Yanfen Thatched Cottage and Xijian Thatched Cottage are both Jiang Guangzhen's libraries. The ruins of Yanfen Thatched Cottage are located on Donghe Street (formerly known as South Street) beside Tongjin Bridge in Xiashi Town, Haining City, Zhejiang Province. It was built around the end of the Qianlong period and is in the style of a southern Jiangsu hall. It faces the river at the back and has a warm bridge. The building of Yanfen Thatched Cottage was originally a pawn foundation and a high iron gate, which is very solid. There is a couplet at the front of the door of Yanfen Thatched Cottage that reads "Nine Marquises are distinguished families, and thousands of volumes of books are collected". Turn left after entering the gate, and there are three halls. In the center is a plaque in Gao Xinkui's regular script "Baoyitang". Entering behind is the hall, which is divided into three rooms, with a fan in the middle. There is a plaque in official script of "Yanfen Thatched Cottage" hanging in the hall, written by Li Chaosun. The old rafters from the Song and Yuan Dynasties are collected upstairs, and the Yanfen Thatched Cottage was later renamed "Yizhiju". There is a catalpa tree in the courtyard, which has been around for hundreds of years. The next step is "Beiyuan Xia Shan Tower", where Dong Yuan's "Xia Shan Tu" was previously collected. The front of the northern head is the "Five Inkstone Room", where Zhang Tingji writes books. It is named after the collection of five inkstones such as Fanlong's sutra writing inkstone in the Song Dynasty and Chen Laolian's (Hong Shou) painting plum inkstone in the Ming Dynasty. "Wuyanzhai" later became "Sibuqunzhai", and the plaque was written by Qian Erlin (Qian Taiji's disciple). It was the guest flower hall of the Jiang family at that time. The upstairs of "Sibuqunzhai" is a collection of books, specializing in Ming Dynasty editions, manuscripts and rare books. The later one is the "Shuangfeng Stone Chamber", and the plaque is in Jiang Guangzhen's handwriting (seal script). Jiang Guangzhen still has three libraries behind the Jiang Ancestral Hall on Xishi Lane West Street, which stores ancient books from the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Xijian Thatched Cottage Library is located in Kanpu Town, Haiyan County. It is adjacent to Beihu in the west and Xijian on the left. It was originally the tomb of the Jiang family in Haining. It is a five-story and five-base Jiangnan residential building. It was built during the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty. The front door has the words " "Jiang's Bingshe" in Haichang, the stone forehead and the stone inscription "Wancang Mountain is connected to the north of Hubei, and the beautiful peaks are close to the west of Xijian." .
The owner of Yanfen Thatched Cottage Library, Jiang Guangzhen, was born in the fifth year of Daoguang reign (185) and died in the twenty-first year of Guangxu reign (1895). He is the younger brother of Jiang Guangxu, the master of Biexiazhai. The Jiang family in Haining was originally from Jiangjia Village in Wuxuqiao, Haiyan. In the middle of Qianlong's reign, he moved to Xiashi Town, Haining, where he lived together as a family. His ancestor, Jiang Yunfeng, had four children after he moved to Xia Shi. Jiang Guangxu was the second child, and Jiang Guangzhen was the fourth child. He lost his father when he was 4 years old. He was raised by his mother Xu An and his biological mother Cao. Jiang Guangzhen's book collection began with his grandfather Jiang Kaiji ( Chuncun), his father Jiang Xingwei (Luhua), his father Jiang Xinghua (Jifeng), and finally Jiang Guangzhan, they acquired it more widely and carried it forward. Whenever they encountered rare or rare copies in the world, they would spend a lot of money to buy or copy them. When its collection of books was in full swing, the famous bibliographers Qian Taiji, Shao Yichen, Gao Junru, famous painters Fei Danxu and Weng Luo, and the epigrapher Zhang Tingji stayed in the library and often visited and chatted with each other. His collection of books all bear the seal of "Yanguan Jiang's Yanfen Caotang III". The ancestors of the Jiang family started off in the pawn business, and their family was well off, which created favorable material conditions for collecting books. The collection of books amounts to hundreds of thousands of volumes, among which there are many unique and rare copies.
