Peking University, founded in 1898 on the occasion of the Restoration and Reform of the Law, was then called Beijing Normal University, and its founding was the highest educational institution in China at the beginning. In 1912, it was renamed National Peking University.
Peking University is the center of the New Culture Movement, the birthplace of the May Fourth Movement, and the earliest place in China to propagate marxism and the two banners of science and democracy.
Among the successive presidents of Peking University, there is a very famous president in the history of the Republic of China, who resigned many times in his life, and there are 24 times that are clearly recorded in historical records alone.
On June 15, 1919, he issued the "Declaration on Unwillingness to Serve as President of Peking University Again", and when the Beiyang government was in power, he unceremoniously questioned the Beiyang government: "Now that the Ministry of Education is interfering and the Senate is also interfering, is there such an unfree university in the world?" I will never again be an unfree university president. ”
Who is this person who dares to directly question the Beiyang government?
He is Cai Yuanpei, a famous educator in the history of the Republic of China, the first director of education of the Republic of China, and one of the four elders of the Kuomintang.
Cai Yuanpei, also spelled Heqing, also spelled Zhongshen, Minyou, and Minmin, was born on January 11, 1868, to a wealthy family in Shanyin County, Shaoxing, Zhejiang.
Cai Yuanpei's grandfather Cai Jiamu was a well-known local businessman, and his father Cai Guangpu was the manager of Qianzhuang, so the Cai family's family situation is still quite superior, the family is well-off, and the children in the family will naturally receive a good education.
Cai Guangpu has seven children, and Cai Yuanpei ranks fourth.
In 1871, at the age of 4, Cai Yuanpei entered the family school and began to study traditional enlightenment education.
However, just as the so-called sky has unpredictable storms, people have bad luck and bad luck,
When Cai Yuanpei was 11 years old, his father Cai Guangpu unfortunately died of illness.
Fortunately, there are many people in the Cai family, and its family is huge, so after Cai Guangpu's death, Cai Yuanpei was still taken care of by the people in the family.
For example, after that, Cai Yuanpei lived in his aunt's house to study, and also received the guidance of the sixth uncle Cai Mingen, Cai Yuanpei also lived up to expectations, he studied hard, and soon became familiar with the traditional Confucian literary classics, such as the Four Books and Five Classics, it is precisely because of these that he laid a good foundation for his later ancient literary skills.
In 1884, the 16-year-old Cai Yuanpei passed the examination and obtained the meritorious name of Xiucai. The next year, in 1885, Cai Yuanpei opened the library to accept apprentices and teach. Of course, while he was teaching, he was ready to continue studying for the exam.
In 1889, the 22-year-old Cai Yuanpei went to Hangzhou to take the township examination and was able to pass the examination. It was also in this year that Cai Yuanpei married his first wife, Wang Zhao.
The marriage between Cai Yuanpei and Wang Zhao was the marriage of the parents and the words of the matchmaker, and Cai Yuanpei had not met before marrying Wang Zhao.
However, because Cai Yuanpei was bold and at the same time a bit macho, he hoped that Wang Zhao would obey him absolutely, so that after the two married, they often quarreled.
After Cai Yuanpei got married, in 1890, he went to Beijing to participate in the examination, and was able to pass the entrance examination, and successfully entered the Hanlin Academy to serve as a Shujishi.
At this time, Cai Yuanpei not only has fame, but also has a good position, and it is reasonable to say that his life should be good, but in fact, it is not.
Cai Yuanpei had a deep sense of family and country, and he very much wanted to serve the country, but the corruption of the Qing Dynasty at that time made him very disappointed, especially after the Sino-Japanese War, the Qing Dynasty signed a treaty of mourning power and humiliation, and Cai Yuanpei was extremely sad and indignant about it.
Under such circumstances, Cai Yuanpei rejected traditional ideas and began to contact new ideas in the West.
And it is precisely because Cai Yuanpei has a new understanding of marriage and women's rights since he began to accept new Western ideas in 1900. Thus, the marital relationship between Cai Yuanpei and Wang Zhao has improved. However, what they did not expect was that not long after, Wang Zhao died of illness.
Later, Cai Yuanpei saw that the decaying Qing Dynasty had accumulated a lot of difficulties, so he resigned and returned to his hometown, and soon served as the principal of the Shaoxing Central and Western Academy in his hometown.
When Cai Yuanpei was the principal of shaoxing Chinese and Western School, he began to reform and create a new type of education, but the conservative members of the school continued to forcibly interfere in his reform, which made Cai Yuanpei very angry.
As a result, he resigned and left.
