A study room of one's own: 21st century Chinese intellectuals and their pursuit of knowledge

My dear friend Lücha (绿茶) is an outstanding book reviewer and the go-to person for book recommendations. He is a master of quick sketching and enjoys drawing the book collections of intellectuals. He told me that he has sketched the study rooms of several friends in recent years, and even sent me a few photographs.

I love his quick sketches. They are simple and interesting, and reveal his deep love for books amid an aura of delicate sophistication, as if his lifelong ambition is to be around books. Under his pen, his friends' study rooms transform into the abode of driven and ambitious scholars, burgeoning into ever-changing bright clouds illuminating the skies, looking down on creation from the top of the world.

Looking at Lücha's quick sketches of various study rooms, you can feel that he has presented each of their scholarly flairs in their own distinctive ways. He integrated himself into the mountain of books but kept his head low, which was adorably humble and modest. It was as if he was a wandering vigilante who kept his identity hidden, exuding chivalry and sauntering into the unknown with a book and sword in hand. He boldly explored the land, strolling in a carefree manner, occasionally drawing his sword and raising it against the sky, looking up at the falling leaves and down at the crashing waves.

He wanted to draw my study room but the Covid-19 pandemic was raging at that time and he could not come to Hong Kong. So, I took and sent to him a photograph of my study desk where I normally worked and included the row of bookshelves along the left side of the wall, which felt like I was inside a fortress of books.

Based on the photograph, he made a quick sketch of my study and named it "A Glimpse of the Study". His strokes were elegant and beautiful and the colour palette was sophisticated, making it seem as if the place where I read and write is pretty spacious, elegant and neat.

In fact, the place where I currently read, write and work is not my study room but my living room instead. It is a space that my wife had no choice but to give up. When we moved into our new house ten years ago, we originally had a study room furnished with a desk one metre long and half a metre wide; a height-adjustable reclining chair; and two 1.8-metre-tall bookshelves made of Zelkova wood. There is even a two-metre-long window ledge that looks onto the Plover Cove Reservoir. In the distance, the sea ripples as boats and ferries make their way towards Tap Mun (Grass Island) from Tolo Harbour. A feast for the eyes!

Before long, painting albums, books and magazines flooded my house and the study room has long become a storeroom for my stacks and piles of books and magazines. Every nook and cranny of the bookshelves, my desk, the chair and the floor was filled with books and stationery, while the window ledge was covered with stacks and stacks of newspaper cuttings and Xuan paper (宣纸, a kind of paper originating in ancient China used for writing and painting) - where is the elegance of a study room?

I could not even take a step inside to find a book and it felt as if I had entered a dense forest with trees and bushes everywhere, and each step was an obstacle to overcome. After shifting a stack of books outside the door, another stack would be piled even higher, like an acrobat trying to balance seven, eight tables and chairs on stage - books and magazines of different sizes became props, precariously swaying from side to side, a tragic landslide waiting to happen at any moment.

Living in Hong Kong where an inch of land is an inch of gold, spaces are tight and possessing an excessive amount of books could spell disaster. My study room became a landfill for my books and its function has completely vanished - I can no longer read or write in my study room, which has become but a "study-saster".

Seeing that I didn't even have a place to write calligraphy, my wife felt for me and sacrificed the dining table for me to set out my Four Treasures of the Study (文房四宝, brush, ink, paper and ink stone) and practise calligraphy. She also split the living room into two sections and placed two desks on one side, to function as our workspace. It was just a "study room" that was put together without much thought and could hardly count as an elegant and neat space.

But the desk is perfectly placed in the living room, directly facing the floor-to-ceiling window. I am greeted by the waters of Tolo Harbour, as well as Pat Sin Leng (八仙岭, Ridge of the Eight Immortals) and Tai Mo Shan across the bay whenever I look up.

The mountain mists complement the colours of the sea; the morning rays keep the sunset glows company, adding to the call of nature and idyllic beauty. While this does not always lead to creative inspiration, I can always stare out of my window from my desk for a long time and let my thoughts take flight.

On sunny days, I could even see a speedboat cruising across the waters, with a water skier towed behind, forming two silvery-white streaks on the surface of the water, reflecting the sunlight and creating a colourful oil painting of a tropical scene.

I could not help but feel that while I am sitting inside this fortress of books, my thoughts could drift away from my desk at any time, as if I were on a beach vacation and was already in the scenic city of Miami.

My friend asked me how big my book collection is. After some calculations, I realised that I have about 30,000 to 50,000 books in Hong Kong, which are stacked and piled up around the house, giving me a lot of trouble.

Apart from the living room, the two guest rooms are also taken over by bookshelves, with my books generally arranged by genre. There are dictionaries and bibliographies, books on theatre and opera, Ming and Qing dynasty history, paintings and ceramics, philosophy, Chinese and foreign poetry, as well as tea and gardens. Although my book collection is huge, it is very different from that of a book collector.

My motive for buying books is more similar to Chinese writer and literary critic Lu Xun's - because of interest. I buy books to read, not to collect, and so I do not pay much attention to the book edition and do not own many coveted rare books. Previously, I had a collection of English books in my New York study room. Many of them were rare books on Chinese history, culture and travel published in the late 19th century in the US. They were basically first editions and mostly used traditional binding methods with uncut pages.

I found these books at old bookstores in the countryside of Boston, New York and New England, and they were mostly left behind by local aristocratic families. Most of the books were still uncut, and seemed to be used by the families just to keep up appearances. I had collected 70 to 80 titles over two decades and temporarily stored them in a basement somewhere when I left the US. But I am not sure why I have never seen the books again and it is difficult for me to go look for them as well. Since then, I have never thought about collecting rare books again.

