关于 1928-1949 中国业余无线电珍贵刊物的来历

Tong Xiaoyong (BA1AA)
童效勇 BA1AA
Draft translated by ChatGPT, with corrections and revisions by Xiangjun Feng

The main content of this collection of digital materials consists of more than 20 periodicals published in China between 1928 and 1949. Most of these are magazines published by radio amateurs for fellow enthusiasts, while a few are general radio magazines issued by professional organizations. Weathered by time, materials of this kind have become extremely rare and valuable. The effort to build this archive has extended over a span of 50 years.

这套光盘资料的主要部分，是 1928-1949 年期间我国出版的二十多种刊物，多为业余无线电爱好者出版的面向无线电爱好者的杂志，少数为专业单位出版的通用性无线电杂志。这类资料在岁月的冲蚀之下已经变得十分稀有和珍贵。这套资料的搜集本身，先后就经历了长达50 年的跨度。

In November 1958, New China’s first amateur radio station, BY1PK, was established. I, along with several other comrades, was tasked with participating in this initiative. However, we knew very little about amateur radio stations or the broader world of amateur radio, making it urgent for us to learn and acquire resources. Knowing that amateur radio activities existed in China before the liberation, and that they had once flourished on a significant scale, we believed there must be valuable written records left behind. Thus, Chang Guoliang (BA1GL) and I began collecting historical materials of this kind. To this end, we searched almost all businesses and shops in Beijing that sold old books and magazines, including places like Dong’an Market and Dongdan Xinhua Bookstore. In the early 1960s, Chang Guoliang had to step away from handling specific tasks related to amateur radio due to other professional commitments, leaving most of the work in this area to me.

1958 年11 月新中国第一个业余电台BY1PK 诞生，我和其他几位同志受命参与此项工作，但对业余电台及整个业余无线电世界的各个方面都知之甚少，急需学习，更急需资料。由于知道解放前我国有过业余无线电活动，鼎盛时期还颇具规模，必定会留下有价值的文字。于是我和常国良/BA1GL 开始收集这些历史资料，为此，几乎找遍了京城所有售卖老旧书刊的商家、店铺，例如东安市场和东单新华书店等。1960 年代初，常国良因工作需要不再兼职业余电台的具体工作，这方面的事情就主要由我来做了。

At the time, the place I visited most frequently was Dong’an Market. Most of the shops there were small, but they offered a wide variety of goods, covering nearly every area imaginable. In addition, the shops showcased a distinct Beijing charm, as the seasoned shopkeepers upheld the traditions of their ancestors, conducting business with honesty, treating customers with warmth, and providing enthusiastic service. Among the shops, there were several dedicated to buying and selling old books. Since I frequented them, the owners became familiar with me and knew I was looking for books and magazines about radio from before the liberation. I would let them know in advance to set aside any relevant materials for me and inform them of the approximate time for my next visit. As a result, I was often able to purchase materials they had pre-sorted for me with ease. If they hadn’t had time to sort them out for me, they would kindly provide a small stool or low chair, allowing me to sit down and sift through newly acquired items myself. I would select what I needed and help roughly sort the rest into categories, which helped maintain a strong rapport between us and enable me to gain a wealth of materials. Shanghai was the most advanced region in China’s radio industry before the liberation. It was also the birthplace of China’s amateur radio and where such activities were most vibrantly developed. Whenever I had the chance to travel to Shanghai for business or family visits, I would always stop by the Xinhua Bookstore on Fuzhou Road, often with fruitful results. Beijing’s Dongdan Xinhua Bookstore also yielded some finds, though relatively fewer. Occasionally, I would discover a few needed items, but more often, I would leave empty-handed.

