A Court Is Auctioning a 'Yongle Encyclopedia' From 1 Yuan, Without Checking If It Is Real
A county court in Xinjiang has listed a volume titled 'Yongle Encyclopedia' on Alibaba's judicial auction platform with a starting price of 1 yuan — and told bidders it never authenticated the object, selling it strictly as a handicraft, as is. More than 600 people are watching.
A leather-bound volume printed with the characters Yongle Dadian — the name of the largest encyclopedia the pre-modern world ever produced — is currently listed on Alibaba's judicial auction platform with a starting price of 1 yuan, and a deposit of 0.1 yuan. The seller is not a bibliophile or a fraudster but a court: the Pishan County People's Court in Hotan, Xinjiang, which seized the object from a judgment debtor and put it up for online auction as lot "XF-053, treasured leather-bound book containing the Yongle Encyclopedia."
The listing, reported by Jimu News on Friday, has drawn more than 600 onlookers and 19 registered bidders since it went up, ahead of a one-day auction on September 25. It has also produced a moment of unusual institutional candor. Asked whether the volume was genuine, court staff told Jimu News the court had not appraised its authenticity or age, was selling it strictly as a handicraft (工艺品), and would deliver it "as is" — no returns, no refunds, no certificate, with buyers responsible for their own judgment. The court will not vouch for the lot's "specifications, variety, texture, category or authentication certificate," the listing's special notice reads, because the debtor supplied all of those himself.
The object itself, photographed on a tiled floor for the listing, is a 26-by-15-centimeter book with damp-stained covers, red seals and a cover title in florid traditional script: Yongle Dadian, flanked by phrases reading "treasure of China," with Wenxian Dacheng — "Documents Achieved," the project's original 1403 name — printed above. The comedy is in what the name implies. The real Yongle Dadian, commissioned by the Ming dynasty's Yongle Emperor and completed in 1408, ran to more than 11,000 volumes and some 370 million characters; fewer than five percent of its volumes survive today, scattered among libraries in eight-plus countries, and each survivor is treated as a first-class national relic. A genuine one would never see a judicial auction at any price. The 1-yuan reserve is, in effect, the market's honest verdict on this candidate.
There is also precedent suggesting where the bidding will land. Jimu News found that the same item was listed for judicial auction in April at a 130-yuan starting price before being withdrawn, and that an identical piece is on sale on a secondhand platform for about 65 yuan. Judicial auctions of seized property — apartments, goldfish, iPhone margins — have become routine on Alibaba's platform, and courts habitually disclaim everything to shield themselves from fraud claims.
The auction opens at 10 a.m. on September 25. Whoever wins will own an object the state has declined to call either treasure or trash — the one lot in China where the buyer must decide, alone, whether he has bought a national relic.