世界日報
- World Daily Supplement: Bound Edition
- Sibu Congkan
- Ear Ailments and Deafness
This page of the Beijing World Daily carried no news, only advertisements and notices. The largest legible notice promoted a monthly bound volume of the paper's literary supplement. The paper said the supplement was edited by Peking University professor Dr. Liu Bannong. Each volume ran to about a hundred and twenty pages and more than a hundred and fifty pieces, was handsomely printed and bound, and was pitched at students for their after-class reading. The Commercial Press advertised a second pre-order subscription for its Sibu congkan reprint series to mark its thirtieth year, and promised to keep the price of seven years earlier. A medicine seller promised permanent cures for ear disease and deafness.
The page consists entirely of advertisements and notices. Scrambled vertical columns and many misread characters leave the small-print book lists, a telephone-rate notice, most of the medicine advertisements and the Sibu congkan preface only partly readable. This edition translates three clearly legible passages and keeps the [?] marks where characters in the bound-edition notice could not be read. No source was found on how patent-medicine advertising was regulated, so that question is not covered.
Translation
World Daily Supplement: Bound Edition
The supplement of the World Daily is edited by Dr. Liu Bannong, professor at Peking University, and most of those who write for it are also learned scholars of the day. The bound edition gathers everything published in a month and binds it into one [?]. Its printing and binding are of the finest quality, entirely unlike the usual volumes made by binding up old newspapers, which are crude in form. Each [?] runs to about a hundred and twenty pages, with more than a hundred and fifty pieces. Its contents are rich, giving equal weight to learning and to amusement. Young people should each have a copy in hand for their hours after class.
Sibu Congkan
To mark the thirtieth anniversary of its founding, this firm is issuing a second pre-order subscription, still at the pre-order price of seven years ago, without adding a single cent.
Ear Ailments and Deafness
Cure guaranteed, root and all, never to return.
Context
Liu Bannong, a Newly Returned Doctor at Peking University
The advertisement introduces the supplement's editor as "Dr. Liu Bannong, professor at Peking University," and the doctorate was recent. Liu had made his name in the May Fourth era: his work first appeared in 1916 in New Youth, the most influential journal of the New Culture Movement, and he took a teaching post at Peking University before going abroad. He later studied abroad and earned his doctorate in 1925 at the Institut de Phonétique of the University of Paris. He returned to China that same year and began teaching, giving courses in phonology at colleges in Beijing and in vernacular literature at Peking University. In 1926 he published two poetry collections, Wafu ji and Yangbian ji. By putting his doctorate and professorship at the head of its notice, the World Daily was selling the supplement on the strength of a scholar who had come home only a year before and was then much in print. His editorship of the supplement is known here from the paper's own advertisement.
Cheng Shewo's World Daily and Its Peking University Ties
The World Daily was founded by the journalist Cheng Shewo, who graduated from Peking University in 1921 after majoring in Chinese literature. After graduating he founded a group of papers under the "World" name: the World Evening News, the World Daily and World Illustrated. A proprietor who came out of Peking University's literature program had good reason to recruit a Peking University professor for his supplement and to sell its bound volumes to students. The advertisement's pitch, serious learning mixed with entertainment to be read after class, fits a paper courting the capital's educated young readers.
The Commercial Press at Thirty and the Sibu Congkan
The Commercial Press, which placed the Sibu congkan notice, was founded in Shanghai in 1897 by Xia Ruifang and three friends, so in 1926 it was in its thirtieth year, the anniversary the advertisement invokes. From 1903 the editor Zhang Yuanji built up the firm's textbook and translation series. Zhang is also recorded as the compiler of the Sibu congkan, a series that reproduced ancient Chinese works in photographic facsimile. The notice announces a second round of pre-order subscriptions and pledges to hold the price of the earlier round, which it places seven years before. Those terms and that date come from the advertisement itself.
The Oriental Library and Its Destruction in 1932
When this advertisement appeared, the Commercial Press had recently founded its Oriental Library, established in 1925. Six years after the anniversary notice, the press behind the Sibu congkan suffered a severe loss. In 1932, during the January 28 Incident, the Imperial Japanese Army bombed the Commercial Press, and the bombing destroyed its attached Oriental Library with a collection of more than 500,000 books, including tens of thousands of rare books. The firm that in 1926 was celebrating thirty years and reissuing classical texts lost that library and its rare books within a few years.
Original
世界日報副刊合訂本
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 [?]， 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 [?] 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。
四部叢刊
本館爲創業三十年紀念起見發行第二次預約仍照七年前預約價不加分文
耳底耳聾
保好除根永不再犯