centuries: what’s the purpose to have this Prime Chamber if we set up so many blockages outside of it?

Just in time, it was said that the great scholar of the time, Mr. Huang Zhongxi, expressed his wish to visit the library! The news no doubt sent a huge shockwaves to all the households of the Fan Clan. Huang Zhongxi was born in Yutao, my own hometown, but had no blood linkage to the Fans whatsoever. According to the rule, he was forbidden to enter the library. However, the Fans have heard for a long time that Mr. Huang was a well-celebrated figure in the kingdom as a well learned scholar with the best known integrity, endeavor and knowledge. Although the means of communication was rather backward at the time, the action of Huang Zhongxi had resounding effect by itself as he had created quite a few far-reaching events in the royal court and among the masses. His father was an important member of the then famous Donglin Party at the end of Ming Dynasty and was killed by the corrupt officials led by Wei Zhongxian. Later on when the Gang of Wei was put on trial, the 19 year old Huang Zhongxi put quite a passionate show of physical attack and verbal eloquence to the rest of the corruptive elements. Later he led a fierce charge to arrest all the fugitives and issued a stern warning to Yuan Dacheng, all the actions that was met with heartfelt applauds from the masses. When the Qing soldiers marched down to the South, he with the aid of his two younger brothers organized hundreds of his town’s folks to form the famous “Life Royalty Squad” and put up quite a fight against the invasion. When the resistance effort failed, he focused all his energy into learning, writing and speech-giving. He had become the first class thinker and historian among the best in the entire history of China in terms of incorporating nationalism and personal integrity into scholarly writing in order to awaken the conscious of generations to come. During his scholarly pursuit, he had already visited “Lifelong Learning Library” of the Niu family and “The Hall of Simple Life” of the Qi family both in Shaoxing. Finally he came to knock on the door of the Prime Chamber. Although he knew beforehand that the Fans had rather strict rules guarding the building and books, he decided to come. The time was the 12th year of Kangxi, 1673 that is.

The surprise was that all the Fan households agreed not only to let Mr. Huang Zhongxi into the building and but also to grant him all the time he needed to read through the books in the entire collection. From this episode, I am totally convinced of the high character of Fan clan. They were book collectors thus didn’t rank high among philosophers, scholars, politicians and societal elite; however, they yielded the chain of all the keys to this one person, not everyone, to the building that was heavily guarded by the entire family. They exercised their judgment and made their choice thus the character of this large family of book collectors was glorified by this act. Mr. Huang Zhongxi in his long cotton coat and cloth shoes climbed up the building carefully and quietly. As the copper locks were opened up one after another, the year of 1673 had become the most glorious year in the history of the Prime Chamber.

Mr. Huang Zhongxi went through all the books in the Prime Chamber. He even compiled a list of the rare books in the library. Later he also published “The Story of the Prime Chamber Collection.” Thus, this book building is forever linked to the personality of this great scholar.

From then on, the Prime Chamber had adopted a new rule to open its service to the greatest scholars of the land. Still the practice of such rule was under strict consideration. In the 200 years or so after Mr. Huang, only 10 scholars were permitted to climb up the building. All of them had their names mentioned somewhere the history of Chinese culture.

This way the Prime Chamber assumed some practical meaning of its own existence, though chances were still rather scarce. The family inheriting system of the feudalistic system contradicted sharply with the social demand by the scholars nationwide. This contradiction put book collectors into a difficult situation which had double edges: one was to guard the books so tightly that the collection would last a long time; the other was to let the society make the best use of the books thus risk the chance that the collection would disappear entirely someday. From such perspective it was really a hard choice for the Prime Chamber to be allowed very limited usage under heavy scrutiny. Indeed, it was really beyond the capability of the family to decide who was worthy among the scholars of the whole nation.

This problem was eased somewhat until the Emperor Qianlong decided to compile The Encyclopedia of the Four Learnings. The Emperor issued orders to register rare books in all provinces and asked all book collectors, especially those in the South of Yangzi River, to donate books to the project. The Prime Chamber made more 600 rare books as presents to the royal court, among them 96 books were chosen by the Encyclopedia of the Four Learnings and 370 books were put on the list of collectables. All of them now resided in the emperor designated royal libraries. The Emperor Qianlong was immensely grateful to the presents from the Prime Chamber, he had sent his praises and plagues a few times. Moreover, the Emperor suggested that all the libraries from the North to the South all model themselves after the Prime Chamber.

The Prime Chamber had thus become well-known in the nation. Although most of the books donated to the Royal Court were not returned, they all had extended lives in Royal Libraries. When I read somewhere that the donation received from the Prime Chamber by Tianlong in his The Encyclopedia of the Four Learnings was something in the neighborhood of highway robbery, I felt that it was somewhere overly stated. The final meaning of any book collection is to make the books more widely used. Storage or hiding should never be the final aim. Think about it, even the royal compilation of books had to rely heavily on the collection of the Prime Chamber, a family collection was thus made known through official media. This was a grand testimony that the Prime Chamber was a huge success. Fan Qin finally achieve his grand success.

5.

