In 1943, Liu Danian encountered the Japanese army on the way from the government of the Southern Border Region of Hebei to the headquarters of the Eighth Route Army in Taihang Mountain, and was forced to jump off a cliff in order to avoid the pursuit of the Japanese army, resulting in lung rupture and bleeding, and then suffered from lung disease for life.
Liu Danian
Liu Danian (1915-1999), a native of Huarong, Hunan. He studied at the Hunan Guoxue College, entered the Anti-Japanese Military and Political University in Northern Shaanxi in 1938, and after graduation was assigned to work in the anti-Japanese base areas in western Hebei and southern Hebei, living and fighting for a long time in the Hebei Plain and the Taihang Mountains. After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, he abandoned rong and devoted himself to academic research.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Liu Danian successively served as deputy director of the Compilation Bureau of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, director of the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and member of the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Out of the needs of his work, Liu Danian retained a large number of correspondence with political and cultural celebrities in New China, as well as letters from others for work reasons. These carefully preserved letters spanning more than half a century either corroborate Liu Danian's life activities, especially with his academic activities, or with major historical events after the founding of New China, and have become important auxiliary materials for the study of modern Chinese scholarship.
The book "Selected Inkblots of Liu Danian's Correspondence" contains 184 letters involving 105 people in his collection of letters. Now, take a few of them and take a look at the ins and outs of the relevant characters and events.
I. Liu Housheng, one of the main authors of the Edict of abdication of the Qing Emperor, and the Biography of Zhang Xiao
Liu Housheng was one of the main writers of the Edict of abdication of the Qing Emperor.
Historically, the recognized author of the edict was Zhang Xiao, but in fact, the real knife catcher was Liu Housheng. At that time, Liu Housheng was an aide to Zhang Xiao, and Zhang Xiao was only the nominal person in charge. According to Liu Housheng's recollection, at that time, Zhang Xiao was "both hesitant to write the responsibility and hesitant about how to drop the ink", consulted with him and asked him to write, Liu Housheng "twenty or thirty minutes of grass".
Zhang Jian
Liu Housheng, whose name is Liu Yuan, was born in 1873 in Wujin, Changzhou, Jiangsu Province. Former Qing Xiucai, the first normal student of Nanyang Public School (now Shanghai Jiao Tong University), the son-in-law of He Siyu, the first general office of Nanyang Public School, was the vice president of the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, the chairman of the Rehebei Coal Mining Company, the chairman of Xintong Company, and the supervisor (general manager) of The Dasheng Spinning Mill of Zhang Jian (Ji Zhi). He has done a lot of research on modern Chinese history. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he served as a librarian at the Shanghai Museum of Culture and History, and died in 1964 at the age of 91.
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Chen Shutong
Chen Shutong and Liu Housheng are very good friends. Chen Shutong, born in 1876 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, was a scholar in the 29th year of the Qing Dynasty (1903), and in May of the same year, he was changed to Shu Jishi of Hanlin Yuan. The following year, he studied at Hosei University in Japan. After returning to China, he served as a member of the House of Elders. After the Xinhai Revolution, he was a member of the House of Representatives of the First National Assembly. He participated in the struggle against Yuan Protector. Later, he served as a director of the Commercial Press and a director of Zhejiang Industrial Bank for a long time, engaged in industrial activities. In 1949, he attended the First Plenary Session of the Chinese Political Consultative Conference, and in September 1954, attended the First Session of the First National People's Congress, and died on February 17, 1966.
In his later years, Liu Housheng concentrated on the creation of the "Biography of Zhang Xiao", which took eight years to complete. Chen Shutong actively contacted him about the publication of this book, and on March 19 and July 15, 1957, he wrote several letters to Liu Danian, who was then a member of the Publication Committee of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, requesting that the book be printed and published. At that time, Liu Housheng's physical and mental state was not good, and under Liu Danian's arrangement, the book was still published in April 1958.
