After the death of Mr. Zhang Kaiyuan on May 28, 2021, I have always wanted to write some text as a souvenir, but I know that I am not "qualified" enough, and I do not know where to start writing. At the beginning of January 2022, I stumbled upon several letters written by Mr. Zhang from 1982 to 1983 on an old book network, and the author luckily photographed one of Mr. Zhang's handwritten letters to Ye Wanzhong in 1983, which are of high historical value and the full text is reproduced as follows:
Comrade Ye Wanzhong:
Teacher Liu and others came to Suzhou, undertook a warm reception, the work progressed rapidly, very grateful. I just don't know if you're in better health? Hido cherishes.
The National Historical Planning Association will be held in Changsha on the 21st. In the Seventh Five-Year Plan, modern economic history is one of the key points. I hope that you and Comrade Wangling can quickly draft an overall idea about the selection of the archives of the Suzhou Chamber of Commerce, and then submit it to the meeting and strive to be included in the national plan, so that the future work can receive more support. (This idea needs to be reviewed by the leaders of the bureau and the library, and it is best to print a dozen copies).)
Xiao Ma and Zhu are graduate students, and they have a part of the planned teaching tasks on this business trip, hoping to take proper care of the work arrangement and give more guidance. If manpower is tight, Comrade Tang Wenquan can also invest some strength. Before September, in addition to preparing lessons and moving, he can also take some time to assist in this work. Some lead-printed or mimeographed documents, it is best to copy or take pictures, in order to save the labor of copying, you and Teacher Liu and so on can free up your hands to make more efforts in editing, selecting, and annotating.
I hope that the archives of the association can be paid attention to as soon as possible, and the selection and compilation can be started before and after the matter of the chamber of commerce files. Publishing issues, we can contact, the working conditions are much better now than in the past.
Greetings to Comrades Kobayashi, Tu and Yao.
Dedicated
Write Ann
Zhang Kaiyuan
5.4
Mr. Zhang's letter page 1
Mr. Zhang's letter page 2
This letter is the initial testimony of the in-depth cooperation between the Institute of Modern Chinese History of Central China Normal University and the Suzhou Municipal Archives to compile and utilize the archives of the Suzhou Chamber of Commerce. The letter paper used by Mr. Zhang is quite promising, and the head is the eye-catching "Xinhai Revolutionary History Research Association in Central and Southern China", and there is a line of small characters at the bottom: "Contact Location: Xinhai Revolutionary History Research Office of Wuchang Huazhong Normal University". The "Central and Southern Region Xinhai Revolution History Research Association" was established in 1978, during the period when Mr. Zhang and Lin Zengping edited the "History of the Xinhai Revolution". The reason why the name of the study association is not national is to listen to Li Shu's suggestion and limit the scope to the central and southern regions to avoid internal "discord". At the end of the year, the first council was held in Zhongshan, and Mr. Zhang was elected as the chairman of the board. The "Xinhai Revolutionary History Research Office" was led by Mr. Zhang after the end of the Cultural Revolution and established in the History Department, with only three lecturers at the beginning, namely him, Chen Hui, and Sun Yuhua, plus Liu Wangling, who was also an assistant teacher. The research office was renamed the "Institute of History" in 1984 and later upgraded to the "Institute of Modern Chinese History" in 1999.
