Books on Yongle Dadian's compilation and preservation work, new copies and latest research.

A display of a page from the Qing copies of Yongle Dadian.

The copies of the Yongle Dadian sections preserved in the UK, Ireland and Japan.

Experts gather to discuss the preservation efforts of Yongle Dadian at the launch ceremony of the Qing Dynasty Manuscript Copies of the Yongle Dadian at the National Library of China in Beijing in mid-January.

A display of the Qing Dynasty Manuscript Copies of the Yongle Dadian.

Forget everything you think you know about ancient, untouchable manuscripts locked away in temperature-controlled vaults.

What if you could hold a perfect replica of a book more than 100 years old in your hands, feel its weight and texture, trace the raised ink on paper, and pause over a scholar's margin note as clear as if it had been written yesterday?

It's now possible with the newly published Qing Dynasty Manuscript Copies of the Yongle Dadian, unveiled at the National Library of China in mid-January.

"This is the closest we can get to touching what was lost," says Xu Haiyan, the project director for the newly published copies by the National Library of China Publishing House.

Produced using modern handmade Xuan paper and high-precision color printing, the volumes go far beyond conventional reproductions. They are conceived as what the publishing house describes as "experiential bridges".

Open the volume on Guangzhou, Guangdong province, for instance, one can spot in the margin a Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) copyist's note reading: "Original missing character here".

"You're witnessing the act of preservation itself," Xu explains.

This intimate connection to a scholar's hand is only possible because the facsimile captures even the faintest graphite whisper. What might be dismissed as a "blemish" in a digital scan becomes, in these pages, a conversation across centuries.

Commissioned more than 600 years ago by Emperor Yongle of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Yongle Dadian was designed to be the sum of all human knowledge, a compendium of everything worth preserving from Chinese literature, history, philosophy, and medicine.

It was monumental: 11,095 volumes containing some 370 million characters.

To modern readers, scholars often offer a comparison: imagine the entirety of Wikipedia, written by hand in exquisite calligraphy, and bound into a collection that would fill a large library.

Yet, today, only about 4 percent of that colossus survives, scattered across the globe in fragments.

The original Yongle manuscript vanished without a trace centuries ago. A single surviving copy, the Jiajing duplicate commissioned by the later Ming Emperor Jiajing in the 1560s, met its own tragic fate.

In 1900, during the Yihetuan Movement (the Boxer Rebellion), the Hanlin Academy in Beijing, where the encyclopedia was stored, was engulfed by fire and looted. Volumes were burned, destroyed, or carried off as souvenirs by foreign soldiers and diplomats.

What remains are roughly 400 volumes of the Jiajing copy, housed in institutions across the United Kingdom, Japan and the United States.

For decades, the primary goal of Chinese scholars has been to simply gather and make sense of this scattered content. The National Library of China Publishing House and Zhonghua Book Company have produced comprehensive photostatic editions, allowing researchers to access texts in modern formats.

But Xu and her colleagues at the National Library of China Publishing House were pursuing something different.

"Their version is complete in content, but you cannot see the original's soul," Xu points out.

The newly released "Qing copies" are meticulous transcripts made by Qing scholars who worked directly from the Jiajing volumes when they were still accessible in the imperial library.

"The original is gone. The Jiajing copy it was based on is also gone for these sections," Xu says.

"All that's left is this later copy. It's a copy of a ghost, but it's our only ghost."

Published for the first time in a fullsize, high-fidelity color facsimile, these 18 volumes offer a double revelation.

First, they preserve unique content. One section, the Guang (Canton) chapter, contains the Gazetteer of Guangzhou, quoting from longlost local records.

For historians, it's a priceless snapshot of South China before the modern era, experts concur.

Second, these facsimiles capture the Qing copy as a historical object, including its weight, texture, and scars.

This philosophy lies at the heart of the National library press' two-decade-long Yongle Dadian facsimile project.

While Zhonghua Book Company's editions prioritize textual completeness in a portable format, the National library press employs what it calls "original-size simulation printing".

The difference is profound, says Zhang Aifang, deputy editor-in-chief of the National Library of China Publishing House.

"Our version can retain the original's beauty in layout, the elegance in handwriting, and the artistry of the illustrations," Zhang elaborates.

The pages are larger, the ruling lines vivid, the texture of the centuries-old paper almost palpable.

Xu reveals that more facsimiles bearing distinctive details are yet to be published.

She compares a page from an upcoming facsimile, showing a clean column of text, to the same page from a 2024 Zhonghua Book Company photostat.

An extra character has crept in.

"It looks like a slip introduced during the photographic process generations ago. By returning to the physical Qing copy, we corrected it," Xu says, pointing out that they are not just reproducing an image but also forensically reconstructing the most authentic state of the text.

This forensic approach extends to every detail. The project's earlier publications of surviving Jiajing volumes have revealed treasures invisible in reduced-print modern editions, including the exact shade of yellow silk covers, the texture of a repaired page and a yellowed 1914 clipping from The Times of London about the encyclopedia's discovery, pasted inside a cover by a long-ago curator, as well as the stamps of collectors and libraries across decades.

"Each volume is an archaeological site," Zhang says.

"The stamps, the repairs and the notes tell the story of the book's journey through war, fire, exile, and finally, homecoming."

The facsimile project itself is a saga of diplomatic and scholarly persistence.

Launched in 2002, it seeks to reunite the encyclopedia's physical likeness, if not its physical self.

Research teams have negotiated with more than 15 institutions across five countries to access and reproduce surviving volumes.

The result so far has been 357 volumes published in facsimile, representing about 81 percent of all known surviving Yongle Dadian volumes worldwide. The remaining 20 percent, some 80 volumes, pose the greatest challenge, as many are scattered in private collections or institutions abroad.

The newly released Qing copies form part of this 81 percent.

Though only 18 volumes in total, the publication marks a shift from chasing the primary Jiajing copies to also preserving these crucial secondary witnesses.

For Xu, the value of the project for the public may not lie in reading the dense classical texts on ancient phonology or Guangzhou's administrative borders.

"The meaning is more intangible," she reflects.

"It's like how a nation preserves its memory. To see this book in its true form is to understand both the scale of what was created and the magnitude of what was lost. It's about cultural resilience."

Contact the writer at yangfeiyue@chinadaily.com.cn