Han Zhiyuan: Dedicated his life to historical research: Mr. Cai Meibiao's academic characteristics and academic contributions

Author: Han Zhiyuan

Source: Guangming Daily (January 25, 2021, 14th edition)

Mr. Cai Meibiao, a famous historian and member of the Honorary Faculty of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, passed away on January 14, 2021. Originally from Hangzhou, Zhejiang, he was born in Tianjin in March 1928. He graduated from the Department of History of Nankai University in 1949 and was admitted to the Graduate School of Peking University that year, where he studied history under the guidance of his supervisor, Mr. Shao Xunzheng. He worked as a teaching assistant at the Institute of Liberal Arts led by Mr. Luo Changpei. After the establishment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, it was transferred to the Institute of Linguistics in 1952. In 1953, he was transferred to the Institute of Modern History and assisted Mr. Fan Wenlan in compiling the Compendium of General History of China and conducting academic research.

Since 1948, when he published the article "LiaoShi Literature Wang Ding Chuan ZhengYi", Mr. Cai has been writing and editing the "Collection of Vernacular Tablets of the Yuan Dynasty", "Ba Si Ba Zi and Yuan Dynasty Chinese" (co-authored with Luo Changpei), "Chinese Historical Dictionary , Liaoxia Jinyuan History", "Compilation of Chinese Earthquake History Materials" in seven volumes, "General History of China" in twelve volumes, "Ba Si Ba Zi Inscription Cultural Relics Interpretation", "Fifteen Lectures on the History of Liaojin Yuan", "Outline of Chinese History", "Liaojin YuanShi Kaoso", "Xuelin Past Events", "Chinese General History Concise", "Genghis Khan's Small Biography", "Genghis Khan's Small Biography" General History of the Qing Dynasty" and other works, published more than 100 academic papers and academic reviews. He devoted almost all his life to the academic cause, not only fruitful, but also formed his own academic characteristics.

The first is a model of the combination of general and specialized. Mr. Cai has talked many times about the relationship between generalists and specializations. He stressed that in the study of history, we must have a general view and be able to integrate and understand it, and he believes that the study of the history of the broken generation has its limitations. He often said that when Fan Lao (Fan Wenlan) was alive, he asked them to pay attention to the combination of generalization and specialization, and pointed out that history is a long-term line that is coherent and coherent, and it is also a big aspect of interconnection. It must be combined with specialization, and cannot be abandoned. In academic research, he has always paid attention to the combination of general and specialized, and his treatises have been well grasped both macroscopic and microscopic. He has profound knowledge, and his research field spans from the Han and Tang Dynasties to the Ming and Qing dynasties, and the knowledge involved is also quite extensive, covering history, geography, political science, ethnology, folklore, ancient literature, paleography and so on. Such profound knowledge is rare in today's academic community. He is not only a generalist, able to independently complete the compilation of the "Outline of Chinese History", but also unique in terms of specialization, is recognized by the academic circles at home and abroad in the history of the Liaojin Yuan, his masterpiece "Liaojin Yuan Shi Kaoso" reflects the achievements in this regard in a concentrated way, and his research on Jurchen, Basiba characters, and Yuanqu also has unique features. Mr. Cai has a wide range of academic research areas, and has written a wide range of historical papers on cultural relics such as "The Nature of pavilions in the Han Dynasty and Its Administrative System", "Ming Dynasty Mongolia and the Great YuanGuo", "The Name of the Country, the Name of the Nation before the Founding of the Great Qing Dynasty", "The Name of the Nation and the Chronology", and has published many papers on cultural relics in magazines such as "Archaeology" and "Cultural Relics". He edited the "Compilation of Earthquake History Data in China", which provides a relatively complete basic data for the study of earthquakes in Chinese history.

The second is the correct view of history and the method of governing history. Cai Meibiao has talked on many occasions about the important role of Marxism in guiding historical research. He held that historians should apply Marxist stands, viewpoints, and methods, carry forward the serious and rigorous study style of seeking truth from facts, proceed from reality, constantly forge ahead in a pioneering spirit, and through hard work, they will certainly achieve high-quality academic results. He stressed that in studying and applying Marxism, we must not be mechanical, rigid, or dogmatic. He said: "Marxism cannot become a rigid dogma, but needs to constantly absorb new achievements in the social sciences and natural sciences in order to achieve vivid and lively development." However, it is a serious misunderstanding to think that Marxism is obsolete and needs to be replaced by some new theory and new method. He has said many times that the development of academic history shows that any scientific achievement that can be called a new creation can only be the crystallization of many years of dedicated research, and cannot be a timely and sensational talk. He often used the term "round place" to describe the essentials of learning. "Place" is to sit still, and "heavenly circle" is to be good at thinking. He also said, "Doing academics and writing articles is like a chef cooking, the ingredients and ingredients are the same, but the level of making is very different", "The chef can't just cook one dish, but can make multiple dishes." In conducting research and writing, it is also necessary to be as comprehensive as possible, and it is necessary to write books, write papers, compile dictionaries, book reviews, and articles, and "the place of being wise in learning is not to discover new materials, but to find problems from common historical materials." Many of his insights on the concept of history and the methods of governing history are very helpful to us in doing a good job in academic research.

