Chinese Rare Books

With over 9,600 items, Harvard-Yenching's rare book collection is one of the largest of its kind in the Western world.

The collection is composed of:

1,500 Song, Yuan, and Ming block-print books (including duplicates), and 188 of them cannot be found in any of the major libraries in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Japan
Roughly 1,500 manuscripts (including holographs)
Song, Yuan, and Ming encyclopedias (leishu), including Sancai tuhui 三才圖會, Shantang sikao 山堂肆考, and Tang leihan 唐類函
Nearly 2,600 gazetteers, including 720 rare editions printed from the Ming through the Qianlong period
Banned books and women’s writing