Dai Zhen's Library

Dai Zhen's Library

Dai Zhen's Library is a cultural relic protection unit of Huangshan City.

Dai Zhen's Library is located on Longfu Middle Street in Tunxi District and dates back to the Qing Dynasty.

Dai Zhen's Library is located in Longfu, northwest of Tunxi, Huangshan. Dai Zhen, courtesy name Dongyuan, was a native of Longfu, Xiuning (now Tunxi), Anhui. He was a progressive thinker and famous scholar of the Qing Dynasty, and one of the key figures of the “Qian-Jia School.” Extremely knowledgeable, he made achievements in fields such as astronomy, mathematics, history, geography, phonology, philology, and textual criticism. His works were later compiled into the Dai Family Collected Works. Since the 1950s, the library has undergone two renovations and was renamed the Dai Zhen Memorial Hall in 1982. It consists of four sections: the Hall of Homage, the Library Room, the Reading Room, and the Rest Hall. The Hall of Homage houses a statue of Dai Zhen, with a plaque inscribed with the words “A Master for the Ages” by Duanmu hanging at the center. Glass display cases in the hall showcase manuscripts of Dai Zhen’s writings and precious cultural relics such as an imperial edict from Emperor Qianlong.

The side rooms of the Hall of Homage serve as library rooms, housing the Siku Quanshu (Complete Library in Four Branches of Literature), which Dai Zhen helped compile, along with various editions of his works and tens of thousands of volumes of classics, histories, philosophy, and literature. Upstairs, the Reading Room displays a desk once used by Dai Zhen, while the walls are adorned with poems and couplets inscribed by scholars such as Chu Tunan, Wang Li, Zhou Gucheng, Zhou Ruchang, and Lai Shaoqi.

In the Rest Hall, elegantly simple Qing-style furniture is displayed, along with six paintings depicting scenes from Dai Zhen’s life. These vividly illustrate his lifelong pursuit of truth and knowledge with the words: “In scholarship, he never catered to popular rhetoric but sought genuine understanding to enlighten future generations.”

Dai Zhen's Library has been designated as a cultural relic protection unit of Huangshan City.