China’s first electric lamp was lit in Shanghai in 1882. The first time Zhejiang used electricity was in 1896. While I was examining the timeline of power supply in the province, I noticed something quite interesting. The power systems in Shanghai and other parts of China were almost all designed and built up by foreigners. Take Shanghai for instance. Concessions were the first users of electricity. In contrast, Zhejiang’s first electricity supply system was set up by two industrialists who were respectively art and book collectors. 

The riverside region on the both sides of the Gongchen Bridge, which is at the southern end of the Grand Canal of China, was home to many textile factories from the last years of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) up to the last two decades of the 20th century. On August 15, 1896, a silk reeling factory operated by the Pang Yuanji and Ding Bing in Hangzhou was the first industrial facility in the bridge region that used electricity. The workshops in the factory were lit so that night-shift workers could carry the work into deep night. The silk reeling business, equipped with over 200 silk reeling machines and a lighting system, caused a stir in the industry. The investment into the silk reeling factory’s lighting system was made by Pang Yuanji (1864-1949) and Ding Bing (1832-1899).

Pang was from Nanxun, a canal town in the heart of northern Zhejiang. Close to Shanghai, the town thrived as a powerhouse of silk export to international markets. The rich silk tycoons of the town were referred to as “four elephants, eight buffalos and 72 gold dogs. Pang’s father was one of the “elephants”, namely one of the richest four tycoons. These families built grand garden houses in Nanxun. Some of these houses have remained and some have disappeared. Pang’s grand house is one of the latter. More than 20 years after he and his business partner built a lighting system in the factory, Pang started a electric lamp joint venture which provided his hometown with a complete lighting system. Today, tourists can see lamps and chandeliers in some best garden houses that have remained. Jiayelou, a library built by the richest man named Liu Yong in Nanxun, was connected to the town’s power grid.

Pang Yuanji was a connoisseur. His art collection was so huge and precious that some considered him China’s best known art collector of his time. The collection comprised bronze, porcelain, and jade artifacts in general and thousands of masterpieces of painting and calligraphy in particular. After the founding of People’s Republic of China in 1949, he donated the art collection to the state.

Ding Bing, Pang’s business partner of the electricity system of the factory at the Gongchen Bridge, was a celebrated bibliophile. When the soldiers of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom seized and ransacked Hangzhou in 1861, the Wenlange Library in Hangzhou which housed a complete copy of the compiled in 1792 under the decree of Emperor Qianlong was also ransacked by the rebels. A collector of books, Ding noticed some street vendors use pages from books of the imperial library in Hangzhou to wrap up goods they sold. To his alarm, he deduced what happened. He and his younger brother Ding Shen took action immediately. They sent people out to buy back all the books looted from the library. One night he went back to the library on the West Lake. After the investigation, the Ding brothers launched a rescue action. Altogether they were able to rescue over 8,000 volumes of the library and rush them to safe houses in Shanghai and Zhoushan archipelago. The books they rescued accounted for about a quarter of the original collection and were in 3396 titles. It was not until in 1865 that all the rescued books were transported back to Hangzhou. In 1880, the Wenlange Library was restored. Ding Bing funded a project to restore the complete copy of the . In 1888, the copy project was essentially completed.

Today a bronze sculpture in Hangzhou memorializes and honors the Ding brothers for their epic rescue project. Of the three private libraries Ding Bing built in a compound which is now part of a hospital in downtown Hangzhou, one is completely restored. The three libraries had a combined collection of 200,000 books. The Dings’ book collection was one of the greatest in the country of his time.