09
Tianyi Chamber
by Harry ·
I went to Tianyi Chamber on Sept. 21st, and I have taken many pictures there. Please find the inredocution of Tianyi Chamber and the pictures as below:
The Tianyi Chamber (天一阁), located in Ningbo city, is the oldest existing library in China. Founded in 1561 during the Ming Dynasty, in its heydays, it boasted a collection of 70,000 volume of antique books.
During the Qing Dynasty, Emperor Qianlong visited Tianyi Chamber, he ordered officials to draw schematics of Tianyi Chamber’s building plan and book cases as prototype to build several imperial libraries including Wenyuan Chamber in the Forbidden City, Wenjin Chamber in the Mountain Resort to house the Siku Quanshu encyclopedia.
After the Opium War, the British army pirated many history and geography collections from Tianyi Chamber, followed by thefts from local thieves; by 1940, the collection dwindled to less than 20,000 volumes. After the founding of PRC, due to government effort and donation by privated collectors, the collection now recovered some what to about 30,000 volumes, mostly rare antique Ming dynasty printed and hand copied volumes.
In 1982, Tianyi Chamber was established by the Chinese authorities as a National Heritage Site.
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