Tags: documents | Du Xiang-guo | poetry

This is a poem by the Taiwanese poet Du Xiang-guo (1893-1947) for a literary gathering called “bowl-hitting recitation.” In such activities, the judges reviewed participants’ works and ranked them in six levels, namely “Yuan (元),” “Yan (眼),” “Hua (花),” “Lu (臚),” “Han (翰),” and “Lu (錄).” This collection derives from the Du Xiang-guo Collection, archived by the Institute of Taiwan History of the Academia Sinica. The documents in the collection were filed and described according to the principle of archival provenance. They are also divided into seven series depending on the content: Familial and Marital Correspondence, Scholastic Correspondence, Business Correspondence, Correspondence of Social Activities, Artwork and Art-related Correspondence, Manuscripts, and Personal Collection. The record group consists of 20 volumes and 554 documents in total, of which more than 10,000 pages have been digitized. Dated between 1908 to 1946, the collection offers a rich source on education, culture, local communities, and poetry societies during the Japanese colonial period. In addition, each of the correspondence and news concerning business trading also provides first-hand historical data for researchers of business development at that time.

Institute of Taiwan History, Academic Sinica