Chinese Canadian Library Weblog

Prof. Brook can’t wait to read the newly arrived 嘉興文獻叢書, especially the Diary by Feng Mengzhen (1548-1595)–《快雪堂日記》. I remember his presentation at the last BC China Scholars’ Forum. Tim was desperately looking for living cost in Ming Dynasty and expenditures on collectables, etc. I finally found them in Feng’s diary. This poor scholar 500 years […]

They always come in the summer time, and this time is a documentary film on dance in Tang dynasty. They usually request for original images and artifacts from various time period and provinces. They like to use poems or proverbs from China, so request for translation. Sort of fun reference work, but very time consuming. […]

I have got this request again after a few failed requests I sent to Taiwan last summer. Prof. Joyce Chen mentioned the tricky copyright issue. Wondering if that is the reason.

It was stated in a couple of sources that the Ming painter, Zhang Hong, painted the 西门豹破河伯图, but they were not clear. 张宏是吴派山水画家，但他的人物画不太被重视。It would have been digitized and available online if it’s somewhere in Taiwan. I assume it’s hidden some where in a museum in Beijing or Shanghai. Will have to go through their catalogues […]

Two requests can only be met by working with librarians in China: Korean rare books held in Shanghai Library and Shanghai District Court records of 1946. English translations from selected works by Mao Zedong and Liu Shaoqi. UBC does not have the complete sets. Important and expensive books missing from Asian reference. Shall we, more […]

If the article was published in the Ming Qing xiao shuo yan jiu in 1993, you would think it’s easy to get, right? Not the case. A student tried ILL twice, and got two wrong articles for not having the correct page numbers. Dozens of East Asian Libraries own the serial title, we do too, […]

The latest and general data are not difficult to find, but from 1950 – 2003 or present? quite detailed: mariculture (sea aquaculture) production data, in tonnes, broken down by species, for each coastal province. This is why UBC needs the Access China project. We have to contact the National Bureau of Statistics in Beijing for […]

UW is requesting for 1980’s newspapers published in Vancouver. UBC and SFU users had same kind of requests. None of local libraries keep any back issues due to the space limit. Digitizing the back issues would make them into important research source for the future scholars. I am glad Ian has started looking into this […]

A SFU professor drove his son here months ago to find the texts of Kuai Ban Shu (快板书). We found a couple of books in the stack, but a whole lot more online, with AV clips. They came back to thank me today, and shared the great news — he has won this year’s “Chinese […]

Public sphere is a hot topic nowadays, but what was it like 500 years ago in China? Was there a proper term in Chinese besides 公共空间？What about the writings in public space in Ming Dynasty?