Lost to China for decades, ancient classics get a new lease on life through artificial intelligence
- Many Chinese classic works were lost or destroyed during the turmoil of the 19th and 20th centuries
- However, many are being rediscovered in overseas collections and returning to China
When Cao Tingdong, a poet in the Qing dynasty (1636-1912), wrote The Surviving Poems by 100 Song dynasty Poets, he had no idea it would end up travelling halfway across the globe.
The poet, born in 1700, loved poetry when he was young and was keen on taking government exams, competing for a spot in the imperial court, according to his autobiography. After failing several times, in midlife, he went into seclusion in the mountains and wrote books explaining previous classics, as well as collected works of other poets.
He spent his last years in peace, but his book did not suffer the same fate.
It was stored in an imperial Qing dynasty library. But when riots broke out in the mid-1800s, the book was lost.
For the following century, nobody knew its exact whereabouts after this. It was stored with a private collector at one point, then lost again. And now, it rests in the library of the University of California, Berkeley, most likely purchased through its acquisition programmes in the first half of the 20th century.
In May, the book finally made its journey home to China, in the form of a digitised copy.