時報
- Sibu Congkan (The Four Branches Series)
- Advertisement: Our Shanghai Branch Opens Today
- Urgent Notice from the Bond Federation
This partial reading of the Shibao for 25 October 1926 covers three advertisements and notices. The Commercial Press's advertisement for the Sibu congkan described the rare editions behind its facsimile titles one by one, stressing Song printings, texts fuller than other editions, and copies said to be better than those used for the imperial Siku collection. An electrical goods firm announced that its new Shanghai branch on Nanjing Road opened that day, with gifts for every visitor. Five lottery-bond bureaus, including the Cishan (charity) bureau, jointly put off their A and B prize draws for one month, citing the political situation and telegraphed requests from colleagues in other ports, and promised to hold the draws earlier once peace returned.
This is a partial reading. It translates three items: the Sibu congkan advertisement column, the Shanghai-branch opening advertisement and the Bond Federation notice. The book titles to which the Sibu congkan edition notes belong are not in the transcribed column, and the electrical firm's name does not appear in the transcribed text. The large stylised display characters at top left, the fine-print advertising rate table, the body of a Mixed Court notice and several narrow columns at the tile edges are blurred or cut off and were not transcribed.
Translation
Sibu Congkan (The Four Branches Series)
Wengong's own notes are very numerous; other printings have mostly cut them, but this edition keeps them all. Song edition. Shao Changheng's supplement to Shi's annotated Su poems took this as its base text. Song edition. No Song printing of Su's prose had been seen; now it stands together with the poetry collection, and the two may be called a matched pair of beauties. Song edition. This is an original printing from the time of Emperor Xiaozong of Song, which no bibliographer has ever seen. Song edition. Mr. Hu's annotated commentary has no copy in circulation anywhere; Ruan Wenda once presented it to the throne. Song edition. The Siku collection was based on a manuscript copy; this is the original Song printing, and it includes the appendices. Song edition. Huang Yaopu's colophon calls it the only copy in the world. Song edition. The Siku collection was based on a Ming recut of a Song edition; this is a Song printing, superior to the Siku text. Song edition. This is the oldest edition; all later printings derive from it.
Advertisement: Our Shanghai Branch Opens Today
We have been in the electrical business for more than ten years. Our prices are fair and our goods carefully chosen, and we have long been praised by our customers. For our customers' convenience we have opened a Shanghai branch on Nanjing Road, which opens today. We have also prepared gifts; all who come will receive a token of our thanks.
Urgent Notice from the Bond Federation
Owing to the present situation, and at the request of colleagues in the various ports who have telegraphed us, the five bond bureaus, Cishan, Dongfang, Liji, Jiangnan and Zhongnan, have jointly agreed that the prize draws for all A and B bonds of the five bureaus will, from the 17th day of the lunar month, provisionally be postponed by one month. As soon as the situation becomes peaceful, the draws will be brought forward, and a further announcement will be published in the newspapers at that time.
Context
Zhang Yuanji's facsimile series and its 1926 reprint
The advertisement promotes the Sibu congkan, which the Wikisource catalogue describes as a series compiled by Zhang Yuanji and published by the Commercial Press as photographic facsimiles of premodern Chinese works. Tong Guanjun's 2025 essay on Zhang says the collection, arranged by the four traditional bibliographic branches of classics, histories, masters and collected works, was completed in 1922 and reprinted in 1926, so this October 1926 advertisement appeared in the year of the reissue. The column transcribed here gives edition notes without the titles they belong to, but the Wikisource list of the first series includes the collected works of Sima Wengong (溫國文正司馬公文集) and two Su Shi titles, 集註分類東坡先生詩 and 經進東坡文集事略, which are the likely matches for the notes on Wengong's own annotations, Su's poems and Su's prose. The selling argument is the advertisement's own: each copy is labelled a Song edition and is set against the texts used for the Siku collection or praised through collectors' colophons. The page makes these claims about the editions; it does not prove them.
How the Commercial Press gathered the rare copies it advertised
The advertisement's repeated boast of Song originals rested on a costly collecting and photographing effort. According to Tong Guanjun's essay, Zhang Yuanji set up the Hanfenlou library soon after joining the Commercial Press and kept there a large body of rare old books and local gazetteers. For books held elsewhere, Zhang sent Sun Yuxiu to the Jiangnan Library to photograph its holdings; because the books could not be lent to Shanghai, the photography had to be done in Nanjing. Mao Dun, quoted in the essay, recalled that a courier brought some two to three hundred negatives from Nanjing every day, and that each day's batch had to be retouched and checked the same day. The essay adds that Zhang and the press accepted huge costs and did not put profit first. That background explains why the notes stress where each base text came from, whether a manuscript copy, a Ming recut or a Song original.
Sun Chuanfang's five provinces and the Jiangxi war
Shanghai in autumn 1926 lay inside the territory of the Zhili-clique warlord Sun Chuanfang. After driving Zhang Zongchang's forces out of Shanghai's Chinese districts in the autumn of 1925, Sun extended his rule over all of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Anhui and Jiangxi, and on 25 November 1925 he set up his headquarters in Nanjing as military governor of Jiangsu. The Nationalist Northern Expedition first concentrated on Wu Peifu, but Chiang Kai-shek launched an attack across the Jiangxi border into Sun's territory on 4 September 1926. Sun answered by arriving from Nanjing with reinforcements on 21 September and forcing the National Revolutionary Army back. When the Bond Federation spoke only of 'the present situation', its readers were living under a ruler who was then fighting a major war a few provinces away.
The Zhejiang revolt in the days before the draws were postponed
The postponement came straight after fighting close to Shanghai. Xia Chao, the civil governor of Zhejiang and one of Sun's subordinates, defected to the Guangzhou government and declared Zhejiang independent on 16 October 1926. He then attacked Sun-controlled Shanghai but was forced back into Zhejiang almost at once, and Sun's troops marched on the province and had crushed the revolt by 23 October. By the end of October Sun's forces were once more retreating in Jiangxi and Fujian. The Bond Federation notice names none of these events; it cites only the political situation and telegrams from colleagues in other ports, which suggests that the bureaus sold their A and B bonds through a network beyond Shanghai. By tying the new date to the return of peace, the five bureaus admitted that they could not yet say when the draws would actually take place.
Original
四部叢刊
溫公自注甚多、 他刻多刪削、 此本均存、 宋刊本邵長蘅補施注蘇詩、 卽以此爲藍本、 宋刊本蘇文未見宋刻、 今與詩集並存、 可云雙美、 宋刊本此爲宋孝宗時元刻、 著錄家均未之見、 宋刊本胡氏箋注、 世無傳本、 阮文達曾以進呈、 宋刊本四庫據抄本、 此爲宋刊原本、 且有附錄、 宋刊本黃蕘圃跋、 稱爲世間祇此一本、 宋刊本四庫據明覆宋本、 此爲宋刻、 出四庫本上、 宋刊本此爲最古之本、 後來諸刻、 均從此出、
滬行今日開幕廣告
電器事業已十餘載定價平允選貨精良久爲顧客稱營業利便顧客起見開設滬行於南京路定於今日開幕幷具禮品凡上皆有奉酬也
債券聯合會緊要啟事
茲爲時局關係由各埠同業來電請求經慈善東方利濟江南中南五券局公議所有五券局甲乙券自陰歷十七日起暫擬展期一個月開獎一俟時局和平當即提早開獎屆期再行登報宣布