In the summer of 1901, when Cai Yuanpei's wife Wang Zhao had died of illness, the 34-year-old Cai Yuanpei went to Shanghai to act as the principal of Chengzhen Academy, which is now Shanghai Chengzhen Senior High School.
In September of the same year, Cai Yuanpei went to nanyang public school to teach in the special class of economics, which was the predecessor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
At this time, Wang Zhao had died, so when Cai Yuanpei was in Shanghai, many friends advised him to marry Again.
Because Cai Yuanpei's fame is very large, after the news of his continuation of the string spread, a large number of matchmakers came to protect him every day.
Cai Yuanpei was also very helpless about this, in order to avoid going on like this, he proposed five conditions for marrying a wife:
First, women who do not wrap their feet. Second, it is literate. Third, men are not allowed to marry concubines, not to marry aunts. Fourth, if the husband dies first, the wife can remarry. Fifth, disagreements can be granted.
As soon as Cai Yuanpei's five conditions came out, they immediately scared away those who said the media.
Because these five conditions, at that time, can be described as shocking behavior, such as not tying feet, the husband died, and the wife could remarry.
Of course, although Cai Yuanpei put forward these five "harsh" conditions, Shanghai is a big city after all, and there is naturally no shortage of talented women, and then fate is doomed.
At that time, Huang Erxuan, a famous scholar in Jiangxi, had a daughter named Huang Zhongyu, who not only had knowledge, but also did not tie her feet, and importantly, she was attracted by the five "harsh" conditions proposed by Cai Yuanpei.
Of course, Cai Yuanpei also felt that Huang Zhongyu met his own standards for marrying a wife, so he asked his friends to match.
Not long after, on New Year's Day in 1902, Cai Yuanpei and Huang Zhongyu married and held a grand wedding.
Cai Yuanpei's first wedding was a traditional Chinese wedding, but this time, it was a wedding that combined Chinese and Western. This also marks Cai Yuanpei's change in thinking.
In 1902, Cai Yuanpei, Jiang Zhiyou and others founded the Chinese Education Association in Shanghai, with Cai Yuanpei as its president.
In 1904, the 37-year-old Cai Yuanpei formed the Guangfu Association in Shanghai with Tao Chengzhang and others, with Cai Yuanpei as the president and Tao Chengzhang as the vice president.
The following year, in 1905, the Chinese League was formed, which was formed by the merger of the Xingzhong Society, the Huaxing Society, and the Guangfu Society, and Sun Yat-sen was elected as prime minister. After the GuangfuHui was merged into the League, Cai Yuanpei became the head of the Shanghai Branch of the League.
In 1911, the Xinhai Revolution broke out, and the Qing Dynasty finally came to an end under the blows of the Xinhai Revolution.
When the Xinhai Revolution broke out, Cai Yuanpei was studying abroad. After the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution, Chen Qimei, the elder of the League and the governor of Shanghai, asked Cai Yuanpei to return to China, and after Cai Yuanpei received the telegram, he returned to Shanghai from abroad.
In January 1912, the Provisional Government of the Republic of China was established in Nanjing, and cai Yuanpei, 45, was appointed as the education director of the Nanjing Provisional Government.
At this time, Cai Yuanpei advocated the implementation of a new type of education, as the chief of education, he was full of ambitions at this time, but just when he wanted to show his fists, it was not long before Yuan Shikai took the fruits of the victory of the revolution, and as a result, the Beiyang government seized power.
At that time, although the Beiyang government still made Cai Yuanpei the post of director of education, this was only superficial, and the meaning had undergone a great change.
Later, as Yuan Shikai's power grew, and the Kuomintang members in the government cabinet were excluded, Cai Yuanpei resigned from the post of education chief in grief and anger.
After Cai Yuanpei resigned as the director of education, he took his family to study abroad in Germany again, and then went to France to investigate, during which Cai Yuanpei organized the Huafa Education Association with like-minded people in France, and organized aspiring young people in China to study in France in the form of work-study.
It is worth mentioning that it is precisely because of this activity organized by Cai Yuanpei that it has had a great impact on Chinese history, because many young people with lofty ideals have gone to France to study through this activity. What is important is that a large number of students also came into contact with and accepted Marxism in France, and representative figures such as Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yi and so on.
At this time, the domestic situation was unpredictable, yuan shikai because of his great power, he had the ambition to be an emperor, so much so that he made a farce of restoring the imperial system and ascending the throne as emperor, and as a result, as soon as this matter came out, the whole country was in an uproar.
As soon as the news of Yuan Shikai's claim to the throne was announced, it was immediately met with strong opposition at home and abroad, and soon Yuan Shikai fell into the point of rebellion and separation.
In June 1916, Yuan Shikai, who had rebelled against him, died under a tragic illness.
