Читать книгу Circulating the Code - Ting Zhang - Страница 13

Throughout the Qing period altogether the Wuyingdian appears to have published seven imperially authorized editions of the Qing Code, in 1725, 1740, 1768, 1790, 1802, 1825, and 1870, at an average interval of twenty years. The Wuyingdian also published at least eighteen editions of the Expanded Substatutes, at an average interval of five years (see table 1.1). Because the laws usually went into effect immediately after they were promulgated and Wuyingdian editions were the only authorized editions acknowledged by the Qing court, it was necessary for the Wuyingdian to provide the Qing bureaucracy with the updated Code and the Expanded Substatutes in a timely fashion. In fact, however, because the reviewing and printing process in the Wuyingdian was rather slow, it usually took several years to finish printing a multivolume book like the Code.

TABLE 1.2. Prices of Wuyingdian Books Relating to Laws and Regulations

Book Title		Volumes (ben)		Price (taels)
The Great Qing Code (Chinese)		40		1.10
The Great Qing Code (Manchu)		40		2.50
The Expanded Substatutes (Manchu)		2		0.10
The Expanded Substatutes (Chinese)		2		0.05
The Expanded Substatutes, 1743–1745 (Manchu)		3		0.15
The Expanded Substatutes, 1743–1745 (Chinese)		3		0.11
The Expanded Substatutes, 1746–1750 (Manchu)		2		0.12
The Expanded Substatutes, 1746–1750 (Chinese)		2		0.08
Administrative Regulations of the Eight Banners (Baqi zeli; Chinese)		4		0.67
Administrative Regulations of the Eight Banners (Manchu)		4		0.40
Treatises on the Management of Military Affairs (Zhongshu zhengkao) (Chinese)		18		1.68
Treatises on the Management of Military Affairs (Manchu)		18		2.94
Regulations of Sacrifice (Jisi tiaoli) (Manchu)		6		1.15
The Collected Statutes of the Great Qing with Administrative Regulations (Da Qing huidian bing zeli)		120		12.46
Regulations of Civil Service Examinations (Kechang tiaoli)		5		0.29
The Chart for the Three Exiles (Sanliu daoli biao)		4		0.21
Substatutes for Arresting Escapees (Dubu zeli) (Chinese)		2		0.27
Substatutes for Arresting Escapees (Manchu)		2		0.33
Administrative Regulations of the Board of Civil Office (Libu zeli) (Chinese)		28		2.77
Administrative Regulations of the Board of Civil Office (Manchu)		22		5.69

Source: Weng, Qing neifu keshu, 738–51.

The proofreading and printing process for the Code, for example, generally involved the following procedures:

1 After the draft of the updated edition of the Qing Code was compiled by the Commission on Statutes, it was sent to the Wuyingdian for proofreading. Upon receiving the draft, Wuyingdian scribes copied the whole draft into a prototype (yangben) in the style and format in which it would be printed.

2 When the prototype was ready, it was sent back to the commission, where the officials collated it with the original draft to correct mistakes. When finished, the prototype was sent back to the Wuyingdian again.

3 When Wuyingdian officials received the revised prototype, they ordered scribes to rewrite the pages on which mistakes had been found. Then the revised prototype went back to the commission, where the officials examined it again. The revised sample would go back and forth between the Wuyingdian and the commission until officials of both institutions found no more mistakes.

4 When the two sets of officials had agreed upon the final version, craftsmen started to cut woodblocks. When all the woodblocks were completed, craftsmen printed several sample copies and sent them to the commission for proofreading again.

5 Commission officials marked any mistakes in the sample copies, and craftsmen in the Wuyingdian rewrote the pages with mistakes, pasted them on the woodblocks, and recut the erroneous woodblocks accordingly. When the revised woodblocks had been cut, the formal printing process finally started.68

