Revisiting History: Joseph Needham's Wartime Trip to China

Text | Mei Jianjun

This is a very special book, its text is simple and eloquent, and a living history jumps on the page; The black-and-white pictures, mostly taken casually, are indescribably exquisite, but they are extremely precious. Because everything recorded in these pictures has long since become faint and blurry with the passage of time; According to the explanation of the text, the characters, the collision of ideas, the landscape of mountains and rivers and the evolution of events in that specific historical period are still mellow, which is both exciting and thought-provoking.

The book is titled "Science in Wartime China through the Lens of Joseph Needham." The authors of the book are Liu Xiao, a professor at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Mofert, director of the East Asian Science History Library at the Needham Institute (Needham Institute) at the University of Cambridge. Liu Xiao specializes in the history of modern Chinese science and technology, and is the author of "A Brief History of the National Beiping Research Institute", etc., and knows the people and events in the history of modern Chinese science in detail. As the director of the museum for more than 30 years, Mofert is well aware of all kinds of materials in the museum's collection, especially historical photographs.

The two men worked together to write such a special book, which not only comprehensively and meticulously described the various deeds and observations of Joseph Needham's trip to China from 1943 to 1946, but also showed the spirit of Chinese scientists and scholars who still worked hard and sang songs despite extremely difficult circumstances.

One

Joseph Needham's magnum opus, Science and Civilization in China (also translated as A History of Science and Technology in China), is an extremely rich and rich scholarly legacy. As a thinker in the 20th century and a scholar of the history of science and technology in China, the academic and public attention is usually focused on his academic legacy and the famous "Needham Question", and rarely delves into the connotation and significance of his intellectual and spiritual legacy. Joseph Needham's trip to China in the 40s was significant in his lifetime, as his research interests shifted radically since then, transforming him from a biochemist to a historian of Chinese science and technology.

Joseph Needham was born in 1900 in London, England, to a middle-class family. In 1918, he entered the University of Cambridge (hereinafter referred to as Cambridge) in England to study biology; After graduating with a doctorate in 1925, he engaged in the study of chemical embryology in the laboratory of Sir Hopkins (1861-1947), and in 1931 published the three-volume monograph "Chemical Embryology", becoming the founder of the discipline. In 1934, he published A History of Embryology. In 1941, Joseph Needham was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Before he left for China, Joseph Needham was already an accomplished biochemist. But the appearance of Lu Guizhen (1904-1991) quietly changed the trajectory of his life.

In 1937, Lu Guizhen went to Cambridge to study for a doctorate, and his supervisor was none other than Joseph Needham's wife, Dr. Li Dafei (1896-1987). Through contact and conversation with Lu Guizhen and other Chinese students, Joseph Needham developed a strong interest in Chinese culture and its history, and with Lu Guizhen's encouragement, he began to learn Chinese, which in turn developed a strong desire to go to China for field trips.

In 1942, after unremitting efforts, he was finally sent to China by the British government as a scientific counselor at the British Embassy in China. He arrived in Chongqing in early 1943 and founded the Sino-British Science Cooperation Museum a few months later, aiming to promote scientific cooperation and exchanges between China and the UK.

Before his departure, Joseph Needham was interviewed by reporters and talked about the mission of his trip to China in several aspects, mainly to strengthen official ties, and more importantly, to investigate China's higher education and research institutions, to explore opportunities for academic exchanges, and to promote cooperation between Chinese and British academic institutions.

Leaving behind the relatively comfortable scientific research work in Cambridge and running to war-torn China, Joseph Needham obviously had his own long-term plans, and after the establishment of the Sino-British Science Cooperation Museum, with the operating funds and staff, he formulated a detailed investigation plan and ran in the rear of wartime China. Soon he also asked his wife Li Dafei to go to China to serve as the deputy director.

Joseph Needham was not only willing to come to China, but also lived and experienced it in China for a long time, observing and documenting everything that happened in China during the war. The driving factor behind this should be his strong curiosity and desire to learn about the development of oriental and Chinese culture, especially ancient science and technology.

During his stay in China, Joseph Needham wrote to Lu Guizhen about his feelings: "The feelings that your country and people have given me since I first arrived here are incomparable. It was a very chaotic time, but because of this, I was able to get into the life of the city and the countryside (and of course, I went from place to place and went through a lot of hardship); I walked on a lonely footstep into the often abandoned Confucian temples, monasteries, and Taoist temples, and thus fully enjoyed the magnificent scenery of the traditional buildings among the ancient trees and deserted gardens. I freely experienced life in Chinese homes and markets, and saw first-hand the suffering of a society as it awaited the coming dawn in its collapse. When I say 'hard work', I don't mean exaggeration. Sometimes I spent the night in a deserted temple on a camp bed, and sometimes I curled up behind the cooperative workshop. In addition to the inevitable insects and snakes, there are also groups of large rats...... It was a different world entirely, and I'm eternally grateful to you for taking me through it all. ”

Two

Reading the book "Science in Wartime China through the Lens of Joseph Needham", the deepest feeling is that Joseph Needham was so conscientious, dedicated, and dedicated to carrying out his mission to China. Since arriving in China, he has been traveling and surveying the rear of China, documenting in detail the current situation of each university and research institute he visited, including the school buildings, book collections, laboratory facilities, the number of researchers, their expertise, and the content of their work.