2. "Eighty Years" Huang Yanpei
Huang Yanpei was born in the fourth year of Guangxu (1878), Chuansha County, Jiangsu Province (now part of Shanghai), enrolled in Nanyang Public School (now Shanghai Jiao tong University) in 1901, and in 1902, he took the Jiangnan Township Examination and was expelled from Nanyang Public School with other students for protesting the "ink bottle" incident of the school expelling students.
In 1905, he was introduced by Cai Yuanpei to join the Chinese League Association, and later succeeded Cai Yuanpei as the president of the Shanghai Branch of the Chinese League Association. In the early years of the Republic of China, he served as the director of the Department of Education of Jiangsu Province, and organized universities in Southeast, Jinan and Tongji. On May 6, 1917, Huang Yanpei, together with 48 well-known social figures Cai Yuanpei, Liang Qichao, Zhang Xiao and other 48 people, founded the China Vocational Education Society in Shanghai.
Cai Yuanpei
In 1921, he was appointed Minister of Education (Minister) of the Republic of China but refused to take office. In 1927, Chiang Kai-shek wanted Huang Yanpei for the crime of "studying valves" and fled to Dalian. After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, Huang Yanpei retreated to Chongqing and served as a senator of the National Defense Conference.
In February 1949, it was arranged by underground communist workers to transfer to Hong Kong to Beijing. In October 1949, after the founding of New China, Huang Yanpei was appointed as a member of the Central People's Government Committee, vice premier of the State Council, and minister of light industry. He died in Beijing on December 21, 1965, at the age of 87.
In his later years, Huang Yanpei summarized his life with the book "Eighty Years: Huang Yanpei's Self-Description", which was published in 1964, the year before his death, under the care of Liu Danian, who was then a member of the Publishing Committee of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
III. Wu Yuzhang and Introduction to the Chinese History Course
Wu Yuzhang (30 December 1878 – 12 December 1966), courtesy name Yongshan, was a native of RongXian County, Sichuan, and the first president of Chinese Min University. He served as principal for seventeen years, and peach and plum were all over the world.
Wu Yuzhang
At the beginning of 1903, Wu Yuzhang entered the Seijo School in Tokyo, Japan, and completed all the courses of the Japanese five-year middle school in two and a half years. In 1905, he joined the Chinese League in Japan, and was later elected as a member of the deliberation department of the Chinese League. In 1907, he founded a local newspaper in the League, took over the change of "Azalea" to "Sichuan", and asked the school for a year of sick leave to concentrate on organizing publications.
In September 1911, Wu Yuzhang returned to Sichuan and participated in the Road Protection Movement. In January 1912, Wu Yuzhang was appointed by the Chongqing Shu Military Government to represent Sichuan in Nanjing to participate in the establishment of the Provisional Government of the Republic of China.
After the failure of the courting yuan, he was ordered by Yuan Shikai to "must be arrested", but fortunately, with the help of Cai Yuanpei and many others, he obtained funds for studying abroad and exiled to France in the winter of 1913. In the autumn of 1914, he entered the University of Law in Paris, France, to study political economy. After the fall of Yuan Shikai, Wu Yuzhang returned to his motherland from France.
Statue of Wu Yuzhang at the Wangjiang Campus of Sichuan University
In 1922, he became the president of Chengdu Higher Normal School (the predecessor of Sichuan University), and in February 1925, he arrived in Beijing and joined the Communist Party of China. At that time, the party organization considered his relationship with Sun Yat-sen and the Kuomintang and still let him stay in the Kuomintang.
On August 1, 1927, Wu Yuzhang participated in the August 1st Nanchang Uprising as a member of the Communist Party. In November 1927, he went to the Soviet Union and wrote an 110,000-word book "The August 1st Revolution". He was the first to report in detail to the Comintern and to the international community the details of the uprising.
In 1937, when the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression broke out in full swing, the Chinese Communist Delegation to the Comintern sent Wu Yuzhang to do international propaganda work in Western Europe.