当时去得最多的还是东安市场，那时里面的绝大多数店家，铺面都不大，但各行各业，应有尽有，且京味十足，老店员们都传承了老祖宗们诚实经商、和气待客、热情服务的精神风范，市场里几家专门收购、销售旧书的店铺，因为去得多了，店主们都认识我，知道我要的是解放前有关无线电方面的书刊，我也会和他们打好招呼，有的话就给我留下，约好大概什么时候再去，所以常能方便地买到他们事先整理在一起的书刊。如果来不及为我整理好，他们也会拿个小马扎或矮凳子让我坐着从刚收来的旧书刊中自由挑选，我就把需要的挑出来，也顺手把那些不要的书大致帮他们分一下类，所以我和他们建立了良好的关系，所得颇丰。上海是我国解放前无线电工业最为发达的地区，也是我国业余无线电活动的萌发地和最活跃地区，我每次利用到沪出差或探亲的机会，都会去福州路新华书店，常多有所获。北京的东单新华书店也能收到一些，但相对较少，有时可能找到几本需要的，但经常无功而返。

In that era, political activities within work units were frequent, especially initiatives like sending cadres to rural areas for labor training and the Four Cleanups Campaign, which required me to leave the workplace for about a year. As a result, there were limited time for work, let alone dedicating significant time to collecting materials. Fortunately, I was single at the time and could use Sundays and public holidays for this purpose. By the start of the Cultural Revolution, I had already gathered over 20 types of publications, amounting to hundreds of volumes. These included some rare issues, such as QSP Amateur Radio*, the journal of CARU published in 1932, as well as Electric Intelligence, the publication of the Nanchang chapter of the CARL. Unfortunately, during the Cultural Revolution, all national defense sports programs, including amateur radio, were falsely accused of being nefarious tools of “He Long’s anti-Party and military usurpation” activities. As a result, all related work unites were disbanded, their registration annulled, and their personnel dismissed. Their equipment, devices, and materials were handed over to relevant departments of the People’s Liberation Army for processing.

那个年代单位政治活动不断，尤其是干部下放农村劳动锻炼、四清运动等，一下去就是一年左右，真正能够从事业务工作的时间有限，不可能有更多专门时间去开展收集。好在当时单身，有周日和节假日可以利用。所以到文革开始前，也已经收集了二十余种数百本刊物，其中包括1932 年出版的CARU 会刊-QSP无线电杂志和CARL 南昌分会的会刊《电讯》等较为稀缺的刊物。然而不幸的是，在文革中包括无线电在内的所有国防体育项目，被诬陷为“贺龙反党窜军” 黑工具，所有单位连同建制全部撤销，人员遣散，器材、设备和资料全部交由解放军相关部门处理。

In the later years of the Cultural Revolution, national defense sports programs were revived as military sports, and I was transferred back from the factory to continue my work in amateur radio. I tried to look for the materials that had been handed over to the Communications Department of the PLA, and I even managed to find the officer who had directly handled this affair. Regrettably, I was informed that all the materials had been destroyed. At the time, the military had a policy requiring periodic file clearance as part of the “Prepare for War, Prepare for Famine” campaign. Any items deemed unrelated to the military or considered “unimportant” were to be destroyed. This batch of materials, along with many other “unimportant” documents and archives, was incinerated during one of these clearances, an act that he himself had supervised.

文革后期，国防体育项目作为军事体育得以恢复，我从工厂调回，仍然从事业余电台方面的工作，于是就设法寻找移交到通信兵部的这些资料，居然找到了直接经手此事的参谋，遗憾的是被告知所有资料已经全部销毁，因为当时军队有规定，为了“备战备荒”，每隔一段时间必须清档，凡与军队无关或内容“无关紧要”的一律销毁，这批资料在一次清档时和众多“无关紧要”的文书档案同时被付之一炬，还是他亲自监督的。

With no other options, I had to return to Dong’an Market, Dongdan Xinhua Bookstore, and Fuzhou Road Xinhua Bookstore in Shanghai to resume collecting. By that time, Dong’an Market had been renamed “Dongfeng Market,” a nomenclature that reflected the influence of the Cultural Revolution. “baptized” by the Cultural Revolution, the market had lost some of its old Beijing charm. While I managed to locate a few of the stalls I used to frequent, some no longer existed. Nevertheless, the remaining shops still yielded a substantial number of the publications I needed. In the end, the total number of publications I gradually collected even surpassed what I had amassed before the Cultural Revolution. For some magazines, I managed to obtain complete collections, from their inaugural issue to their final one, such as Popular Radio Magazine, The China Radio, Radio World (missing its inaugural issue). This might have been an unexpected opportunity created by the Cultural Revolution’s “Smash the Four Olds” campaign, which drove many family treasures out into the market. The Dongdan Xinhua Bookstore in Beijing and the Fuzhou Road Xinhua Bookstore in Shanghai continued to deal in old books and magazines. Although Dongdan yielded comparatively fewer finds, their service of compiling scattered issues into bound volumes was exceptional. Therefore, nearly all the publications I collected were ultimately bound into complete volumes there. Additionally, they carefully repaired many damaged pages during the process.

