Published by Zhonghua Bookstore and written by Zhang Jian, a professor in the Department of Chinese of Peking University, "The Flea of Huaqiu" is a phased result of his major project of the National Social Science Foundation of China, "Narrative, Collation and Research of Modern Chinese Diary Literature". The book cover is bright dark gold, like a very beautiful robe, and the left side of the robe is hot stamped with a subtitle: The Daily Troubles of High-Ranking Officials in the Late Qing Dynasty. The book is wrapped in another side of the scenery of the great figures of the times washed out from the diary, including He Rulin, Ji Zhichang, Zeng Guofan, Liao Shouheng, Lu Chuanlin, and Shao Ying.
"The Flea of Huaqiu - The Daily Troubles of High-Ranking Officials in the Late Qing Dynasty"
He Rulin returned to his hometown to bury his mother, but he attracted the demands and entanglements of many relatives and friends; when the prospects of Ji Zhichang's career were bright, he returned from illness; Zeng Guofan obeyed his ancestral precepts of "not believing in medicine, not believing in monks and witches, and not believing in earth immortals", and still blamed himself for taking medicine after he was too ill to take medicine; Liao Shouheng's brother was critically ill, and he still could not return to heaven in order to save his brother. Under the military minister's Hua Qiu is similar to the daily troubles of ordinary people, and the source of troubles is not much different from ordinary people. Zhang Jian's interpretation of the diaries left behind by these late Qing dynasty military aircraft officials undoubtedly narrowed the distance between the big people and ordinary people, and let ordinary people understand the ordinary places of the big people, he said in the preface: Perhaps, when the "role model" walks down the altar and becomes the people around us, the courage of people to hope for the sage will be greatly increased.
Chatting with Zhang Jian is a pleasant thing, his erudition and kindness make people calm, and his collation and research of modern diaries over the years has also been slowly and hierarchically presented.
Zhang Jian
It's interesting to look at his emotions in a diary and ponder his state of mind
Zhang Jian's research on modern diaries began in 2007 with the compilation of Weng Xincun's diary. At that time, he worked at the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and accidentally and inevitably entered the topic of the diary, partly because he believed that he was "only a middle-aged person, not a good man, and should first do a good job in some valuable literature", and the diary is a documentary material that he believes to advance all aspects in three dimensions and truly make up for the gaps in history. The diary is known as an encyclopedia, "which is more fun in general." Studying the diary, mainly in the history of emotions and mentality, looking at the emotions of the owner of the diary in the diary, thinking about his mentality, this is what I think is very interesting."
"Weng Xin Cun Diary", Weng Xin Cun Zhang Jian sorted out
Zhang Jian is a regular visitor to several major libraries in the country, and the National Library goes the most because it is the largest. "If you want to resonate with the life of the owner of the diary, you must see more, so you can go when you have time, especially when you find a diary that interests you, and go more frequently." Zhang Jian always said that stupid people are to work harder, and I see more of the fun he gets after he drills in.
Zhang Jian's initial academic research did not start directly from the classic characters, but mostly the second-rate figures in the society, he described his way of doing learning is "the countryside surrounds the city", "the first-class characters are super-era, second-rate figures often have more times of truth, those grass-roots officials, teaching gentlemen, shogunate masters, etc., their diaries are sometimes muddy, Zhang parents Li Family short, not so many humanistic feelings, even if the late Qing Dynasty so big social changes, often not reflected in their diaries, as if they have nothing to do with them." But just like Ruan Ji said, "the lice in the crotch", when people go to catch lice, the lice have been hiding deep in the cracks, but if they really encounter a fire, where can they hide? This kind of peace is also the truest human nature." Through the diary, Zhang Jian wanted to cut out the most basic things of human nature. Even if Zhang Jian's diary research involved big people later, his focus still fell on the level of human nature.
Zhang Jian has a group of like-minded friends, such as Xu Yanping of Nanjing University, Peng Guozhong of East China Normal University, and Ma Zhongwen of the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. From 2013 to the present, together they have promoted the publication of the "Series of Rare Historical Materials in Modern and Contemporary China". According to Zhang Jian's incomplete statistics, among the modern figures from 1840 to 1919, there were more than 1,000 people who left their diaries, of which the research space and value were very large.
The finishing process is often accompanied by pain, and some handwriting is difficult to recognize that makes people vomit blood, Zhang Jian described it as like a ghost drawing symbol, "Than how Ru Lin's diary, to be honest, many times it is guessed by the upper and lower contexts." So we don't believe that a calligrapher can solve the problem, the calligrapher can't enter the diary context, and if you don't understand this period of history, you can't guess it."
"Diary of He Rulin" Daoguang 28 December 11
The process of sorting out the diary takes a long time, the first time the manuscript is just typed into the computer, how much can be recognized, Zhang Jian joined a diary letter sorting WeChat group, which has experts in various industries, and everyone often guesses the word together. "It is best to not count the right and wrong, record the diary in its entirety, if you start with a careful cut, it is difficult to organize forward." The second time, through contextual understanding, the appearance of the same word in different positions, etc., has a general understanding and correction of the whole diary. After that, look for exclusive geographical names, personal names, people involved, etc. "In order to be better used by more scholars, it is recommended to do a character index." The character index of a diary is best not represented by page numbers, but by date, that is, the year, month and day on which the character appeared. The biggest benefit of this is that the indexes you make are valid regardless of how future versions change. ”
With the successive publications of the series, more and more people are interested in diary collation, many people volunteer to join, Zhang Jian is very understanding and pleased, because almost no one is not interested in the diary, everyone is a living life, after reading other people's diaries will have a sense of substitution. Zhang Jian himself often wants to leave his work to do research, mainly because it is too interesting.