In November 1939, Wu Yuzhang went to Yan'an and served as the dean of Lu Xun Art College, the president of Yan'an University, and the director of the Cultural Committee of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region Government.
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War in 1945, Wu Yuzhang was appointed secretary of the Sichuan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China. In August 1948, North China University was established, with Wu Yuzhang as president.
In December 1949, Chinese University was established on the basis of North China University, with Wu Yuzhang as president. In 1954, he was elected to the First National People's Congress.
In 1955, he became a member of the Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences of the Academy of Sciences. On December 12, 1966, Wu Yuzhang died in Beijing.
Wu Yuzhang's book Introduction to the Chinese History Curriculum was published in early 1949, when he was the president of North China University. Wu Yuzhang's teaching is rigorous, and after the completion of this book, in the absence of reference materials, in order to write a letter to Liu Danian, president of the Academy of Social Sciences, for the sake of Zhang Xuecheng's sentence "The History of the Six Classics" mentioned in the book, to confirm. In fact, Wu Yuzhang's memory at that time was correct.
4. Professor Chen Xulu's doctoral student program
Chen Xulu (31 March 1918 – 1 December 1988), formerly known as Chen Xiulu, was a historian from Xiangxiang County (now Shuangfeng County) in Hunan Province.
Chen Xulu
Chen Xulu graduated from the Department of History and Sociology of Daxia University (now East China Normal University) in 1943, and in the 1940s he was a professor at Daxia University and St. John's University, teaching modern history.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he served as a professor of the History Department of East China Normal University, the director of the Chinese Cultural Research Center, the director of the Research Office of Modern Chinese History, and the vice chairman of the Chinese Modern History Society. After 1978, he studied social changes in modern China and other issues. He died in Shanghai on December 1, 1988, at the age of 70.
In his later years, Chen Xulu devoted himself to the study of modern Chinese social changes and cultural history, and was known for his speculation and writing.
From April to June 1986, Professor Chen Xulu wrote several letters to Liu Danian about the establishment of a doctoral program in the Department of History at East China Normal University. For some reasons, Professor Chen Xulu's application for doctoral program has not been approved. At the deliberations, Liu Danian once said "impartially and bluntly" for Professor Chen, but it was fruitless. Two years later, Professor Chen died.
Mao Haijian's book "The Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty" and the title page
Historian Mao Haijian was a student of Chen Xulu when he was studying for a master's degree at East China Normal University. On the title page of his book "The Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty", a sentence is printed: "Dedicated to my mentor Mr. Chen Xulu.".
V. "Détente" or "détente," Premier Zhou told you
Fan Ruoyu (1912 – June 20, 1985) was a native of Wuzhai, Shanxi. He was Zhou Enlai's theoretical secretary.
Fan Ruoyu, Secretary of Premier Zhou
When he was serving as Zhou Enlai's secretary, Fan Ruoyu found that when Zhou Enlai reviewed and drafted international documents, he changed the word "détente" to "détente". He wrote to Liu Danian in October 1983 asking about the origin of the two words.
In November, Liu Danian wrote back, explaining in detail the origin of these two words.
In the "Zuo Biography", it is mentioned that two famous doctors in the Spring and Autumn Period, namely "Medical Harmony" and "Medical Relaxation", the two are not brothers, The Medical Harmony is a Qin person, and the Medical Slow is a Jin person. Medical reprieve is the inventor of the idiom "terminally ill". Later generations take it simply, collectively called "relaxation", such as in chronological order, "slow" in front, "and" in the back, but the ancients mostly used "gentle" instead of "relaxation". Premier Zhou changed his article and quoted the scriptures, which shows that he is meticulous in reading and has seen and heard of the liberal arts.
6. Tang Degang and the Domestic Academic Research Institute
Tang Degang (August 23, 1920 – October 26, 2009), born in Hefei, Anhui Province, was a Chinese-American scholar, historian, biographer, and red scholar who made significant contributions to oral history.
