Liang Siyong (left) and his brother Liang Sicheng pose for a group photo at the excavation site in Northwest Gang ◎ Guo Jingchao
In this issue, we tell you the story of a great Chinese scholar.
On January 10, 1927, the Tsinghua Institute of Chinese Studies held a warm welcome tea party to celebrate the fruitful results of the archaeological excavations in Xiyin Village, Xia County, Shanxi Province, the previous year. This was the first scientific archaeological excavation led and organized by the Chinese. At the meeting, Li Ji, the person in charge of the excavation, and Mr. Yuan Fuli, a geologist, said in their speeches that the two of them were halfway out of the house in archaeology, and the real people who specialized in archaeology were still in the United States...
They were waiting for China's first archaeologist from the class to return home. He is Liang Siyong.
Knowing people's expectations of his son, Liang Qichao was happy and scared
Before the 1920s, modern archaeology was still a Western discipline that had not taken root in China. The reason why Liang Siyong chose such an unpopular profession is related to his father. He was the second son of Mr. Liang Qichao. Liang Qichao, an influential politician and thinker in modern China, also vigorously promoted archaeology to take root in the land of China.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Liang Qichao wrote an article introducing the Famous Three-Period Theory of the Danish antiquarian Thomson. Thomson uses the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age to describe the prehistory of Europe. The doctrine was widely disseminated in the 1860s and is still used in prehistoric archaeology around the world today. Therefore, Liang Qichao advocated writing Chinese prehistory according to this doctrine, rather than myths and legends, "so it is not an exaggeration to take this doctrine as a proportion and to examine the history of Chinese prehistory." Shen Songjin said so in the article "The Establishment and Development of Liang's Father and Son and Modern Chinese Archaeology".
Liang Qichao also served as the president of the Chinese Archaeological Society at that time, and strongly supported the field archaeology work. In 1926, when Li Ji went to the archaeological excavation of Xiyin Village in Shanxi, Liang Qichao twice wrote to Yan Xishan, who was in charge of Shanxi, asking him to support this new scientific cause. In that turbulent era, Li Ji's archaeological work was thus carried out smoothly.
In October 1926, Gustav, president of the Archaeological Society of Nations and Crown Prince of Sweden, visited China. Liang Qichao attended the welcome meeting held on October 22 and delivered a famous speech entitled "The Past and Future of Chinese Archaeology". In his speech, he reviewed the achievements of epigraphy, the predecessor of Chinese archaeology, and also looked forward to the development of Chinese archaeology in a very forward-looking manner: he believed that Chinese archaeology should not only consciously strengthen field archaeological excavations, but also promote advanced methods and talent training. He believed that "with such a large place in China, such a long history, and such a rich collection of antiquities, if you work hard to go down, you will definitely occupy a very high position in the archaeology of the world." ”
"Liang Qichao is the disseminator who introduced modern Western scholarship to China and the founder of China's modern 'new historiography' thought. He advocated the study of historiography using a variety of materials, including archaeological materials. Before the official birth of Chinese archaeology, he had already done a lot of preparatory work for the introduction of archaeology. Chen Xingcan, director of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said.
Liang Qichao spread a new historical idea that incorporated Western archaeological ideas to China, while also guiding his children to become pioneers in practicing this concept. Among the nine children, Liang Qichao hoped that his second son Liang Siyong would study archaeology, so he sent him to Harvard University in the United States for further study. Therefore, at the tea party in 1927 to welcome Li Ji's return from Shanxi archaeology, when he heard two people who walked at the forefront of Chinese archaeology called themselves "halfway out of the house" and said that Liang Siyong was "a person who really specializes in archaeology", his heart should be very excited and happy. That night, he wrote a long letter to Liang Siyong. The letter said: "I am happy for you, and I am afraid for you, how can you deserve the reputation of 'China's first archaeologist in the future?' ”
Liang Siyong did not live up to his father's expectations. He is trying to muster the strength to transform it into a solid cornerstone of the "edifice" of Chinese archaeology.