The proofreading process was thus time-consuming, and it usually took years for the Wuyingdian to get the books printed and published. Sometimes when there were major changes in the Code and the Qing officials wanted to promulgate the laws as soon as possible, they had no choice but to use temporary measures to circulate the new laws. For example, many statutes and substatutes were significantly changed in the 1740 revision. After the Qianlong emperor approved the draft of the revised Code, officials in the Board of Punishments felt it urgently necessary to implement the new laws, especially the revised substatutes that reduced the harshness of the original penalties. These officials argued that the revised substatutes should come into force as soon as possible in order to save people’s lives and show the emperor’s benevolence. Zhang Zhao (1691–1745), vice minister of the Board of Punishments, submitted a memorial to the emperor, in which he wrote: “The compilation of statutes and substatutes has been finished, but it will still take a long time for the Code to be printed and published. I ask Your Majesty’s permission to send one draft copy of the Code to our Board so that we can follow the revised laws.”⁶⁹

The emperor approved the suggestion. About half a year later, he approved a request that reflected the same policy from another official, Wu Yuan’an, who supervised the district courts in Beijing. Wu wrote that it was taking too long for district judges in Beijing to get the printed Code issued by the Wuyingdian and asked that such judges be permitted to send clerks to the Board of Punishments to hand-copy the new substatutes. Although some officials could ask the emperor’s permission to obtain the updated laws through other means, it was difficult for officials and commoners in the Qing empire to get access to the updated laws in a timely fashion. For example, about three years after the promulgation of the 1740 Code, the Jiangsu judicial commissioner finally received a copy. The delay became much longer after the high Qing period, when the efficiency of the Wuyingdian significantly declined because of budget cuts and poor management. In the Jiaqing and Daoguang periods, it generally took the Wuyingdian ten or even twenty years to print a multivolume book.⁷⁰

The print run of the imperially authorized editions of the Code was small. For example, after three years of proofreading and printing the 1740 imperial edition, the Wuyingdian produced 150 copies of the Manchu version of the Code and 350 copies of the Chinese version, which were sent only to offices of high-ranking officials. The chief editor provided a comprehensive list of recipients in a memorial: in the capital, copies were sent to all the main administrative agencies of the imperial court and the central government, including the Court of the Imperial Clan (Zongrenfu), the Imperial Household Department, the Grand Secretariat, the six boards, the Censorate, the Court of Judicial Review, and so on. In provinces, copies were sent to provincial-level civil and military officials, including generals, provincial military commanders (tidu), governors-general, governors, salt controllers (yanzheng), administrative commissioners, judicial commissioners, education commissioners, and so on. The chief editor explained the reason for not sending copies to subprovincial government offices: “There are such a large number of circuits [dao], prefectures, and counties. If they all need copies sent from the capital, we cannot withstand the burden!”⁷¹ He suggested that the Wuyingdian send two extra copies to the administrative commissioner in each province and let them arrange for recutting woodblocks based on the Wuyingdian edition and distributing reprinted copies in local governments. Commercial publishers were also allowed to print from these recut woodblocks. The only evidence for such reprinting, however, is the Guizhou governor-general’s memorial in 1743, in which he briefly mentioned that he had finished reprinting the Code based on the Wuyingdian edition.⁷² Such reprinted editions are not in evidence, so it seems that such reprintings were not prevalent.

The imperial editions of the Code symbolized imperial judicial authority. The cover page of imperial editions was printed in vermillion ink with a unique decoration that no other editions were allowed to use: the title of the Code was printed in a square frame surrounded by flying dragons. When receiving an imperial edition, an official had to treat it with the utmost reverence required for other imperial gifts. For example, after receiving an imperial edition of the Code in 1743, the Guangxi governor recorded the ritual he performed: “Upon hearing that the imperial edition of the Code would arrive, I went outside the city gate, where I knelt and waited. I respectfully brought the Code to my office. I set up an incense table, kowtowed towards the direction of the imperial palace, and expressed my gratitude for this imperial grace.”⁷³ Then he submitted a memorial to formally extend his gratitude to the emperor. The Code would probably be enshrined in the government’s library. Imperial editions of the Code were the emperor’s gift and the government’s property—a book to revere, not to consume. Extant imperial editions of the Code show few, if any, traces of use: there are few marks, notes, or worn pages. If people actually read these editions, they must have done so with extreme care.

