(i)
Recently, the author carefully read the "Collection of Letters of Mr. Hu Shi Wang Chongmin" (2009, hereinafter referred to as the "Collection of Letters"), which was turned over in the electronic version about six years ago and added to the paper in 2017, but I have not seriously read it until today, which is quite ashamed.
"A Collection of Correspondence of Mr. Hu Shi Wang Chongmin"
The collection of letters contains a total of 253 letters (including manuscripts and copies) from Hu Shi, Wang Chongmin and others, which can be described as one of the important treasure houses of modern academic history. The book is arranged in chronological order and reads very clearly. Page 1 of the book is a letter from Wang Chongmin to Hu Shi, the original text is as follows:
Mr. Zanghui:
Receiving a letter from a friend, I am relieved to learn about the latest situation. The heavy people are here, taken care of by relatives and friends, and they are quite comfortable. Yu Gonghui donated 3,000 gold, which is particularly impressive for the future use of the United States. Packing should be brought with you, and you can finish it within a week. However, Yu Gong's letter of introduction has not yet arrived, and presumably there must be a convenient person who can bring it. It is urgent to leave this place around the twentieth of the next month, and then to arrive in Washington by May 20. If you encounter Hummel, it is best to ask him to send Ms. Liu Xiuye's living expenses in May. Curator Yuan left this place within a day due to an incident. Yu Rong post-report, i.e. please
Daoan!
After learning to pay homage to the people.
March 29
Wang Chongmin wrote a letter to Hu Shi
The original source of this letter should be page 134 of volume 24 of The Collected Manuscripts and Secret Letters of Hu Shi (1994), except for the date of payment, there is no indication on the letter paper to indicate the date, and no envelope remains. The collection of letters is tied to 1939 and states that "this letter was sent from Paris", a view that should be based on the old saying (pp. 408-409) in the 1979 Selected Letters of Hu Shi and later in the 2013 edition of Selected Letters of Hu Shi (middle volume, 695 pages). In addition, the "Hu Shi Archives Retrieval System" of the Taipei Hu Shi Memorial Hall also attributed this letter to 1939 according to the collection of letters. All of the above, the time and place of writing the letter seems to have become a "consensus" on both sides of the Strait.
"Hu Shi Archives Retrieval System"
(ii)
On September 28, 1934, Wang Chongmin arrived in Paris, and for nearly five years he spent nearly five years mainly engaged in cataloguing and research in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and visited the Dunhuang scriptures collected by France and Britain, as well as the writings of Catholics in China. In May 1938, Wang Chongmin and his wife Liu Xiuye went to England and had a lot of contacts with Xia Nai, who studied here. On March 25 of the following year, Xia Nai "went to Wang Chongminjun for a tea party in the afternoon, and Zhu Qingyongjun was also present to help Wang Jun carry his luggage" ("Xia Nai's Diary", 2012, vol. 2, p. 241), so I think that on March 29, Wang Chongmin and his wife most likely returned to Paris; and on March 28 of the same year, Wu Mi visited Yuan Tongli at the Kunming office of the Beiping Library in Persimmon Lane to talk about personal affairs ("Wu Mi's Diary", 1998, vol. 7, pp. 12-13). Referring to the diaries of the two men, it is not difficult to find that the sentence "Director Yuan left here within a day because of an incident" in the letter is directly contradicted by the phrase "This letter was sent from Paris", which is difficult to justify itself.
Portrait of Wang Chongmin
Wang Chongmin's family took a group photo
At the beginning of June 1939, Wang Chongmin was overjoyed, and Xia Nai recorded the incident in his diary on the 11th ("Xia Nai's Diary", vol. 2, page 248), and wrote a poem congratulating him on "Congratulations to parisian friends Sanweng and celebrate the victory of Lin'er Xiaoshigong." I have not tried to know the English thing, and the first edition of the fine paper is different." On June 20, Wang Chongmin sent a letter from Paris to Yuan Tongli, in which he wrote:
Shouhe Wushi: There hasn't been much news lately, but it's because I'm busy at home and have less contact with outsiders. Today, a maid is introduced by the hospital to take care of the child and Ms. Liu for several days, and tomorrow's students can work like Hengyi. ...... The matter of the United States has been calculated for twelve points, the road fare has been sent, the two tickets outside France have been allowed, and the French mail ship Normandie has been selected to ask the outside to book a space, which will open on August 23, arrive in New York on the twenty-eighth, and arrive in Washington on the twenty-ninth or thirtyth.