From the highest academic hall to the extremely cold northeast field
Born in Shanghai in 1904, Liang Siyong went into exile with his father in Japan and attended a tongwen school run by overseas Chinese in Kobe. In 1913, he returned to China with his family and soon after enrolled in the Chongde Middle School in Xicheng, Beiping. From 1916 to 1924, he studied at tsinghua school in the preparatory class for studying in the United States. During these eight years, Liang Siyong studied diligently and achieved excellent results, and he collaborated with his brother Liang Sicheng to translate the "Outline of World History" written by the British scholar Wells, which was published after Liang Qichao's revision. During this period, he also participated in the May Fourth student movement, "taking great pride in his heroic deeds, and bringing back the dried steamed bread he ate when he was imprisoned to his family to show his patriotism." ”
In the summer of 1924, Liang Siyong graduated and went to the United States to study the following year. Siyong Liang specialized in archaeology and anthropology at harvard research institutes, and has participated in the excavation of ancient sites of Native Americans, specializing in East Asian archaeology. During his studies, he often corresponded with his father to discuss his studies and return to China for internships, and received strong support from his father.
From July 1927 to August 1928, in order to understand the archaeological situation in China, Liang Siyong returned to China to serve as an assistant teacher at the Tsinghua Institute of Chinese Studies, and sorted out the pottery pieces excavated by Mr. Li Ji in Xiyin Village, which were later published in a special issue. During his studies, he also wrote the article "Some Issues in the Archaeology of the Far East", which put forward forward-looking insights into East Asian archaeology.
In the summer of 1930, Liang Siyong graduated and returned to China. After returning to China, Liang Siyong joined the archaeology group of the Institute of History and Linguistics of the Academia Sinica (hereinafter referred to as the "Archaeological Group of the Institute of History and Languages"), which had just been established for two years. In the autumn of the same year, he began to implement the "Northeast Archaeological Project" initiated by the institute - to heilongjiang to excavate the ruins of Ang AngXi. In late autumn and winter, he transferred from Tongliao to Rehe for archaeological investigation. Chen Xingcan once wrote in the article: "He and his colleagues traveled thousands of miles under extremely difficult conditions, lasted 38 days, and completed the first systematic archaeological survey of Northeast China in Chinese. ”
The hardships here have both social and natural factors. "At that time, Tohoku archaeology was controlled by the Japanese and Russians. Liang Siyong only took his assistant and went deep into the northeast to investigate, which was a huge risk. Chen Xingcan explained.
In Rehe, Liang Siyong saw villages and fields that were inaccessible under social unrest. He wrote in his investigative report: "This bleak situation not only makes us feel a great blow to our spirits, but also increases the difficulty of traveling. Along the way, there is not a single day where people eat, horse grass, drink water, fuel, and rest places without problems. In addition, coupled with the presence of thieves, the cold of the climate, the obstruction of ice and snow, and the shortening of the daylight hours, our walking stopping is completely dominated by the environment, without the slightest freedom. ”
Under such harsh conditions, personally taking the risk of collecting archaeological data was something that Chinese literati intellectuals disdained to do in the past, and Liang Siyong and the new generation of Chinese archaeologists did it. They "went up and down to the Yellow Spring and used their hands and feet to find things" in order to reconstruct ancient history with rich archaeological data.
Chen Xingcan said: "Liang Siyong's archaeological investigation has given us the first real understanding of the prehistoric culture of Northeast China. In particular, the prehistoric fishing and hunting archaeological data of the Ang Ang Creek site still have important reference value to this day. Since then, Liang Siyong's archaeological work has begun to bring a new look to Chinese archaeology.
Discover the "Hougang Triassic" and excavate the Chengzi Cliffs in Shandong
After returning to Beiping, Liang Siyong completed the excavation report of Ang'ang Creek in Heilongjiang, and in the spring of 1931, participated in the excavation of Xiaotun and Hougang in Anyang, Henan. This excavation is the fourth excavation of the Archaeological Group of the Institute of History and Language in Anyang. The first time was presided over by Dong Zuobin, an oracle osteologist born in Henan, and the second and third times were presided over by Mr. Li Ji, the new head of the archaeology team of the Institute of History and Languages and the first doctor of anthropology in China who graduated from Harvard University in the United States.
In this excavation, the archaeological team of the Institute of History and Language mobilized all its forces, including Li Ji, Dong Zuobin, Liang Siyong, Wu Jinding, Guo Baojun and others, and the archaeological scale and number of personnel were unprecedentedly large. Among them, the most critical force is Liang Siyong's participation. Since Liang Siyong joined, the excavation of Yin Ruins has gradually embarked on the track of science.
