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Inside Asia’s oldest private library, guarding ancient scrolls in the age of AI_我的网站

一 |     　　一个随手丢掉的矿泉水瓶子，背后可能正养活着一家上市公司。    

    Visitors view ancient documents at Tianyige Museum. Photo: Courtesy of Tianyige Museum
Huang Gang is in his fifties. Every day, he sits before a computer screen at Tianyige Museum (Tianyige), flipping through ancient books - digitally.
As director of the information technology department at Tianyige Museum in Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang Province, home to Asia's oldest surviving private library and one of the world's three oldest remaining family-run libraries, his job title may seem far removed from old books. Yet his work centers on them: converting brittle, thread-bound antique volumes into searchable, zoomable digital files accessible on screen.
For years, Tianyige has carried out digitization in batches guided by its mission: rescue-oriented preservation, scholarly organization and public-oriented outreach. Its teams have scanned more than 3.4 million pages of ancient texts. The institution rolled out its Ancient‑Book Digital Service Platform back in 2009. By 2025, the platform had drawn over 4.6 million total visits.
To outsiders, this might look like a headlong rush into digitization. For Huang and his colleagues, it is delicate work balanced between fast‑evolving artificial intelligence models and the reverence owed to fragile paper relics. "Technology is a tool, ancient books are artifacts, and reading is the ultimate purpose," Huang told the Global Times.
    Huang Gang, director of the information technology department of Tianyige Museum, works on the digitization of ancient books. Photo: Courtesy of Tianyige Museum
Beyond tech boundaries
Deep in the storage vaults of Tianyige, tens of thousands of ancient volumes rest in silence. Some pages are curled and fragile; others bear faded script -the accumulated marks of centuries. Vulnerable to aging, wear and external damage, these precious paper relics can hardly sustain long-term repeated manual consultation, making digital preservation an indispensable way to inherit ancient book resources. 
Huang's daily work involves leading his team in the digitization of the library's entire collection of ancient books, paintings and cultural relics, bringing rare treasures out of the shadows and into public view.
AI now serves as a core auxiliary tool for ancient-book digitization and research. Huang's group initially built character-recognition frameworks based on optical-character-recognition technology. By cross-checking outputs across different models, ancient Chinese characters, damaged script and blurry handwriting.
According to Zhejiang Daily, by August 2025, the Tianyige's digital platform had added over 3,700 new digitized book sets, lifting its total digital holdings past 20,000 volumes. 
Digitization is never  a purely technical exercise;  in-depth scholarly expertise in ancient texts remains indispensable. Huang frequently collaborates with Zhao Xuteng, a museum librarian specializing in classical literature. Zhao is responsible for selecting which volumes to digitize, evaluating editions, studying content, and identifying works of significant academic or public value. While one team focuses on the technical execution, another digs deep into the textual substance, ensuring that cold digital capture remains faithful to the historical and bibliographic logic of the originals.
    A staff member of Tianyige Museum view digital resources of ancient documents in the museum's ancient book reading room, on August 18, 2026. Photo: Lin Xiaoyi/GT
Staying true to  reading
When he is not writing code, Huang keeps asking one fundamental question: What should technology actually do for people? "All technology ultimately serves the act of reading itself," he said. "It can never replace that."
With the rapid rise of large language models, demand for high-quality text corpora has surged. Overseas, some AI companies have reportedly purchased millions of printed books in bulk, scanned them and then shredded the originals. 
"Machines can efficiently compile documents, retrieve sources and generate explanatory notes. Real engagement with ancient texts, however, is far more than mechanical assembly of characters," Huang noted.
Both Huang and Zhao stressed that human beings sit at the heart of cultural inheritance. People absorb wisdom from old texts, draw on personal experience and scholarship to reflect, and produce new knowledge - an intellectual process no AI can fully replicate.
The Global Times learned that every digitization workflow at Tianyige follows strict closed-loop protocols: collection checkout logging, noncontact scanning, AI-powered quality checks, precise image stitching and compliant online publication. The full procedure minimizes physical wear on original artifacts.
"A book is, first and foremost, a cultural relic that carries a thousand-year legacy," Huang said. "Only secondarily is it a text to be read." That principle, he added, is shared by all guardians at Tianyige.
"Media change, technologies evolve, but the essence of reading has never changed," he stressed.
Today, drawing on its comprehensive digital collections, Tianyige hosts monthly exhibitions of rare texts and organizes family reading events where parents and children explore the classics together. For Huang and his colleagues, the most gratifying reward is watching more and more ordinary people develop a love for ancient reading and a deeper appreciation for the traditional Chinese culture.
In an era swept by artificial intelligence, Tianyige's guardians tend to fragile paper relics while leveraging modern technology, preserving the genuine power of reading. More than 450 years of scholarly heritage flows onward, passing between human fingertips and glowing digital screens.
。　　这不是段子，而是当下中国正在发生的商业现实。