On June 20, 1939, Wang Chongmin sent a letter to Yuan Tongli
"The Matter of America" refers to the fact that Wang Chongmin was invited by Arthur W. Hummel, director of the Oriental Department of the Library of Congress, to Washington with his family to help the library compile Chinese book. According to Wang Chongmin's letter to Yuan Tongli from Washington on August 30, his itinerary to the United States is indeed exactly the same as expected in the June 20 letter. Therefore, "if you meet Hummel, you can ask him to pay Ms. Liu Xiuye's living expenses in May" by the way, and there is no possibility that it will be earlier than September 1939. At this time, the Oriental Department of the Library of Congress could only hire four Chinese, namely Wang Chongmin, Wu Guangqing, Fang Zhaoyao, and Zhu Shijia, and Ms. Liu Xiuye only went to the ministry to work part-time to supplement the family after her son was one year old.
(iii)
In fact, the letter compiled on page 1 of the main text of the collection of letters was written by Wang Chongmin in Shanghai on March 29, 1941. In the preceding paragraph, "Mr. Zanghui" is deliberately used to avoid people's eyes; "Yu Gong" does not refer to an individual, but should be an individual, and should be the Ministry of Education of the National Government, which "donated three thousand gold", that is, the Ministry of Education allocated the cost of transporting books to the National Peking Library (hereinafter referred to as "Pingguan"); "should be packed", that is, the Pingguan A and B libraries that were transferred to the public concession on March 12 and 13, and were being selected, cataloged, and packed at this time; "but Yu Gong's letter of introduction has not yet arrived" indicates the customs permit or instruction required by the mouth. Issued by the Ministry of Finance (or the Ministry of Education), on the basis of which it is declared to Jianghai Customs (i.e. Shanghai) for release.
In early 1938, Yuan Tongli began to consider transporting the rare books stored in Shanghai to other places. As far as the author knows, Kunming and Hong Kong have successively been expected destinations, but they have not been realized due to various objective factors. On March 30, 1940, the Wang puppet government was established in Nanjing, and there were gradual motions to reclaim the concessions in various places, and the situation in the Far East deteriorated further, prompting Yuan Tongli to decide to select fine works from the Pingguan Southern Transport Rare Books and ship them to the United States for temporary storage in the Library of Congress. On November 15 of the same year, Yuan Tongli sent a telegram to Hu Shi informing him that Heon Ben Yunmei had obtained the consent of the Ministry of Education of the Nationalist Government and asked him to communicate with the U.S. State Department of State nearby on specific matters (Hu Shi Memorial Hall HS-JDSHSE-0401-089), which is the earliest record of Hu Shi's involvement in this matter as far as I know.
A telegram from Yuan Tongli to Hu Shi on November 15, 1940
The following year, Hu Shi recorded the following in his diary (Taipei Lianjing, 2009):
On January 6, "went outside and engaged with Hornbeck, Hamilton, Adams, Dr. MacLeish, and Ziwen in the Shanghai Ancient Book." (p. 89)
Jan. 18, "Went to see Library of Congress Librarian Archibald MacLeish, long talk." With A. W. Hummel talks. Talked with Wang Chongmin and Wu Ziming. (p. 92)
On January 29, "This morning went outside with S. K. H. discussed the deposit of books in Shanghai. (p. 95)
On February 1, "I went to the Library of Congress to discuss the deposit of books in Shanghai with Archibald MacLeish & A. W. Hummel, and decided that I would send someone to conduct a field survey." Brother Wang Chongmin came to talk and decided that he would go to Shanghai. (95 pages)
On Feb. 2, "A few letters were written for the heavy civils. (p. 95)
On February 3, "Today the heavy people set out. (p. 97)
Among them, Archibald MacLeish, the ninth director of the Library of Congress, Myleish, Wu Ziming, wu Guangqing, was a librarian of the Ping Library, and was responsible for the cataloguing of Chinese books in the Oriental Department of the library with Wang Chongmin. S. K. H. or Stanley K. Hornbeck, transliterated as Hempeck, was a special adviser to Then U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull and a close friend of Hu Shi.'s.
