Ancient accounts of Chinese go on exhibition

The China in Western Books exhibition is now taking place at Bibliotheca Zi-Ka-Wei in Shanghai. Photos by Gao Erqiang / China Daily

China used to be described in ancient Greek and Roman books as an Oriental country famous for selling silk to Western countries.

In the encyclopedic work Naturalis Historia by Roman author Gaius Plinius Secundus, Serica (the Latin term for China) grew silk which the Chinese had knitted into different patterns before selling them to Rome.

In 5th century BC, well-known ancient Greek historian Ctesias wrote in a book that Chinese were 2-meter-tall beings who had skin as thick as a rhinoceros and a good business acumen.

These are just some examples of the interesting information that can be found at the exhibition taking place in Bibliotheca Zi-Ka-Wei in Shanghai. Titled China in Western books — the spread and influence of Chinese knowledge and products in the West, the two-month exhibition kicked off on Dec 10 and showcases more than 40 foreign books collected by the bibliotheca over more than a hundred years.

“We have had these well-preserved documents for a very long time and decided to work with experts to create seasonal exhibitions to let visitors learn more about the history of the world. These books have been kept in the same position on the same shelf for the past decades with almost no damage,” said Zhou Deming, deputy director of Shanghai Library.

Many of the publications show how Chinese tea, chinaware and Chinese garden architecture made their way to European countries, how Traditional Chinese Medicine was introduced to the Western world and how Chinese goods were exported overseas in the past two thousand years.

There are also precious documents by groups of Catholic missionaries from Societas Jesu (the Society of Jesus) such as Matteo Ricci, Nicolas Trigault and Ferdinand Verbiest who had arrived in China to introduce Western ideals and concepts to the local residents. When these missionaries returned to Europe, they brought along copies of traditional Chinese literature that they had translated and diaries containing their observations of the country.

“The communications between China and Western countries have always been bilateral throughout history,” said Zhou.

An ancient Western book published in 1686 about traditional Chinese medicine.

The exhibition also features the book Flora Sinensis (Chinese Flora) by Poland-born Jesuit Michal Boym. The book, published in Vienna in 1656, is known as the first description of an ecosystem in the Far East that was published in Europe.

In Flora Sinensis, Boym documented the medicinal properties of Chinese plants using hand paintings and vivid descriptions. He also wrote a series of books to introduce TCM and several methods of healing and diagnostics previously unknown in Europe.

Bibliotheca Zi-Ka-Wei today comprises two buildings that date back to the 1800s. The four-story Western-style building, originally the Society of Jesus, was built between 1867 and 1868, while the other is a two-story Chinese-style structure built between 1896 and 1897. The former housed books in Western languages while the latter was reserved for Chinese publications.

In May 2015, an information center for China and Western culture exchange was launched in the bibliotheca.

The facility, which was incorporated into the Shanghai Library in 1959, is home to a massive collection of 560,000 volumes of documents published before 1949. These publications can be found in about 20 foreign languages, including Latin, English, French, German, Japanese and Russian, and cover a wide range of themes from philosophy to literature to history and politics.

The most distinguished items in the collection are rare Western books published before 1800 (the oldest was published in 1477), old Japanese documents and materials on theology and Sinology.