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BOOK PUBLISHING ACTIVITIES IN THE WUYINGDIAN

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Starting with the Yongzheng Code of 1725, the Wuyingdian Book Editing Department (Wuyingdian Xiushuchu) published all the imperially authorized editions of the Qing Code. As the main publishing institution of the court, the Wuyingdian was quite active in the High Qing period. During the Yongzheng and Qianlong periods, the Wuyingdian published 380 titles, totaling a mind-boggling 26,982 volumes.50 The books published by the Wuyingdian covered a wide range of genres and subjects, including imperial writings, Confucian classics, almanacs, medical texts, dictionaries, religious texts, dynastic histories, collections of literary works, and various administrative regulations and the laws. As a subsidiary of the Imperial Household Department, the Wuyingdian was part of the government. The book printing and publishing activities in the Wuyingdian were usually under the direct orders of the emperor, to serve, in general, his political purposes. By editing, printing, and publishing various books through the Wuyingdian, the court intended not only to establish its image as a legitimate cultural sponsor but also to ensure its cultural and political authority through the production of standard texts in the field of literature, history, religion, law and regulation.

Like other central institutions, the Wuyingdian operated according to strict and detailed administrative regulations. The number of officials and long-term craftsmen, as well as their ranks and salaries, were fixed.51 The Imperial Household Department required an annual report on the operation of the Wuyingdian, including the income and expenditures, the number of books printed and sold, the salaries for each official and craftsman, raw materials purchased and consumed, and so on. Even the price and quality of the raw materials to be purchased were preset. For any departure from fixed regulations, officials of the Wuyingdian needed permission from the emperor or the Imperial Household Department.52 The various detailed regulations on the operation of the Wuyingdian standardized the process and cost of book production but limited the efficiency of book production and reduced the flexibility of the Wuyingdian’s response to changes.

Book publishing in the Wuyingdian was a rather time-consuming process because the priority of officials and craftsmen was to guarantee the quality of the books, not the efficiency of publishing. According to the Wuyingdian’s administrative regulations, if there was any tiny mistake or discrepancy in editing or printing, the officials and craftsmen who were responsible for it would be punished by a reduced salary or even by demotion. Book production required a series of proofreading procedures, and both manuscripts and printing samples were usually transferred back and forth between the editors and printers for examination.53 In the Yongzheng and Qianlong periods, because there was no specific schedule for each procedure, it usually took years for the Wuyingdian to publish a book. The situation became even worse after the Qianlong period. Sometimes ten or even twenty years were needed to print a book with multiple volumes. For books like Confucian classics, dictionaries, dynastic histories, and literary and medical works, the Wuyingdian’s publishing system worked well, but books like the Qing Code and the Expanded Substatutes, whose contents were updated constantly, posed a sizable challenge. Indeed, the Wuyingdian proved unable to provide enough timely updated editions of the Code and the Expanded Substatutes.

The books printed in the Wuyingdian circulated through several major channels: (1) submission to the court for the emperor’s personal use, (2) presentation as gifts by the emperors to officials and literati, (3) issuance through administrative channels, and (4) sale to individual readers through the Book Circulation Bureau (Tongxing Shuji Chu), an office in charge of sales of Wuyingdian books. Only a small percentage of Wuyingdian books were circulated through the first two channels. Most went through administrative channels, mainly to officials at different levels of the bureaucracy, and students studying in state-sponsored academies.54

When the Wuyingdian published new editions of books about laws and regulations, it usually sent copies through administrative channels to officials who needed these books in their daily administration. In Beijing the books were sent directly to top officials of each department; in the provinces, provincial governors usually received all the books from the Wuyingdian and then issued them to the local governments. For example, in 1800, when the revised Regulations of the Board of Civil Office was completed, the Wuyingdian sent about sixty copies to each province, and provincial officials issued them to the provincial bureaucracy.55 Sometimes the Wuyingdian only sent one or two copies of a book as samples to provincial governments, and it was the provincial government’s responsibility to cut woodblocks, reprint copies, and distribute them to local governments. Provincial governments also reprinted and distributed edicts, regulations, and new substatutes issued by the central government through the administrative channel to local governments.56