(iv)
On his way to Shanghai to handle the fortunes of the book, Wang Chongmin made a report, which is included in pages 9 to 10 of the collection of letters, combined with his letter to Hu Shi on May 19, so that people can roughly understand the twists and turns. But beyond that, there are still a considerable number of old historical materials that have not entered the field of relevant research. Mr. Shen Jin's "Annals of Gu Tinglong" (2004), an important historical material used, "Gu Tinglong's Diary", not only records yuan Tongli's departure from Shanghai for Hong Kong on March 29, but also has a lot of ink on Wang Chongmin's deeds in Shanghai. The author transcribes its important ones as follows:
On March 16, "Yuan Tonglilai said that he would travel to the United States, and the Beiping Library was presided over by Wang Chongmin. (p. 171)
On March 23, "in the evening, Yuan Tongli, Xu Senyu, Wang Chongmin, Liu Chongxi, and Pu Jiangqing were invited to accompany Ye Jingkui, Pan Boshan, and Pan Jingzheng. (p. 172)
On March 29, "Yuan Tongli came to resign and returned to Hong Kong first, and there was a complaint between the words." (p. 173)
On April 9, "Wang Chongmin came to read the book unfinished, and came back next week to present the second series of "Dunhuang Fragments and Tails". (p. 174)
On April 17, "In the afternoon, Wang Chongmin came and visited Wang Dalong at the library of St. John's University. (p. 176)
On May 2, "in the evening, Xu Senyu was invited to drink, and Ye Jingkui, Pan Boshan, Wu Hufan, Wang Chongmin, Zheng Zhenduo, Zhang Heng, Li Xuanbo, and Cai Jixiang were seated." (p. 179)
Among them, the phrase "there are complaints between words" should refer to the huge differences and repeated twists and turns between Yuan Tongli and the members of the Pingguan Committee on their own going to the United States to seek assistance from the American academic and library circles, and to change Wang Chongmin's return to China to preside over the library affairs. The matter was most complicated, in short, although Yuan Tongli received the initial support of Wang Shijie, then minister of the Central Propaganda Department, and the consent of the Ministry of Education of the Nationalist Government, Fu Sinian, Ren Hongjun, Zhou Yichun and other members of the Pingguan Committee were resolutely opposed (Fu Sinian's Testament, 2011, vol. II, pp. 1153-1157). As one of the members of the association, Hu Shi's attitude toward Yuan Tongli's attempt to go to the United States was extremely crucial, but with the existing historical data, it is still impossible to draw a clear conclusion. But one thing is certain: Hu Shi actively supported the temporary storage of the Pingguan Shanshu Book yunmei, otherwise he would not have contacted various places in the United States and "personally provided capital axes and sent heavy people back to China" (Collected Letters, p. 9), which is very different from the skeptical attitude of Ren Hongjun and others (Selected Letters of Hu Shi, Volume 2013, p. 763). With all due respect, although Hu Shi did not explicitly express his support for Yuan Tongli's visit to the United States, he did not openly oppose it, and he is very likely to hold a duplicitous attitude. In addition, since 1940, Wang Chongmin has continuously expressed a strong willingness to return to China to serve Yuan Tongli, who arranged for him to take over the management of the museum, which was not a temporary compulsory order, and the two most likely reached some kind of compromise.
On April 8, 1941, in Hong Kong, Yuan Tongli visited Yan Huiqing, who was then a director of the board of directors of the China Education and Culture Fund, and "informed him that he would leave for the United States in June and talked about the misunderstanding with the Book Committee and Shen Jun" (Yan Huiqing's Diary, 1996, vol. 3, p. 331). Among them, "Shen Jun" should be the compiler's mistranslation of the name Clarence L. Senn in the English original manuscript. From April 16 to 18, the Board of Directors held its annual meeting in Hong Kong, and as an important undertaking jointly organized by the Association and the Ministry of Education of the National Government, the current situation, budget and personnel situation of the library must be reported and decided at the annual meeting. On April 26, the Pingguan Committee was also held in Hong Kong. After these two meetings, Yuan Tongli's plan to go to the United States was completely rejected, but fortunately, with the full cooperation of his three predecessors, Xu Senyu and Qian Cunxun, one hundred and two boxes of ancient books in Pingguan were transported to the United States before the outbreak of the Pacific War, and under the supervision of Wang Chongmin, the Library of Congress chose its non-collection version to shoot microfilm, which was undoubtedly a great blessing for Chinese and foreign academic circles during the War of Resistance Against Japan.