Volume 12, no. 1 (Spring 2006), mailed in April 2006, contains two articles on the relationship between text and illustration. They are:
Julia Murray, “Changing the Frame: Preface and Colophons in the Chinese Illustrated Book Dijian tushuo (The Emperor’s Mirror, Illustrated and Discussed);” and
Nicolas Standaert, “Ritual Dances and Their Visual Representations in the Ming and the Qing.”
Preceding the main articles are William Atwell's obituary for Frederick W. Mote, founder of and advisor to this journal, and a tribute to Professor Mote by Thomas Bartlett, “Vale, Magister: Reflections on the Integrity of Pre-modern Chinese Humanism.”
Volume 12, no. 2 (Autumn 2006) is at the printer and will be ready for mailing in April 2007. Presented in English translation, the two main articles in this number are by Wu Yankang, researcher at the Jinling kejingchu (Jinling Buddhist Press) in Nanjing. The first article "The Reverend Master Deep Willows and the Hall of Deep Willows" emphasizes the character and influence of the founder of the press Yang Renshan (1837–1911), a man of action and keen spiritual insight, in the context of the social and political turmoil of the last forty years of the Qing dynasty. The second "Yang Renshan and the Jinling Buddhist Press" relates the growth of and changes in the Jinling Buddhist Press over the course of its 140-year history, demonstrates its pivotal role in the history of the publication and dissemination of Buddhist texts, and offers insights into aspects of the operation of a woodblock printing and publishing house in China.
| Expressly for this issue, Dai Xueyan, an artist and teacher of book conservation and design in Nanjing, contributed a contemporary painting of the Jinling Buddhist Press. |  |
Preceding the main articles are three short pieces. The first is a memorial resolution in honor of Denis C. Twitchet (1925–2006) presented to the Princeton University faculty in November 2006. The second is the text of a brief address by Marian Koren of the Netherlands Public Library Association given at the opening of the conference "Chinese Written and Printed Cultural Heritage and Library Work" held at the Zhejiang Provincial Library in Hangzhou in August 2006. Her comments address her concerns about human rights and the access to information in library resources. The third is Marian Koren's report on the August 2006 World Library and Information Congress of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) held in Seoul, Korea. Her remarks emphasize the advocacy role that libraries need to take at all levels of government.
Volume 13, no. 1 (Spring 2007) publishes three of four papers that originally made up the panel entitled "Books in History, History in Books," part of the program for the Frederick W. Mote Memorial Conference held at Princeton University 7–8 October 2005. Comments by the panel organizer and moderator Martin Heijdra, Chinese Bibliographer and Head of Public Services for The East Asian Library and the Gest Collection at Princeton introduce the papers. The fourth paper, by Hok-lam Chan, will be published in a future issue of Asia Major. The articles and their working titles are:
Hung-lam Chu, "Textual Filiation of Li Shimian's Biography: The Part about the Palace Fire in 1421;"
Tai-loi Ma, "The Collecting, Writing, and Utilization of Local Histories during the Late Ming: a Case Study of Xu bo (1570–1642);" and
Lynn Struve, "Ancestor Édité in Republican China: The Shuffled Journal of Xue Cai (1595–1665)."