After Yuan Shikai's death, Li Yuanhong succeeded him as president and immediately announced the restoration of the Provisional Covenant Law of the early years of the Republic of China, and under such circumstances, many revolutionaries exiled abroad returned to China one after another, including the 49-year-old Cai Yuanpei, who returned to Shanghai from France.
Soon, Fan Yuanlian, the beiyang government's chief of education, made Cai Yuanpei the president of Peking University.
At that time, some friends advised Cai Yuanpei not to serve as the president of Peking University, because the problems of Peking University at that time were difficult to solve, and if they were not handled properly, it would affect his reputation.
However, Sun Yat-sen advised Cai Yuanpei that he should be the president of Peking University, and that Cai Yuanpei should bring revolutionary democratic ideas to the center of the Beiyang government.
Cai Yuanpei listened to Sun Yat-sen's advice and felt that it was reasonable, so he went to Peking University to take office.
After Cai Yuanpei became the president of Peking University, he began to carry out drastic reforms, such as Cai Yuanpei reformed the leadership system of Peking University and the scientific system of Peking University, established scientific research institutions, advocated civilian education, and coeducational learning.
In addition to reforming the school system, Cai Yuanpei also actively changed the old concepts of students.
Because in the past, studying was to become an official, being an official was for fame and fortune, and some were for the sake of corruption and wealth in the future. Therefore, Cai Yuanpei believes that students should be based on academic research, and cannot regard the university as a ladder to promotion and wealth, so he advocates that students should be a person with charisma, moral cultivation, and usefulness to the country and the people.
Of course, learning is in the student, while teaching is in the teacher. How students learn, how the level of the school, a large part of the factors depend on the level of the teacher, Cai Yuanpei naturally knows this truth, so Cai Yuanpei boldly introduced a large number of outstanding talents and social celebrities.
At that time, Cai Yuanpei decided that everything in Peking University was mainly academic, as long as it did not affect teaching, as long as there was real talent and practical learning, it could be hired regardless of age, ideological tendency, qualifications, and nationality.
Therefore, under the advocacy and efforts of Cai Yuanpei, a large number of outstanding teachers and talents have been gathered for Peking University, such as Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, Lu Xun, Liu Bannong, Gu Hongming and so on. Some of these people are celebrities, and some are academics.
After Cai Yuanpei's vigorous reform and rectification, the teacher team of Peking University became the youngest, most enterprising and most vigorous team in China at that time.
With cai yuanpei's efforts, Peking University has become one of the few colleges and universities in China in just a few years.
It is precisely because cai Yuanpei's vigorous reform and rectification of Peking University has made The masters and students of Peking University full of vitality and the young people of Peking University have a deep sense of home and country, so that Peking University has become the center of the new cultural movement, the source of the May Fourth Movement, and the earliest place in China to publicize and disseminate marxism, science and democracy.
At the end of 1920, Cai Yuanpei's wife Huang Zhongyu died.
In January 1923, Cai Yuanpei, dissatisfied with Peng Yunyi, the beiyang government's chief of education, resigned and left Beijing to go south.
After Huang Zhongyu's death, Cai Yuanpei lived alone again, and his friends advised him to continue the string for the sake of his life. On July 10, 1923, 54-year-old Cai Yuanpei and 33-year-old Zhou Jun held a grand wedding ceremony at the Suzhou Lingering Garden. Although they are 22 years apart in age, they are still very affectionate after marriage.
In January 1924, at the First National Congress of the Kuomintang, Cai Yuanpei was elected as an alternate member of the Central Control Commission.
In 1926, the Guangdong Revolutionary Army began the Northern Expedition, and Cai Yuanpei actively cooperated with the Northern Expedition and participated in revolutionary activities.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Cai Yuanpei also actively carried out and devoted himself to the movement of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression to save the country.
On March 3, 1940, Cai Yuanpei's residence in Hong Kong unfortunately fell, although he was taken to the hospital for rescue, but unfortunately, on March 5, Cai Yuanpei still died, when he was 72 years old.
After Cai Yuanpei's death, Chiang Kai-shek not only held a memorial service for him in Chongqing, but also personally presided over the public ceremony. In Yan'an, a memorial service was also held, when Mao Zedong praised Cai Yuanpei in a telegram of condolences: "A great scholar in the academic circles and a model for the world." ”
Cai Yuanpei is an advocate of modern and contemporary education in China, and his ideas are implemented from three aspects: family education, school education and social education.
Throughout his life, Cai Yuanpei devoted himself to abolishing the feudal education system and laying the foundation for a new style of education in China. It has made significant contributions to the development of China's education, culture and other fields.