Mr. Zhang believes that in order to run a research institute well, its host "must have a head, a pair of shoulders, and a pair of legs", which means having thoughts, daring to take responsibility and moving around diligently. Looking back at that year, three volumes of the "History of the Xinhai Revolution" were published one after another, but Mr. Zhang did not become complacent and stopped moving forward, he had already made up his mind to lay out the plot and "continue the frontier again." As early as 1964, Mr. Zhang, who was seconded to Beijing, participated in the preparation of the "Modern China Social History Investigation Committee" (hereinafter referred to as the "Historical Investigation Committee"), the focus of the investigation work included the national bourgeoisie, the comprador class, the Jiangsu and Zhejiang chaebols and the Chamber of Commerce. Unfortunately, due to the impact of the political movement, the investigation work was eventually aborted. Around New Year's Day in 1980 (according to the Oral Autobiography of Zhang Kaiyuan), Mr. Zhang went around New Year's Day in 1980. However, according to the earlier "Preface to the First Series of The Archives of the Suzhou Chamber of Commerce", which mr. Zhang personally wrote, he said that he went around New Year's Day in 1981 to write the paper "The Xinhai Revolution and the Jiangsu and Zhejiang Bourgeoisie". Professor Ma Min believes that it may be that Mr. Zhang misremembered when writing the preface, because Mr. Zhang mentioned in his 1980 lecture the discovery of the archives of the Suzhou Chamber of Commerce), and Mr. Zhang visited the Suzhou Municipal Archives for the first time (press: Because Mr. Zhang specifically contacted Tang Wenquan and asked him to guide him to the Suzhou Municipal Archives). He always remembers when he first came into contact with the suzhou chamber of commerce files:
The archives were dusty and piled up in the underground warehouse of the Suzhou Municipal Archives. It was quite cold, and the only heating tool for the staff was a dripping glass bottle filled with boiling water and covered with hands to ward off the chill. I don't even have that bottle. Later, they gave me a glass bottle, but I couldn't use it because I couldn't use it because I had no way to look at the archives and make records with the glass bottle. (Zhang Kaiyuan's Oral Autobiography, Beijing Normal University Press, 2015, pp. 307-308)
"Its beginnings are also simple". The staff of the Suzhou Municipal Archives would not have thought that because of the arrival of this scholar who was fifty years away, dressed in gray military civilian clothes, wearing hats, and smiling, the two sides would actually form such a deep fate - the archives of the Suzhou Chamber of Commerce, which had been piled up in the underground warehouse for many years to eat ashes, would reappear in the day, and the academic lives of many historical researchers would be linked to this, and the world would have a new understanding of the city of Suzhou because of this research.
In fact, Mr. Zhang is not the first person in the academic community to see the files of the Suzhou Chamber of Commerce. Previously, several scholars went to the archives, and the staff enthusiastically took some chamber archives and asked them to judge their value, and the results were considered to be of little significance. This made Ye Wanzhong, the backbone of the business that sorted out the archives at that time, "very unconvinced." It just so happened that Mr. Zhang came to Suzhou, and Ye Wanzhong asked him to look at it again, "If he also said that there was no value, then seal these materials." Mr. Zhang highly affirmed the value of these archives, and he and Ye Wanzhong saw each other as they were. The archives of the Chamber of Commerce preserved the rare archives of the citizens' communes, and Mr. Zhang", who "had the wisdom to see the pearls", not only suggested in the letter that Ye Wanzhong should "start selecting and compiling" as soon as possible, but also gave a fair evaluation in the article "The Xinhai Revolution and the Jiangsu and Zhejiang Bourgeoisie". Ye Wanzhong admired Mr. Zhang's historical insights, saying in a 1983 article:
For example, the question of the citizens' commune was consulted as early as 1965 when the archives were cleaned up, and the result was not satisfactorily answered. After going through all the historical reference books, there is no record. At the beginning of the opening of the historical archives, I asked some relevant "families" and "teachers" for advice, but unfortunately I either shook my head and did not answer, or my words were vague, and even a few people who did not learn and did not have any skills actually called it "inexplicable things" in a wonderful way. Only Professor Zhang Kaiyuan thought that it was of great academic research value after reading the file, and actively suggested that we organize compilation and vigorously support publication. (Ye Wanzhong: "Experience in Compiling Several Series of Historical Materials of Suzhou Chamber of Commerce", "Reference Materials for Archival Document Compilation", Archives Publishing House, 1987, pp. 438-439)
After Mr. Zhang returned to school, he shared this new discovery with ma Min and other undergraduates in class. In the spring of 1982, Ma Min and Zhu Ying were admitted to Mr. Zhang's graduate school. Mr. Zhang broke the teaching routine and asked Ma Min and Zhu Ying to follow Teacher Liu Wangling to the Suzhou Municipal Archives to participate in the collation and compilation of the archives of the Chamber of Commerce. They stayed in Suzhou for more than half a year (Ma Min, "Gentlemen and Merchants Are China's "Bourgeoisie" during the Xinhai Revolution", The Paper, Private History, January 4, 2018). The two well-known professors Ma Min and Zhu Ying in the academic circles today are the "little horses and Zhu" in Mr. Zhang's letter. It should be pointed out that because of the long time, the parties' recollections are inevitably ambiguous or biased. Although Mr. Zhang and the Suzhou Municipal Archives both want to sort out the archives of the Chamber of Commerce as soon as possible, Mr. Zhang is "suffering from too much work at hand", and second, the research office is not manpowered enough, so it can only be postponed. Ma Min and Zhu Ying became Mr. Zhang's graduate students, which to some extent supplemented "fresh blood". It was not until March 18, 1983, that Mr. Zhang replied to Ye Wanzhong that Liu Wangling had taken Ma Min and Zhu Ying to assist in sorting out the archives of the Chamber of Commerce, and arrived in Suzhou on March 31 or April 1. In terms of accommodation and food, it is best to arrange in the Suzhou City Guest House, one is convenient for work, and the other is to save costs, because of the long time, too much money, can not be reimbursed, and the standard of food subsidies for graduate students on business trips is also low.