On some occasions, the provincial officials could directly request that the Wuyingdian send some books badly needed for local administration. For example, in 1825 the Jilin general stated in a memorial that because of population growth, criminal and civil cases in his jurisdiction had significantly increased. He then complained that his yamen had only one Chinese edition of the Expanded Substatutes issued in the Jiaqing period, which was now out of date and was in any case difficult for Manchu officials to read. He then asked the emperor’s permission to order the Wuyingdian to provide updated Manchu editions of the Expanded Substatutes to his yamen.57

The books issued by the Wuyingdian through the administrative channel were the property of governments or schools and were stored in their libraries, often kept in wooden cabinets, under lock and key. Those libraries were built to protect the physical volumes and to inspire the sense of reverence of books, not to ease readers’ access to these books. They were not open to the public, and usage of the books was under strict regulations. Even officials and government students had to go through complicated procedures to access the books.58 Although the regulations were designed to protect books from being damaged or stolen, people complained that libraries in local yamens or schools were “locked up tightly and hidden away” and that readers could seldom see or read the books collected in them.59

For individual readers, the most common access to the Wuyingdian books was not through those libraries but through buying reprinted versions or “general circulation” (tongxing) versions. The Qing court encouraged local governments, individuals, and sometimes even commercial publishers to reprint the Wuyingdian books. For the books the Wuyingdian printed that could benefit literary circles, such as imperially authorized Confucian classics and dynastic histories, the Qing court usually required provincial administrative commissioners (buzhengshi) to recut the woodblocks according to the style and content of the Wuyingdian editions. When the woodblocks were completed, individuals and commercial publishers who wanted to reprint the books could submit a formal written request to the provincial government. When it was approved, they could bring their own paper and ink to the provincial administrative commissioner’s yamen and print the books by using the woodblocks. However, few individual and commercial publishers were willing to use woodblocks in provincial offices for reprinting the books, possibly because of the forbidding administrative procedures when applying for permission to print, as well as the extortion of yamen clerks during the printing process.60

Officials and commoners also could buy books directly from the Wuyingdian. In the Kangxi and Yongzheng periods, there was no clear regulation of this. Because the number of books printed in the Wuyingdian increased and demand grew with it in the early Qianlong period, Wuyingdian officials started to draft regulations for selling the books. In 1742 the emperor approved new regulations, which stated: (1) All books currently stored in the Wuyingdian may be purchased by officials, who should submit their request and payment through their own departments. As soon as the request and money are received, the Wuyingdian will send the books to the officials. (2) Retired officials and commoners may also buy books from the Wuyingdian. They should submit their request and payment through the Hanlin Academy. (3) Officials who are willing to reprint the books for their personal use are allowed to make use of the woodblocks in the Wuyingdian.61

Two years later, in 1744, the Wuyingdian established the Book Circulation Bureau, and bookselling activity was further institutionalized.62 The bureau was in charge of selling the Wuyingdian books to individual readers. However, although the creation of both the bookselling regulations and the Book Circulation Bureau itself was intended to ensure that individuals had access to the Wuyingdian books, the complexity of the procedures was intimidating to most people. It was difficult for commoners without sufficient social connections to submit their requests and payment through the Hanlin Academy to buy books from the Wuyingdian. Even for officials, buying books from the Wuyingdian was not easy. They had to submit a formal request through their own department and wait for the communication between their department and the Wuyingdian, and the payment was deducted from officials’ salaries. This process might take days or even months.63

