Shen Jianhua, Tsinghua University: More than 40 years, suffering and happiness in the world of ancient characters

Shen Jianhua recent photo Author/Courtesy photo

I was born in Shanghai to an intellectual family, my father worked in literature and education, and my mother worked in education. In 1966, I graduated from elementary school. At that time, it was popular among classmates and friends to privately exchange novels with each other. Because of my eagerness to read, I used my brother's bicycle to secretly exchange a Tolstoy's "Resurrection" with my friends as a "capital" for the future exchange for world famous works. Because the school was closed at that time and there was no study to go to, I simply indulged in reading famous works from various countries at home, as if I were living in a different world.

At the age of 13, I feel that I can find spiritual sustenance and happiness in books, and I can forget my troubles. Fortunately, there is a used bookstore near my house, which is a place where I often read books and spend time. For a while, I still went to the waste collection station every day, waiting for people who came to sell "waste paper books" in bundles, and I once selected a set of "Chinese Loose-leaf Anthology" at a low price, and I still remember the excitement at the beginning. At that time, I was hungry and thirsty for reading, and there was no distinction between good and bad in the mud and sand, just to pass the time. Now that I think about it, my first knowledge was probably accumulated during this period.

1

In the winter of 1969, my father returned home from the Shanghai Museum to undergo political review, but fortunately there were some books on history, art, archaeology, oracle bones, and ancient texts in the fields of gold and ancient script. While writing materials, he secretly read Sima Qian's "Records of History" and Chen Mengjia's "Summary of Yin Xu Bu Ci". Later, through Mr. Gu Tinglong, my father borrowed from the Shanghai Library the Island Bangnan's "Yin Xu Bu Ci Comprehensive Category" (hereinafter referred to as the "Comprehensive Category"), and he simply loved this ten-year-old sword-sharpening and epoch-making oracle bone reference book. At that time, there was no photocopier, so my father asked me to help him transcribe the "Generic, Pseudo-Synonymous Use Cases" and "Word Index" sections.

Since then, I have become curious and interested in Oracle, and even in my dreams, my eyes are full of Oracle. Twenty years later, when I came to the Institute of Oriental Culture at the University of Tokyo in Japan, when Mr. Michio Matsumaru took out the original manuscript of Shima kunio's "Synthesis", I was extremely shocked and moved. Mr. Shimabang, who has been dead for many years, would never have imagined that it was his book that would allow a foreign young woman to enter the world of Oracle and change her life.

In the spring of 1970, I went to Suxian County to join the team, and in addition to some foreign famous books and biographical miscellaneous books, I also had a box of Oracle bone cards given to me by my father. It was the "Oracle Bone Block Character" made by the Shandong Literature and History Museum in the early days of the founding of New China, which was written with 1155 square characters, with oracle bones written on the front and kaisers, chinese sounds and simple annotations on the back, one is the original character, the other is the ordinary character meaning, much like the picture literacy reading for young children. There is also a "Text Seeking" and a line-bound version of "White Incense Word Spectrum" by Heaven and Void I.

In those years, I was recommended to the Shanghai Overseas Academy and the Department of Archaeology of NTU three times in a row. Because my father did not pass the political trial, I was brushed off again and again, which was a great blow to my spirit. My father wrote to comfort me that there were no walls in college and set up a study plan for me. First of all, he learned to check the "Explanation of Words in Shuowen" and began to read the works of early oracle bone writers, such as Zhu Fangpu, Yu Shengwu, Wu Qichang, Yang Shuda, Shang Chengzuo and other predecessors, and learned from the interpretations of different scholars. Among them, Tang Lan's "Yin Xu Character Record" (Peking University Lecture Notes Mimeograph) and Hu Houxuan's "Oracle Bone Study and Business History Series", "Bu Ci Tong" and "Oracle Bone Script Research" and other books have been of great help to me in getting started, and I still feel that I have benefited a lot.

