Zhang Yuan liang you xiang lun [Dialogues between Zhang and Yuan, Two Friends]

Singapore : Jian xia shu yuan [American Board Mission Press], Daoguang 16 [1836]. Octavo (240 x 135 mm), xylographically printed in Chinese on rice paper, [42] double leaves, bound with the original yellow upper wrapper into early plain paper wrappers (lightly foxed) with nineteenth-century annotation to front ‘The Two Friends, A Dialogue on the Christian Religion / 5 cents’; a fine example.

Among the earliest books in Chinese to be printed in Singapore.

The Two Friends was first printed in Malacca in 1819 and became one of the most popular tracts used in Chinese Christian religious instruction in the nineteenth century.

The author of this work, LMS missionary William Milne (1785-1822), followed Robert Morrison as the second Protestant missionary in China. In Canton he worked closely with Morrison in printing translations of Christian works into Chinese, including the first translations of the Bible. Milne moved to Malacca in 1815, where he was the first principal of the Anglo-Chinese College.

This rare example of Milne’s tract was printed posthumously in Singapore, at the American Board Mission Press. In 1834 the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions took over the LMS press that had been established in Singapore in 1823 by Thomsen. According to the National Library of Singapore, ‘Ira Tracy oversaw Chinese printing while [Alfred] North supervised the printing, proofreading, distribution and binding of all other books’. In its early phase the LMS press had published works in English. Printed in the sixteenth year of the reign of the Daoguang Emperor (1836), the present work is one of the first books in Chinese printed in Singapore. Christian publications of this kind that were printed in Singapore had to be smuggled into China, where the printing of such literature was banned.