As a writer who grew up "nourished by Western thought and literature", what was the biggest difficulty and challenge for Xu Zhiyuan to write a biography of Liang Qichao?
Xu Zhiyuan's biography of Liang Qichao is a decade-long writing project. Young Changemakers: Liang Qichao (1873-1898) is the first volume, followed by the second and third volumes. Recently, at the award ceremony of the first Wenjing Historical Writing Award, Xu Zhiyuan talked about his confusion and understanding of writing the second volume of "Young Changemakers".
The second volume is about Liang Qichao's exile in Japan. It was the beginning of the twentieth century that Liang Qi traveled to Japan and to the United States, which was in the Gilded Age, and other places. At that time, the various ideological trends that were breeding in those places, the chaotic and vital social changes that were taking place, how did Liang Qichao understand these? Far from China, as a bystander, how does he observe changes within China? In the face of a situation with many clues and complicated historical materials, long-term investment in it is very unaffected by emotional factors.
Xu Zhiyuan said, "Sometimes there is too much information, but it falls into it." When he couldn't find his way, he chose to go to the scene and look for the feeling of reality. In Xu Zhiyuan's view, what is important is how to feel these histories, how to make them a kind of existence and continuation in our lives. Today, Movable Type Jun shared with book friends The latest speech of Teacher Xu Zhiyuan at the award ceremony ,"An Amateur's Attempt".
An amateur's attempt
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Xu Zhiyuan dictated
This article is compiled from the shorthand of the award ceremony
Full speech: Xu Zhiyuan,"An Amateur's Attempt"
I would like to suggest that the next award can be held in the evening, and everyone can drink a little before sitting down to talk. Because I think history is not only sober, spectator-bystander, but also intense, intervening, even full of nonsense, that is also a very important part of history, even the most important part.
It's a pleasure to be here today, because some of them are my teachers, some of them are pro-teachers, I have chosen their classes, or I have read their books. They are also pioneers in new ways of writing Chinese history. I also saw my peers, and the younger generation. I saw the birth of a small community. For any discipline or category, how important is a community. We see that encouraging, stimulating, and criticizing each other can give birth to new creativity.
My remark here of "the attempt of an amateur" is a definition of myself in a sense that has a lot to do with my recent confusion. I am writing that Liang Qichao founded the Shinmin Cong Newspaper in Yokohama in 1902, exactly 120 years ago. It was in the Xinmin Cong Bao that he began to talk about the new historiography, and he believed that Chinese historiography had undergone a revolution. Now 120 years have passed, and it is exactly two reincarnations. From that era, from 120 years ago, we slowly began to be dominated by a now-accepted linear view of time.
The magazine edited by Liang Qichao in Yokohama was smuggled into China, showing a generation of new knowledge and ideas. His footprints spanned Japan, Oceania, the Americas and Europe, and he was warmly welcomed by overseas Chinese everywhere he went, and local politicians and the press flocked to him, believing that he held China's future.
I was in a lot of trouble when I flipped through that magazine. There were new ideas of history, new ideas of geography, and portraits of Napoleon and Bismarck were printed on the cover of the magazine, which showed the fashion of the time. I often feel a certain confusion, I want to find a key, that is, Liang Qichao in Yokohama and Tokyo in 1902, how he really understood this messy knowledge. This knowledge flowed from abroad to Japan, and from Japan to China at that time, from Kant to Rousseau, to Darwin, and to the generation of Defu Sufeng, all these traditions, such a huge amount of information, Liang Qichao had to digest.
New Min Cong
People at that time did not have our modern academic training, they thought and imagined in a highly amateur way. What do these ideas have to do with each other? What does it mean to understand Darwin in this context, what does Spencer mean? How was modern Hungary established? How do they imagine their homeland? How does a Hungarian exile face the reconstruction of his country? What kind of ideas and stimuli does this bring to China's reconstruction? I was caught up in such a vast network, trying to understand The history of Europe, to understand the rise of so-called modern human rights, the rise of the modern state, the emergence of modern constitutions, and then to understand how these ideas have entered Tokyo through the flow of power, into the heart of a young Chinese.
I have read these ideas in college, the history of Western political thought, or Rousseau's Social Contract. I usually use the concepts and nouns in it, but when it comes to how to understand "social contract", now I suddenly find that my understanding of these ideas and information is so vague. So this moment, which plunged me into an unprecedented confusion, was also a process of re-correction of my entire knowledge structure.