The third is to practice the spirit of realism and coldness. "Real and cold" is Cai Meibiao's incisive summary of Fan Wenlan's spirit of governance. Moreover, it is precisely with this as his motto that he carries forward the exercise of physical strength. Real, that is, practical, also includes plain and honest. Fan Wenlan has repeatedly advocated that the study of history should proceed from reality, not from concepts. Historical phenomena are complex, many things lack a complete record, and some have rich information, but due to different sources of information and the bias of the narrators, they often do not reflect the truth of historical facts. This requires honest and arduous and practical investigation and research work, repeated reading, and careful thinking in order to remove the false and the true and get close to historical reality. Cold, that is, the abbreviation of cold bench and cold pork. Fan Wenlan advocated that scholars should have the spirit of "two colds" in doing their studies. He often encouraged the comrades of the institute to make a determination to "cool down". The first is to sit on the cold bench, that is, to sit down and seriously study and conduct research, bury their heads in hard work, and persevere. The second is to eat cold pork (people with high morals in ancient times can enter the Confucius Temple after death to enjoy sacrifices), which is to warn everyone not to rush to achieve success, to make long-term efforts, and eventually your achievements will be recognized by society. Cai Meibiao is a model for practicing the spirit of realism and coldness. From the time I started working at the institute in the mid-1970s, I saw him sitting in his office every morning reading and writing for decades. Before the 1980s, the office conditions of the Institute of Modern History were still very simple, and the general history group of 20 or 30 people concentrated in a large bungalow. My desk is opposite Mr. Cai, and every day I see him working hard, lying on his desk at noon for a short rest, and then reading and writing in the afternoon. Until the age of ninety, it seems that he still does not know that "old age has arrived", and continues to continue to study and work every day as always. We have seen that Mr. Cai has published a variety of personal works in the past decade. In the past, most of his energy was spent on completing Fan Wenlan's last wish to write the General History of China, and less on personal research. This spirit of dedication is also worth learning.

The fourth is to pursue both history and literature. Mr. Lu Xun once said: "The Chronicle of History" is "the ultimate song of historians, the departure of no rhyme", and gives a very high evaluation to Sima Qian's historical skills and literary accomplishment. Historical works should strive to achieve the perfect unity of historical facts and written expressions. However, many historians today lack literary literacy and do not attach importance to the expression of words. Although his writings are innovative in historical sources and opinions, they are obscure and difficult to read, thus weakening their own value and the scope of dissemination. In her early years, Cai Meibiao worked with Fan Wenlan and Luo Changpei, both of whom were language masters. Fan Wenlan's early research on "Wenxin Carved Dragon" was quite profound, and several research monographs were published, he was good at turning ancient Chinese into modern Chinese, and was praised by the academic community for his concise and simple sentences. Luo Changpei has excellent language ability and belongs to the level of a titan in the field of linguistics. Mr. Cai was deeply influenced by them and attached great importance to the cutting of historical facts and the expression of words. It can be said that his ability to control words, out of the blue, into gold, can really be described as "the use of magic, with one heart". This is inseparable from his own profound attainments in paleography and phonology, as well as his ability to write poetry, literature and history. Therefore, reading his works makes people feel relaxed and pleasant, and there is no sense of pretending to be profound and dragging mud and water. This is also one of the important reasons why the "General History of China" and the "Outline of Chinese History" can be in-depth and simple, elegant and popular, and loved by the majority of readers.

The fifth is the "horizontal" style of studying Mongolian studies. Cai Meibiao was one of the earliest scholars engaged in Mongolian studies in China, and in 1948 he published a paper entitled "Marriage Customs of Ancient Mongolia Seen in the History of The Yuan Secret". In the early 1950s, Tong Luo Changpei compiled "Ba Si Ba Zi and Yuan Dynasty Chinese", and began to systematically collect and study the work related to the Ba Si Ba character Mongolian and Chinese literature. During this period, he successively published the "Preface to the Expansion of the Yuan Basiba Character Stele collected by the Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences of Peking University", "From the Origin of Mongolian Script to the Implementation of the New Mongolian Language", "Mongolian in Chinese", "Several Translations in Yuan Miscellaneous Dramas", etc., making outstanding contributions to the development of Mongolian studies. For more than seventy years, he continued to cultivate in the Mongolian Academy, and was a scholar who devoted himself to the field of Mongolian studies and achieved remarkable results.

