We read all the lead to present a different history.
Good morning, friends! Ziyuan has introduced many stories of the masters of the Republic of China to everyone before, which has aroused the strong interest of readers. Today we will talk about the publishing industry in the Republic of China period - Mr. Zhang Yuanji, who opened a generation of young wisdom with his life's work and made great and far-reaching contributions to the progress and development of the country.
▲ Zhang Yuanji old photo
Zhang Yuanji ( Zhang Yuanji ) was born in the sixth year of Tongzhi ( 1867 ) in a family of scholars in Haiyan , Zhejiang. Zhang Yuanji has been studying hard since he was a child, and he is bent on passing the scientific examination to shine the lintel. At the age of 18, Zhang Yuanji achieved the title of Xiucai, and at the age of 23, he was a high school scholar, and at the age of 26, he entered the Hanlin Academy as a Shu Jishi, and later became the head of the Punishment Department, and the following year he was admitted to the Prime Minister Yamen Zhangjing with the first place. Judging from his resume as an official, Zhang Yuanji was extremely smooth in both the imperial examination and his career, which was not easy at that time.
▲Zhang Yuanji joined Hanlin's "Qin Ming Theory Of Loose Poetry"
In the twenty-fourth year of Guangxu (1898 AD), Zhang Yuanji was summoned by the Guangxu Emperor alone on June 16 under the sponsorship of his friend Xu Zhijing (on the same day, Kang Youwei was also summoned), and the monarch discussed the matter of the restoration and reform of the law. On September 5, Zhang Yuanji played five general outlines and 40 details of the change method, respectively, on the five major issues of the overall situation of the change, Manchu, employment, and financial management. On the 18th of the same month, Zhang Yuanji again went to the imperial court and requested that the Ming Dynasty issue an edict ordering Chinese and foreign officials to effectively sponsor those who studied the agricultural and industrial and commercial studies of the mining road, so as to enrich the newly established General Administration of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce of the Mining Road and vigorously develop industry. Unfortunately, Empress Dowager Cixi launched a coup d'état the next day, imprisoning the Guangxu Emperor, and the "Penghu Reform Law" failed.
▲Guangxu Emperor stills
Afterwards, Zhang Yuanji, who also belonged to the restoration camp, was implicated, and Cixi "dismissed him from his post and never used him", and Zhang Yuanji, who was only 32 years old, came to an abrupt end to his political career. Fortunately, Li Hongzhang, who was at a low point in his life, sent someone to comfort Zhang Yuanji and ask him what his plans were, and Zhang Yuanji said that he would go to Shanghai to make a living, and in late October he went south to Shanghai with his family. In April of the following year, at the suggestion of Li Hongzhang, Sheng Xuanhuai, who was then the superintendent of Nanyang Public School, warmly invited Zhang Yuanji to serve as the dean of nanyang public school translation college and presided over the translation of new books from eastern and western countries.
▲Old photo of the Commercial Press
In the 27th year of Guangxu (1901 AD), at the invitation of Mr. Xia Ruifang, the founder of the Commercial Press, Zhang Yuanji took a stake in the Commercial Press. In the spring of the following year, Zhang Yuanji resigned from all his posts and devoted himself to the work of the Commercial Press. At that time, many people expressed puzzlement about this, after all, Zhang Yuanji was once a Hanlin Qinggui, even if he "never used it", but in the future, if he encountered amnesty, it was not impossible for officials to be reinstated, and under the wave of the New Deal at the end of the Qing Dynasty, the Qing Court Academy once asked Zhang Yuanji to be reinstated as an official, and served as a counselor of the Ministry of Education, and then he was transferred by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Chu Cai Guan, so why did he succumb to the "lowly industry" of printing books?
▲ Zhang Yuanji's old photo in his later years
In fact, Zhang Yuanji had entered Beijing in December of the thirty-second year of Guangxu (1906 AD), but because he could not stand the official customs of the time, he resigned his official post and returned to the south in January of the following year. Under the repeated summons of Zhang Yuanji's mentor, minister of military aircraft and Shangshu Qu Hongyu of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zhang Yuanji was still willing to be bland and no longer made a career. In a letter written by Zhang Yuanji to Sheng Xuanhuai, it is not difficult to glimpse what he is thinking: Only 400,000 of China's 40,000 people are educated; and to open up the people's wisdom, it is necessary to publish good books, and he is willing to "support education as his duty." Zhang Yuanji, who had great ambitions, could have become a high-ranking official in the DPRK and China, but he chose to go down to the "commercial sea" to print books as a profession to benefit the mathematicians, and eventually became the most famous publisher and cultural master in modern China.
Resources:
Draft History of the Qing Dynasty, Selected Historical Materials of the Commercial Press (1897-1950)
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