Guoxue master Chen Yuan

Chen Yuan, a name that once sounded like thunder in the field of historiography, is already somewhat unfamiliar to people today. He is a Chinese historian, religious historian, and educator.

On November 12, 1880 (the tenth day of october in the sixth year of the Qing Dynasty), Mr. Chen Yuan was born in Fugangli, Shixiang, Tangxia Town, Xinhui County, Guangdong Province, to a merchant family engaged in the business of medicinal materials, and he was the first generation of scholars in the family for many years. He went to Guangzhou with his father at the age of 5, lived in a medicinal herb shop, and then entered a private school to study, and basically finished reading the "Four Books and Five Classics" at the age of 12. (Chen Yuan's own account: Before the age of 12, he read the Four Books and Five Classics in the academy, but he was stiff and dead.) By chance, he found Zhang Zhidong's Bibliographic Answers on the teacher's bookshelf, and after reading it, he broadened his horizons. So he bought books according to the Bibliography and Q&A. At the age of 13, he began to read the Compendium of the General Catalogue of the Four Libraries, and his horizons were even broader. At the age of 14, an epidemic occurred in Guangzhou, and the private school was dissolved, which gave him time to freely read his favorite books, which laid the foundation for his lifelong learning.

As a historian, he doesn't have the gossip that is widely circulated. Most of the anecdotes about him are related to how he taught and how he learned.

Chen Yuan does not smoke, drink, watch plays, do not watch movies, and do not even drink tea. Although his income was not cheap, he lived frugally, and his biggest expense was to buy books and calligraphy and paintings. When he died in 1971, he left a large fortune, all donated to the state, including more than 40,000 line-bound books, Qing Dynasty scholar manuscripts and calligraphy and paintings more than 1,000 pieces (including 10 or 20 of Dong Qichang's calligraphy and paintings, any one of which is worth tens or millions of yuan today), and the manuscript fee is 40,000 yuan.

Chen Yuan read a lot of books and has a superb memory. In his early years, when he taught at Fu Jen University, other faculty members used him as a living dictionary. Someone metaphorically said: "If he knew that there was a flow in the ground somewhere, and cut it three feet, he would surely be able to jump out of the fish." Even after the founding of New China, Chen Yuan still played such a role. Guo Moruo went abroad to discuss the issue of Chu Ci with others, and some of them were confused for a while, so they called the international long distance and came back to ask Chen Yuan. Until the age of 90, Chen Yuan was able to memorize Luo Binwang's "Discussion of Wu Shuo" from beginning to end. Some students recalled: "In his eyes, the mistakes of his predecessors were somehow so many, just like he was a microscope, and no speck of dust escaped his eyes." No, he was a special microscope, specifically picking the wrong ones... His mouth was quite powerful, and he was not at all ruthless in criticizing the wrong scholars. ”

Although he was amazed by Chen Yuan's talent, the people around him were also well aware of the hard work he had done. Usually, he gets up at 4 o'clock in the morning to read and write, whether in winter or summer, and only leans back in his chair for a few minutes after lunch, and then writes again. Every night at 9 o'clock and at 10 o'clock at the latest, I go to bed. Chen Yuan's grandson Chen Zhichao revealed that for 4 years, because he got up early every day to compile the "Chinese and Western Hui History Calendar", painstakingly designed concise and convenient forms, and as a result, Chen Yuan suffered from stomach diseases and could only eat noodles. For a Cantonese, this is a very painful thing. Chen Yuan once said in a conversation with a graduate of Beijing Normal University: "I am 82 years old, the more I study, the more I feel that it is not enough, you are not 28 years old, there are still many things you should learn!"