"They're not estate, they can't be sold or used to feed or shelter the family. We had to pay to store them in vaults in Shanghai during the war," he adds.
He recalls the huge leather trunks used for storage. "We had tens of those chests made in Fujian province to keep the books. The neighbors thought we kept garments in them and commented that we had a lot of clothes."
Gu Duhuang was not an avid reader. But he tried his best to preserve the books by "sunbathing" them once a year to kill off the bookworms.
"But we couldn't leave the books under direct sunlight. The books had to be covered by a piece of cloth," Gu Duhuang explains.
It's not easy to preserve these ancient publications. During the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), to preserve the collection, Gu Duhuang's father, Gu Gongshuo, voluntarily offered the books to Suzhou Museum.
The books were later returned to the Gu family in the 1980s.
Gu Duhuang says that in 1991, Nanjing Library proposed acquiring the Guoyun Lou book collection. But one of the four Gu brothers did not agree to the proposal and the books were divided among the brothers.
About three-quarters of the collection went to the library on one condition: that it was kept as a single entity. The library paid 400,000 yuan - 300,000 yuan went to the Gu family and 100,000 to the middleman.
"We didn't set the price and we didn't bargain," Gu Duhuang says.
"Nanjing Library got 541 titles, in 3,707 volumes, including seven Song Dynasty (960-1279) prints and 10 from the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). They're kept in specially made shelves," says library director Chen Li.
In 2005, one of Gu Duhuang's cousins auctioned his quarter of the collection and an anonymous buyer paid 23 million yuan for it. The same collection was re-auctioned recently for about 10 times the price.
Gu Duhuang says the second auction had nothing to do with the Gu family. To him, books are priceless and he would never auction them.
"You can't choose buyers during an auction, and you don't know if the collection is in safe hands," he says.
"I used to give kittens to those who were willing to adopt them. But before I gave away the kittens, I always sent out someone to find out about the adopted families," he says. "These are cultural relics and they are not even treated with the same care as kittens."
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Guoyun Lou's Rare Collection
Editor: Shi Liwei
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