Early twentieth century. In front of the Six Nations Hotel in the Dongjiaomin Lane restaurant area, a group of blonde foreigners lined up to buy tickets to a lecture. The protagonist of the lecture was a Chinese scholar who was going to give a lecture in English on the book "The Spirit of Chinese." At that time, there was no precedent for ticket sales in Chinese speeches, that is, the maximum ticket price of Mei Lanfang, a famous actor in Peking Opera, was only one yuan and two corners, while his speech tickets were priced at two yuan, and one ticket was difficult to find. What is even more unexpected is that these foreigners know that the speakers are sharp in speech and will be scolded, but they still flock to them. Not only his speeches, but also the books he wrote sold well overseas, and for a time there was even a saying that when he went to China, he could not look at the Three Great Halls, and he had to look at Gu Hongming. The Nobel Prize-winning Indian poet Tagore, the Japanese writer Ryunosuke Wasagawa, who wrote Rashomon, and the famous British writer Maugham, have all visited this famous oriental legend. This person is Gu Hongming, who is known as the Republic of China's people and a generation of strange masters.
Gu Hongming originally did not belong to Beijing, he was from Nanyang, and he could only be regarded as Chinese. Originally from Fujian, the Gu family came to Nanyang from their ancestors and gradually created a family business. Gu Hongming's father was the head of the rubber plantation, and his mother was a Portuguese, so Gu Hongming was only half Chinese, he had deep eyes and nose, and his face was well-defined. The owner of the rubber plantation, the English priest Brown, liked the clever and sensible child very much and adopted him as an adopted son. The Browns left Malaysia to return to China, and with the consent of Gu Hongming's parents, they brought the ten-year-old Gu Hongming back to Scotland. In this way, Gu Hongming became a real "foreign devil" culturally.
Gu Hongming has thirteen doctoral titles on his head, which is the result of his fourteen years of study in Europe. The University of Leipzig in Germany and the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom have left him with the figure of hard study. Not only is he deeply rooted in the essence of European and American culture, but he is also proficient in 9 languages, and seems to have an amazing talent in language. It is reasonable to say that Gu Hongming received a systematic Western-style education and should be a "chongyang faction", but he has always spared no effort to "overthrow the ocean" and strive to open his eyes for China, which he has done more thoroughly than anyone. As early as during his study tour in Germany, he began to use his iron teeth and copper teeth to raise his eyebrows for Chinese.
Once, on the train from Vienna to Berlin, in order to pass the time, Gu Hongming picked up a German newspaper and read it. He has always loved to be funny, and he has been holding the newspaper upside down. At this moment, the two Germans sitting next to him began to mutter. Seeing that Gu Hongming did not respond, one of the Germans laughed loudly and said: "Look, this stupid man does not know German at all, but he still has garlic, and he does not even know that the newspaper is upside down." After saying this, the two laughed recklessly, and the others in the carriage also showed a look of contempt. At this time, Gu Hongming put down the newspaper in his hand and said, "You hairy boys, you really don't know how thick the sky is!" Your German writing is simply too simple, and I can't look at it effortlessly. A pure and fluent German surprised the two Germans, but Gu Hongming did not stop there, and he really performed a rewind newspaper in public, which completely defeated the two German youths. In the end, Zai Hongming did not forget to beat the falling water dog and taught the two people a harsh lesson.
Gu Hongming vigorously carried forward the Chinese spirit in his mind abroad, however, at this time, the motherland was still a distant illusion in his heart, and his "Chinese spirit" had no place to rely on. In the more than twenty years since Gu Hongming returned to China, he entrusted all his talents to Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Huguang at that time. In the years of following Zhang Zhidong, in addition to his work as a foreign secretary, Gu Hongming spent the rest of his time studying the subset of classics and history, and because of this, it was possible for him to become the spokesperson of Chinese culture.
In 1907, Zhang Zhidong was ordered to enter Beijing to serve as a scholar and military minister of Tirenge University, and Gu Hongming accompanied him to the north, and he finally came to Beijing, which he had been fascinated for a long time. Gu Hongming's days in Beijing coincided with the era of "the great banner of the changing kings of the city", as a university scholar who studied both Chinese and Western, he was very active, but his enthusiasm inevitably made people criticize, he was only blindly retro out of the fanaticism of defending Chinese culture, but politically he was quite naïve, and even sang praises for Cixi, becoming a complete royalist.