Speaking of interesting, Zhang Jian remembered that the eighth series of rare historical materials in modern and contemporary China contained the diary of the famous literary historian Tan Zhengbi when he was young, which was a set of copies of the original diary manuscript provided by Mr. Tan Zhengbi, the son of Tan Zhengbi. "The old man wanted to sort it out, but he was old and his eyesight was not good, so he entrusted the publishing house to find a candidate for sorting out, and finally we entrusted Dr. Wang Runying of the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to sort out the diary." Zhang Jian also found some of tan zhengbi's wife Jiang Huipin's maiden diary in the information provided by Mr. Tan Zhengbi, and he noticed one of the details, "Tan Zhengbi's wife was twelve or thirteen years old when she wrote this diary, a little girl, she wrote on the cover of the diary, 'Please don't look at it, but there is a Mr. Tan to see.'" I did the math, tan Zhengbi should have been in his twenties at that time, so it is estimated that the two people had a good feeling at that time."
Cover of Mrs. Tam's diary
The ultimate goal is to write a history of Chinese diaries.
In addition to diary collation, research is Zhang Jian's most important work, he hopes to use the next 5 years, he can see every kind of modern diary to write a synopsis, "who left what diary, mainly said what things, do a synopsis, so that there is a game of chess in the heart." At the same time as making a synopsis, I will also write interesting, life-like and temperamental parts of the diary into small articles, like social silhouettes. Although it is a by-product, it will be more infectious." Zhang Jian's ultimate goal was to write a history of the Chinese Diary, which was an ideal of his scholarship.
Zhang Jian believes that since the Qing Dynasty, especially since the modern era, it should be said that it has become more and more common for diary records to record things that are private, "I myself have a feeling that this change is very much related to the transformation of the Tang and Song dynasties. Tang poetry is often far away from daily life, it is refined and detached. But after the Song Dynasty, especially the Qing people, literary expression was often implemented into daily life. The same is true of diaries, no longer always thinking about what kind of content is beneficial to the hearts of the world, such as those geographical investigations, reading books and raising oneself, etc., but as a record of personal life history, eating, drinking, and complaining about diseases have come in, from public to private, and closer to daily life."
"Five Kinds of Diaries of Military Ministers in the Late Qing Dynasty", [Qing] He Rulin [Qing] Ji Zhichang [Qing] Shen Zhaolin [Qing] Xu Gengshen [Qing] Liao Shouheng Written by Zhang Jian zheng yuan
Zhang Jian also cites Xu Dunren's diary and poems in the late Qing Dynasty as an example: "Xu Dunren was the master of the shogunate of Jiang Zhizhang, the envoy of Sichuan, jiang was a native of Jiangxi, the great-grandson of the famous poet Jiang Shiquan, took Xu and others to take office, from Jiangxi to Sichuan to cross the Three Gorges, at that time crossing the Three Gorges was very terrible, their boats overturned twice, so you can't see too many romantic feelings from Xu's diary; he wrote a poem about the Three Gorges, the beginning and end of which are realistic 'yesterday overturned a boat, today overturned a boat'. Do you see that Li Bai's 'the apes on both sides of the strait can't stop crying, and the light boat has passed through the Ten Thousand Heavy Mountains' are two completely different expressions of literary experience? ”
The diaries of Zeng Guofan, a major minister of the late Qing Dynasty, and Xu Shichang, president of the Republic of China, were also personal. Zhang Jian said that what is often seen in Xu Shichang's diary is watering, flower arrangement, walking, and practicing writing every day, and the major events of the times are recorded very simply in the diary, and some are almost traceless, because his side of handling official affairs does not need to be reflected in his private diary. Zeng Guofan's diary also has many words related to his own life. Zeng Guofan is undoubtedly a "superman of the times", but in his diary, fierce inner struggles can be seen everywhere, "some things can not be persevered, such as getting up early", he often scolded himself when he was young, but still could not get up the next day. Even if he was an extremely popular minister, when Jiangnan's military affairs were at its most tense, his diary kept appearing "one game of Go" and "two games of Go", Zhang Jian said: "This may be the only way for him to relax himself, although he often expressed his need to quit, but the next day he couldn't help but play chess again." Zhang Jian feels that this is also the biggest charm of private life history, it is real, it can make you immersive, and resonate with yourself.
Private diaries are the most able to exercise the sense of history, the sense of life of the literature, page by page, year by year, the sense of the passage of time makes the daily life in the grand historical background become concrete and trivial, Zhang Jian combined with a variety of documents of the characters to refer to each other, the flow of time and the shadow of the years will converge into a long river.
The Diary of He Rulin
I also asked the origin of the title of "Huaqiu No Flea", why not "Huaqiu No Lice"? Does Zhang Ailing's famous quote refer to fleas or lice? Zhang Jian said that the original title of the book was "The Lice of Huaqiu", and later asked his colleague Li Guohua to find out that the earliest version of Zhang Ailing's article was a fleas, so he changed it. "Then why do people know more about lice?" Zhang Jian said that after the publication of "The Flea of Huaqiu", he found Zhang Ailing's "Small Opinions on Modern Chinese", which said that "the last sentence of 'lice' was mistaken for 'flea', Mr. Chengjing wrote to point out, thank you very much, and if the book is republished in the future, it will be corrected." "Probably because Zhang Ailing expressed this opinion, this article will be more 'lice' in the future." But her earliest writing was about fleas. At this time, Zhang Jian seemed to joke and said: "In the future, I will use the word 'lice' in the title of a certain book, because I owe lice an explanation." ”
(This article was originally published in the 10th edition of Beijing Youth Daily on September 15, 2020, with deletions and the title is intended by the editors.) Author: Wang Mian, reporter of the newspaper, courtesy photo: Zhang Jian)