Gushan Park
Hillside garden holding an imperial library rebuilt page by page after Qing-era looters scattered its books.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Gushan Park in Hangzhou starts with a Hangzhou book collector named Ding, biting into a paper twist of roasted peanuts and recognizing the brushwork on the wrapper as a page torn from the Siku Quanshu, the largest book collection ever assembled in China, after Taiping rebels destroyed the pavilion that once held it in 1861. You'll hear how Ding and his brother began buying back loose pages one stall at a time, tracking down whole volumes and copying out what could not be found. The library eventually passed to the Zhejiang Library, where the work continued.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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