In the winter of 1937, the Battle of Shanghai comes to an end, and Shanghai is reduced to an isolated island.
Shen Yanqing, a professor at Jinan University and a gifted bibliographer, can determine whether an ancient book is genuine from half a page of scraps. He resigns from his post and stays on the isolated island, hoping to salvage Chinese classics scattered through the streets amid the artillery fire.
Sato Osamu, head of the Japanese Army's Documents Section, holds a doctorate in Sinology. Under the guise of “cultural cooperation,” he arrives with the Outline for the Collection of East China Documents, vowing to systematically plunder Jiangnan's thousand-year cultural heritage.
The Chen family's library goes up in flames, and an old scholar dies clutching his books. At last, Shen Yanqing understands: yielding will not bring peace, and quietly guarding the books will not protect their roots.
Armed with a Qingtian stone seal engraved with the words “Guard the Collection,” he joins forces with the secondhand book dealer Master Wei, Commercial Press executive Meng Jingzhi, and others to form a secret society. Using their expertise in identifying fakes, connections in the underworld, and cover from the business community, they wage a silent cultural war against the Japanese army in the cracks between the foreign concessions.
They pass off fakes, disrupt auctions, hide ten thousand volumes in cellars, and smuggle rare books out of the besieged city.
One person guards the books; many guard the collection. As long as the books survive, the cultural legacy will endure.