The excavation lasted more than 50 days and was suspended due to the turbulent situation. Liang Siyong then led the team to Shandong Chengziya for excavation.
In the late autumn of 1931, Liang Siyong returned to Anyang for the fifth excavation. This time, he found that the famous "Hougang Tri-Stack" - that is, the cultural layers of Xiaotun (Shang), Longshan and Yangshao had a very clear superimposed relationship. "This discovery, in the limited archaeological excavation materials at that time, can already clarify the relative chronological relationship between the Yangshao culture, the Longshan culture and the Shang culture." Commenting on this discovery, Chen Xingcan said, "With the discovery of the miaodigou phase II culture, a transitional layer between Yangshao culture and Longshan culture, in the late 1950s, the development sequence of Yangshao-Longshan-Shang culture was finally determined. ”
The reason why Liang Siyong was able to identify such stratigraphic relationships, dividing strata by differences in soil color and inclusions, rather than simply dividing by depth, is closely related to the stratigraphy method he studied at Harvard University. Liang Siyong once followed Qi De, who studied American archaeology, to the southwestern United States and participated in the excavation of Aboriginal sites. At that time, Qi De asked to divide the strata according to the natural changes of the strata. Therefore, Liang Siyong applied this new method to archaeological excavations in China. This also makes him a well-deserved founder of Chinese archaeological stratigraphy.
The reason why Liang Siyong went to Shandong Chengziya for excavation after the fourth Anyang excavation was forced by the war in Henan on the one hand, and because there was an important discovery in Chengziya on the other hand, the Longshan culture.
Regarding the Longshan culture, Liang Siyong introduced its origin in his article "Longshan Culture: One of the Prehistoric Periods of Chinese Civilization": "The evidence for the existence of the Longshan culture was first discovered by Wu Jinding in the spring of 1928. On the western cliff of the local mesa called Chengzi Cliff, a complete cultural layer is exposed. Here the discoverer excavated a thin piece of pottery with a black luster that coexisted with the stone bone tools. The Chengzi Cliff, which is partially piled up by this cultural relic, is on the east bank of a small river in Licheng County, Shandong Province, facing the small town of Longshan. Therefore, the name Longshan is the name of the culture discovered. ”
Wu Jinding's discovery was no accident. This is the reason why Li Ji and other scholars attach great importance to Shandong archaeology. Based on the literature and existing archaeological findings, they believe that the provinces along the Bohai Sea and the Yellow Sea have an important position in archaeology, so they went to Shandong to carry out archaeological investigations. The purpose of excavating Chengzi Cliff is not only to study the origins of Chinese culture, to trace the remains of the early Shang Dynasty and before, but also to explore the sites in the east that are earlier than the Yin Ruins, and to add evidence to refute the popular "Chinese culture in the west".
At the end of 1930, Li Ji, Dong Zuobin, Wu Jinding and others carried out the first excavation of Chengziya, found the walls and pottery kilns of the Longshan black pottery period, and also obtained pottery pieces, bones, stone tools and other specimens. In the autumn of 1931, Liang Siyong presided over the second excavation of the Chengziya site. In the excavation, he divided the stratum according to the stratigraphic method, and found two overlapping cultural layers of gray pottery culture and black pottery culture; in the arrangement of excavation work, he improved the method and improved the efficiency; at the same time, he also conducted typological analysis of cultural relics in follow-up research, laying the foundation for Chinese archaeological typology.
Later, Liang Siyong edited the compilation of the "Chengzi Cliff" report. In this report, he wrote several chapters of his own, and also reviewed and revised all the manuscripts in detail. This is the first field excavation report compiled by Chinese archaeologists themselves, which has created the basic style of field reporting. These include "normative basic archaeological concepts and terminology, and more importantly, a complete system of text and picture representations". This style is still used today.
