“’Yongle Dadian:" An Emperors' Encyclopedia The 2024 Sol M. And Mary Ann O'Brian Malkin Lecture

“’Yongle Dadian:’ An Emperors' Encyclopedia” The 2024 Sol M. And Mary Ann O'Brian Malkin Lecture by Li Wei Yang
Yang's talk recounts his rediscovery of an unknown volume of “Yongle dadian” (known as the Yongle Encyclopedia in the West) in the rare book storage room of The Huntington Library in 2014. Classified as a national treasure in the People's Republic of China and revered in much of the Chinese-speaking world, “Yongle dadian” consisted of 11,095 manuscript volumes when the original set was completed in 1408. A second identical manuscript set was commissioned in 1567. Due to a variety of internal and external factors, only about 416 volumes from the second set are still extant as of 2024, and they are scattered in libraries and museums across Asia, Europe, and the United States. Yang will examine the book's history, its bibliographic significance, the Boxer Uprising, and his ongoing research and curatorial projects related to the book.
Li Wei Yang is the Curator of Pacific Rim Collections at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. His first Huntington exhibition, "Y. C. Hong: Advocate for Chinese Ameri can Inclusion," was on view in 2015. In 2020, Le Wei was part of the team from The Huntington, the Los Angeles Public Library, and the Library Foundation of Los Angeles that curated "Stories and Voices from L.A. Chinatown," an outdoor exhibition located in L.A. Chinatown's Central Plaza and online. His 2023 exhibition, "Printed in 1085," showcased The Huntington's oldest printed book, a Chinese Buddhist Canon from the Song dynasty. His next exhibition, co-curated with Huntington Art Curator Yinshi Lerman-Tan and scheduled for 2027-28, will focus on a group of Asian American artists in L.A. Chinatown in the 1930s. Li Wei received his M.Sc. in History from the University of Edinburgh and M.L.I.S. from San Jose State University.