Why is the value of song engraving more important than gold?
2022-08-11
At an auction on December 2, 2020, the three volumes of Wang Anshi's anthology, song Longshu's Wang Wengong's anthology and Song people's lost slips, published in the Song Dynasty, were sold for 263.35 million yuan, becoming the most expensive ancient books at present. In fact, it is not only the modern and contemporary song engravings that are of high value. As early as the Ming Dynasty, the song engravings were already the price of a page of gold, and there was a saying that "every inch is worth every inch of gold". Zhu Wenjun, a collector in the Republic of China, sold the painting of Yunshan by Shen Zhou and Wen Zhengming in order to collect a rubbings of the Song Dynasty. Nowadays, the song engravings are mostly auctioned in units of pages, which shows their value. Then, why is the value of Song Dynasty engraving more important than gold in the book industry? At present, the total number of song engravings collected in China is no more than 1200. The real publishing industry began in the Sui and Tang Dynasties. At that time, it was only a small number of prints, mainly publishing Buddhist scriptures. It belongs to the initial stage in terms of paper, content, printing number and dissemination, so the circulating version can be almost ignored. The carving and printing techniques were mature, and the real mass publication of books was in the Song Dynasty. There are three kinds of paper materials in Song print: hemp paper, bamboo paper and leather paper, of which bamboo paper is the most common. Since the Jin Dynasty, China began to make a large number of paper, and the papermaking technique was more sophisticated in the Song Dynasty. Su Dongpo said in Dongpo Zhilin: "people today use bamboo as paper, which was not found in ancient times." It can be seen that bamboo was mainly used for paper making in the Song Dynasty, which is also the reason why most of the song engravings came from Zhejiang, Sichuan and Fujian. There was once a saying that "Fujian has been in the world for several times". The disadvantage of bamboo paper is that the production process is complex, and it needs more than a dozen processes to complete. The advantage is that the production is fast, which hastens the number of engravings. However, the weather in Southern Fujian is humid, and the engravings are very likely to be moldy and moth eaten, which is also one of the great losses of song engravings. In addition to bamboo paper, there was also a kind of "Pepper paper" in the Song Dynasty. The paper was dyed with pepper. This paper is not afraid of insects. Therefore, there are a lot of pepper paper in the Song Dynasty. Time flies by. There are many uncontrollable factors, such as wars, natural disasters, and man-made disasters. Therefore, although the Song Dynasty engravings are rich and numerous, most of them are gradually lost after such a long period of unconsciousness. Rare things are precious. Those that are lucky enough to be handed down have become rare books, rare books, or even solitary books. According to the latest statistics of rare Chinese ancient books, there are about 3500 Song Dynasty editions in existence, most of which have been collected overseas. At present, the total number of Song Dynasty engravings that can be collected in China is no more than 1200. Every time one is found, it will almost be designated as a national first-class cultural relic. At that time, the Song Dynasty engravings were just ordinary books, so both the upper level and the people kept them. Many of the folk engravings were not protected. After a long time, they reappeared in the contemporary era, and they were still incomplete, even only a few pages. In this process of gradual separation, the five volumes of Jin Jiang Ji written by Xue Tao in Shu in the Song Dynasty were lost. The original records of Huayang written by LV Dafang and Li Di in the Song Dynasty also lost in the war of the Yuan Dynasty. In the auction market in recent years, there are also fragments of books and pages
Edit：Li Jialang Responsible editor：Mu Mu
Source：chinanews.com
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