Ma Min's Master's Degree Admission Letter
It was a time of renewal, but the material conditions were relatively rudimentary. Wuhan and Suzhou are far away, and it is not easy to travel for a business trip. Professor Zhu Ying recalled: At that time, they did not have a direct train from Wuhan to Nanjing, Shanghai, Suzhou and Hangzhou, generally by ship to Nanjing or Shanghai, just by boat to Shanghai it took about two days and two nights, and then transferred to Suzhou. Once, he also took a long-distance bus for more than ten hours to Nanjing, and then transferred to Suzhou by train. They live in the municipal government guest house in Suzhou, the archive is also a subordinate unit of the municipal government and is located in the municipal government compound, the impression of the guest house ordinary double room conditions are very general, eating in the municipal government canteen, feel ok. I spent the first few months familiarizing myself with archiving and editing, and then I took advantage of Sundays to visit some of the attractions. Professor Ma Min still remembers that they went from Wuhan to Nanjing by boat (third class) and then to Suzhou by train (hard seat), and indeed lived in the municipal government guest house, he and Zhu Ying lived in a room, there was a free breakfast in the morning, and they also met the star of the movie, Guo Kaimin (the male protagonist of the movie "Lushan Love")," and others.
The main purpose of Mr. Zhang's letter was to ask Ye Wanzhong and Liu Wangling to "quickly draft an overall idea for the selection of archives of the Suzhou Chamber of Commerce", which would be submitted to the National Conference on Planning of Historical Disciplines held in Changsha in late May, "and strive to be included in the national planning, then the future work should receive more support." At this important meeting, the Series of Modern Chinese Economic History series was included in the "Sixth Five-Year Plan" (according to the "Sixth Five-Year Plan" here, and Mr. Zhang's letter also said that it was the "Seventh Five-Year Plan", because this meeting had a dual task, one was to implement the "Sixth Five-Year Plan" and the other was to discuss the "Seventh Five-Year Plan"). According to the agreement of the planning meeting, the "Series of Modern Chinese Economic History" actually includes three sets of series: "The first is the "Series of Modern Chinese Economic History Series", which mainly includes works on special topics and regional studies with considerable academic level; the second is the "Series of Materials on Modern Chinese Economic History", which collates and selects various important historical materials of higher value and relatively systematic; and the third is the "Translation Series of Modern Chinese Economic History", which translates and introduces representative works of various foreign schools with more influential masterpieces or historical value. (Zhang Kaiyuan: "Research on China's Modern Economic History Should Be Strengthened", "China Modern Economic History Research Newsletter", Vol. 1, December 1983, p. 3) In order to promote the editing and publication of the series, the Editorial Board of the Modern Chinese Economic History Series was established accordingly. The editorial board office is located in the Economic History Research Office of the Institute of Economics of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, and the daily work is presided over by Ding Richu. On August 24, the editorial board held its first meeting in Shanghai, attended by the following members of the editorial board: Zhang Kaiyuan, Ding Richu, Mao Jiaqi, Zhang Zhongli, Xu Yuanji, Huang Yiping, and Hong Yeguan. After discussion, Mr. Zhang Kaiyuan was elected as the director of the editorial board.
In order to strengthen mutual exchanges, the Editorial Board regularly publishes a series of "Research Materials on Modern Chinese Economic History". It should be noted that the series was originally published internally under the title of the first issue of the Newsletter for the Study of Modern Chinese Economic History, in December 1983. In the "Special Report" of the first series, there is not only a brief introduction to the content of the book "Selected Archives of the Tianjin Chamber of Commerce" mentioned in Mr. Zhang's letter, but also the article "The First Series of the Archives of the Suzhou Chamber of Commerce has begun to be finalized" written by the signature "Xin Liu" (according to Professor Zhu Ying, Xin Liu is the common pseudonym of Teacher Liu Wangling). At the beginning of the article, it was clearly stated that the first series of the Suzhou Chamber of Commerce Archives Series "After more than half a year of hard work, the first draft has been compiled and has now entered the finalization stage.". It then goes on to explain the series "Six Series to be Divided", which briefly summarizes the archives and focuses on the content of the first series. Then the article mentioned that the selection and compilation work has received attention from all sides and "has been included in the national 'Sixth Five-Year Plan' key project "China's Modern Economic History Data Series". The selection team is composed of a combination of archivists and professionals. The whole book was edited by Zhang Kaiyuan, Liu Wangling, and Ye Wanzhong, and "comrades Lin Zhilin, Tu Xuehua, Yao Kaishun of the Archives, and Tang Wenquan, Zhu Ying, Ma Min, and other comrades who participated in the selection and compilation of the first series were comrades." Finally, the article mentions that the first series was finalized in 1983 and will be published by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Publishing House in 1984, and the other series are "planned to be selected and compiled within five years according to the progress of one series per year.".