When the books in Yanfen Thatched Cottage were moved to Xijian Thatched Cottage, Haiyan Zhu Jiayu (Zixin) compiled a copy of the Bibliography of Xijian Thatched Cottage, recording a total of 1,605 books and 481 volumes in the collection. Among them, there are 5 rare books in 8 volumes published in the Song Dynasty, 7 volumes in 48 volumes published in the Yuan Dynasty, 6 volumes in 11 volumes published in the Ming Dynasty, 146 manuscripts and proofreads in 955 volumes, which are stored in Haining County Library. Later, Jiang Guangzhen's second grandson Jiang Qinxu compiled the "Bibliography of Yanguan Jiang's Yanfen Caotang Collection", and later Qinxu's younger brother Shu Peng (Keng You) made a supplementary compilation. The bibliography records the edition of each book, the number of volumes (volumes), the number of words on each page, the imprint of the book collector, and the inscriptions and postscripts of celebrities. It's a pity that this item was lost in "*".
Jiang Guangzhen is not only a famous bibliophile, but also a publisher. He has engraved "Annotation of Poems", "Synopsis of Mencius", "Annotation of Duan's Shuowen", "Five Kinds of Burial Books", "Hui". "Xi Medical Records", "Xu Pi's Authentic Surgery", "Jiaxing Qian Yiji's Continuation of Chronicles", "Yuanhe Chen Kejia Penglai Pavilion Poems", "Mei Chao Miscellaneous Poems", etc. Among them, "Collection of Poems" is considered to be the best book since the Ming Dynasty, and Jiang Guangzhen also has a certain status in the history of Chinese publishing. Jiang Guangzhen also wrote a volume of "Poetic Novels" and "Jingzhai Miscellaneous Works", which contain poems, ordered postscripts, short notes, etc. He also compiled "Jie Xiaolu" for his mother-in-law, Mrs. Xu.
Yanfen Thatched Cottage Library has gone through many vicissitudes of life, but it is still generally well preserved. In the 1950s, Haining City carried out a waterlogging project and demolished the two front halls of Yanfen Thatched Cottage, namely Baoyitang and Wuyanzhai. At present, there are still five halls including Yanfen Thatched Cottage Library and Yizhiju, Beiyuan Xiashan Building, Sibuqunzhai and Shuangfeng Stone Chamber. Xijian Thatched Cottage was in disrepair for a long time. In 1984, the Haiyan County People's Government allocated special funds to renovate it according to its original appearance. The famous scholar Yu Pingbo added the inscription on the plaque of "Xijian Thatched Cottage"; Gu Tinglong, director of Shanghai Library, inscribed the plaque of "Yixiu Pavilion"; Chen Congzhou, a famous ancient architecture and garden expert, also inscribed the plaque of "Xijian Thatched Cottage". Yanfen Thatched Cottage and Xijian Thatched Cottage were listed as city- and county-level cultural protection units in 1984 and 1986 respectively.
Although the books in the two libraries have withstood many wars, including the Revolution of 1911 and the Anti-Japanese War, the descendants of the Chiang family have cherished them and never lost them. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Jiang Pengqian, a descendant of the Chiang family, generously donated all his father's old collection of books to the Zhejiang Provincial Cultural Relics Management Committee. Now they are stored in Beijing Library, Shanghai Library and Zhejiang Library.
Jiang Guangzhen devoted his whole life to the cause of collecting books. The famous scholar Yu Yue wrote an elegiac couplet: "Thousands of volumes are piled up in piles. At that time, when the three pavilions were looking for books, they searched for the fallen slips from the ashes. After thirty years of mutual understanding, one day a monument marked the tomb, and since then "Shame on my ancestors," this is a true portrayal of Jiang Guangzhen's lifelong book collection career (to be continued).