People can gain knowledge by reading books. And sometimes surprisingly, they can also find Jinhua stories from books.

On June 12, 1871, a German tourist began his summer journey from Tiantai (a county in Taizhou, Zhejiang) to Jinhua. He hired several baggage carriers to transport outdoor equipment. They got up at 4 a.m. every day and walked for 9 to 10 hours. It took them 12 days to arrive in Pan’an from Tiantai. Then they passed through Dongyang and urban Jinhua, and arrived in Lanxi. That German tourist from the 19th century was Ferdinand von Richthofen (1833-1905), the teacher of Swedish geographer Sven Hedin  (1865-1952). Richthofen was a pioneer in modern geography, who coined the term “Silk Road.” He recorded his experience in Jinhua, which also revealed Jinhua’s characteristics in the 1870s.

Over 40 years later in the 1910s, a drug salesman from Japan set out from Hangzhou and arrived in Lanxi. He stayed in Lanxi for half a month, putting up advertising messages. The drug salesman was deeply impressed by the bravery of the Lanxi people when seeing people on boats or bamboo rafts picking up drifting wood in the Lanjiang River. He also went to urban Jinhua and fell in love with the delicious ham noodles. Many years later, the Japanese drug salesman who loved ham noodles became famous for opening a bookstore in Shanghai. Many influential left-wing intellectuals used to visit and gather in the bookstore. The bookstore was the Uchiyama Bookstore and the drug salesman was Kanzō Uchiyama.

On the early morning of New Year’s Day in 1938, on a small boat on the Jinhua River, a man in a long robe wrote down his melancholy that “I welcome a new year on a river today. It has been the bleakest New Year’s Day in the past seven years.” After the outbreak of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, how to preserve the treasure of Zhejiang Library – Siku Quanshu (Complete Library of Four Branches, including works of four categories: classics, history, philosophy, and literary works) and rare collections – became an urgent task for him. Worrying about the country’s fate as well as the preservation of priceless books, he could not sleep well at night.

In early 1938, the Zhejiang Provincial Government moved to Fangyan Town, Yongkang. He also came to Yongkang by boat. It took him about two months to persuade the authorities to transport these precious books to safe provinces in southwest China as soon as possible. The books were well preserved because of his efforts and were returned to Hangzhou after China won the war.

The man was Chen Xunci, the curator of Zhejiang Library. He wrote a diary during his two-month stay in Yongkang. His diary was later compiled and published, so we know that Yongkang was an important place for the transfer of books.

Uchiyama wrote his autobiography at the age of 64. It was later translated and published in China in 2021. We learn his story in Jinhua from his autobiography. We learn about Richthofen’s Jinhua trip from Richthofen’s China Travel Diary.

Learning Jinhua stories by reading books has become a surprisingly inspiring experience for readers. (By Zhang Guoguo, translated by Jin Haiqiong, edited by Mariam Ayad)