It can be seen that Liu Wangling took Ma Min and Zhu Ying to the Suzhou Municipal Archives to compile the contents of the first series of contents, and the stay for more than half a year mentioned by Professor Ma Min earlier is indeed the case. From April onwards, they may not return to Wuhan until October or November, and the work cycle lasts from spring to late autumn or even early winter (according to Professor Ma Min, Zhu Ying returned to Wuhan after staying for a while because of family troubles). This kind of life experience is hard for the two graduate students of history, but it is very practical, laying a solid foundation for their follow-up research. The selection team was highly efficient, and Tang Wenquan later joined it, and the "Xiaolin, Tu, and Yao" in the letter were Lin Zhilin, Tu Xuehua, and Yao Kaishun, the staff of the Suzhou Municipal Archives. According to Zhang Kaiyuan's oral autobiography, Tang Wenquan was once hindered by his transfer to the Chinese Division due to his low education, and Mr. Zhang Shunhui even took up the case and said loudly: "I don't even have a middle school diploma, and before the founding of New China, I can become a professor of the Ministry of Education!" After much trouble, Tang Wenquan was finally officially transferred to the Chinese Division in 1983. Therefore, the letter said that "before September, in addition to preparing lessons and moving, he can also take some time to assist in this work", which should refer to Tang's work transfer is no longer a problem, and he was busy preparing classes and moving at that time. Professor Ma Min said that Tang Wenquan's family was in Wuhan with them. In short, the information revealed in this article and Mr. Zhang's letter are enough to corroborate each other.
According to Professor Zhu Ying' recollection, the letter said that "with some planned teaching tasks", under Mr. Zhang's arrangement, before and after going to the Suzhou Municipal Archives or during the period in Suzhou (the specific time can not be remembered), Teacher Liu Wangling once took them to Nanjing, Shanghai, Yangzhou and other places, listened to "lectures" and chatted in the homes of many famous modern historians, and also rubbed a meal in his home (at that time, he rarely invited guests to restaurants, and generally entertained guests in his own home). Since most of them met these big men up close for the first time, they felt that the opportunity was rare and they were quite enlightened. Such a unique graduate "teaching" may not be possible in the future. As for who are these "big guys"? Professor Ma Min mentioned in an interview with Xu Jinjing in March 2018, such as Xia Dongyuan and Chen Xulu of East China Normal University in Shanghai, Duan Benluo of Su University, Mao Jiaqi and Cai Shaoqing of Nanda University. Qi Longwei of Yangzhou University not only gave them lessons, but also invited them to eat authentic Yangzhou dishes (Ma Min: "We have always paid attention to children's IQ, ignoring how to behave people", The Paper, Think Tank Report, November 26, 2018). ——Not only into the "copper mountain to open a mine", but also to visit teachers to learn, opportunity to create, can not be sought, people yearn for it.
The "Suzhou Chamber of Commerce Archives Series" was not later published in the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Publishing House, but returned to the Central China Normal University Publishing House. The words on the cover of the book, "China's Modern Economic History Materials Series", prove the extraordinary origin of this series. However, the actual publication process of the series is quite long, which can be described as "good things and many grinding". When the first series came out, it was already 1991. In 2004, the publisher launched its second series, with a gap of thirteen years. "Personnel has a metabolism", Mr. Zhang's two disciples, Tang Wenquan and Liu Wangling, died in 1993 and 1998, respectively. Until 2011, all six series were published (Feng Huiping and Fan Jun: "Suzhou Chamber of Commerce Archives Series" Publication Chronicle", Modern History Journal, No. 11, 2014). In 2017, the first series of the Suzhou Chamber of Commerce Archives Continued Edition was published.
