Mystery of the disappearing great books
By Fang Aiqing | China Daily | Updated: 2019-01-26 06:34
How do the fruits of what is thought to be one of the largest publishing exercises ever undertaken simply vanish? Chances of finding the answer to that question seem to be diminishing with time
It is believed to be the largest paper-based general encyclopedia ever written, presented on 22,937 rolls in 11,095 volumes and using 370 million Chinese characters.
That means if someone had managed to finish reading one volume of The Great Canon of the Yongle Era, or Yongle Dadian, every day it would have taken them a full 30 years to polish off the lot.
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