二 | 过去人们眼里上不了台面的“破烂”，正悄然撕开一条超级黄金赛道。

三 | 　　前不久，国家统计局放出一组数据：2026年上半年，废弃资源综合利用业规上企业营收达5705亿元，同比上涨3.2%，利润总额同比增长104.5%，达到127.4亿元。　　在全国41个工业大类中，这个容易被人忽视的行业，利润增速居然高居第二，硬生生把计算机通信、有色金属冶炼等传统赚钱大户甩在了身后。

四 | 　　破铜烂铁、废纸壳、废塑料可能正在创造巨量财富。　　根据《中国再生资源回收行业发展报告(2026)》的数据，2025年，国内废钢铁、废有色金属、废塑料等11个主要品种回收总量达4.17亿吨，回收总额达1.39万亿元，同比增长3.8%。　　这其中，废钢铁回收占总量六成以上，在以旧换新政策和再生资源回收机制不断完善的带动下，废电池(铅酸电池除外)、废轮胎及报废机动车回收量也增幅明显。　　放到全球维度，数据显示，2025年，全球再生铜铝铅锌产量约5923.5万吨，其中，中国以2057万吨产量稳居全球第一，占比34.7%。　　此外，早在2021年时，中国废塑料的材料化回收量就已经达到约1900万吨，回收率达到31%，是全球废塑料平均材料化回收率的近1.74倍。　　中国真的有在认真“收废品”，并且是用真金白银和制度保障铺路。　　近期对外发布的《循环经济发展“十五五”规划》已经把目标摆上台面：到2030年，资源循环利用产业产值要冲到8万亿元；到2035年，循环经济高质量发展体系基本建立，主要资源利用效率达到国际先进水平。

五 | 　　法律层面，2026年8月15日起正式施行的《中华人民共和国生态环境法典》直接明确了“国家建立健全生产者责任延伸制度，促进资源循环利用”“国家鼓励再生材料推广应用，建立健全再生材料标准和认证制度”等重要内容。

六 | 　　直白点说，循环经济不再只是靠企业良心觉悟，而是法律硬性倒逼，这为产业构建了长期稳定的制度预期。　　资金支持的信号也很明确。如，用超长期特别国债支持资源循环利用，一直是“两新”政策体系中的持续性安排。　　在废品回收上下这么大功夫，值吗？答案是，当然。　　对于中国来说，环保目标是一方面，背后更是实打实的资源掌控权和长远布局。

七 | 　　以矿产为例，国际能源署发布的《全球关键矿产展望(2024)》报告曾提到，锂、镍、钴、石墨、铜、稀土元素等六种重点矿物的供应可能无法完全跟上需求的增速，会出现巨大的供应缺口。　　到2035年，全球铜的供应量将只能满足预计需求量的70%，而锂的需求只有50%能得到满足。　　因此，再生资源已成为全球大国对冲矿产博弈风险的重要抓手。循环利用对于保障资源安全、增强产业链供应链韧性有重要意义。　　近年来，在政策与资本的双重驱动下，不起眼的破铜烂铁正在变成香饽饽，国家队甚至都直接下场“收废品”。　　2024年，由国务院、多家重量级央企共同出资组建的中国资源循环集团挂牌成立，成为国内第一家主攻资源循环利用的央企，电池、机动车、设备资产、塑料再生、绿色科技等都纳入了它的业务版图。　　除了央企大举杀入，地方国企和民营龙头也在强强联合。　　如，2025年12月，新能源回收龙头格林美砸下4亿元战略入股河南循环集团，目的是更好实施循环产业战略布局，形成国有企业和民营企业的优势互补。　　随着资本涌入，这场循环经济的产业变局正在加速。　　对于中国来说，一座巨大富矿的挖掘才刚刚拉开序幕。　　“年轻人，你手里的瓶子还要吗？”　　未来关心这个问题的，不仅仅是楼下收废品的大爷大妈，因为你手里握着的可能是国家未来的工业基石。　　｜总策划：俞岚　　｜策划：周锐　　｜统筹：王庆凯 程春雨　　｜执笔：张尼　　｜责编：李金磊　　｜校对：叶婷　　｜“三里河”工作室出品。

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