I remember that one year on my birthday, my father bought a set of 12 volumes of lithographed pocket copies from the Shanghai Used Bookstore for me, and the "Zhou Li" published by the Harvard Yenching Society and sent me reference books. Guo Moruo's "Yin Qizhi Compilation", I read it while taking notes. My father also gave me oracle bone rubbings from different periods, so that I could try to identify the characteristics of the evolution of the style of the Zhenren Group in the five periods of Bu Ci. For a beginner, this is one of the very important and must-master foundations.

2

In September 1978, as a special talent, I was transferred from the Fertilizer Factory in Suxian County, Anhui Province to the Special Grade Calligraphy and Painting Warehouse Storage Department of the Anhui Provincial Museum. In December of the same year, I was honored to attend the first symposium of the Paleography Society held by Jilin University. At the meeting, the deputies vigorously debated and discussed issues such as the staging of oracle bones in Li Xueqin's article "On the Age and Related Issues of women's good tombs." I read out my first paper, "A Little Supplementary Opinion on "On the Age and Related Issues of women's tombs."

When the first issue of "Paleography Studies" was released, this small article of mine was rejected by Mr. Zhang Zhengxiu. He disagreed with my proposal, and Mr. Zhao Cheng gave me a letter that said:

Shen Jianhua could not be used. It cannot be used after modification. When the lithology was advanced to Wuding, this doctrine could not be established, and a few pieces of evidence were reluctantly pieced together, plausible, and could not solve the problem. Pencil approval do not erase, but show the author, if it is a self-motivated youth, will thank, will not hate me.

January 14th (January 1980)

Mr. Zhang may not have tolerated me going astray and looked up to me, otherwise he would not have written a handwritten letter to me. I don't know Mr. Zhang, and it is also a fate for me to get his teachings unexpectedly, and to this day I am still grateful to Mr. Zhang. Opening this letter that has been treasured for more than 40 years and has the marks of the years, it is as if it is in the next life, and there is always an inexplicable feeling and awe.

Today, Mr. Li Xueqin's "two-line theory" is broken, that is, "a royal family, not only has a kind of prophecy, but also a kind of prophecy is not necessarily limited to one wang shi", this short 24-character "two-line theory", has become a classic quote in today's oracle bone staging, which has been universally recognized by the academic circles. If it is said that in the 1940s, Mr. Dong Zuobin's staging laid the five-stage method, then since the 1970s, Mr. Li has opened the oracle bone staging calendar group and created the "two-line theory" of oracle bone staging. The new theory has developed into a system that has had a profound impact on the study of oracle osteology.

Since the 1980s, Oracle research has ushered in a golden age, and it is precisely because of the concentration of data that it has provided an unprecedented superior environment for academic research. Nearly 100,000 pieces of oracle bones, how should they be better utilized by scholars of different professions? In April 1983, I was invited to visit the Institute of Chinese Culture of the University of Chinese in Hong Kong, and Mr. Jao Zongyi proposed to me to do a "how fast and good province" project, different from the previous version of the oracle bone finishing project. After repeated weighing, I felt that only by making an oracle bone classification vocabulary index, and classifying and selecting each published word, could it be used by scholars of different majors. In April 1984, I returned to the Anhui Provincial Museum, which was far less convenient than shanghai's academic conditions, so I made a bold decision: I left my job without pay and returned to my home in Shanghai to compile the "Oracle General Inspection". My decision was fully supported by my parents.

03

In February 1988, through the recommendation of Mr. Hu Houxuan and Mr. Li Xueqin, I was given the opportunity to participate in the large-scale oracle bone reference book project presided over by Professor Michio Matsumaru of the Institute of Oriental Culture of the University of Tokyo, Japan.

The book summarizes the vast results of Oracle's research in the form of "explanatory words" for easy editing. The purpose of the compilation of the book is to make a basic work for the future research and development of Oracle. From 1904 to 1988, 1904 works and papers with 471 authors included a total of about 25,000 interpretations, which were classified and edited according to the format of the Oracle Bone Compilation (1965 edition) compiled by the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (now the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), and the included interpretations were arranged in chronological order in tabular form, which had a clear effect at a glance. Therefore, the intention of the compilation of the book is not only limited to the search of interpretations, but also to provide a comprehensive overview of the history of text research through the summary of the interpretation of various languages.