Chinatown, Yokohama, 1910
I don't have that sensitive talent for understanding abstract concepts of thought. How to face such confusion? I think for me, going to the scene is a way to save myself. This is also a bit of a coincidence with my personal encounters.
In early 2020, I went on a trip to Malaysia. Soon after the outbreak of the epidemic, I began a long life of being stranded overseas and forced to exile. It started in Malaysia and I went to Penang. Sun Wen, Kang Youwei, and Liang Qichao all went into exile there. I began to imagine a colonial world left by the British, a multi-racial world in Malaysia, that tropical feeling, when there was also a global plague that was coming. I also discovered wu liande, one of the founders of modern Chinese medicine, the inventor of the anti-epidemic mask in Harbin, who was born in Penang.
I imagine that more than a century ago, Sun Wen and Kang Liang and others went to Malaysia to raise money, where overseas laborers and overseas merchants were their most important material and spiritual foundation. They went there, persuaded the local Chinese to embrace these new ideas, and then used overseas power to bring about a change in domestic power. What kind of food do they eat there? How do they see that world?
Liang Qichao
I wandered all the way to Tokyo, Yokohama, and then to Hawaii to catch up with the global pandemic that had just begun. It happened to be in 1900, also 120 years ago, when Liang Qichao also went to Hawaii. He had planned to travel from Hawaii to the United States, but the plague that was sweeping the world was spreading from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, then to the United States, Europe, and finally through Siberia to Harbin in 1910. In 1900, when the plague came to Hawaii, then called Honolulu, Liang Qichao was unable to start his trip and had to stay in Honolulu. Hawaii had just become part of the United States at the time of the plague pandemic, and there was a temporary transitional regime and a period of major change. Why was Hsing Chung Founded in Hawaii? How do these people understand the changes that are taking place in distant China?
Everyone imagines the world in their own way. In Honolulu, local residents did not see Chinese as heretics, and whites were a small minority who were rarely involved in political change. The natives saw their kings die, their queens deposed, and they were more easily involved in politics in smaller worlds, so they were politically conscious and influenced by Christianity. When Liang Qichao arrived, he witnessed the destruction of the entire Chinatown and felt a new humiliation. Because the Honolulu government at that time believed that Chinese was related to the virus, it blocked the entire Chinatown, and believed that the only way to eliminate the virus was to rely on fire, and when burning a sick overseas Chinese house, the fire was out of control, and the whole of Chinatown was burned in the fire. At that time, Liang was in this situation, lobbying the local Chinese how to build a modern China and help them cope with the humiliation of the outside world.
Sick houses burned in Chinatown, Honolulu
Liang also fell into a relationship there. If you keep seeing changes in scenery during your travels, how much you crave some warm, more personal feelings. Because Liang's daily life is dominated by publicity, his whole being is dominated by a sense of fear, anxiety, and a feeling of always wandering, and he is controlled by the traditional value system, the way of reading, including the ethics of the family, and he rarely shows his emotions except in poetry and letters from friends, or occasionally with friends. Such a young man in his 20s, he is faced with some kind of unexpected emotion, or a belated love, his mind is full of all kinds of associations and feelings. He later wrote 24 poems to review the affair.
What matters to me is how we feel this history, how we make them a kind of existence and continuation in our lives. History never really passes. As William Faulkner said, "The past never fades, it never even passes." I read what Lord Acton said before I came, and I can't remember the original sentence, but I think he made a lot of sense. Presumably, in the present sense, it may be that historical writing is a relatively marginal way of writing, even though everyone present has their own ambitions and confidence. But in fact, historical writing has never been just a kind of writing, never only belongs to history, and historical writing is also a way of observing the world. Through this dimension, we can pay attention not only to history itself, but also to the fate of society as a whole, to the changes of each generation. Looking forward to us starting here, and looking forward to the next edition even better! Thank you!
Xu Zhiyuan, writer, founder of One Way Space, and creator of the talk shows "Thirteen Invitations" and "Thirteen Tours". His published works include "Those Sad Young People", "Strangers in the Motherland", "Young Reformers", etc., and his works have been translated into English, French, Korean and other editions.
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