Mr. Cai's research on Mongolian studies has its own unique features. Instead of studying a single aspect of Mongolian studies, he adopted a horizontal approach, that is, a comprehensive study using a comprehensive approach of linguistics, history, literature, sociology, ethnology, etc. For example, in the study of Marco Polo, most scholars in the past believed that Marco Polo was a traveler. Mr. Cai, on the other hand, through the accounts of the various places described by Marco Polo in his travelogues, as well as the Persian and Mongolian words used in the book, conducted a comprehensive examination of his language and concepts, status and identity in China during his seventeen years, and the characteristics shown in his travelogues, so as to point out not only that he should be a brokered businessman, but also that the trajectory of his activities in China was related to his identity. Many of the problems that arose in Marco Polo's research were thus solved. After the article was published, it was unanimously praised by experts and scholars at home and abroad, such as Yang Zhijiu, professor of Nankai University, Luo Yiguo, an Australian Mongolian historian, and Chen Dezhi, professor of Nanjing University. History departments at some universities in the United States use their papers on Marco Polo's research as textbooks for students to learn and reference. Another example is the study of Guan Hanqing. Guan Hanqing is a great dramatist in the history of our country and has left many precious legacies in theater. However, due to the lack of surviving information on Guan Hanqing's life and deeds, for a long time, people did not know much about Guan Hanqing's birth and death era and life experience, and many details became difficult mysteries. Cai Meibiao conducts in-depth and meticulous analysis and research from the perspective of historical linguistics through Guan Hanqing's creation of Mongolian and other words in the drama, thus revealing the conclusion that Guan Hanqing was born at the end of the Jin Dynasty and was entered by Jin. He also pointed out that he was not the "Yin of the Late Jin Dynasty Hospital" or the "Yin of the YuanTai Hospital" as people thought, and based on the historical facts of the Yuan Dynasty classics and the household registration system, it was concluded that Guan Hanqing was a medical household under the custody of the Yuan Dynasty Tai Hospital. In addition, it has also been examined that "from the ancestors of the Yuan Dynasty to the late Yuan Dynasty, Guan Hanqing also engaged in theatrical activities in the Hangzhou generation". This paper, "Guan Hanqing's Life Examination Strategy", reflects that he is good at using linguistics, literature, history, etc. to conduct comprehensive research, so the results achieved are more convincing. His study of The Basiba characters also has its own characteristics, not simply identifying the characters, but using the Basiba characters as a research tool for Mongolian historiography, and in turn interpreting the content reflected in the Basiba character literature through historiography, thus pushing the study of the Bashiba character Mongolian philology to the peak.

In short, Mr. Cai Meibiao's academic contributions are multifaceted, and can be summarized as follows: First, through the "General History of China", "Outline of Chinese History", "Concise History of China", etc., to explore the development of Chinese history, disseminate systematic and correct historical knowledge, and make serious academic works move from the ivory tower to the society. A "General History of China" has been published for decades, reprinted many times, won the National Book Award, and has become a must-have book for many people. The "Outline of Chinese History" written in recent years is also deeply loved by the vast number of readers and has been reprinted several times. These have made important contributions to the development and popularization of Chinese historiography. The second is to carry out integrated research on breaking through the barriers of the Liao, Jin, and Yuan dynasties, which is of great significance to revealing the characteristics and laws of rise and fall of ethnic minorities such as the Khitans, Jurchens, and Mongols. His works such as "Liaojinyuan Shi Kaoso" and "Fifteen Lectures on the History of Liaojinyuan" explore the process of integration and formation of the Chinese nation's pluralistic integration, thus bringing new horizons to the study of ethnic history. The third is to publish a series of treatises on the Mongolian inscription documents and cultural relics of the Basi ba character, thus pushing the research in this field to a climax, especially using the combination of linguistics, history, sociology, literature, etc., to conduct comprehensive research on the ancient Mongolian peoples, opening a new chapter in Mongolian studies. In addition, he served as the chairman of the Chinese Mongolian History Society, the president of the Chinese Yuan History Research Association, and the executive member of the International Mongolian History Society, making significant contributions to the development of Chinese Mongolian historiography and Yuan history research.

The author, Han Zhiyuan, is a researcher at the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of History

Editor: Xiang Yu

Proofreader: Water Life

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