More trainees are needed to help tackle huge task

More young restorers must be trained to promote the protection of ancient books, so human civilization can be preserved despite the ravages of time, experts said.

Given the massive number of decaying ancient books, professionals are in short supply.

Before 2007, China had no more than 100 restorers, so a lot of ancient books perished before they could be restored, according to Shi Wenlan, senior restorer at the Hunan Center for the Preservation and Conservation of Ancient Books at the Hunan Library in Changsha, capital of Hunan province.

That year, the State Council, China's Cabinet, released a document promoting the protection of ancient books, which prompted efforts nationwide.

The number of restorers has now reached about 1,000. They have better educational backgrounds and receive more systemic training, as well as better salaries and higher social status, Shi said.

However, that is still far from enough. The number of ancient books in China exceeds 50 million, with about 10 million in urgent need of restoration, data from the National Library of China show.

In Hunan alone, only five of the more than 70 libraries and museums with ancient book collections have restorers, and they only number about 20.

Hunan has about 1.5 million ancient books, one-third of which require restoration work, said Liu Xueping, director of the Hunan Library's special collection department. This means professional restorers are in great demand.

Yang Huanhuan, 23, is the center's youngest restorer. The relics restoration and preservation graduate joined the team in 2020. He said few of his family or friends agreed with his decision to take a less-popular major.

"They worried that it would be difficult to find a job. But I insisted on learning something that interested me," he said.

In addition to restoring bronze ware, wooden items and ancient books, he has studied related knowledge, such as history, archaeology, ancient Chinese painting, culture and carving.

So far, he has restored seven or eight books. "The genealogy book of the Gan (family) I'm working on is badly damaged. Most parts have been eaten by insects, leading some to become fine particles," he said, adding that sometimes he has to mend hundreds of holes in a single page.

"Most of time, I'm sitting all day long, isolating myself from the outside world because I need to concentrate fully," he said. "Sometimes I do feel a little bored, but colleagues make jokes from time to time to cheer us up."

According to Liu, the center has held book restoration training courses twice a year since 2016. So far, 16 people, mostly from other archives, museums and libraries, have attended.

"It takes two to three years to train a professional restorer. We hope to spread the knowledge of experienced restorers and combine traditional techniques with modern ones to help cultivate restorers and promote the preservation of relics," she said, noting that the center has also organized restoration experience activities to raise awareness of the techniques.

In recent years, the government has attached great importance to the restoration of ancient books and has put forward many preferential policies to encourage more people to take up the work, such as professional title appraisal and an incentives mechanism, Liu added.

Zhu Youfang in Changsha contributed to this story.