The Prime Chamber survived into the modern era. Many things somehow became rather strange in modern era of China. This ancient building of books also had its share of convulsion.

First, during the time when the Tai Ping Rebels attacked the City of Ningbo, some petty thieves took advantage of the chaos and broke the walls of the building to steal books and sell them as used paper. There was a person who purchased some of the stolen books with usual high prices but those books were later destroyed in a big fire.

This episode became the prelude of the tumultuous fate suffered by the Prime Chamber in the modern era. The challenge was no longer about whether to allow which scholar to climb into the building. Rather, thieves and robbers had become the biggest threat.

In 1914, a thief named Xue Jiwei miraculously sneaked his way into the building. He kept it quiet during the day and did the book stealing during the night. His main meals consisted of nothing but some dates. A boat was harbored in the river outside of the East Wall of the building to store and transport stolen books. The heist took more than half of the rare books in the entire collection and many of them were later found in some of the bookstores in Shanghai.

This plunder by Xue Jiwei differed greatly from those by the petty thieves ahead of him. Huge was not only the number of books lost but also the robbery was systematic and well thought out, in conspiracy with book dealers in Shanghai thus had a support line behind it. I always feel an inauspicious irony or metaphorical revelation in the way urban book dealers gnawed away or took over an ancient book house with strong armed robbery. Fan Qin had thought through many protection measures for his collection but he obviously didn’t take break-in seriously because unlawful entry at his time was almost a non-threat because his real estate was well fortified. Fan Qin couldn’t anticipate the change of time and the coming of a new era. He had no way to imagine how ferocious modern merchants were in the stage of capital accumulation. This was how the book shelves were emptied out one by one. The wooden floors that Miss Qian Xiuyun had glanced upon but could never set a step onto and Mr. Huang Zhongxi walked on ever so carefully now had nothing but piles of date pits spat out by a skilled thief.

When the then chief operating officer of the Commercial Press, Mr. Zhang Yuanji, heard about the calamity suffered by the Prime Chamber and that some book merchants were preparing to sell some of the Prime Chamber collections to foreigners, he immediately started a rescue mission by allocating large sums of funds and housed the books rescued in the “Han Fen Building” of the Eastern Library. The Han Fen Building thus gained its name in the cultural circles because of the nourishment from the Prime chamber as many well-known scholars had come to the building to take cultural nutrition. The grand tragedy occurred when the building was bombed into ashes during Japanese invasion.

All of the above, Mr. Fan Qin had no idea of centuries ago. His heavenly secret blessing, “the Prime Chamber gives water,” had finally lost its magic.

6.

However, the cultural conscience exemplified by Fan Qin and his offspring has not lost its glory even in the modern era. Besides Mr. Zhang Yuanji, there have been many passionate individuals who put on an effort to save this Chamber under threat and to prevent it from becoming a wasteland. In modern days this has become an enterprise for the society at large and can no longer be carried by one family or a clan. This century the Prime Chamber has had its share of good fortunes as many repairs and fortification had been done in the 1930s, 50s, 60s and now 80s. The Prime Chamber is now designated as a Landmark protected by law and becomes a tourist attraction to many who come to Ningbo. The book collection, on the other hand, in the Prime Chamber needs a lot of work. However, in today’s world of information saturation and swift communication, the significance of the Prime Chamber no longer resides in its book contents that lend the society knowledge. The sheer existence or survival of this Chamber erects a monument of an ancient cultural enterprise, to allow the younger generation to imagine the vicissitude of cultural preservation in China through the corridor of time. It has become a legend for the children to learn really how sad and solemn it has been for an ancient people to nurture its spectacular thirst for cultural preservation and heritage.

Here we came. I had no doubt that our instinct contained the yearning to contribute to the flourishing of modern culture. But our genes seemed to suggest that we are part of the legacy of an ancient culture. All of us were more or less the offspring of the founders of the Prime Chamber, though the Fan clan would still treat us as “bearers of other family names.” When I was climbing the stairs leading to the Prime Chamber, I took it slow and gentle. I asked myself constantly: have I arrived? Which era do I belong as a scholar?

There aren’t many places where I as a visitor could feel so heavy-hearted and calm at the same time. A historian of book printing of the Chamber in his advanced age brought two binders to me. After I browsed through the hard-carved files of the Ming Dynasty, an examination ranking file and a Shanghai county record, I had the unmistakable impression that if not for those sole survivors of records, there would be no way to view the Chinese history from such a unique angle of close range. From such perspective, it makes one wonder if there is a need to preserve and study the history of book collection effort such as the Prime Chamber. Then Mr. Pei Minghai handed me a book, A History of Ningbo, written by Misters Xu Jizi, Zhen Xuepu, and Yuan Yuanlong, in it contained a piece about the vicissitude of the Prime Chamber. They did their research and writing with great lucidity; therefore, I have learned a lot of facts that I hadn’t known before. However, in my view, the history of the Prime Chamber is ample material for a spectacular epic poem of great length and substance. When will our great writers and poets cast their eye on such ancient buildings and gardens? When will they bring us close with vivid colors to the trajectory of a noble soul of the Fan and many other clans when they traveled through the days and nights of centuries to reach us in the modern era?