世界日報
- Sibu Congkan: Second Subscription Offer
- Advance Notice of Subscription Sales: The Old-Edition Twenty-Four Histories and the Sibu Congkan Continuation
- Urgent Notice from the Peking Telephone Bureau
This partial reading of the Shijie Ribao page of 3 November 1926 covers three notices from the lower part of the page. The Commercial Press advertised a second subscription for its Sibu congkan reprint series of 323 titles and 2,100 volumes, promising to hold the price set seven years earlier despite higher labour and material costs, as a gesture for its thirtieth anniversary. A second advertisement previewed a set of the Twenty-Four Histories reproduced from old editions, criticising the familiar Wuying Hall printing for missing passages and misprints, and announced a continuation of the Sibu congkan. The Peking Telephone Bureau published an urgent notice quoting an official instruction about Zhili–Shandong Allied Army scrip that it had earlier been ordered to accept in part payment.
This is a partial reading of three notices in the lower part of the page. Each excerpt is a fragment: the Sibu congkan advertisement has one illegible character, marked [?]; the Twenty-Four Histories notice starts and ends mid-sentence; and the telephone bureau notice breaks off before it says what had become of the scrip. Some columns are cut at the edges of the image tiles. The small print of the medicine advertisements on the right is dark or blurred and was not read. Uncertain names and figures were left out.
Translation
Sibu Congkan: Second Subscription Offer
The complete collection: 323 titles, 8,548 juan, 2,100 volumes, 158,000 leaves. The price at the first subscription was already low. Many years have passed since then, and labour, materials and everything else have grown more expensive. To mark the thirtieth anniversary of its founding [?], this House will keep the subscription at the subscription price of seven years ago, without adding a single cent.
Advance Notice of Subscription Sales: The Old-Edition Twenty-Four Histories and the Sibu Congkan Continuation
Also printed separately as individual works. However, the public has long been weary of the all-too-familiar Wuying Hall edition; although its collation and carving are fine, missing passages and erroneous characters cannot always be avoided. Our House planned to compile and print a complete set of the histories from old editions, and after searching for several years we have fortunately been able to complete the task. Except for the History of Ming, for which the Palace edition is still used (but with collation notes appended separately), the rest
Urgent Notice from the Peking Telephone Bureau
The instruction states: Previously, on notice from the Zhili–Shandong Allied Army authorities, orders were issued to each office to accept it in part payment, as is on record. At present this military scrip has already
Context
The Commercial Press and the Sibu Congkan reprint series
The first advertisement concerns the Sibu congkan, the series of photographic reprints of classical Chinese works issued by the Commercial Press and compiled by Zhang Yuanji. The whole publication ran from 1919 to 1936 and eventually comprised 504 works in 3,134 volumes across three series, which appeared in 1922, 1932 and 1936. The original series used photolithography, which produced better texts than any typeset editions then available. The figures in the advertisement (323 titles, 8,548 juan, 2,100 volumes, 158,000 leaves) describe the first series, the only one published by 1926, and so cover a narrower scope than the combined totals of all three series. The ad's statement that the first subscription had opened seven years earlier fits the 1919 starting date of the enterprise. Its promise to hold the old price despite rising labour and material costs, framed as a gesture for the firm's thirtieth anniversary, is the publisher's own sales argument as printed on this page.
Why old editions were to replace the Wuying Hall histories
The second advertisement announces a parallel project: a set of the Twenty-Four Histories reproduced from old editions, sold alongside a continuation of the Sibu congkan. The Twenty-Four Histories are the official histories of China's dynasties; the collection received that title in 1775, the 40th year of the Qianlong reign, and the set as fixed and edited under the Qing runs to 3,213 volumes and about 40 million words. The advertisement itself calls the Wuying Hall edition the Palace edition and argues that, however careful its collation, it contains lost passages and wrong characters, which is the publisher's case for going back to older printings. The single exception it makes, the History of Ming, reflects its late origin: the Ming history was completed only under the Qing, after which the collection came to be called the Twenty-Two Histories. That timing helps explain why the publisher kept the Palace text for this one history and promised separate collation notes instead. The notice was a forecast; the second Sibu congkan series appeared only in 1932, several years after this page.
The Zhili–Shandong Allied Army and its military scrip
The telephone bureau's notice quotes an instruction recalling that, on notice from the Zhili–Shandong Allied Army authorities, offices had been ordered to accept that army's scrip as part of payments. That force was associated with Zhang Zongchang, the Fengtian-clique warlord whose commands included the Shandong–Zhili Army. Zhang was appointed military governor of Shandong and ruled it as a warlord until May 1928; when the Nationalist Northern Expedition began he stayed loyal to the Fengtian clique, briefly retaking Shanghai before his army was driven north. His Shandong regime imposed excessive taxes, starved public institutions of funds and printed so much provincial currency that it became worthless. That record helps explain why a Peking utility had to issue an urgent public notice about army-issued paper it had been told to accept in settlement of its bills.
Original
四部叢刊第二次預約
全書三百二十三種八千五百四十八卷二千一百冊十五萬八千葉第一次預約定價本廉距今多年人工材料種種加昂本館爲創業三十年紀 [?] 預約仍照七年前預約價不加分文
古本二十四史四部叢刊續集發售預約預告
另印單行惟武英殿版世人久厭習見校刻雖精而脫簡訛字時所不免敝館擬輯印古本全史蒐求數年幸得集事除明史仍用殿版外 （但另附考證） 餘
北京電話局緊要廣告
訓令內開前准直魯聯軍當局分飭搭收在案現在此項軍用票業