Qianjiang Evening News Hourly News Reporter Song Hao
On December 27, 2021, when the news of Shi Jingqian's death spread on social platforms, Benjamin Hammer was flipping through the literature in his office at Shandong University.
Meng Weilong is an associate professor at the Institute for Advanced Study of Confucianism at Shandong University
After the 1970s, he is an associate professor at the Institute for Advanced Study of Confucianism at Shandong University, and also serves as the executive editor of the international edition of Wenshizhe magazine, which is mainly responsible for translating domestic first-class research results into English and distributing them to the world. Meng Weilong's work is like a bridge, on the one hand, it is an important town for the study of traditional Chinese studies, and on the other hand, it is a broad vision of overseas sinology research.
Shi Jingqian's departure made him a little sad.
Shi Jingqian (1936-2021)
Shi Jingqian is known for his research on the history of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and many Chinese readers are not unfamiliar with him because of works such as "Kangxi: Reconstructing the Inner World of a Chinese Emperor", "The Death of Wang", and "Memories of Dreams of the Former Dynasty: Zhang Dai's Glitz and Desolation".
Overseas sinologists have the saying of "three masters of sinology", and Wei Feide, Kong Feili and Shi Jingqian, three "post-30s", are all important sinologists of the 20th century. On December 26, 2021, Shi Jingqian passed away, and the "Three Masters" have become history.
In January 2022, Life, Reading, and Xinzhi Sanlian Bookstore published scholar Yao Peng's "Sinologist and Rulian Award". The "Rulian Prize", the highest prize in sinology, was established a year before the death of the French sinologist Stanislas Aignan Julien (1797-1873), and the award is just 150 years old, and the book reviews in detail the sinological research from the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century.
In the view of "Foreign Professor" Meng Weilong, it is precisely under the efforts of generations of predecessors that overseas sinology research has reached a peak today, and the reason behind it is the rise of China, which has an extraordinary significance for the world.
Meng Weilong, a post-70s sinologist: Contemporary overseas sinology is becoming more and more vigorous
"Overseas Sinology is becoming more and more exuberant. With the strengthening of China's economic and political power and the spread of culture, overseas naturally found it necessary to study it well and explore the reasons for its successful rise, either starting from modern factors or looking for reasons from ancient cultures.
"The interest of overseas academics in ancient China is only a concrete manifestation of the interest of the wider overseas academic community and even the general public in all aspects of Chinese society."
Meng Weilong studied at Shandong University in the areas of pre-Qin and Han classics, sub-studies, ancient literature collation, Western sinology, and comparison of Eastern and Western cultures. He grew up in San Francisco, USA, and grew up surrounded by many overseas Chinese and Ethnic Chinese, which gradually made him interested in Chinese culture and began to learn Chinese.
Meng Weilong, image source: Ru Guo'er WeChat
Meng Weilong studied international relations, and in his junior year, he studied at Nanjing University for one year, and after graduating from his senior year, he applied for a master's degree in Chinese classical philology from Shandong University.
Recalling the master's study stage, at that time, I did not come to China for a long time, and I chose Chinese classical philology, a niche major that few people in China have contacted.
Just like Shi Jingqian, Meng Weilong will also encounter problems when reading ancient documents. Meng Weilong's cultural background and knowledge base at that time had a great disadvantage in learning. Most of his classmates studied classical literature or ancient literature in undergraduate, and Meng Weilong had to redouble his efforts, "Not to be the worst student." ”
At that time, his Chinese level was limited to understanding Mandarin, and many of his professional knowledge were blank. The teacher speaks quickly, or some words can't remember how to write for a while, and the content of the class can't be memorized. Every time after class, Meng Weilong would borrow his classmate's notebook, go home to copy and supplement, and return it to his classmates the next day.
Relying on diligence and the help of teachers and classmates, Meng Weilong successfully graduated, and then completed his ph.D. in classical philology at Peking University in 2010. Compared with the post-30s Generation of Shi Jingqian, the scholars of Meng Weilong's generation can study and do research in China for a long time, which is their advantage.
