Ancient Chinese texts, accessible online worldwide
Besides establishing resource centers outside Taiwan, in response to technical innovation facilitating digital data the NCL has also constructed an international digitization platform. This platform shares its catalogue with bodies housing major sinology collections worldwide, thus permitting researchers in any location to access precious ancient tomes and documents via the library’s online platform.
Since the 19th century, a large number of priceless ancient books and original manuscripts have fallen into foreign hands, or have been looted or sold off internationally for large sums. Sinologists estimate that more than 3 million ancient Chinese volumes are currently outside Greater China. Their dispersal not only negatively impacts academic research, it has also deeply damaged the self-confidence of the Chinese people. For example, the British explorer Aurel Stein entered Central Asia on several expeditions in the 1920s and 1930s, and left with a haul of tens of thousands of scrolls from the Dunhuang Grottoes. This meant that the first scholars to earn a reputation as Dunhuang experts were European sinologists, not China’s. Even a scholar such as Chen Yinke noted ironically, “The Dunhuang caves are located in China, but ‘Dunhuang Studies’ are located overseas.”
From the 1930s through the 1980s, the library’s status as one of the top institutions engaging in international book exchange was, according to Tseng, “rooted in the National Central Library’s collection of rare and ancient texts.” This collection followed on the heels of the Republic of China’s government when it set up in its capital, Nanjing, then found its way to Chongqing in China’s interior, relocated to Chengdu to avoid the disasters of war, and finally came to Taiwan in the late 1940s. “When our predecessors who served at the library talked about how they transported the books back then, it was breathtaking,” recounts Tang Shen-jung, secretary to Director Tseng. “It was accomplished literally at the cost of human lives.”
Going interactive: Technology has given new life to the Song era’s Annotated Poems of Su Dongpo. Visitors can zoom into the ancient tome’s content simply by tapping a finger on a touch screen.