I was assigned to the Kenichi Kojima Research Laboratory, first doing the Chinese literature essay explanatory summary card, these basic work gave me both the opportunity to enjoy the rich oracle bone books collected by the Institute of Oriental Culture and various magazines at home and abroad, especially the magazines and books in The study of paleography in Taiwan are quite complete, and at the same time, I was trained by Mr. Takashima's rigorous work, which had a great impact on my later approach to learning.

Then, I sorted out the work of comparing the words of the Oracle Bone Compilation and the Comprehensive Category. Because these two books are completely different in the search style, from the mutual collation, I truly realized the convenience and superiority of the "Comprehensive Category" to create natural classification search, and the "Oracle Bone Compilation" is according to the Han Dynasty "Shuowen" head, many illiterate oracle bone scripts, allophones are placed in the "Appendix" outside the "Oracle Bone Compilation" volume 14, which is extremely inconvenient for readers to retrieve. Therefore, Mr. Takashima simply made a search form according to the "Appendix" of the Oracle Bone Compilation according to the "Comprehensive Category" style. Published in 1993, the two masterpieces of "Overview of Oracle Bone Character Interpretation" and "Synthesis" of Dao Bangnan can be described as complementary.

04

In October 1991, I bid farewell to my three-year and nine-month sojourn life in Japan, and at the invitation of Mr. Jao Zongyi, I came to the Institute of Chinese Culture of the University of Chinese, Hong Kong for the second time, and continued to complete the compilation of the "Oracle General Inspection" cooperated with Mr. Jao Zongyi, and published the first to fifth volumes (Xiangong Xianwang Zhenren, Fang Guo Place Names, Astronomical Meteorology, Officials, Tian Hunting). When I came, Professor Chen Fangzheng was the director of the Institute, he was the former Secretary General of CUHK, with rich administrative work experience and organizational skills, as a doctor of physics, he has always had a unique scientific modernization thinking and enthusiasm for traditional culture. With the expansion of the business of the various centers in the institute, the number of famous scholars at home and abroad who visit and exchange students in different disciplines is increasing, and the development of the Institute of Chinese Culture has entered a golden period and has become a cultural business card of hong Kong Chinese University.

In 1988, Director Chen and Professor Liu Dianjue planned an electronic database of documents handed down from the pre-Qin to the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and published a verbatim index, which had a great impact on the academic community. In 1993, Mr. Rao invited Mr. Li Xueqin to visit the institute, and the main purpose of the speech was to talk about the newly discovered excavated documents in recent years, which were of great significance to re-evaluate the academic history of the pre-Qin Dynasty, which also triggered the thinking of Director Chen. In 1996, Director Chen revived his unfulfilled wish of 1983 and proposed to me a work plan for the establishment of an Oracle electronic full-text database project. After 13 years, finally, under the impetus of his active planning, an "Oracle Full-text Electronic Database Project" led by Mr. Rao after the "HanJian Shu Shu Electronic Database Project" was quickly funded by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council.

For seven years, we created the intelligent Oracle Full-Text Database, which is still popular with the academic community today. In view of the limitations of the oracle bone material inventory that had been completed at that time, in early 2000, Professor Cao Jinyan and I co-edited the "New Oracle Bone Glyph Table" (that is, the "Oracle Bone Glyph Table") and the 20 volumes of the "Oracle Bone Interpretation Collection", which were published successively, and won the second prize of the National Excellent Ancient Books in 2006 and the seventh prize of the First Prize of the Outstanding Research Achievements of the Ministry of Education in Colleges and Universities in 2009.

