Li Wenru (1924–2016).

Many of us are nostalgic for the old days of the Music Research Institute (MRI) in Beijing, in the days when it was still at its original home in Dongzhimenwai—bare dingy corridors, peeling plaster and all.

As I pore over the substantial collection of ritual manuals and gongche scores that we found among village ritual associations in Hebei, I’m reminded of yet another MRI luminary. Through the 1950s, while a stellar team of great scholars like Yang Yinliu, Cao Anhe, Zha Fuxi, and Yuan Quanyou were dedicating themselves to ground-breaking research, the MRI’s remarkable archive was maintained, indeed developed, by the kindly and unassuming Li Wenru 李文如. [1]

Li Wenru spent his youth helping his father in antiquarian bookshops in Liulichang. After the Communist Liberation, the MRI recruited him from 1953 to seek out and buy old musical scores—including precious early manuscripts for the qin zither—and to preserve, bind, and reproduce them. The treasures of the MRI archive owe much to his careful work. Ever reliable, he was much respected by the scholars there, and he remained loyal to them in periods when they were under a political cloud (for a 1965 photo, see here). Over more than four decades he also edited many catalogues and articles on Chinese music periodicals, notably his comprehensive Ershi shiji Zhongguo yinyue qikan bianmu huibian 二十世纪中国音乐期刊篇目汇编 (2005).

From 1986, as I visited my mentors at the MRI—Qiao Jianzhong, Tian Qing, Xue Yibing, Zhang Zhentao, all then still living in very modest circumstances—we would explore the library’s treasury of material on early and traditional music from all over China, in search of leads to local folk musical cultures. Even in the early 1990s the MRI was still poor, retaining the leisurely old-world atmosphere of the commune system.

Far from our modern equipment that allows us to take and store infinite photos, in my early years of fieldwork in rural China I had to bring several dozen films for my camera (not to mention all the audio and video tapes). On our project in Hebei, where possible I photographed ritual manuals and scores complete, but occasionally when we found lengthy fragile volumes that clearly deserved careful copying, we asked the association leaders if we could take them back to Beijing to photocopy. They were sometimes anxious about this—quite rightly, since several local cultural cadres had “borrowed” scores and never returned them.

Such texts, copied at various stages since the late 19th century, were often in precarious condition.  Though by then nearly 70, Li Wenru relished the tasks we gave him of preserving the Hebei manuscripts, painstakingly handling the damaged pages from his little room behind the library. Finally he would bind three copies—one for the MRI, one for me, and an extra copy for the home village when we returned the original to them.

Just a few of the Hebei ritual manuals and scores bound by Li Wenru.

By 1993 the MRI had basic computers, so Li shifu could add a succinct printed preface by Zhang Zhentao or Xue Yibing.

Zhang Zhentao’s preface to the Gaoqiao score.

From my partial photos of the Gaoqiao score.

Many of the gongche scores in the major recent anthology Zhongguo gongchepu jicheng 中国工尺谱集成 passed through Li Wenru’s expert hands—the Hebei scores that we consigned to him appear in the three weighty volumes for that province.

With his modest and industrious demeanour, Li Wenru (like performer-turned-cadre Li Jin in Yanggao) was one of those unsung generous workers who managed to contribute to the new society despite the futile interruptions of Maoist campaigns. Quite separately from official slogans, such integrity was always much valued: local moral values endured.

[1] See e.g.
http://www.zgysyjy.org.cn/204/32044.html, http://news.ifeng.com/gundong/detail_2014_03/27/35175677_0.shtml, and
http://chuansong.me/n/1391306852337