International Edition of Literature, History and Philosophy
Since 2014, Meng Weilong has entered the editorial department of Wenshizhe and co-founded the international edition of Wenshizhe, and is currently the executive editor. Wenshi Zhe is an academic journal sponsored by Shandong University and founded in 1951. The international edition of "Literature, History and Philosophy" translates the first-class research results in China into English and distributes them to the whole world. This gives him a more cutting-edge and intuitive academic vision when looking at China.
Meng Weilong's name, originally meng Weilong, learned Chinese kung fu in a Chinese martial arts gym in his hometown of San Francisco, and asked the kung fu teacher to give him the name of the teacher, followed by the teacher's surname Meng. Later in China, he gradually realized that the name "Weilong" was "too arrogant", so he retained the pronunciation and changed it to "Weilong". Yin Yin echoed Taishan, the head of Qilu's Five Peaks.
These years of overseas sinology research
A few years ago, Lu Yang, a professor at Peking University, wrote a long microblog of more than 2,200 words, recalling his impressions of Shi Jingqian. When the mood is difficult to calm down, there are a few typos.
Professor Lu Yang's Weibo
Lu Yang said that he and Shi Jingqian had only met twice, but Shi Jingqian's influence on him was quite large.
In 1990, at the age of 25, Lu Yang ended his studies at the University of Vienna and prepared to apply for a doctorate from Princeton University. At that time, he read Shi Jingqian's "In Search of Modern China" in the town's library, and he read it "endlessly", "Some parts of it are extremely impressive, even touching." ”
Later, Lu Yang entered Princeton University and studied with Yu Yingshi, who often mentioned Shi Jingqian, an old colleague. "Master Yu and he are very sympathetic at Yale." "In the first autumn semester of Mr. Yu's class, when Mr. Yu talked about the Qing Dynasty, he specifically mentioned Shi Jingqian's book "Cao Yin", saying that this was Shi Jingqian's real efforts."
Professor Lu Yang of Peking University
Yu Yingshi also repeatedly reminded the students that Shi Jingqian had a high understanding of the key points of historical materials, and he was good at grasping the main points, finding narrative clues, and constituting historical pictures.
The literary brushwork and the capture of scenes are the most praised places for Shi Jingqian's historical narrative. Just as the name Shi Jingqian clearly pays homage to Ma Qian of the Taishi Company, Shi Jingqian's writing has also been compared with the "History of History": it is both a historical work and a literary work.
Shi Jingqian once talked about his own way of writing, he said that he tried to complete two levels of narration, one is accurate, the other is to express feelings, just like completing a work of art, he makes historical writing close to art. "My combination of literature and history just means that I have a passion for the writing style of historiography."
"Rich in historical passion", this is also the young Lu Yang's view of this predecessor.
Shi Jingqian is a British national who has been teaching at Yale University for a long time. The tradition of American sinology can be traced back to Samuel Wells Williams ,1812-1884, Shi Jingqian's alumnus and yale university's first professor of Chinese and Chinese and literature. The establishment of this position at Yale is considered a sign of the establishment of professional sinology in the United States.
Wei Sanwei
In 1833, a ship from New York docked at the port of Huangpu in Guangzhou, and the 21-year-old Wei Sanwei set foot on Chinese soil and began a 43-year-long Life in China. By the time he returned to the United States, Wei Sanwei, who was more than a year old, already had a wide understanding of China and became the first professor of sinology in the United States.
Professor Liu Dong, dean of the Chinese and Western College of Zhejiang University, who has spent more than 30 years editing the Overseas China Studies Series and has a deep understanding of overseas Sinology, said that although overseas sinologists have taken a big step toward cultural exchanges between China and the West in the era of Wei Sanwei, the cause cannot be completed by a generation. Early sinology studies inevitably carried an "exotic" perspective.