Unexpectedly, I was with this book, "once I fell into it" for ten years, and later became the most important part of my life, including my joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness, and it has long been integrated into my spiritual life. Looking back, in the years spent at CUHK, whenever I look at the mountains of old manuscripts piled up in the office, I seem to approach a mirror, see my past again, and re-understand myself. Sometimes I can't believe it, and I ask myself, where did the persistence and madness in my heart come from?

05

In September 2008, I ended my 17-year work at the Institute of Chinese Culture at the University of Chinese, Hong Kong, and at the invitation of Mr. Li Xueqin, I went to work at the Center for The Research and Conservation of Unearthed Documents at Tsinghua University in early October of the same year. Under the leadership of Mr. Li, he participated in the whole process of Tsinghua Jane from cleaning and conjugating to interpreting, editing, sorting and researching.

Remembering what kind of surprises and confusion we had with Mr. Li in the face of Chu Jian made me experience the happiness and satisfaction of dreams come true.

The conjugation process of Tsinghua Jane became more and more difficult the later. Sometimes, there wasn't much progress in a week, and the depressed mood kept me breathless until one day, the conjugated fragments of Jane were waiting for you to find out" in the dim light. How many days of anxiety and confusion have disappeared in that instant, and what could be more enjoyable than the joy and pleasure brought by the harvest?

That year, every day I walked from ZhongguanYuan to the old library of Tsinghua Library to sort out Chu Jian in this "mysterious" old house, and my mood at that time was almost with a sense of pilgrimage awe, trembling and fearful, it was Mr. Li who quietly comforted me and said: "Jianhua, learn while doing!" "I never expected that it had been 13 years since I came to Tsinghua, and it was Mr. Li who led me into the seductive Chujian realm, and although I was stupid and stumbling, it opened a new page in my life."

In 2009, Mr. Li assigned me to do the first volume of "Sacrifice of the Public's Order" Brief Interpretation. Scholars familiar with the Book of Shang know that it is a compilation of ancient political documents. It is found not only in the ancient Chinese text Book of Shang, but also in the Yi zhou Shu, which is known as "Confucius deleted the Book of Books". The book contains quite a few doubtful sick sentences that have long been ignored.

Fortunately, in Qinghua Jian, we have seen the "Cheng Yue", "Imperial Gate", "Sacrifice of the Gong's Gu Fate", and "Life Training" in the "Book of Yi Zhou". There are many documents about the history of the priest and the father, the most detailed of which is the "Yi Zhou Shu • Sacrifice Gong" chapter. The words of the sacrifice of the father's dying admonition to the three dukes can be found in the "Ye (Sacrifice) Gong Zhi Zhi Zhi Qinghua Chujian's "Sacrifice of the Gong's Gu Order" is completely reproduced, which can basically correspond to the heirloom "Yi Zhou Shu • Sacrifice Gong". I can't forget the first few months, when I saw that the content presented by Chu Jian was confirmed by the documents passed down from generation to generation, the shock and excitement in my heart was indescribable.

For me, the 17 years I spent with Rao Gong at Chinese University in Hong Kong were probably the most memorable days of my life. If I hadn't had the opportunity to compile Oracle Pass, I might have had a different fate. I was fortunate to meet The Physicist Chen Fangzheng, who, with rare boldness, self-confidence and foresight, built his vision of Chinese cultural studies, and gave me trust and tolerance from beginning to end. He not only provided me with the opportunity to stretch my academic life, but also let me know myself. In fact, I do not have any academic qualifications, looking back on the past 40 years in the ancient script of the world, constantly "picking ears of wheat", God after all, did not pay off, or gave me a lot of rewards and surprises.

For me, there are excitement points in work, and life is enough! I will always remember the family training that my father sent me, the famous words of the Italian painter Leonardo da Vinci: "There is no waste in life, you can die happily, just as a day has not been wasted, you can sleep peacefully." ”

(Author Affilications:Center for Research and Conservation of Excavated Documents, Tsinghua University)

Original title: Learning the sea is endless

Editor: Yan Qi