Tang Degang
When Tang Degang was a child, he studied in a private school, and his old learning was very secret, and he had already circled the "Zizhi Tongjian" in his teens.
In the autumn of 1939, he was admitted to the Department of History of National Central University, and graduated in 1943 with a bachelor's degree. In 1944, he taught "General History of the West" at the Department of History and Geography of Anhui University.
He studied in the United States in 1948, received a master's degree from Columbia University in 1952, and a doctorate in history in 1959, with a doctoral thesis on Sino-US relations from 1844 to 1860.
In 1972, He left Columbia University and was appointed professor at the City University of New York, where he taught at the City College under the City University system for nearly two decades until his retirement in 1991, during which time he was president of the New York Literary and Art Association.
On October 26, 2009, he died of kidney failure at his home in San Francisco, USA, at the age of 89. Before his death, he donated all 124 boxes of books to Anhui University.
Since 1986, he has returned to China several times and participated in relevant research and planning conferences, such as the International Symposium on "Dream of the Red Chamber", the Academic Symposium on the History of Zhou, Qin, Han, and Tang Dynasties, the Hu Shi Symposium, the International Symposium to Commemorate the 55th Anniversary of the Taierzhuang War, and the Academic Symposium on Sino-Japanese Relations in the Past Hundred Years.
In the Spring Festival of 1992, when he withdrew from the "Society for the History of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression," he wrote to Liu Danian, saying, "Although he no longer teaches, he still pushes and pushes at any time when he has any summons and is within reach of his strength." ”
VII. Ji Xianlin and the "Mr. Chen Yinke Commemorative Symposium"
Ji Xianlin (August 6, 1911 – July 11, 2009), courtesy name Xidi, also spelled Qizang, was a Native Qingping of Shandong Province, a Chinese Chinese dialectician, literary translator, and an expert in Sanskrit and Pali. Professor of Peking University.
Ji
In 1930, he was admitted to the Western Department of Tsinghua University, where he studied under Wu Mi and studied the comparison of Eastern and Western poetry, English, and Sanskrit; he chose Chen Yinke's Buddhist scripture translation literature, Zhu Guangqian's literary and artistic psychology, Yu Pingbo's Tang and Song poetry, and Zhu Ziqing's Tao Yuanming poems.
He graduated from the Department of Western Literature of Tsinghua University in 1934 and went to the University of Göttingen in Germany the following year to study Sanskrit, Pali and Tocharian, and received a doctorate in philosophy. In 1946, he returned to China and served as the director of the Department of Oriental Languages at Peking University. He is the youngest full professor in the history of Peking University.
He joined the Communist Party of China in 1956 and began translating the Indian epic Ramayana in 1973, completing the full translation in 1977.
In 1978, he became the director of the Department of Oriental Languages and Literatures of Peking University, the vice president of Peking University, and the director of the Institute of South Asian Studies of Peking University, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
He died at 9:00 a.m. on July 11, 2009 at Beijing 301 Hospital at the age of 97.
Mr. Chen Yinke, who suffered from eye diseases in his later years
Chen Yinke was Ji Xianlin's Buddhist teacher. With Chen Yinke's recommendation, Ji Xianlin entered Peking University as a professor. In the 1995 article "Remembering Teacher Chen Yinke", it can be seen that Ji Xianlin has deep feelings for Chen Yinke.
In May 1988, Mr. Chen Yinke held a commemorative colloquium. Previously, Ji Xianlin had written to Liu Danian many times, asking the Academy of Social Sciences to fund it in the name of the "Chinese Historical Society". After the payment was approved, a letter was sent to confirm the availability of the payment.
Liu Danian viewed the people and events in the letters with the profound vision of a historian, leaving us with a precious historical material, and also providing a credible basis for studying the academic history of the 1940s and 1990s, so that we can imagine the beginning and development of New Chinese scholarship.
Behind each letter is a story that lifts the veil of history for us, and the true face of history looms silently.