Throughout the Anti-Japanese War, no one had the courage to visit so many places and institutions, talk to so many people, and leave such meticulous observations and records, including a large number of precious pictures taken. In order to understand and understand the spiritual outlook of intellectuals and scholars in the rear of China during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, who shared the same hatred for the enemy, persevered, and rose to the occasion, there is no more comprehensive, more direct, and more objective than the records and comments left by Joseph Needham. Joseph Needham saw and felt the tenacity of China's intellectual elite in the face of national crisis.

In order to keep the people of the world abreast of the state of scientific research and higher education in the rear of China during the war, Joseph Needham wrote a report on each expedition he completed, which was published in the British journal Nature, five in 1943, two in 1944, and one in 1945 and 1946. After the end of the war, Joseph Needham and Li Dafei brought together these articles, together with the work reports, letters, diaries, poems, and speeches they wrote together, and compiled them into a book called "The Outpost of Science".

Prior to this, in 1945, Joseph Needham also collected a large number of photographs he had taken in China, as well as photographs of scientific research in the liberated areas of northern Shaanxi given by friends, and published the album "Science in China". In 1947, Xu Xiangong and Liu Jiankang selected and translated six articles published by Joseph Needham on his expedition to China and three lectures published in a single collection, which was published by Shanghai Zhonghua Book Company under the title Science of China in Wartime.

On December 9, 2000, to commemorate the 100th birthday of Joseph Needham, the Museum of Science and Technology in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, China, cooperated with the Joseph Needham Institute to hold an exhibition entitled "Joseph Needham and the Science of China during the Anti-Japanese War".

In September 2015, the Needham Institute, in collaboration with the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, held a photo exhibition entitled "Wartime Chinese Science through the Lens of Joseph Needham", using a large number of photographs taken by Joseph Needham in China. The exhibition has since been exhibited at the University of Chinese in Hong Kong, the University of Hong Kong, Hongli College in Hong Kong, Shenzhen University and other educational institutions. The success of the exhibition led directly to the writing of the book "Science in Wartime China through the Lens of Joseph Needham".

Three

Joseph Needham himself valued this unique experience of living and traveling in China.

In 1948, in a letter to Cambridge University Press, England, he said that he was "extremely lucky", "because my duty enabled me to conduct in-depth research in the vast areas of China's rear during the war, and I would not miss any opportunity to consult with Chinese scholars on the subject of Chinese science and civilization and to leave notes." I was also fortunate to have amassed a good collection of relevant Chinese books, which were shipped back to Cambridge safe and sound, and are now being used by me. Therefore, I can only do what I want, because it is the responsibility of the time, the place, and the people."

In the "Preface" to the first volume of Science and Civilization in China, published in 1954, Joseph Needham spoke of at least two of the six comprehensive conditions that must be met to write this work that were directly related to his experience of living in China, that is, experiencing Chinese life firsthand, and having the opportunity to establish close contacts with a large number of Chinese scientists and scholars, and to receive their guidance and help.

Why was this experience so important to Joseph Needham? In my opinion, Joseph Needham found in this a career worthy of his life's pursuit, that is, to enhance the understanding between the East and the West through mutual learning between Eastern and Western civilizations, so as to open up a peaceful path of cooperation and common prosperity for the future of mankind.

What is the special significance of such a book being published today? Is it to review the development of science in China during the Anti-Japanese War, or to better understand Joseph Needham's expeditions to wartime China, or to allow readers to more fully share the large number of pictures taken by Joseph Needham in wartime China?

I think it would be a bit narrow to look at the motivation and value of this book from this perspective. If we can reflect on Joseph Needham's research experience in China during the Anti-Japanese War from the perspective of his lifelong research on the history of Chinese science and technology, we can realize that it was this experience that laid the foundation and spiritual connotation of Joseph Needham's writing career in the second half of his life.

Therefore, the significance of publishing this book is not only to preserve complete and precious historical materials, but also to further understand, excavate and reveal Joseph Needham's intellectual and spiritual heritage.

In a paper published in 2016, British scholar Leon Rocha noted that Joseph Needham's ideas "contain political vision, openness, and moral imperatives, and are worthy of our inheritance." Because his ideas show that modern science and medicine are far from finished, they are still developing; They may not have a monopoly on "truth"; Non-Western cultures also have the potential to modify the ways and means by which people acquire true knowledge; Studying the history of science and medicine in non-Western cultures will help construct a pluralistic science that not only fully recognizes the complexity of nature and reality, but also embraces one-sided perspectives from different classes, genders, ethnicities, and cultures.

Rocha's comments reflect the fact that a new generation of European and American scholars are still reflecting on Joseph Needham's intellectual and spiritual legacy and affirming its positive, long-term value and significance. From this perspective, this book is very timely and will certainly further promote the study of Joseph Needham's thought and spiritual heritage, as well as the study of the history of modern Chinese science.

(The author is director of the Joseph Needham Institute, University of Cambridge.) This article is the preface to the book "Science in Wartime China through the Lens of Joseph Needham", with deletions, the title is added by the editor)