世界日報
- The First Stage
- Bound Volumes of the Shijie Ribao Supplement
Two notices concerned Beijing's entertainment and reading markets. The First Stage and Deji Trading Company announced a temporary halt to film screenings because new and unusual films had not reached the capital, together with cancellation of their existing contract. An advertisement offered the newspaper's August supplement as a carefully printed and bound volume, emphasizing scholarly contributors, approximately 120 pages, more than 150 works, and a balance of learning and enjoyment. Its first-volume catalogue also featured essays, folk songs, diary writing, and poetry.
This partial edition covers the two supplied excerpts, including their surviving fragments. [?] and ellipses preserve gaps in the supplied transcription. Dense catalogue entries, unevenly printed medicine advertisements, and text crossing tile boundaries limit legibility. Isolated words and units cannot always be securely connected; their fragmentary renderings do not reconstruct the surrounding advertisements. The catalogue's isolated 國 is retained as Guo without identifying an author, while 新 begins the following title. The cinema heading is limited to 第一舞台, with a pronunciation guide in Japanese; its lower continuation is not reconstructed. The unfinished phrase before the first-volume catalogue remains unfinished.
Translation
The First Stage
[?] [?] fen, jiao, 2 fen, jiao, 5 fen [?] 7 fen [?] 7 fen [?] 7 fen, jiao, 2 fen, yuan, jiao [?] fen [?] square [?] [?] 5 cun; clearing stagnation; declaration; this [?] [?] [?] entirely different in nature from an auction … … Other shops reduce prices on only some goods … … The reduction applies to everything. Address: western entrance of Langfang Second Alley. Telephone: South Exchange 3221.
Notice: Deji Trading Company previously screened motion pictures at the First Stage. As the new and unusual films have not yet arrived in Beijing, screenings are temporarily suspended and the original contract will be cancelled. We hereby give notice.
Jointly announced by the First Stage and Deji Trading Company.
[?] secondary school [?] subjects [?] society [?] government [?] north [?] continuing enrollment [?] elementary English [?] middle [?]
Bound Volumes of the Shijie Ribao Supplement
[?] [?] Volume 2 (August) [?] The Shijie Ribao Supplement is edited by Dr. Liu Bannong, professor at Peking University. Its contributors likewise include many accomplished scholars of our day. Each bound volume gathers a month's contents into a single book. Printing and binding are both exceptionally fine, entirely different from the usual crudely assembled bindings of old newspapers. Each volume has approximately 120 pages and more than 150 works. Rich in content, it gives equal weight to learning and enjoyment. For young people in their time outside class—
Principal contents of Volume 1:
“Something of an Inaugural Statement” — Liu Fu
“French Folk Songs” — same as above
“June 28” — Qiming
“The Newspaper of Hu Shizhi's Friend” — same as above
“Four Proposals” — same as above
“Complaints” — same as above
“The Manager of Liansheng Inn” [?] Guo
“A Brief Introduction to New Miscellaneous Notes beneath the Wall” — same as above
“Preliminary Preface to Diary on Horseback” — Lu Xun
“Diary on Horseback” — same as above
“Miscellaneous Reflections” (7 poems) — Shen Yinmo
“A Love Song of Attachment to Things” — Gu Jiegang
Context
Film deliveries and the exhibition agreement
The joint notice shows how film availability affected this particular Beijing exhibition arrangement in September 1926. Deji Trading Company had been screening films at the First Stage, but the expected films' failure to arrive brought both a temporary suspension and the announced cancellation of the original contract. Those were distinct commercial consequences: describing the interruption as temporary did not preserve the agreement under which screenings had operated. The theatre and trading company signed together, publicly connecting the change in the programme with a change in their contractual arrangement.
Turning newspaper contents into a monthly book
The advertisement distinguished the bound supplement through both its manufacture and its contents. A month's writing became a single volume with fine printing and binding, explicitly contrasted with crudely bound old newspapers. Approximately 120 pages and more than 150 works gave buyers concrete measures of the advertised abundance. Presenting Volume 2 alongside the contents of Volume 1 also marketed a continuing series and gave earlier newspaper writing a further life as a book for sale. The catalogue's mixture of essays, folk songs, diaries, and poems made the promise of learning and enjoyment more tangible.
Scholarly prestige and the supplement's literary identity
The advertisement's combination of a professor's credentials and enjoyable reading reflected a tension present at the supplement's founding. In his inaugural statement dated June 28, 1926, Liu Bannong distinguished newspapers from textbooks and described casual browsing that might yield modest benefits. This helps explain the advertisement's pairing of learning with pleasure. Literary affiliations also mattered. Yuan Yidan's 2021 study recounts Qian Xuantong's objection to the advance publicity and Liu's reply that his supplement was separate from Mingzhu. Against that background, the advertisement's emphasis on its editor and learned contributors can be read as an assertion of editorial identity as well as a promise of quality.
Original
第一舞台
[?] [?] 分角二分角五分 [?] 七分 [?] 七分 [?] 七分角二分元角 [?] 分 [?] 方 [?] [?] 五寸除滯聲明本 [?] [?] [?] 與拍賣性質完全不同 … … 別莊是一部分減價 … … 減價是全部的地址廊房二條西口電話南局三二二一啓者德記商行原在第一舞台開演電影茲因新奇片未能到京暫行停演將原合同撤銷特此聲明第一舞台德記商行仝啓 [?] 中學 [?] 科目 [?] 社會 [?] 政 [?] 北 [?] 續招 [?] 初級英 [?] 中 [?]
世界日報副刊合訂本
[?] [?] 第二卷 （八月份） [?] 世界日報副刊， 爲北大教授劉半農博士主編， 担任撰述者， 亦多一時績學之士， 合訂本乃彙集一月所載， 裝爲一册， 印刷裝潢， 均極精美， 與尋常以舊報裝訂， 形式粗劣者， 完全不同， 每册約一百二十頁， 作品在一百五十種以上， 內容豐富， 講學與趣味并重， 青年課餘， 所第一卷要目也算發刊詞劉復法國民歌仝右六月二十八日豈明胡適之的朋友的報仝右條陳四項仝右訴苦仝右連陞店掌櫃 [?] 國新壁下雜抄小引仝右馬上日記豫序魯迅馬上日記仝右雜感 （七首） 沈尹默戀物的情歌顧頡剛