For example, Liu Dong said, an American brought back a piece of porcelain from China as an art decoration, but in the daily life of Chinese, it may be a night pot. Some sinologists do not know enough about foreign cultures, so they need a lot of imagination to fill in the gaps between reality.
"Then there was Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973)." Liu Dong said that after Pearl Buck there was John King Fairbank (1907-1991).
Fairbank.
Shi Jingqian's teacher was Mary Clabaugh Wright (1917-1970), and Mary Rui's teacher was Fairbank.
Many Chinese readers are no strangers to Fairbank, except for the well-known Cambridge History of China and other works, Fairbank has come to China many times, studied with Jiang Tingdian at Tsinghua University, and maintained contacts with Chinese scholars such as Liang Sicheng, Lin Huiyin, Hu Shi, Jiang Menglin, Fu Sinian, and Fei Xiaotong. The Chinese name of "Fairbank" was taken with the help of Liang Sicheng, which is in harmony with the English name John King.
Fei Zhengqing, Fei Weimei, Liang Sicheng, Lin Huiyin and his wife
Liu Dong believes that because of the emergence of Fairbank, after World War II, the American sinology research team changed from small to large and from weak to strong, and a new school of learning different from the past was born.
Different from the old school of sinology, this new school of sinology is a branch of "area studies": taking modern And modern China as the research object, pursuing the process of China's modernization as the basic purpose, taking the generalized history as the main form, spanning sociology, anthropology and other multidisciplinary disciplines.
Fairbank in 1947
"Overseas scholars' understanding and research on Chinese history and culture has gone through a long process." Du Zhengzhen, a professor of history at Zhejiang University, agrees that in the mid-20th century, two stages of evolution were completed, from traditional sinology to Chinese studies. "From the early missionaries' introductions to Chinese texts to the in-depth study of contemporary scholars influenced by more social science methods, they are quite different in terms of the themes they focus on, the materials they use, and the styles of writing."
And here in Shi Jingqian, there has been a slight change. Shi Jingqian once said that he was a little different from Fairbank: "My interest is in arousing people's interest in China. ”
Shi Jingqian's portfolio
"If I have a school of thought, it is to motivate or encourage the reader to think: 'China is really a complex and interesting society.'" There are some things out there that we Westerners have never heard of or thought of. If we want to understand China, or even if we work with China without understanding it, we should think about it. ’”
Exchange at Fudan University
This may also be the consensus of many sinologists. Martin Kern, a sinologist at Princeton University, also said, "If you don't understand China, you can't understand the ancient world." In the 1980s, Ke Martin studied at Peking University, studying early Chinese texts and literature.
How do we understand Shi Jingqian's sinology research?
Zheng Peikai often said that Shi Jingqian's greatest contribution is not in China, but in the West, he let Western readers understand the historical encounters of Chinese, cross the barriers of cultural barriers, and resolve the civilization confrontation mentality of "not my race, its heart must be different". Let the world better understand China's history and culture, familiar with the cultural psychology of Chinese, and better feel the humiliation and setbacks experienced in modern China, but can persevere, work hard, and constantly pursue the ideal and happiness.
The development and evolution of Sinology is the process of the Continuous Deepening of the Western Understanding of China, and also the process of Chinese civilization becoming an important part of world civilization.
"We must understand that overseas sinology is part of the great overseas humanities and social sciences academic trend, and the readers they study and write to are first of all overseas readers, and the more early they are, the more obvious this feature is." Professor Du Zhengzhen said, "But this does not mean that overseas research is useless to us, on the contrary, Chinese academic community has benefited too much from overseas Chinese studies." There are quite a few excellent works in them, which not only show us how to apply the research paradigm and multidisciplinary approach derived from Western philosophy and social sciences to understand China, but more importantly, let us understand the possibility of examining Chinese history and culture from different perspectives. "Bystanders may not be clear", but comparative vision and pluralistic values can find many previously overlooked aspects of Chinese history and culture.
"Overseas Sinology research not only allows the world to understand China, but also allows us to better understand ourselves and understand China in the eyes of the world."
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