Rare Book Preservation Society
Chinese book preservation group during WW2 / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Rare Book Preservation Society (文献保存同志会) was founded in 1940 by Zheng Zhenduo (郑振铎), Zhang Shouyong (张寿镛), He Bingsong (何炳松), Zhang Yuanji (张元济), Zhang Fengju (张凤举), and Chung-Chang Shen (沈仲章)for the purpose of secretly acquiring and preserving rare books and manuscripts in the Shanghai Jiangnan region. These cultural assets have been accumulated by a number of famous private libraries some over 1,000 years.[citation needed]
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They faced Japanese looting and forced sale under duress. In less than two years, the Society succeeded in saving over 130,000 volumes in the lands controlled by the Japanese. One hundred thirty crates were sent to Hong Kong (then a British colony) for safekeeping. Despite their best efforts, the entire collection was looted anyway when the Japanese later overran Hong Kong. Fortunately, after WWII and the Japanese surrender, Zhang Fengju 张凤举 (fluent in French, English and Japanese) was sent to Japan in April 1946 and recovered the collection after working closely with the U.S. Occupation forces in Tokyo. These were successively shipped back to Shanghai for the National Central Library 中央图书馆 in Taiwan.[citation needed]