4. Spring Rain Pavilion
The following seals are found at the opening of the third volume of Lu Xuan's Meanings of the Book of Documents:
“Kuai Xue Zhai” (“The Studio of Swiftly-Melting Snows”), “Qi Jin Zhai” (“The Studio of Rare Jin Dynasty Calligraphy”), and “Chun Yu Lou” (“The Spring Rain Pavilion”). The first two were repositories for Lu Xuan’s collection, and the third, the name for Shen Cai’s own literary studio. Subsequently, no other seals are found on any of the volumes until after the fall of the Qing dynasty, which likely means that the manuscript remained in the possession of Lu Xuan’s descendants until that time.
Once again, it is Liu Chenggan’s diary that is the source for new information as to the book’s location; his entry for the eleventh day of the eighth lunar month of 1916 includes information on a Shanghai book dealer Luo Zhenchang selling the manuscript and three other books to him for a total price of 487 silver yuan.
Other than Meanings in the Book of Documents, the only surviving specimens of Shen Cai’s handwritten manuscripts are two drafts of her opus Collection of the Spring Rain Pavilion, though these are much smaller in size and scope. They were also sold by Luo Zhenchang, this time to the collector and literatus Zheng Zhenduo in the 1940s. Zheng died in an airplane crash in the 1950s. Both of these manuscripts then passed into the collection of the Beijing Library, where they remain to this day.
On the first page of the first juan of the first volume, on the bottom right of the recto, are two large square seals belonging to Liu Changgan. Above them in the extreme right-hand column are two smaller oblong seals:
The top seal reads “Jia Bin Cang Shu” (“Jia Bin Ex Libris”) and the bottom “Zhu Shao,” which is a personal name. Both of these seals belong to the same banker and book collector. In 1942, Liu Chenggan sold some of his Ming dynasty printed books to the Central Library of Republican China and the rest of his library to Zhang Shuping. The latter then sold the most precious books to Zhu Shao, also known as Zhu Jiabin. As the current owner, Zhu Shao affixed his seals, and on the back page of the twelfth volume he also stuck in a piece of paper that includes his collector’s notes.
Due to the runaway inflation of the time, the deal between Zhang Shuping and Zhu Shao quickly floundered; Zhang Shuping sought help from the Japanese occupying authorities, and Zhu Shao was thrown into prison. Eventually the book found its way back to Zhang Shuping, whose subsequent seal appears in the second column from the right on the first page of the first juan of the first volume, directly above those of Liu Chenggan, and to the left of Zhu Shao’s. It was from Zhang Shuping that the manuscript finally passed to HKUL.