Top 10 Chinese cultural events of 2012
- By Zhang Rui
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E-mail China.org.cn, December 27, 2012
"Guoyunlou Book Collection" sets auction record
One-fourth of the "Guoyunlou Book Collection" set a new auction price record for rare Chinese books in June 2012, with the final auction price of 216 million yuan ($33.2 million), including commission fees. The collection was purchased by the Jiangsu Phoenix Publishing and Media Group. The other three-quarters of the collection were collected by the Nanjing Museum prior to the auction.
After the purchase, the Phoenix Group organized rare book experts to verify the collected items one-by-one, and discovered that the condition and value of the collection were worth much more than the expected. In addition to the five original books, which have been identified as national Level-1 cultural artifacts by the National Department of Cultural Heritage, there are still many other rare books that may be included as national level cultural relics.
A free-admission exhibition on one-fourth of the "Guo Yunlou Book Collection" was held at the Nanjing City Planning and Construction Exhibition Hall on the morning of Dec. 12, 2012, presenting a total of 1,292 books in 179 categories. The exhibition ran until Dec 14.
Guoyunlou Book House is a famous private library in the south of Yangtze River, and has collected books for 150-plus years by six generations of the Gu family. The Guoyunlou has pooled together 800-plus types of ancient books from both the Song and Yuan dynasties, old manual copies in delicate writings, engravings from the Ming and Qing dynasties, as well as rubbings of inscriptions and seals.
But questions over the ownership of the Guoyunlou collection and preemptive purchasing rights surfaced as Peking University announced they would exercise their right to owning the collection. With the support from the Jiangsu provincial government, Jiangsu Phoenix Publishing and Media Co. Ltd., and the Nanjing Library made joint efforts in returning the collection to its hometown.
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