EAST ASIAN East Asian Publishing and Society 7 (2017) 127-166 PUBLISHING AND SOCIETY brill.com/eaps Reading the Guides, Directories, Manuals, and Anthologies of Liulichang Emily Mokros University of Kentucky [email protected] Abstract During the Qing dynasty, Liulichang became a prominent bookselling and publishing district in the imperial capital. Yet, most historical and scholarly writing on Liulichang has addressed only the antiquarian and rare book trade, and has neglected the promi- nence of commercial publishing of informational texts in Beijing. Commercial book- seller-printers formed a significant presence in Liulichang, and their research, publishing, and marketing practices were attuned to the changing dynamics of life in the capital. For clerks, merchants, and aspirant officials, Liulichang publishers offered books such as guidebooks, official directories, examination results, forensic handbooks, and administrative anthologies. Based on an examination of hundreds of books pub- lished in Liulichang and focusing on official directories ( jinshen lu) and guidebooks, this paper demonstrates how publishers managed connections with the state, cultivat- ed sources, recycled texts, and crafted printing practices. It argues that publishing prac- tices in Liulichang became more standardized during the dynasty, both in reaction to the state’s loosening of controls on publishing and to the growth in the market for infor- mational texts. Keywords Liulichang – official directories – informational texts – print strategies – commercial publishing Describing his strolls through Beijing’s Liulichang 琉璃廠 district in the de- cade after the fall of the Qing dynasty, the scholar-official and book collector Miao Quansun 繆荃孫 (1844-1919) reflected with displeasure on changes in © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi �0.��63/���06�86-��34Downloaded�309 from Brill.com09/26/2021 10:38:50AM via free access 128 Mokros the environment of the district. Miao based his description on over forty years of ‘pleasant times with books’ and many years in the capital between 1867, when he began his official career, and 1910, when he spent a year working at the newly-established Capital Library (Jingshi tushuguan 京師圖書館).1 Not only a record of his own experience, Miao’s diary also paid homage to an earlier nar- rative of Liulichang authored by the collector Li Wenzao 李文藻 (1730-1778). In this essay (preface dated 1769), Li had declared browsing through Liulichang and dropping in on specialist booksellers run by highly knowledgeable propri- etors as one of the greatest pleasures associated with a trip to the capital on official business.2 Miao attempted in his narrative to follow the same trajectory as Li, and drew attention to the circumstances that had changed significantly in the interven- ing one hundred and fifty years. Most prominent in Miao’s impressions of the decline of the district since Li’s day are his comments on the sale of cheap editions and on shops devoted to selling directories and informational texts. Lately, Miao complained, Liulichang shops and other venues such as temple fairs seemed only to distribute cheap volumes and editions, not necessarily all authentic.3 In recording these changes, Miao related his dissatisfaction at the dissipation of a golden age of scholarly culture and book collecting. Indeed, scholarly bias led Li and Miao to neglect the significant and booming presence of commercial publishing and to focus instead on the decline of the rare book trade. Even as these connoisseurs mentioned in passing the growing trade in ‘cheap’ books, they understated the prevalence of commercial publishing. In fact, evidence from Liulichang editions, the diaries of contemporaries, and other archival records shows that ‘cheap’ texts—including almanacs, di- rectories, guidebooks, and court gazettes—made up an important segment of Liulichang publications from the late seventeenth century onwards, and their number grew most dramatically in the second half of the nineteenth century.4 By the early twentieth century, Miao could not describe a walk through Liulichang without mentioning the commercial publishers, although he disparaged them. Yet while connoisseurs may have scorned the cheapness and utility of commercial publishers and their products, others associated a 1 Miao Quansun, Liulichang shusi houji (1911), 1a. 2 Li Wenzao, Liulichang shusi ji, 1a. 3 Miao Quansun, Liulichang shusi houji, 3a-b. 4 Zhenjun 震鈞 (1857-1920) also attested to the release of rare editions onto the commercial market after 1860, and steadily increasing prices for these editions throughout the late Qing: quoted in Wang Yeqiu, Liulichang shi hua, 34. East Asian Publishing andDownloaded Society from 7Brill.com09/26/2021 (2017) 127-166 10:38:50AM via free