A Library Built Around Public Learning

The local account traces its beginnings to the Xianxin Society in 1905 and a reading society formed in 1924. In 1928, overseas Chinese residents established the library to promote education at home. That sequence places the institution within a wider civic effort, rather than presenting it as an isolated monument.

A 2022 municipal profile reported a collection of about 110,000 volumes. The number belongs to that dated account, but the more enduring story is the library’s role as a community institution: a place where books, reading and local initiative came together. Its history links Heshun’s migration networks to public life without reducing either to a single donor or a single generation.

From the 1905 Xianxin Society and a 1924 reading group to the library founded in 1928, Heshun’s public learning took shape through local associations. Its later wartime role—books evacuated during the occupation and the building used as a command post in 1944—shows how one institution became part of both civic and military history.

The library’s wartime record adds a second life to the institution: the municipal account says books were evacuated during the occupation and that the library later served as a command post during the 1944 campaign. This history should be attributed to the library’s own account, but it makes the building’s civic role unusually visible across education, preservation and war.