"Based on the archaeological findings of the Longshan culture, Mr. Liang Siyong systematically summarized the characteristics of this culture for the first time and made an attempt at partitioning." 15 Although due to the limitations of archaeological discoveries at that time, Liang Siyong's relationship between Longshan and Yangshao culture did not go beyond the scope of the hypothesis of the "duality between east and west" in which Longshan culture developed to the west and Yangshao culture developed to the east, Chen Xingcan believed that "his identification of Yangshao, Longshan and Yinxu Shang cultures is quite accurate." Moreover, "the interpretation of the longshan culture as the predecessor of Chinese civilization has indeed shaken to a considerable extent the 'Chinese culture in the West' that has been popular for more than a decade at that time, which is also a major contribution of Mr. Liang Siyong." ”
"Desperate Sanlang" and northwest Oka excavations
People who know Liang Siyong know that he has the working spirit of "Desperate Sanlang". In the spring of 1931, just three months after his marriage, Liang Siyong participated in the excavations in Xiaotun and Hougang in Anyang, and has always appeared at archaeological sites ever since. His daughter Liang Baiyou once wrote: "He excavated with the workers in the field work, although the conditions were very difficult, sometimes needed to roll up the legs of his pants and soak in the water for several hours, in order to work without being affected by the rainy season, sometimes he had to pick up the lights and fight at night, eating irregularly, the work was so tight that he could not leave the construction site, so he had to nibble on some white steamed buns, drink a few sips of cold water to count as a meal, but he was still full of energy." ”
Working so hard under difficult conditions, no matter how strong the will, the body can not eat. In the spring of 1932, Liang Siyong was just 28 years old when he fell ill with trophotomy and was sick for two years. The doctor drew four bottles of stagnant water the color of beer from his lungs.
In the spring of 1934, as soon as his body had recovered, he began to complete the Report of the Rehe Investigation. From the autumn of the same year to 1935, he went to Anyang to preside over three excavations of the Yin King's Mausoleum in the northwest of Houjiazhuang, Yin Ruins, and was also the tenth to twelfth excavation of Yin Ruins Archaeology. The harvest and scale of these three excavations have reached an unprecedented peak. In particular, in the third excavation of Northwest Gang in the autumn of 1935, 500 workers were employed every day, which was the largest number of people in the history of field archaeology in China until then. The excavation area is 9,600 square meters. These three excavations uncovered 1,232 Yin shang tombs, including 10 large tombs.
Mr. Xia Nai, who had followed Liang Siyong to participate in the excavation of Northwest Gang, wrote in the commemorative article: "Mr. Liang was just over thirty years old at that time, and it was not long after the recovery of pleurisy, his slender figure and pale face appeared to have not yet fully recovered. But on the construction site, he ran around like a tiger, and his selfless work spirit made him completely forget the fragility of his body. ”
"The large-scale excavation of Northwest Gang fully demonstrates Mr. Liang Siyong's outstanding archaeological expertise and excellent management ability. At that time, the situation was unstable and there were many people, and as the host of the excavation, he not only had to ensure the orderly progress of the excavation, but also arranged the actions of hundreds of people. Even today, the excavation scene at that time was spectacular and remarkable. Chen Xingcan commented.
The excavation of the Northwest Gang Tomb has attracted the attention of foreign scholars. Western sinologists and Japanese scholars have published articles discussing Shang society and culture. When Fu Sinian, the founder of the Institute of Historical Languages, accompanied the French sinologist Bo Xihe to visit the excavation site, they sat with Liang Siyong on the construction site of the tomb, looked at the remains of Yin Shang, and left a group photo to freeze the historical moment.
He did not live up to his father's high hopes
After excavating the Northwest Gang, Liang Siyong had planned to take a good look at these extraordinary excavations, write the excavation report, and then arrange the next step of excavation work. However, when the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression broke out in 1937, the plan was interrupted. He followed the archaeological group of the Institute of History and Language and precious cultural relics to various places. First to Changsha, then to Kunming via Guilin, and then to Lizhuang, a remote village in Sichuan that "cannot be found on the map". During this period, life was hard, materials were scarce, and colleagues had dishes, not to mention Liang Siyong, who was physically weak.
In 1942, Liang Siyong had a violent attack of tuberculosis and was critically ill for a time. In the Spring Festival of 1944, he took advantage of his wife's absence and quietly asked the attending doctor: "I have one thing to discuss with you, it seems that my body cannot fully recover." But for now I can barely work. I want to know if my body can barely support the work for a year. Just give me a year's work and I'll be able to finish the report of Northwest Gang. At that time, even if I died of exhaustion, I was willing. "Maybe the heavens were moved by it and multiplied one by ten.