access guides, directories, manuals, and anthologies of liulichang 129 trip to the capital with these relatively inexpensive but highly useful print products. For a growing class of sub-bureaucratic clerks, unranked ‘expect- ant’ (houbu 候補) officials, and recipients of degrees-by-purchase, Liulichang imprints provided access to knowledge essential for advancement in official life, from paths around the capital city to the names and ranks of official colleagues. This article profiles the products and activities of Liulichang commercial booksellers during the Qing period, when the ranks of low level officials and sub-bureaucratic clerks were swelling. It contends that Liulichang’s com- mercial publishers worked at the boundary between official and commer- cial worlds, both in terms of the market they cultivated and the information sources on which they relied. Just as the boundaries of the official world ex- panded to incorporate growing numbers of clerks and degrees-by-purchase, so did these boundaries open up to commercial publishers seeking to republish personnel registers, updated regulations, and other state documents. In this process, Liulichang publishers created a unique set of printing and publishing techniques to supply usable products to their market. Official directories (jinshen lu 縉紳錄) and guidebooks to the capital city exemplify the intersecting worlds of publishers and consumers. Both products appealed to newcomers who needed information on the city’s officials, mar- kets, and calendar. Liulichang publishers formed and maintained relationships within state institutions that enabled them to obtain and update government documents, including the details of personnel and tax quotas. The publish- ers endeavored to use this information in as many texts as possible, and de- signed their textual products to support frequent updates without significant outlays. Especially in the production of directories, Liulichang publishers used the woodblock as a template within which they inlaid or removed discrete col- umns of information. Advertisements for frequently updated guidebooks and custom texts including souvenirs, placards, and couplets, further attest to the reputation for speed and customization achieved by the Liulichang publishers. Capital of a Print Empire? In many ways, the activities of Liulichang’s commercial publishers appear dis- tinct from the practices of woodblock publishers in other parts of the empire. While Beijing has long been acknowledged as a late imperial print center due to its administrative status, few studies have elucidated what the relationship between administrative and printing activities looked like on the ground. In East Asian Publishing and Society 7 (2017) 127-166 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 10:38:50AM via free access 130 Mokros contrast to the Imperial Printing House (Wuyingdian 武英殿), which spe- cialized in showpieces and collectible editions, the commercial printers of Liulichang offered many books valued solely for their utility.5 Throughout the dynasty, the constant motion of scholarly and official travel to Beijing bol- stered the commercial trade in informational books. Although publishers in other cities, notably Hangzhou, also produced legal and informational texts, Liulichang booksellers excelled in the rapid production of books compiled from the archives of the metropolitan government itself. Liulichang booksellers retained ties to other imperial printing centers and interregional networks while operating within a distinctive commercial environment in southern Beijing. According to both Liu Wenzao and Miao Quansun, most Liulichang bookstores were run by natives of other provinces, especially Jiangxi. Some shops may well have been branch outlets of enter- prises stationed throughout the empire.6 This practice drew on late Ming prac- tices of selling—but not printing—books in the capital city.7 In selling paper and stationery products alongside their imprints, Liulichang publishers drew on interregional mercantile networks which supplied ‘southern paper’ (nanzhi 南紙) and inkstones, among other things. Nonetheless, by the nineteenth cen- tury, the Beijing shops mainly capitalized on the publishing of imperial di- rectories. Only in Beijing could publishers obtain reliable access to imperial offices and the court gazette so as to print the quarterly directories. The case of Liulichang suggests that we need to attend more closely to the dynamics that differentiated the publishing and consumption of texts, both across the empire and within the frame of the woodblock print. Publishing in the imperial capital did not simply mean imperial publishing, just as elite lite- rati tastes did not dictate the output of publishers in regional printing centers like Sibao