When it comes to modern Chinese literati, Hu Shi must be on the list. Before watching "The Age of Awakening", Hu Shizhi can be regarded as a good-looking man among these many literati, and he is still a man who loves and thinks about his wife in the play.
The interaction with Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao and others can also be regarded as not shallow, even if there are some conceptual contradictions in the later period, there is no big gap between several people. What happened in the later stages that made his friend Lu Xun alienate him?
I. The life of Hu Shi
At the end of 1891, that is, in the seventeenth year of Guangxu, Hu Shi was born in Pudong, Shanghai, and his birthplace was Jixi County, Anhui Province. Now you can go to Shanghai or Jixi to see Hu Shi's former residence. Hu Shi was born when his father was 51 years old, and his mother was only 19 years old at this time. When Hu Shi was four years old, his father died, his mother remained widowed for 23 years, and Hu Shi also recorded his mother's difficulties in the "Forty Self-Introduction" that he later wrote.
In 1904, before Hu Shi went to Shanghai with his half-brother to study, his mother set up a family affair for him, and the woman was Qianjin Jiang Dongxiu of the Wangjiang family in Jingde County, Anhui Province. Although this young lady was the daughter of a noble family, she had not read any books or accepted any trendy ideas, and she was still the one of a woman who was talentless and virtuous, wrapped in small feet, waiting in the boudoir for Hu Shi to marry her.
In the fifteen years between Hu Shi and Jiang Dongxiu's engagement and marriage, the two never met, only occasionally corresponded. But at that time, how many words women could understand, Hu Shizhi was studying in Shanghai and was exposed to many new ideas, and then went to the United States to study in 1910, and the men and women he came into contact with were even more knowledgeable and free-thinking. He asked Jiang Dongxiu to stop wrapping his feet and began to read and write back to him, until Hu Shi found that his fiancée in Anhui at that time could not read and write on her own.
Hu Shi did not ask his fiancée to be a "new woman" in the future, and he did not know whether he really understood the difficulties of Chinese women at that time or met more eye-catching women abroad. In 1914, when Hu Shi visited the geology teachers in the school, he met Wei Liansi, a confidant with whom she had been associated for more than 40 years.
Wei Liansi was studying at the New York Art School and later became a painter, which is the perfect new woman in Hu Shi's mind. In Hu Shi's heart, this extremely knowledgeable and knowledgeable woman was his perfect marriage partner. The two admire each other, admire each other extremely, and their elegant cultural temperament is extremely similar. They all have very similar views in art, literature, politics, and so on. The way the two walk together is enviable today.
Later, Hu Shi transferred to Columbia University, and within two years, Hu Shi alone wrote more than a hundred letters to Wei Liansi. Perhaps Hu Shidu almost forgot his fiancée Jiang Dongxiu in China, but his mother would not forget this matter, and it just so happened that Wei Liansi's mother did not approve of such an exotic marriage and love relationship, and the two eventually failed to get married, but this did not affect the forty-eight years of correspondence between the two.
Later, Hu Shi returned to his hometown to complete the marriage, but met Cao Chengying at the wedding. In the future, the two also had many stories of children's private affairs, and in the end, it was because after the founding of New China, Hu Shi was going to the United States to end their exchanges. In 1962, Hu Shi died of a sudden heart attack while attending a cocktail party, and Chiang Kai-shek went to the memorial and was eventually buried in the Jiuzhuang Cemetery in Nangang, Taipei.
Second, the road to the country
In addition to the sentimentality that the literati often had, Hu Shi also had the ambition to save the country in the literati at that time. In the same year, after completing his studies in the United States, Hu Shi returned to his motherland after seven years of absence, became a professor at National Peking University, and together with Chen Duxiu advocated the new cultural movement and joined the literary revolution.
When the May Fourth Movement broke out in 1919, Hu Shi also advocated the May Fourth Movement together with Chen Duxiu and others, becoming one of the representative figures of the May Fourth Movement, but at that time, he was the one who acted moderately among several people and was not resolute. It may be that Hu Shi was suspended from school because of the chaos of the country when he was studying, and he always believed that students who had the opportunity to study should go to school well, not participate in any revolution or movement, and engage in academics.
At that time, the May Fourth Movement was led by students at the beginning, which naturally did not meet Hu Shi's expectations of students as a tutor, let alone his expectations of himself as an academic researcher at that time. Perhaps from this time on, Hu Shi and Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, Lu Xun and others became estranged. In addition, he later overthrew his own academic research theories and began to have frequent contacts with the political circles. This person who overturned his original intention was also bound to go farther and farther away from Lu Xun and others.
Hu Shi's own knowledge can also be regarded as rich, from the perspective of erudition or not, Hu Shi is definitely the best candidate for a teacher. For the student, this is not only a knowledgeable teacher, but also a person who can "teach people to fish", who understands new ideas and new things quickly, and has a high degree of acceptance of new things, which is unparalleled in the new cultural movement.
Third, the road ahead is winding and no one is with us
After Hu Shi received an unusual phone call in 1922, he met with emperor Xuantong. How could this man, who was at the forefront of the new cultural movement, meet the greatest figure of feudalism? Word of mouth spread about this matter, and no one knew about it. As the leader of the new cultural movement and also supporting the new cultural movement, Hu Shizhi felt that Hu Shizhi was not firm in his will; As an advocate and colleague like Hu Shi, Lu Xun and others did not understand why he dealt with the leaders of feudal culture.
In the end, the reason they came to was probably that "who does not want to meet this highly anticipated Son of Heaven, Hu Shizhi is no exception." No one knows what the reason is, but Hu Shi is therefore estranged from Lu Xun and others. In addition, later in 1928, Hu Shi attended the wedding of Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Mei-ling and became acquainted with Chiang Kai-shek. Drifting away from Lu Xun and his party.
By 1932, Hu Shi finally entered politics, contrary to his original remarks, even after obtaining a doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University, serving as a teacher and requiring students not to participate in political activities. Even in 1938, Hu Shi was elected a suffragan of the "National Political Participation Association" and went to the United States to become an ambassador to the United States in the same year. Since then, he has always been deeply immersed in the political whirlpool, recalling the words he mentioned in the past that academic research does not participate in political movements, and proposed the "Ten-Year Plan for Academic Independence".
4. Summary
However, I don't know if Hu Shi has always had prestige in the educational circles, and many schools today have not been able to achieve full academic independence. However, this is all an afterthought, and Hu Shi's old age was not stable. A literati born in Jiangnan studied all the way to the United States and Taiwan.
After entering the 1970s, he was involved in many party and government struggles, and was arrested and imprisoned. However, at this time, looking back at Lu Xun and others who advocated the new cultural movement, how many people are still alive? Hu Shi had already seen the founding of New China, and no matter what his original intention was, he had also seen the dawn of victory.