The quality of the Code published by the Wuyingdian was high in the Yongzheng and early Qianlong periods, but as printing quality declined in general in the Wuyingdian after the mid-Qianlong period, the quality of the Code also dropped.⁷⁴ The physical size of each edition of the Code did not shrink, and there were no significant differences in the quality of paper used in each edition. However, the quality of the woodblocks, ink, and printing decreased dramatically, especially for the editions printed after the Jiaqing period. For example, in the 1725, 1825, and 1870 editions of the Code, the cover page (with the title and the flying dragon imprint) was the most elegant page of the whole book, which represented the highest quality of woodblock cutting and printing of the Code that the Wuyingdian published. The vermillion ink used to print the cover page of the 1725 edition was purer, brighter, and longer lasting than that of the 1825 and 1870 editions. Compared with the cover page of the 1725 edition, the vermillion ink on the 1825 edition’s first page has faded almost beyond recognition, though it was printed a century later. The 1870 edition is even worse: instead of a rich vermillion color, the ink used in the 1870 edition appears garish pink, and the dragons surrounding the title were cut much more coarsely than the ones in the 1725 edition.⁷⁵

Beside the cover page, the printing quality of other pages in each of the three editions also declined. In the 1725 edition, the characters throughout the text were neatly cut, tidy, and easy to read. Although the woodblocks were cut by different craftsmen, the style of the characters was uniform. The woodblocks were also apparently newly cut, and the edges of each stroke were sharp and clear. Compared with the 1725 edition, the quality of the printing in the 1825 edition was obviously inferior. The woodblocks were worn, and sometimes it is even difficult to identify the characters (figure 1.1). The situation was worse still in the 1870 edition. Many characters are blurry and difficult to read. The woodblocks are significantly worn, the printing was done carelessly, and the style of the characters is not unified. Characters on some pages are dramatically different from those on other pages. Generally speaking, the 1725 edition was exquisite by any standard and could be viewed as a work of art, the 1825 edition was of lower printing quality but was still readable, and the printing quality of the 1870 Code was nearly unacceptable—the text was not only unpleasant to read but sometimes even illegible.

FIG. 1.1. Blurred characters in the 1825 imperial edition of the Code, caused by careless printing and a worn woodblock. Da Qing lüli, “Santai zoushu,” 1a, printed in 1825 by the Wuyingdian. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

An important reason for the decline in printing quality was that the Wuyingdian used the same woodblocks for many years. The maximum printing capacity of woodblocks ranged from several thousand to more than twenty thousand copies based on the quality of wood and the care devoted to block preparation.⁷⁶ Because of the relatively dry climate in Beijing, the Wuyingdian’s woodblocks were prone to crack after years in storage. Therefore, if the Wuyingdian intended to maintain high printing quality, it needed to repair or recut the woodblocks regularly. However, in printing the Code, it seems that the Wuyingdian usually used the same woodblocks to print several editions. There were no significant changes of the structure or content of the Code after 1740. For each Code revision process, the Qing legislators added some new substatutes and deleted some outdated ones. Most of the content was not changed. Therefore, the Wuyingdian usually did not need to recut all of the woodblocks. In most cases, it just took out the woodblocks in which the content had been changed, replaced them with new ones containing the revised substatutes, and printed them together with the old, unchanged woodblocks. Even in the Qianlong period, when the printing activities in the Wuyingdian were most active and financially secure, they did not recut the woodblocks for printing the Code for more about fifty years after 1740. In 1789, when the officials of the Commission on Statutes intended to print the revised Code, they found that many characters on the old woodblocks were blurred and suggested that all of the woodblocks be recut. This was approved by the emperor.⁷⁷ Readers of the later editions of the Code printed by the Wuyingdian were not so lucky. Judging from the later editions, many blurred or even cracked woodblocks were still in use. For example, there was an obvious crack on the page of Foge’s memorial in the preface of the 1825 edition, which showed that the woodblock for printing this page had been used or stored for many years. Then, on the same page of the 1870 edition, the crack was still there, and the characters were even more blurry (figure 1.2). It is clear that the cracked woodblock had been kept in use. Although it was cheaper to reuse the old woodblocks to produce new editions of the Code, it significantly lowered the printing quality, which made it difficult for the Wuyingdian’s editions to compete with commercially published ones.

FIG. 1.2. The same page (“Foge zoushu,” 1a), from the 1825 imperial edition of the Code (right) and the 1870 imperial edition (left). The same crack appears just below the middle of both pages, indicating that the same cracked and worn woodblocks were used to print both editions. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.