无奈之下，只好重新去东安市场、东单新华书店和上海的福州路新华书店收集，那时，当年的“东安市场”已经改名为带有文革色彩的“东风市场”，市场内经过“文革的洗礼”，也少了些许老北京的气息，原来我经常去的摊位虽然找到几个，有些已不复存在，不过在继续经营的店家仍然可以收到不少所需刊物。最后陆陆续续收集到的刊物，如单从数量上看，甚至较之文革前还多，有的杂志还收齐了从创刊号到最后停刊的所有期号，如《实用无线电》、《中国无线电》、《无线电世界》（缺创刊号）等，这或许是文革“破四旧”把家藏的宝贝统统赶出门所带来的机遇吧。北京东单和上海福州路的两个新华书店仍然有经营旧书刊的业务，东单新华书店相比之下虽然收集到的书刊数量仍然相对少些，但他们那里将零散刊物装订成为合订本的业务服务得非常到位，所以，所有收集到的刊物最后基本都是在那里装订成册的，在装订过程中他们还修补了其中很多破损的地方。

The post-Cultural Revolution efforts to recollect materials were not without regrets. The publication of China Amateur Radio Union (CARU), the first amateur radio organization established by Chinese people in 1932, is titled QSP Amateur Radio. Among the dozens of chapters of the [Chinese Amateur Radio League] (CARL), the only one with its official publication was the Nanchang chapter, which published the Electric Intelligence. I had them in my collection before the Cultural Revolution, but they were all destroyed during the turmoil, and I was unable to find any copies during the later recollection efforts. Furthermore, QSL, published by CARL’s predecessor, the [Amateur Radio Wartime Service Corps], was also not recovered. While the CARL journal Radio World was almost fully recollected, the inaugural issue remained missing. Similarly, its predecessor, [CQ Gazette], was not recovered either.

文革后的重新收集也不无遗憾之处。1932 年我国第一个国人自己成立起来的业余无线电组织“中国业余无线电社（CARU）”的会刊叫《QSP 无线电杂志》，“中国业余无线电协会CARL”几十个分会中，唯一正规出版会刊的是南昌分会会刊《电讯》杂志，文革前都曾经收集到，但又毁于文革，重新收集时一本也没有收到。另外，CARL 的前身“业余无线电人员战时服务团”的会刊《QSL》也未能收到，CARL 的会刊《无线电世界》虽然基本收齐但仍缺第一期创刊号，《无线电世界》之前的会刊《CQ 协刊》也未能收到。

By the late 1980s, people began to recognize the historical and archival value of old magazines, making them exceedingly difficult to collect. Even when they were occasionally found, their prices were no longer comparable to the few cents or yuan they once cost when treated as “discarded” items. Instead, prices were often hundreds of times higher, and this trend only grew more pronounced over time. For example, Electric Communication, the bulletin of the Government Institute of Telegraphy, was found in Beijing’s Xidan Book Building after 2000. It was the only copy available and was priced at an exorbitant amount—several hundred yuan for a thin booklet. Naturally, photography was not allowed. I managed to take a few photos only after negotiating with the staff, explaining that I needed them as a reference for locating other copies elsewhere.

