Jiayetang Library is the largest private library with the largest collection of books in modern China.  The owner was named Liu Chenggan (1882-1963).  The private library is located by the Francolin Stream in the town of Nanxun of Huzhou in north Zhejiang.  The construction of the library was started in 1920 and completed in 1924.  It is a two-storied building of wooden and brick structure.  The stream runs around the building, and in the garden are trees, zigzag paths, rockery, stalagmitic stones, pavilions, bridges and lotus ponds.  The garden and the building become an integral whole.  The library is built in the shape of a square with corridors on all sides.  In the middle is a square courtyard.  There are 52 rooms in the two-storied building.  Each room has its own characteristics in the collection of books and its layout, convenient to keep and to read the books.  In its prime times, the library housed a collection of 570,000 volumes in 180,000 kinds of books.  Among the collection are 150-odd kinds of the editions of the Song (960-1279) and the Yuan Dynasty (1206-1368), 200 kinds of the editions of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and 5000 kinds of editions and 2000 kinds of hand-written copies of the Qing Dynasty (1616-1911) in addition to 1000-odd kinds of rare and precious editions.  The collection is also characterized by large numbers of local chronicles that amount to 33000 volumes in 1200 kinds.  Liu Chenggan was well known not only for his collection of ancient books, but also for his block-printed books.  He was in charge of the block printing of books like ¡°A Library of Jiayetang¡±, ¡°A Library of Wuxing County¡± and ¡°A Library of Qiushe Studio¡±.  In 1933, Jiayetang began to sell its collections.  There were only 110,000 copies left and almost no block-printed editions of the Song and the Yuan Dynasties when Liu Chenggan donated them to Zhejiang Library in November 1951.  In 1981, Jiayetang Library was designated as a site of cultural relics under the protection of the provincial government.  In 1984, the provincial government of Zhejiang put aside a fund of 200,000 yuan in the renovation of this former private library.  Now it has become part of Zhejiang library that mainly houses ancient books.