I also had a batch of duplicates I bought from the Harvard-Yenching Library. It included books Chinese historian and sinologist William Hung donated after his death; a collection of Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies - over 20 issues from its inaugural issue - donated by former American Ambassador to Japan and Harvard professor Edwin O. Reischauer; and over ten years of compilation volumes of Taiwan's Zhuanji Wenxue (Biography Literature Magazine), also from its inaugural issue.

I later left the US in a hurry to teach in Hong Kong. My brother handled my books for me, and they were all donated to the Queens Public Library at Flushing in New York. I also loved reading mystery fiction in the past and thus bought the whole collection of detective novels by Agatha Christie and Georges Simenon. I roughly had over 100 books of this genre, but they were all let go of in the end.

This made me realise that disasters and calamities brought about by wars are probably the most frightening things that can happen to book collections during the agricultural era, when most people preferred settling down in an area over moving elsewhere. But in the industrial and digital age where people frequently move from place to place, the worst calamity that can happen to book collections is perhaps the need to uproot to a faraway place, like a mythological beast Kunpeng (鲲鹏) flying 90,000 li (Chinese mile).

There are also some books that I always carry around for research purposes. Half a century later, these books have also become rare treasures. They include Arthur Waley's Ballads and Stories from Tun-huang (first edition, published by George Allen & Unwin in 1960); Pan Chengbi and Gu Tinglong's Mingdai banben tulu chubian (《明代版本图录初编》) (published by Shanghai's Kaiming Book Co. in 1941); and Gu Ling's Guyunmei bujuji shouji (《顾云美卜居集手迹》) (photocopy, published by Zhonghua Book Company in Shanghai in 1958).

I have many of such books that I often refer to. To book collectors, they may just be bricks and stones and cannot even count as classics. But my copy of Mingdai banben tulu chubian is unlike others - the title page includes a handwritten note by artist Gu Tinglong, detailing his experience when he saw this set of books. When he visited the US in 1986, he stayed at my New York home and saw the four volumes of illustrations he had compiled and printed in Shanghai during the "solitary island" period in wartime.

He thought back on past events and realised that four decades had passed. He lamented that he did not even have this set of books himself anymore, and that the coated paper version of the collection had already been destroyed. On the occasion of meeting an old acquaintance during a visit to the US, he left a precious ink inscription on the flyleaf in between the cover and the title page of the book, filling the page neatly in small regular script (小楷).

The scope of contemporary study room sketches by Lücha is quite amazing. They covered the study rooms of 22 literati, 27 academics, 24 calligraphers, 32 friends, and 15 friends who have since passed on. He drew a whopping 120 study room sketches - this numbers more than the 108 outlaws in Chinese novel Water Margin, and certainly more than the 40 illustrations by Chinese painter Chen Hongshou depicting the outlaws. What an extraordinary feat!

Most of their study rooms have sophisticated names, such as Zhong Shuhe's "Nian Lou" (念楼, The Tower of Remembrance); Chen Zishan's "Mei Chuan Shu She" (梅川书舍); and Li Hui's "Kan Yun Zhai" (看云斋). He even asked each of them to list a few recommended or treasured books, and I was so tempted to get all of them.

Although my study room has already become a storeroom and I never had the chance to hang up a plaque bearing the name of my study, I once had a hypothetical name for my future study and even had a renowned figure inscribe it for me.

It happened 20 years ago when Chinese artist C. C. Wang came to Hong Kong for a rare Chinese painting and calligraphy auction and visited CityU's Chinese Civilisation Centre. I invited him to write a couplet for the centre's entrance, using Zhu Xi's saying: there is always something to gain from examining old wisdom or new knowledge.

He asked if I wanted him to write something else, and I casually asked if he could help me inscribe the name of my study.

Mr Wang was very polite and asked for the name of my study. Actually, I had not bought a house in Hong Kong at that time and did not have my own study room. I suddenly thought of a line in the "Record on the Subject of Education" (学记) chapter of the Book of Rites (《礼记》): "Therefore when he learns, one knows his own deficiencies; when he teaches, he knows the difficulties of learning... after he knows the difficulties, he is able to stimulate himself to effort."

I thus said that "Knowing My Own Deficiencies" (知不足轩) would be a fitting name for my study.

Mr Wang returned to the hotel to rest, and asked a friend to deliver to me a one-and-a-half-metre-wide horizontal scroll bearing the words "Knowing My Own Deficiencies" the next morning. His brushwork was thick and heavy, exhibiting vigour and vitality. I asked a master paperhanger to mount and frame it for me, and it became an art piece itself.

Because of its relatively large size, I have always kept it aside. I wanted to hang it up once I had set up my own study room but could never find a suitable spot for it. I never got around to it again, and my study room had turned into a storeroom since. My dream of owning a refined study room was dashed and the plaque was drowned in my "plague of books".

Lücha sketched over 100 study rooms of modern intellectuals, including incredibly exquisite book collections, elegant study rooms with a plethora of books, and also a storeroom of books like mine.

These illustrate the true picture of contemporary book collections and book piles, and display the environment of 21st century Chinese intellectuals who are ever so diligent and ever so tireless in their pursuit of knowledge. His sketches leave behind a precious record of private book collections and study rooms in the history of Chinese books.

Related: Woman traveller of the Qing dynasty Qian Shan Shili: Education is the bedrock of a nation | The book box: A cultural journey from Geylang to China and back