进入 1980 年代后期，国人们开始意识到旧杂志的历史文献价值，收集变得非常困难了，就是偶然找到，价格也远非开始时作为“破旧”书刊处理的几毛、几元可比，往往要高出上百倍甚至几百倍，而且随着时间的推移，这种情况越演越烈。这套光盘中的国民政府交通部电讯学校校刊《电讯》[should be 电信]，就是2000 年后在北京西单图书大厦看到的，仅此一本，且标价不菲，薄薄的的一个册子，报价竟高达数百，当然也不准拍照，现有的几张还是和工作人员商量后，以只拍个样子便于日后到他处寻找作为参照为由拍下来的。

Fortunately, with the advancement of Reforms and Opening-up and the continuous development of science and technology, major libraries have increased their efforts to make historical collections accessible to the public and allow limited reproduction of materials. Online search has also been steadily improved, providing greater convenience and opportunities to fill in the missing gaps in my collection. As I needed more historical materials to write articles about the history of amateur radio in China, I began shuttling between the National Library in Beijing and the Shanghai Library. Fortunately, collections in the two libraries can provide most of the missing materials and some other historical resources I needed. At the National Library, I found the inaugural issue of CARL’s journal Radio World and the wartime service corps’ bulletin QSL. However, the library’s policies explicitly prohibited reproducing entire volumes and allowed only partial copying at a time. To address this, I sought the assistance of Professor Su Ning (BA1SN) from Tsinghua University, the son of veteran amateur radio operator BA1KY. Together, we made multiple trips to the library, each time copying portions of the materials, which we then pieced together. In this way, we managed to obtain complete copies of all the pages from the National Library’s holdings of Radio World’s inaugural issue and the QSL bulletin. It is worth noting, however, that when Radio World was launched in Chongqing in 1945, its inaugural issue (Volume 1, Issue 1) was in newspaper format. The version preserved at the National Library is a reprinted edition from 1946 in Nanjing, formatted as a magazine, which is somewhat regrettable.

所幸的是随着改革开放及科学技术的不断发展，各大图书馆的史藏书加大了公开投放社会的力度并允许有限度地复制资料，网上检索功能也不断完善，这给补齐所缺资料提供机会和方便。又因为撰写关于我国业余无线电历史的文章，需要有更多的史料，于是我又穿梭于北京国家图书馆和上海图书馆之间，可喜的是在这两个图书馆里基本可以补齐上述所缺资料和我所需的部分史料。在国家图书馆找到了CARL 会刊《无线电世界》创刊号和战时服务团的团刊《QSL》，但国图有明文规定，不准整本复制资料，每次只准复制其中的少部分，于是又请了清华大学的BA1SN 苏宁教授(老业余家BA1KY 之子)协助，由他和我两人各自分别多次到国图进行复制，然后拼凑在一起，这样才将他们馆藏的《无线电世界》创刊号和《QSL》团刊所有页面全部复制下来，还要说明的是《无线电世界》1945年在重庆创刊时，第一卷第一期是报纸式的，而国图保存的是1946 年在南京重新印刷的改为杂志式样的了，未免稍有遗憾。

At the Shanghai Library, I found copies of QSP, the journal of CARU, and Electric Intelligence, the journal of CARL’s Nanchang chapter, both of which I had collected before the Cultural Revolution but were destroyed during the turmoil. At the library, I also discovered that QSP was originally named QST. It appears that, to avoid sharing the same name as the journal of the ARRL in the US, the name was changed to QSP starting with the second volume. The Shanghai Library’s collection of QSP begins with the inaugural issue and is nearly complete. Several years ago, I browsed and copied some of these materials there. However, since the journal spans thousands of pages in total, it was impossible to copy everything. At that time, the library required patrons to photograph materials themselves and pay based on the number of images taken. This process was time-consuming, labor-intensive, and resulted in lower-quality images. As a result, I only photographed a small portion. I photographed only the pages I needed at the time and did not do it in chronological or numerical order. I also did not organize the images properly afterwards. Additionally, over the years, the computers and hard drives used to store the original data have been replaced multiple times due to damage, resulting in further losses. Consequently, only a limited selection of covers, tables of contents, and content pages that I could organize have been included in this collection. As for the rest, further additions will have to wait until more materials are gathered or discovered in the future.

