世界日報
- Bound Volumes of the Shijie Ribao Supplement
- Notice from Lawyer Gao Rang
- List of Books Sold on Commission by This Paper's Publishing Section
This partial reading of the Shijie Ribao (World Daily) of 21 October 1926 centres on an advertisement for the monthly bound volume of the paper's supplement. The ad put its editor first, Peking University professor Dr. Liu Bannong, and boasted of learned contributors, fine printing and binding unlike crudely bound old newspapers, and about 120 pages with more than 150 pieces per volume. It promised equal weight to scholarship and interest and urged young people to keep a copy for after-class reading, followed by a garbled contents list that seems to include Indian fables and translated songs. Two small notices, one from the lawyer Gao Rang and a list of books the paper's publishing section sold on commission, survive only as fragments with issue numbers and the word for the Commercial Press.
This edition covers only part of the page. The OCR candidate was too garbled to use, so the readings come from the page image. The contents list at the end of the bound-volume advertisement is partly illegible, and the Gao Rang notice and the publishing section's book list yield only fragments. The medicine advertisements, the book-price tables, the telephone-rate notice and the lower Sibu congkan text could not be read reliably, so the research questions on stock-exchange debt collection and telephone rates are not addressed.
Translation
Bound Volumes of the Shijie Ribao Supplement
The bound volume of the Shijie Ribao Supplement is edited by Dr. Liu Bannong, professor at Peking University, and those who write for it are likewise mostly scholars of deep learning of our day. The bound volume gathers a month's contents into a single book. Its printing and binding are both exceedingly fine, entirely different from the usual binding of old newspapers, which is crude in form. Each volume runs to about 120 pages, with more than 150 pieces. Its contents are rich, and scholarship and interest are given equal weight; every young person should have a copy in hand for after-class hours. Each copy sells net for … Volume 2, Volume 3, No. 1, Wartime Indian Fables [?] Little Thunder God [?] Random Thoughts 7, Liang Rengong, Miscellaneous Essays 4, A Modest Little Restaurant, Mr. Zhou, Lianshengdian, On Horseback, Exactly Three O'Clock, Translated Songs [?] Miscellaneous Essays, Feelings Imitating Things
Notice from Lawyer Gao Rang
Daily [?] No. five hundred and ninety [?] 0 ▼ [?] … will not be mailed to those … Commercial … four
List of Books Sold on Commission by This Paper's Publishing Section
Daily [?] Outline, No. 593, Commercial Press printing, Four Branches
Context
Why the advertisement sold the volume on 'Dr.' Liu Bannong's name
The advertisement opens not with the contents but with the editor, presenting him as Peking University professor and 'Dr.' Liu Bannong. Both parts of that label carried weight in 1926. Liu had first made his name in 1916, when his work appeared in New Youth, the most influential journal of the May Fourth New Culture Movement. He then studied in Europe and gained his PhD in 1925 at the Institut de Phonétique de la Sorbonne, returning to China the same year to begin a university teaching career in Beijing. By October 1926 the World Daily could therefore market him at once as a familiar figure of the New Culture camp and as a scholar with a fresh foreign doctorate. The claim that the contributors were 'scholars of deep learning' is the paper's own advertising language, built on that reputation.
How Liu came to edit a supplement for Cheng Shewo's World Daily
The World Daily belonged to the newspaperman Cheng Shewo, who after graduating founded World Evening News, World Daily and World Illustrated. According to the literary historian Yuan Yidan, in 1926, not long after his return from Europe, Liu accepted an invitation from his old friend Cheng to run the World Daily Supplement. The paper's announcement of the new supplement declared that many of Liu's friends, old ones from the New Youth circle and new ones from the Yusi circle, had agreed to send in contributions steadily. The bound volume advertised on this page is the product of that arrangement: the supplement's monthly output repackaged as a book for readers, especially students, who might not have kept the daily sheets.
Why Qian Xuantong balked at writing for the supplement
The supplement's association with a commercial daily drew objections from Liu's own camp. When Qian Xuantong, Liu's New Youth comrade, saw the advance announcement, he wrote in protest that he did not want his writing to keep company with the likes of 'Mingzhu' and 'Chunming waishi'. Liu replied that his supplement had nothing to do with the World Daily's other supplement, Mingzhu, edited by Zhang Henshui. Yuan Yidan argues that by taking over the World Daily Supplement Liu placed himself in the gap between two circles: the popular-fiction world he had left behind and the New Culture group that still regarded that world with suspicion. Read against this quarrel, the advertisement's insistence on learned contributors and on a handsome book far removed from crudely bound old newspapers shows how the paper wanted the supplement to be seen, though the page itself does not state the motive.
What 'scholarship and interest given equal weight' meant in practice
The advertisement promises a balance between scholarship and entertainment. Yuan Yidan's account of the supplement shows what filled its columns: from the first issue it serialized Indian Fables, translated by Liu Beimao and revised by Liu Bannong, together with Liu's own translations of foreign folk songs, later adding more specialized pieces. Yuan concludes that although Liu framed the supplement as instruction through pleasure, he leaned toward scholarship over interest. The garbled contents list in this advertisement appears to include an Indian fables title and translated songs, consistent with those serials. Yuan also notes that Liu's editorship lasted only a little over half a year, so this October 1926 advertisement falls within a short-lived venture; the ad's promise of equal weight is the paper's sales pitch, while the leaning toward scholarship is a later historian's judgment.
Original
世界日報副刊合訂本
合訂本世界日報副刊， 爲北大教授劉半農博士主編， 担任撰述者， 亦多一時積學之士， 合訂本乃彙集一月所載， 裝爲一冊， 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， 每冊約一百二十頁， 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， 所當人手一編也。 每本實售大第二卷第三卷第一戰時的印度寓罰 [?] 小雷神 [?] 雜感七梁任公雜文四輕微的小飯店周先生連陞店馬上日正三點譯歌 [?] 雜文擬物的情
律師高穰啟事
每日 [?] 第五百九十 [?] 〇號 ▼ [?] 者不寄商務四
本報出版股代售書目
每日 [?] 大要五百九十三號商務印四部