Ancient Chinese libraries (as seen in "Hero")

[Zsofia]

Well, we just got back from Hero, which we quite enjoyed, but I had a question about the library in the calligraphy school. It seemed to be made of Jenga-ish stacks of rolled, er, placemat things - I assume a scroll is rolled up in a bamboo-slat map, and then stacked in rows of three at right angles, and can be pulled out just like a Jenga piece? I noticed hanging tags on some of the scrolls, I assume as some form of call number or identification?

Is this a normal Chinese library of any historical period, and when? The subtitle mentioned “bookshelves”, which was obviously not the actual word - is there a more literal translation for what to call these things? How many scrolls make up a document? From the movie it seemed it would be hard to take out the scrolls parallel to the viewer - would an actual library have had stacks farther apart? Could you just take out one or would you have to remove more?

I do hope somebody knows more about this - I’m pretty aware of the historical evolution of Western books and scrolls and the furniture they’re put on, but know virtually nothing of how it is and was done in the East.

[Zsofia]

Bump?

Nothing? Not even a “me too”? I thought it was really interesting!

[Exapno_Mapcase]

I saw the movie, but didn’t believe the scene for even half a second. The whole thing was CGI nonsense.

Bamboo scrolls were quite real, but no sane individual would stack them in a way to make them inaccessible. AFAIK, all scroll libraries work pretty much the same way.

This page has some history of scrolls in China.

And Google answers gives some more background.

Now we can head to China. We know the Chinese had several styles of
book binding by the mid 8th century CE. Some of the best examples are part of the Dunhuang collection in the UK. These Dunhuang “booklets” had butterfly bindings, stiched bindings, concertina, whirlwind and wrapbacked bindings.

The oldest of these bindings was the “butterfly” binding. This was the first Chinese book format to depart completely from the idea of the scroll. Although both concertina and whirlwind bound books had characteristics of the leaf book, they were both strongly influenced by the scroll and still shared many of the its features. Butterfly binding, on the other hand, managed to break away from this
bookbinding tradition, starting on a new direction for the making of Chinese books.

It is nearly impossible to know exactly how this format evolved and how long the history of that development was. The most important innovation of this format was the development of the folded leaf. - “A butterfly bound book was made by folding sheets of paper in half, forming four sides each (diagram). Paste would then be applied to the folded edge of the paper, and the folded sheets would be stacked together (diagram) so that the folded edges met to form the spine of
the book (diagram). The shape of the leaves and the manner in which the book opened and closed resembled the wings of a butterfly, therefore the book was given this rather descriptive name.” - Quote from (and diagrams found at)
http://idp.bl.uk/chapters/topics/bookbinding/chooser-frameset.html -
International Dunhuang Project

The earliest known “bound” books also come from China. While these are not “codices” in the classic sense, they need to be included in the answer simply because of a single precedent, which was the “binding.”

These ‘bound’ documents consisted of bamboo or wood strips written with characters by brush. These slips are called jian, the earliest form of books in China and date as early as the 16th century BCE. Writing on bamboo or wood slips was done from top to bottom, with each line comprising from 10 to at most 40 characters. To write a work of some length, one would need thousands of slips. The written slips would then be bound together with strips into a book. Some books were so heavy that they had to be carried in carts. In some cases the blank slips were first bound into books before they were written on. You
can find more information about jian books here:
http://www.crystalinks.com/chinascript.html - Chinese Script - From
Crystalinks. While Crystalinks would be what is called a “New Age” website, it is jam-packed with interesting and accurate information about an enormous range of topics. I make heavy use of it as a source for my own webpages.

Obviously a real library would not have a million identical objects rolled up.

[elbows]

I have seen a library of scrolls in Asia, not an enormous one like you seem to be describing [sorry I haven’t seen the movie].

It appeared to be scrolls stacked into cabinets not unlike wineracks, I have also seen more swish cabinets with glass doors but they were effectively the same in how the scrolls were stacked. They also had notations on the visable ends to help with identification, (I assume, they were very small chinese characters) and those refering to the scrolls could quite handily reach and locate what they wanted. That’s how it seemed to me.

I also saw very special scrolls which were given more precious treatment. Usually a special (elaborately decorated) box or sometimes a stand not unlike a gunrack.

Hope it helps.

[midget]

I just saw that movie, and thought to myself during that scene: “How the hell do they take out a scroll at the bottom? I be that would make a good Dope question…”

[Zsofia]

I’d figured they’d either do as undergrads do today with, say, microfilm - realize it’s at the bottom of the stack and say “Uh, I guess I don’t need that one”, or they’d get really drunk and go “Jenga! Jenga! Jenga!”

I should have guessed it was entirely fictional and that the reality was more like the Alexandria scroll model, but it seemed like such a neat and crazy idea…