Note: Boldface indicates major revisions when the complete book of the Code was revised and printed; other years are the ordinary revisions, when only the Expanded Substatutes was compiled. Dates generally refer to when the revisions were finished and the manuscripts were sent to the Wuyingdian for printing.
As seen in table 1.1, until 1852 revision of the substatutes was undertaken at fairly regular five-year intervals: eighteen editions of the Expanded Substatutes and four editions of the Code were published in this 110-year period. The Qing court suspended and neglected the Code revisions after the Taiping War (1850–64) started, when the court was preoccupied with military concerns. The court formally resumed the revision process in 1863 when it was about to win the war and started trying to reestablish law and order. Seven years later, in 1870, the Commission on Statutes finally submitted the draft of the Code for printing. This turned out to be the last major revision of the Code before the late Qing legal reforms.49 The product of this revision, the Tongzhi Code of 1870, was the last imperially authorized edition of the Code published in the Qing.
BOOK PUBLISHING ACTIVITIES IN THE WUYINGDIAN
Starting with the Yongzheng Code of 1725, the Wuyingdian Book Editing Department (Wuyingdian Xiushuchu) published all the imperially authorized editions of the Qing Code. As the main publishing institution of the court, the Wuyingdian was quite active in the High Qing period. During the Yongzheng and Qianlong periods, the Wuyingdian published 380 titles, totaling a mind-boggling 26,982 volumes.50 The books published by the Wuyingdian covered a wide range of genres and subjects, including imperial writings, Confucian classics, almanacs, medical texts, dictionaries, religious texts, dynastic histories, collections of literary works, and various administrative regulations and the laws. As a subsidiary of the Imperial Household Department, the Wuyingdian was part of the government. The book printing and publishing activities in the Wuyingdian were usually under the direct orders of the emperor, to serve, in general, his political purposes. By editing, printing, and publishing various books through the Wuyingdian, the court intended not only to establish its image as a legitimate cultural sponsor but also to ensure its cultural and political authority through the production of standard texts in the field of literature, history, religion, law and regulation.
Like other central institutions, the Wuyingdian operated according to strict and detailed administrative regulations. The number of officials and long-term craftsmen, as well as their ranks and salaries, were fixed.51 The Imperial Household Department required an annual report on the operation of the Wuyingdian, including the income and expenditures, the number of books printed and sold, the salaries for each official and craftsman, raw materials purchased and consumed, and so on. Even the price and quality of the raw materials to be purchased were preset. For any departure from fixed regulations, officials of the Wuyingdian needed permission from the emperor or the Imperial Household Department.52 The various detailed regulations on the operation of the Wuyingdian standardized the process and cost of book production but limited the efficiency of book production and reduced the flexibility of the Wuyingdian’s response to changes.
Book publishing in the Wuyingdian was a rather time-consuming process because the priority of officials and craftsmen was to guarantee the quality of the books, not the efficiency of publishing. According to the Wuyingdian’s administrative regulations, if there was any tiny mistake or discrepancy in editing or printing, the officials and craftsmen who were responsible for it would be punished by a reduced salary or even by demotion. Book production required a series of proofreading procedures, and both manuscripts and printing samples were usually transferred back and forth between the editors and printers for examination.53 In the Yongzheng and Qianlong periods, because there was no specific schedule for each procedure, it usually took years for the Wuyingdian to publish a book. The situation became even worse after the Qianlong period. Sometimes ten or even twenty years were needed to print a book with multiple volumes. For books like Confucian classics, dictionaries, dynastic histories, and literary and medical works, the Wuyingdian’s publishing system worked well, but books like the Qing Code and the Expanded Substatutes, whose contents were updated constantly, posed a sizable challenge. Indeed, the Wuyingdian proved unable to provide enough timely updated editions of the Code and the Expanded Substatutes.
The books printed in the Wuyingdian circulated through several major channels: (1) submission to the court for the emperor’s personal use, (2) presentation as gifts by the emperors to officials and literati, (3) issuance through administrative channels, and (4) sale to individual readers through the Book Circulation Bureau (Tongxing Shuji Chu), an office in charge of sales of Wuyingdian books. Only a small percentage of Wuyingdian books were circulated through the first two channels. Most went through administrative channels, mainly to officials at different levels of the bureaucracy, and students studying in state-sponsored academies.54
When the Wuyingdian published new editions of books about laws and regulations, it usually sent copies through administrative channels to officials who needed these books in their daily administration. In Beijing the books were sent directly to top officials of each department; in the provinces, provincial governors usually received all the books from the Wuyingdian and then issued them to the local governments. For example, in 1800, when the revised Regulations of the Board of Civil Office was completed, the Wuyingdian sent about sixty copies to each province, and provincial officials issued them to the provincial bureaucracy.55 Sometimes the Wuyingdian only sent one or two copies of a book as samples to provincial governments, and it was the provincial government’s responsibility to cut woodblocks, reprint copies, and distribute them to local governments. Provincial governments also reprinted and distributed edicts, regulations, and new substatutes issued by the central government through the administrative channel to local governments.56
On some occasions, the provincial officials could directly request that the Wuyingdian send some books badly needed for local administration. For example, in 1825 the Jilin general stated in a memorial that because of population growth, criminal and civil cases in his jurisdiction had significantly increased. He then complained that his yamen had only one Chinese edition of the Expanded Substatutes issued in the Jiaqing period, which was now out of date and was in any case difficult for Manchu officials to read. He then asked the emperor’s permission to order the Wuyingdian to provide updated Manchu editions of the Expanded Substatutes to his yamen.57
The books issued by the Wuyingdian through the administrative channel were the property of governments or schools and were stored in their libraries, often kept in wooden cabinets, under lock and key. Those libraries were built to protect the physical volumes and to inspire the sense of reverence of books, not to ease readers’ access to these books. They were not open to the public, and usage of the books was under strict regulations. Even officials and government students had to go through complicated procedures to access the books.58 Although the regulations were designed to protect books from being damaged or stolen, people complained that libraries in local yamens or schools were “locked up tightly and hidden away” and that readers could seldom see or read the books collected in them.59
For individual readers, the most common access to the Wuyingdian books was not through those libraries but through buying reprinted versions or “general circulation” (tongxing) versions. The Qing court encouraged local governments, individuals, and sometimes even commercial publishers to reprint the Wuyingdian books. For the books the Wuyingdian printed that could benefit literary circles, such as imperially authorized Confucian classics and dynastic histories, the Qing court usually required provincial administrative commissioners (buzhengshi) to recut the woodblocks according to the style and content of the Wuyingdian editions. When the woodblocks were completed, individuals and commercial publishers who wanted to reprint the books could submit a formal written request to the provincial government. When it was approved, they could bring their own paper and ink to the provincial administrative commissioner’s yamen and print the books by using the woodblocks. However, few individual and commercial publishers were willing to use woodblocks in provincial offices