Yanfen cottage

Yanfen cottage

From the Yuan Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, Haining's private collection of books was prosperous, with 28 authors. Today, Yanfen thatched cottage is preserved completely. "Caotang" is located in Hedong Road, Dongshan community, Xiashi street, Haining City, Jiaxing City, Zhejiang Province. Since the reign of Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty, this place has gradually become a place where the Chiang family lived together. The master of Yanfen thatched cottage, Jiang Guangyu, was born in 1825. This mansion was built by his grandfather Jiang Kaiji. He was fond of gathering books and collected Luo Youqin from Guangyu. His grandparents and grandchildren had obtained hundreds of thousands of volumes of rare books. It was hidden in the "Yanfen thatched cottage" and was as famous as his brother Jiang Guangxu's "biexiazhai".

Brief introduction of Yanfen thatched cottage

Yanfen thatched cottage is located at 66 Hedong Road, Xiashi street, Haining City, Zhejiang Province, 25 meters northwest of Maoqiao. It is the library of Qing Dynasty bibliophile Jiang Guangyu. During the three dynasties, Chiang collected tens of millions of rare and rare books, which were collected in "Yanfen thatched cottage"; in addition, Ming edition, manuscript, calligraphy and painting, ancient inkstone, etc. were collected in the buildings of sibuqunzhai, baoyanzhai, etc. Yanfen thatched cottage is located in the East and faces the West. It faces the Shihe River in front of it. There are two axes in the south. The south axis includes the street house, "Yanfen thatched cottage", "yizhiju", "sikongshi", "Beiyuan xiashanlou". The north axis includes "wuyanzhai", "sibuqunzhai", "shuangfengshishi", kitchen, etc. There are attached rooms in the south. The axis is separated by a high wall, and a lane runs through it. Each house is also separated by high walls with glazed pottery windows. The building is an independent courtyard, giving people the feeling of high wall and deep courtyard, reflecting the characteristics of the ancient library. Its structure is rigorous, and it pays attention to decoration, especially the brick carving platform door in front of the "Shuangfeng stone room" is the most exquisite, and it is engraved with the plaque of "Qingfen Shishou". The original collection of books is mainly stored in the "Yanfen cottage" and "sibuqunzhai" upstairs, "Yanfen cottage" stores the song and Yuan inscriptions; "sibuqunzhai" stores the Ming edition, rare edition and transcripts. "Beiyuan xiashanlou" is named after the famous Song Dynasty landscape painter Dong Yuan's xiashantu, which is now the treasure of Shanghai Museum.

Source of Jiang's collection:

Jiang's collection of books began with his ancestor, Jiang Kaiji, and was collected by his sons, Jiang Xingwei and Jiang Xinghua. Jiang Guangyu (1825-1892), a native of Xiashi, Haining, was named Yinfang. He is good at poetry and calligraphy. He is the author of Jingzhai Zashu, mingbiao Bian and one volume of poetry and novel. Over 100000 volumes of various rare books were collected in Yanfen thatched cottage. During the war of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, in order to avoid the war, Jiang Guangyu moved ten thousand volumes of ancient books to the Xijian thatched cottage of Jiang's bingshe in the north and South lakes of Haiyan. Later, the collection was divided into more than 50 boxes and 16 cabinets, which went up the Yangtze River and traveled between Jiangsu and Han Dynasties for three years. It was not transported back to Xiashi until Jiangsu and Zhejiang were pacified. During the Anti Japanese War, he moved to Tibet several times, finally moved to Shanghai, and hid in a bank vault for 8 years, only then he was able to keep it intact. At the beginning of 1952, the Jiang family donated all the books to the state and collected them in Beijing Library, Shanghai Library and Zhejiang Library.

The historical frontier of Yanfen thatched cottage

Yanfen thatched cottage was built in the middle period of Qianlong (1736-1795) of the Qing Dynasty. It was a pawn at the beginning. In 1978, due to the excavation of Shihe, the street houses and wuyanzhai were demolished. The three buildings of Sikong room, Beiyuan Xiashan building and sibuqunzhai were transformed into residential buildings; Yanfen thatched cottage and yizhiju were used as office and dormitory houses in the 1980s, and their doors and windows were demolished. In 1990, the district office moved out, and in 1991, Yanfen thatched cottage and yizhiju were taken over by the cultural department; Shuangfeng stone room has always been inhabited by the descendants of Jiang. In the first half of 1999, the old city was rebuilt, and the Sikong room and the Xiashan building in Beiyuan were demolished. The sibuqunzhai, Shuangfeng stone room and the South attached room were put under the cultural department. In 2001, they were fully repaired, and the special items such as the evolution of Jiang's collection of books, the land of fish and rice, and shadow play were arranged inside and opened to the outside world.

At the age of 67, Jiang Guangyu spent all his life collecting and caring for these hundreds of thousands of volumes of books. In 1857, when the Taiping army came to the south of the Yangtze River, he abandoned his family property and moved more than 60 boxes of books to Xijian thatched cottage in Shupu, Haiyan. Soon after that, he moved to Wuchang with books and moved to Jianghan area for 67 years. In 1864, he transported these books back to Xiashi undamaged. After his death, his descendants treasured his books, moved them several times during the Anti Japanese War, and finally hid them in the vault of Bank of China in Shanghai.

Yanfen thatched cottage's books were donated to the country after liberation, and its quantity ranked first in the country. Rare ancient books, such as Jin Shu, LV Fu Yin Yi and Zhongyi Tang Yan tie, have been photocopied for a long time.

Yanfen thatched cottage was one of the large-scale and rich libraries in Zhejiang Province in the late Qing Dynasty. In October 1984, "Yanfen thatched cottage" single building was announced as Haining county cultural relics protection unit. In January 2011, it was announced as a cultural relic protection unit of Zhejiang Province.

Address: Hedong Road, Xiashi Town, Haining City, Zhejiang Province

Longitude: 120.692236064

Latitude: 30.527253823668

Chinese PinYin : Yan Fen Cao Tang