Song Yunbin, a Chinese expert on literary history and editing.

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“Currently, people often misunderstand that compilation of ancient books is all about collating words and punctuation, writing annotations and translating texts, which only requires a basic comprehension of ancient Chinese. Many universities and institutes don’t consider compilation work to be a research achievement in award evaluation and project application,” said Zhao Shengqun, leading editor of the Revised Edition of the Records of the Grand Historian and professor from Nanjing Normal University.

The work of compiling ancient books varies in terms of difficulty, Zhao said, adding that in-depth and creative research is arduous and valuable.

A number of excellent ancient compilations invite respect for this work, and the Song Yunbin Awards highlight those works that have won praise in academia.

The compilation of the Revised Edition of the Records of the Grand Historian took eight years, drawing on 10 reliable texts of the Song and Yuan dynasties and 10 fragmentary transcripts of the Six and Tang dynasties.

Also, the new edition has absorbed fresh academic results. It added more than 3,400 collations and revise a considerable number of characters and punctuations with great care, making it an authorized edition, said professor Du Zexun from Shandong University on Revised Edition of the Records of the Grand Historian.

Ge Zhaoguang from Fudan University showed his respect for the work done to compile Integrated Bamboo Slip and Silk Manuscripts Excavated from Mawangdui Han Tomb. Ge said that Qiu Xigui, in his 80s, led a team of a dozen middle-aged and young scholars to sort out hundreds of bamboo slips and more than 50 kinds of silk manuscripts and pictures that were excavated about four decades ago in the Mawangdui Han Tomb near Changsha, capital city of Hunan Province. They spent six years in making up relics, identifying characters and revising errors as well as explaining main ideas. They present the precious relics, which were dubbed a micro-scaled library of early Western Han Dynasty (1046-771 BCE), to the world with full details.
 

 

Du Fu’s Complete Annotated Works is a comprehensive collection of works by the Tang poet together with related critiques based on rigorous comparative collations and precise annotations. It compiles and summarizes complete works by Du and relevant studies that were achieved in the past two centuries. The book collection marks a major milestone in the studies of the great poet, said Cheng Zhangcan, a professor from Nanjing University.

Doubts remain about what is left to accomplish in the future since the most important ancient books and records have already been compiled. As academic studies progress, the compiled ancient books require new and more precise editions, such as the Revised Edition of the Records of the Grand Historian and Du Fu’s Complete Annotated Works, while the emergence of excavated and exotic documents calls for thorough compilation work, such as Integrated Bamboo Slip and Silk Manuscript Excavated from Mawangdui Han Tomb, said Xu Jun, manager of Zhonghua Book Company and director of the Ancient Book Publishing Committee at the Publishers Association of China.

In his address at the ceremony, Yuan Xingpei from Peking University said that the awarded books this year are a testament to the collective efforts of two or three scholarly generations, representing three crucial aspects of compilation of ancient books in China. These books also embody the essence of current cultural studies and reflect current academic ability. We should summarize, reflect upon and promote the importance of their selected topics, difficulty in compilation and attitudes towards research. The first Song Yunbin Awards have set an example for the future compilation of ancient books, Yuan added.