Every book sold by the Wuyingdian through the Book Circulation Bureau was carefully recorded on the department’s bookselling registers, including the books’ titles and cost and the buyers’ names and occupations. Some of these registers from the Tongzhi and Guangxu periods are extant today. Thanks to them, we can learn who the purchasers were and what kinds of books they brought from the Wuyingdian. From 1865 to 1871, the Book Circulation Bureau all together received 70 orders from 46 individuals and sold 766 books. On average it received 10 orders and sold about 109 books per year. Since the publishing activity in the Wuyingdian had been in decline for a long time before the Tongzhi period, the number of books sold by the Wuyingdian in this period was probably less than those sold in the mid-Qing period when the Wuyingdian’s publishing was at its height. Because of the absence of sources, the exact statistics on book sales in the mid-Qing period are not clear. According to a financial report submitted by the Wuyingdian’s officials in 1792, the Book Circulation Bureau sold 187 books in that year.64 Since the Wuyingdian’s printing and publishing businesses were most active and the printed books most abundant in stock in the mid- and late Qianlong period, it can be roughly estimated that the Wuyingdian sold around two hundred books per year in the late Qianlong period. The number probably gradually declined thereafter until the Tongzhi period, when, as we have seen, the bureau sold about one hundred books per year. Thus the number of books sold through the Book Circulation Bureau was limited.

According to the bookselling registers from 1865 to 1871, purchasers of the Wuyingdian books were from various social backgrounds, including Manchu princes (20 percent of the books sold by the Wuyingdian), officials and clerks in the central government (43 percent), craftsmen of the Wuyingdian (13 percent), and commoners (22 percent). Most purchasers of the Wuyingdian books, however, were people with close connections to the Qing central bureaucracy, especially with the Imperial Household Department and the Wuyingdian itself. For example, the vice director of the Wuyingdian, whose abbreviated name was Chun on the registers, placed 7 orders and bought 89 books in total. One Wuyingdian craftsman named Zhao Junying placed 7 orders and bought 96 books, including many duplicates.65 Some of these purchasers bought the Wuyingdian books for their own use, but some probably bought for their friends or even for sale on the book market. Although a broader audience might get access to the Wuyingdian books through their friends working in the Wuyingdian or through bookstores in Beijing, considering the small number of books sold by the Wuyingdian (only 766 books in 7 years), the audience was probably not large. The audience for books sold by the Book Circulation Bureau was thus small and restricted to certain social groups.

Generally speaking, the books sold by the Wuyingdian were not expensive. Because the Wuyingdian was not a profit-oriented publishing institution, pricing was based on the cost of materials and labor as well as some overhead charges. According to the “Catalog of the Wuyingdian Books for Circulation” (Wuyingdian tongxing shuji mulu qingce), a document probably compiled in the Qianlong period, 154 titles were on sale in the Book Circulation Bureau. The price ranged from 0.007 taels to 14.6 taels, based on how many volumes the book contained and on the kind of paper used. Most of the books cost less than five taels. Some were even cheaper than similar books sold by bookstores. For example, while the price of the Code, a forty-volume book, was only about 1.1 taels (table 1.2), similar editions printed by commercial publishing houses and sold in bookstores ranged from 2.4 to 7 taels.66

The books sold by the Book Circulation Bureau covered a wide range of categories. According to the Department’s bookselling registers from 1865 to 1871, histories were the most popular genre of the books sold by the Wuyingdian. In seven years, the Wuyingdian sold 239 history books, about one-third of all copies it sold in this period. The works of the Qing emperors (191 copies, 25 percent of all copies sold by the Wuyingdian), Confucian classics (135 copies, 18 percent), and dictionaries (105 copies, 14 percent) were also in demand. Books about laws and regulations, however, were not popular among readers. From 1865 to 1871, the Wuyingdian altogether sold only one copy of books related to law and regulations—The Substatutes for Arresting Escapees (Dubu zeli). It did not sell a single copy of the Code or the Expanded Substatutes between 1865 and 1871. According to the “Catalog of the Wuyingdian Books for Circulation,” there were twenty books on Qing laws and regulations for sale by the Book Circulation Bureau (table 1.2), which was about 14 percent of the 154 books.67 However, from 1867 to 1871, such books only comprised 0.1 percent of all books sold by the Wuyingdian. The reason for this is unclear based on the Wuyingdian’s documents. It is possible that these books were out of stock in the Book Circulation Bureau. A more plausible explanation is that readers were not interested in purchasing such books from the Wuyingdian, as commercially published editions of the Qing Code and some other books about Qing laws and regulations were better quality and easier to buy from various bookstores.

Circulating the Code

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