When Gu Hongming was a professor at Peking University, he left the most evocative mark on the ancient capital of Beijing. In 1917, Cai Yuanpei became the president of Peking University and put forward the purpose of "inclusive schooling." He hired Gu Hongming as a professor in the English Department of Peking University, and since then, Gu Hongming has maintained a distinct personal attitude in the exciting revolutionary atmosphere of Peking University with his signature attire every day. He preached the ancient spirit of the East in a proficient Western language, and he opposed English classes for girls and the new cultural movement, which was indeed unique on the campus of Peking University at that time. When Gu Hongming walked into the Peking University classroom for the first time with a pigtail, the students laughed loudly. He said calmly, "The braids on my head are tangible, but the braids in your heart are invisible." Hearing this, the classroom immediately fell silent. In the classroom, Gu Hongming often borrowed the topic to play and vigorously preached the traditional Chinese culture.
He translated the "Thousand Character Text" and "Three Character Classic" into English, and taught students to read the "Thousand Character Text" in English in the classroom, saying that it was read, in fact, it was more like singing, the tone was very neat, the mouth was full of feet, the whole class sang, and others sounded very ridiculous. Looking at his appearance, although witty and funny, it makes students happy and forgetful, and this unique teaching method is very popular with students. In January 1923, Cai Yuanpei resigned as president of Peking University because of the withholding of education funds by Peng Yunfu, the chief of education. Gu Hongming was grateful for the kindness of the encounter, so he and Cai Yuanpei advanced and retreated, and then resigned as a professor at Peking University.
Gu Hongming's later years were very desolate, and after his wife left him, he was a great blow to Gu Hongming, and his mental pain tormented him, and he began to immerse himself in the poetry of the poet Milton after he lost his sight, and died in his beijing apartment in 1928 at the age of 72. Gu Hongming did not forget to fight with people until his death, he wanted to engrave a stamp, print his resume on it: "Born in Nanyang, studied in the West, married in the East, and shi in Beiyang", and said that he must compare Kang Youwei's "Travel Around the Thirty-Six Kingdoms" idle chapter.
Perhaps in response to the old saying that "the incense blooms inside the wall and the incense outside the wall", Gu Hongming, who is crazy and strange in the eyes of the Chinese people, is fragrant in the eyes of Westerners. Because he was the first person to devote himself to introducing Chinese classics and Chinese spirit to the West, in the eyes of Westerners, especially in the eyes of Germans, he was one of the two major spokesmen of Eastern culture, the other being Tagore of India, whose name was known even to ordinary people in Germany.
Gu Hongming's thoughts and writing reveal a witty and humorous sense of reason, often making pretentious Westerners bow to the wind. One day, Gu Hongming hosted a banquet for European and American friends at his private residence in Beijing's Maple Tree Hutong, lighting a kerosene lamp and choking on the smoke. Some people said that kerosene lamps are not as bright as electric lamps, and Gu Hongming laughed and said: "We Orientals pay attention to clear-sightedness, Oriental people are bright, and oil lamps are self-illuminating." Easterners don't pay much attention to superficial kung fu as Westerners do. "His so-called Oriental philosophy can really scare those foreign devils."
The Westerners revered Gu Hongming's learning and wisdom to the point of obsession. Gu Hongming's prestige in the West is far superior to that at home, and the praise and evaluation he has received in European cultural circles is unprecedented. In terms of the scope of his works in Europe and the United States and the sensational effects they have produced, Gu Hongming can be called the first person in modern China. Some people have even raised his words and deeds to the height of the national image, and some people have said: "After Gengzi's indemnity, if there is no Gu Hongming to support the national façade, Westerners will regard Chinese as someone who will not even have a nose." ”
Gu Hongming's reputation in his life was mixed: he had penetrated the cultural knowledge of the East and the West, and could have contributed this life's talent to the salvation of the country, but unexpectedly he became a complete royalist and loyal to the Qing Dynasty all his life; the Qing Dynasty he supported was eventually overthrown by the revolution, and his life's ambitions and ideals were also annihilated with the dynasty, and he eventually became a Manchu Qing widow, stubborn old man, and controversial person who was criticized by posterity. However, all this did not prevent him from becoming an upright Chinese!