Liang Siyong compiled the material of the Northwest Gang King's Mausoleum into a manuscript of up to 241 pages, including a preliminary catalogue of chapters. Writing these manuscripts, Liang Siyong can really be described as bloody. Chen Xingcan explained that the manuscripts were written under a variety of difficult circumstances: one was Liang Siyong's poor physical condition; the second was that his living conditions were difficult; and the third was that he had no conditions for research. Those who do research work know that the study of archaeological materials is best spread out to facilitate observation, documentation and mapping. But there was no place for artifacts and materials to be spread out at all. Liang Siyong could only turn the materials out of the box, sort them out, and then put them back. A large number of materials are born out of this tedious procedure of taking it out and putting it in. When Chen Xingcan mentioned these details, he couldn't help but feel "very moved.".
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War in 1945, Liang Siyong went to Chongqing for a major operation, amputated several ribs in order to allow the left lung infected with tuberculosis to atrophy, and then returned to Beijing to recuperate. In 1948, he was elected to the first academician of the Academia Sinica for his outstanding contributions to archaeology. In 1949, the situation of the Kuomintang civil war gradually became clear, and the Kuomintang government was defeated and retreated to Taiwan, and the materials of the archaeological group of the Institute of Historical Languages were also brought with them. The manuscript written by Liang Siyong also became a precious material for the archaeological team, and they went to Taiwan together to wait for the systematic collation and publication of people with hearts.
However, Liang Siyong stayed in Beijing and joined the Institute of Archaeology, founded in 1950, as deputy director. At this time, despite his weak body, he still devoted himself to planning and guiding field excavations and indoor research, while not forgetting to actively support the growth of young archaeologists.
In February 1954, he was admitted to the hospital to continue his work if he was not in serious trouble, but he never left the hospital door. On April 2, Liang Siyong had a heart attack and died at the age of 50. Before dying, he said to his family: "I don't struggle anymore, I can't struggle, we will never say goodbye." ”
Mr. Liang Siyong's struggle stopped. His short life was born for Chinese archaeology. He did not live up to his father's high hopes, and contributed all his wisdom and painstaking efforts to Chinese archaeology.
Chen Xingcan said: "Liang Siyong injected new methods into Chinese archaeology, laid the foundation of typology and stratigraphy, and set a model for the writing of archaeological excavation reports. He was one of the early excavators of the Yin Ruins and an important discoverer of the Shang civilization. He is the founder of Chinese archaeology. ”
Li Ji said: "Mr. Liang Siyong, one of the most outstanding archaeologists in China, has devoted his entire life to this one thing. ”
Xia Nai said: "His heart and blood have been exhausted, his brain juice has been strangulated, and now even his bones have turned to ashes, but his spirit and deeds are immortal." ”
The Slovaks are gone, and the aftermath is rippling. In the summer of 1954, the news of Liang Siyong's death reached the other side of the strait. His former colleagues and students, with a sense of mourning, decided to do one thing - to go all out to complete the excavation report of the Northwest Gang Tomb that Liang Siyong was most concerned about before his death. After discussing with Li Ji, Dong Zuobin decided that Gao would go and compare the physical materials and compile Liang Siyong's posthumous manuscript. Li Ji personally handed over the 220,000-word manuscript to Gao To find. From then on, this scholar who was quite accomplished in paleography, historiography, folklore, and anti-artifacts began to devote the rest of his life to this matter. From sorting out relics, checking, measuring, taking photographs, and systematically sorting out materials, he almost rewrote the report; after more than a decade of days and nights, Gao went to find that he finally completed seven series of reports under the name of "Houjiazhuang". The title page of the report reads: "Liang Siyong has not finished the manuscript / Gao went to find a supplement." The word "compilation" has never been full of such affection, never carried such a weight...
Acknowledgements: Thank you to Chen Xingcan, director of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, for his strong support and valuable comments on this article; and to Professor Zhang Liangren of the School of History of Nanjing University and Dr. Liu Yan of the National Asian Art Museum of the Smithsonian Museum of the United States for his careful revision of this article.
Photo courtesy of Guo Jingchao