In the letter, Mr. Zhang thought about Ye Wanzhong's "health is better." This is by no means a polite remark. In November 2012, Mr. Zhang, Professor Ma Min and Professor Zhu Ying went to Suzhou together to attend the launch ceremony of the complete collection of "Suzhou Chamber of Commerce Archives Series". After the event, Mr. Zhang went to the hospital to visit Ye Wanzhong, who was hospitalized, "Elder Ye was very excited", and others on the sidelines witnessed the cordial scene of the two elderly people getting together, and they were also "very moved". Professor Zhu Ying still remembers that he and Ma Min did not participate in the compilation of archives in those years, and in many ways they asked Ye Lao for advice, which benefited a lot. Mr. Zhang also had an unfinished business matter — sweeping the grave of his disciple Tang Wenquan — and when Tang died, Mr. Zhang was working as a visiting professor at National Chengchi University in Taiwan. Tang Wenquan's tomb is on a tea hill, there is no formal road, and it has rained the day before, and it is slippery and slippery. The eighty-six-year-old Mr. Zhang, despite his persuasion, slowly went up the mountain. The tomb sweep was over, and it was difficult to go down the mountain. On the way back to Wuhan, he also instructed Zhu Ying to have the Institute edit and publish a "Collection of Tang Wenquan's Writings" on the twentieth anniversary of Tang Wenquan's death, with his descendants as the preface (Zhu Ying: "Remembering Mr. Zhang Kaiyuan", "The Paper, Private History", June 5, 2021). -- "The old man entered my dream, and I remembered what I looked like", Mr. Zhang had a benevolent heart.
I remember that Mr. Zhang once told such a story: "During the Cultural Revolution", a war chess set up in a room in the third teaching building of Guizi Mountain, the Chinese master, and many teachers who were rebels "fought" there, so that the chessboard was later worn out and could not be seen clearly. But soon someone will draw with a pen and continue to "fight". By the end of the exercise, these once-spirited, youthful people were empty-handed and had nothing to do. At the same time, in the burrow room converted from a bathhouse to a burrow on the Tan Hualin Campus, Mr. Zhang Shunhui did not sigh, but regardless of the cold and summer, morning and dusk, he struggled to write a book, "When the rainy season, the roof leaks, just find a basin to pick up, the water comes in from the outside, put on the rain boots, and continue to write." Over the years, Mr. Zhang has authored a number of influential academic works. In order to transcribe the Commentary on the Interpretation of Words, he wrote more than fifty brushes. Even if society is pathological, don't go with the flow; at the lowest point of your life, you may wish to enrich yourself (Zhang Kaiyuan's Oral Autobiography, pp. 248-250).
More than ten years later, I still think of the smile and eloquent expression when I first met Mr. Zhang. The reason why this highly respected old man in his eighties made a descendant boy feel "funny" was that he had a "pure heart". Li Yan of the Ming Dynasty once said: "Those who have a childlike heart are absolutely false and innocent, and the original heart of the first thought is also." If you lose your childlike heart, you lose your true heart; if you lose your true heart, you lose your true person. ...... If the child's heart is obstructed, and if it is spoken, then the speech is insincere; if it is seen and is a political affair, then the political affairs have no roots; if it is written as a word, the words cannot be reached. Mr. Zhang advocated that as a scholar, you should have the courage to maintain a rational distance from the mainstream, so that you can enter the best mental state of doing learning - "virtual" and "quiet". His explanation is:
"Virtual" is the void, there is no slightest distraction in the brain, there is no shackles of chai rice oil, salt, sauce and vinegar tea, no projects, no assessments, and even no theoretical knowledge of their own before, completely empty themselves. "Quiet" means tranquility, and only by not living in a lively field can one be quiet; only when one's mind is not moved by external temptations can one be quiet. If you can be vain and quiet, you can wander through the ages, concentrate your mind, and think clearly. Scholars who are "virtual" and "quiet" may be "crazy, demented, and fascinated" in the eyes of others. But this is indeed the best state of mind to do learning. Scholars who are "virtual" and "quiet" are innocent scholars. The more virtual and quieter, the higher the innocence. What kind of realm a scholar can eventually achieve and what kind of situation he can create has a lot to do with his innocence. (Oral Autobiography of Zhang Kaiyuan, p. 311)
Although hundreds of years apart, Mr. Zhang's "virtual quiet theory" and Li Yan's "childlike heart theory" are common principles.
Mr. Zhang is not a scholar who sits in a study all day, and when he was in college, he participated in a progressive student society called the "Fire Fellowship". The so-called "although the fire is small, the pawn can burn the wilderness", the longer the time passes, the more people will look back at Mr. Zhang's life and career. His life practice and personality charm will undoubtedly remind those who come after him how far away he is from being a true intellectual.
(After the completion of the first draft of this article, after the review of Professor Ma Min, Professor Zhu Ying and Dr. Zhang Xiaoyu, Professor Ma Min and Professor Zhu Ying also took the trouble to reply to the author's email interview, adding many unknown historical details, and thank you for it!) ）