在上海图书馆，则找到了文革前收集到而毁于文革的 CARU 会刊《QSP》和CARL 南昌分会会刊《电讯》，在上图还发现《QSP》原来取名为《QST》，可能是因为避免和美国ARRL 会刊同名，所以从第二卷开始即改名为《QSP》，上图藏有的《QSP》是从创刊号开始的，基本齐全，我还是前些年在那里翻阅复制了一些，因为全部杂志的页面有数千页之多，无法全部复制，而且那时的上图只能由需要者自己拍摄，然后按拍摄的数量付款，这样费时费事，质量也较差，所以只翻拍了一少部分，由于当时是按自己所需选拍，所以翻拍时未按刊期和页码顺序，翻拍后又尚未整理，加之距离翻拍的时间相对较久，期间储存原始数据 的计算机和硬盘都有过损坏，已几经更换，所以这次光盘中只收进了能够整理出来的一些封面、目录和内容，至于更多的只能有待以后进一步收集或发现后再做补充了。

As to Electric Intelligence, the magazine of CARL’s Nanchang chapter, I had previously entrusted Ms. Liu Jinling, a former operator of BY1PK in the 1960s who now resides in Nanchang, to search for it at local libraries. She eventually located it at the Jiangxi Provincial Library, but the collection only included two issues. While the library prohibited photocopying the entire issues, moderate photographing was allowed. Considering that Ms. Liu was in her seventies and it would have been inappropriate to burden her further, I asked the Jiangxi HAM Xu Meng (BD5IQ) to photograph the main content of these two issues at the library. To further complete the content of this journal, the only publication by a local chapter of CARL, I recently found more issues at the Shanghai Library. However, aside from Volume 2, Issue 1, which was still intact and could be read in its original form, the remaining issues were severely damaged and inaccessible. The library had digitized the relatively well-preserved pages, making them available for on-site online reading. If needed, specific pages can be requested for printing, though the print quality is suboptimal as it is based on images. In terms of quantity, while many pages are missing from the library’s holdings, which span from the inaugural issue to Volume 3, Issue 1, the total still amounts to several hundred pages. As it was impossible to copy all of this material in a short time, I selected the relatively clear and essential portions to include in this digital collection.

南昌分会的《电讯》杂志，先前曾请现住南昌的 1960 年代BY1PK 操作员刘金玲女士到南昌的图书馆查找，最后她在赣图找到，但馆藏仅有两期，不能复制，可以适量拍照，因刘女士已年逾70，不便再劳累于她，于是又请江西HAM徐猛/BD5IQ 从赣图把这两期的主要内容拍了下来。为了尽可能配齐这CARL 唯一的分会会刊，最近我又在从上图找到了这个杂志，但除二卷一期尚完整可以阅读原件外，其余均已破损，无法取出原件，他们已将相对较好的页面制成电子版，供阅览者馆内在线阅读，如有需要，可以列出清单，由他们打印，因为是图片打印，效果不够理想，就页面数量而言，尽管其馆藏从创刊号到最后第三卷第一期中已有很多缺页，但总数也有数百页之多，无法在短期内全部复制，所以只选了其中相对清楚和必要的部分收入到本次光盘中。

Many veteran amateur radio operators, such as Zhang Jiaqi (BA1KP) and Yu Zhenzhuo (BA7KA), also contributed to the accumulation of this collection. Some even provided treasures they had preserved for years. For instance, the [CQ Gazette] included in this digital collection came from Shen Minggang (BA4AB) and Feng Guoxiang (BA4AE).

张家齐 BA1KP、余祯焯BA7KA 等很多老业余家也都参与过这套资料的积累和收集，有的提供了他们多年的珍藏，例如光盘中的《CQ 协刊》就是来自沈明纲BA4AB 和冯国祥BA4AE。

*The English translations of proper names are based on historical sources. For instance, a Chinese magazine may have its English title printed on the cover page. If I have not found an English translation in such sources, I use a literal translation and place it in square brackets. For example, China Amateur Radio Union (CARU) is an English name I have seen in historical sources, whereas [Chinese Amateur Radio League] (CARL) indicates that I have not confirmed the full English name of CARL in historical sources.