On the afternoon of June 6, 2013, Mr. Shu Yi, former curator of the National Museum of Modern Chinese Literature, member of the Central Research Institute of Culture and History and son of Mr. Lao She, visited the Confucius Institute at Paris Diderot University, and gave a lecture entitled National Museum of Modern Chinese Literature and Collecting Writers’ Manuscripts to a large number of sinology enthusiasts as well as teachers and students from the Confucius Institute.

At the very beginning, the National Museum of Modern Chinese Literature was proposed by Mr. Ba Jin. Its construction started in 1993, and completed in 2000. Mr. Shu Yi has served as the curator for four years, and spent 10 years constructing and building the National Museum of Modern Chinese Literature. According to Mr. Shu Yi, the research Institute of Culture and History has no specific criteria for collecting manuscripts. He said any criteria would make it impossible to be fair and equitable, and the whole picture of literature at that time could hardly be reflected in an objective and comprehensive manner. Due to this reason, the collections of the National Museum of Modern Chinese Literature are valuable historical materials and the international sinology and academic world rely heavily on them. The National Museum of Modern Chinese Literature has very frequent international exchanges. When some international scholars and foreign writers visit the National Museum of Modern Chinese Literature, they are excited at both the rich collections and its elegant environment, and they envy the status and treatment enjoyed by Chinese writers. When Mr. Shu Yi mentioned the interesting aspects of collecting writers’ manuscripts, the Chinese and foreign attendees all felt his enthusiasm, seriousness and respect for collecting manuscripts besides his chatting and laughter. The codicology not only studies the creation and modification processes of works and tries to explain the writers’ subjective pursuit, but also expounds on the researchers’ understanding of the works. According to Mr. Shu Yi, to build the codicology, we shall start from the departments of Chinese language and literature at universities and colleges. First, there shall be teachers teaching this course and students taking it as an optional course; second, there shall be master and doctoral students studying the original manuscripts; third, there shall be monographs in this aspect being published gradually so as to form the series of monograph on codicology. Finally, Mr. Shu Yi quoted what Mr. Lu Xun said that if one wonders how to write, he needs to read famous works; if one wonders how he should not write, he needs to read original manuscripts. This quotation was used as the conclusion of the lecture.

The lecture was presided over by Professor Zhou Hanbin, Chinese Director of the Confucius Institute at Paris Diderot University. Professor Jacques Neefs, former Vice President and Deputy Director of Academic Board at the University of Paris VIII (Sorbonne), Professor Xu Shuang, Head of the Chinese Department at Paris Diderot University, and several Paris scholars studying codicology devotedly listened to this lecture, and had academic exchanges with Mr. Shu Yi. They thanked Mr. Shu Yi for bringing the audience a cultural feast and promoting academic exchanges in codicology between China and other countries.

Poster for the lecture