Perspective||The essence of academic indexed management is to deprive scholars of their time and freedom

This article is transferred from: Required Notebook

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The author of this article is Li Huaiyu, a reporter from Time Weekly, Wang Fansen (1958-), a native of Yunlin, Taiwan, who graduated from the Institute of History of National Taiwan University in 1983 and immediately enlisted in the army. In 1985, he served as an assistant researcher at the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. In 1987, he entered the doctoral program of the Department of East Asian Studies, Princeton University, USA (under the supervision of Mr. Yu Yingshi). In 1993, he received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and was promoted to associate researcher at the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan, where he began teaching at the Department of History of National Taiwan University and the Institute of History of Tsinghua University in Taiwan. In 1998, he was promoted to researcher at the Institute of History and Philology. In 1999, he was appointed Visiting Professor of History, Department of History, Chinese University of Hong Kong. In July 2014, he was appointed Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Journal of the Institute of Chinese Studies. Hereby shared.

The Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica is an important academic institution for my visit to Taiwan. The director, Mr. Wang Fansen, helped me a lot at the Academia Sinica, and enthusiastically took me to National Taiwan University in Taipei, Chung Hsing University in Taichung, and Chung-Ang University in Zhongli City. Before going to Taiwan, Mr. Xu Zhuoyun mentioned to me: "Wang Fansen is a student of Yu Yingshi, and we all like him. It's extraordinary now, and it's going to be great in the future. "The first time I met Mr. Wang Fansen, he invited me to lunch with Mr. Chan Wing Fat, and the center of conversation was Mr. Yu Yingshi and Mr. Hui Zhuoyun. On that day, we talked about Mr. Gao Xinjiang, who passed away on May 5, 2009, and we were very embarrassed. At the age of seventeen or eighteen, Wang Fansen submitted an article to the supplement of "China Times" entitled "The World", and after the newspaper appeared, Gao Xinjiang, the editor-in-chief of the supplement of "The World", invited him to a meal. Many years later, Wang Fansen and Gao Xinjiang became close friends. Gao Xinjiang was described as "the first person on paper", and planned a series of cultural activities with the supplement of "The World" as the stage, which caused a sensation on the island and made indelible contributions to the development of Taiwan's culture in the 1970s ~ 1980s. The supplement of the "China Times" presided over by Gao Xinjiang and the supplement of the "United Daily News" presided over by Jiu Xian were evenly matched and agitated with each other. Wang Fansen recalled: "My younger brother often recalled that he picked up a human supplement on his way to high school, and after reading it, he thought the content was very rich, but now he doesn't feel this way at all. At that time, Gao Xinjiang contacted a large group of overseas scholars, and articles such as Yu Yingshi, Li Oufan, Tu Weiming, and Liu Shaoming often appeared in supplements, which had a great impact on the diversity and liveliness of Taiwanese culture. Gao Xinjiang had three thick books, full of addresses and phone numbers of overseas scholars, and everyone thought they were his secret books at that time. Wang Fansen recalled that when he was studying in the history department of National Taiwan University, the old generation of the history department of National Taiwan University was withering, and the average student did not seem to know much about the depth of the professor's knowledge. Mr. Lu Yaodong has taught academic history for nearly 300 years, and Wang Fansen rarely listens to lectures, and once after handing in the final exam papers, Lu Yaodong came out and said: "You are Wang Fansen!" And said a few words of encouragement. It turned out that he had read Wang Fansen's study report, but he had not seen Wang Fansen come to class. Lu Yaodong is famous for writing about food, and Wang Fansen remembers: "Teacher Lu is very interested in eating, and he once talked about the new recipes in the mainland in class, and he felt that lard was used too much because people had not eaten good things for too long. Wang Fansen read Mr. Qian Mu's works all over when he was in college, and once went to Sushulou to listen to lectures, but he did not understand Mr. Qian's accent, but he was deeply impressed by one thing: "At that time, a South American president visited Taiwan, and the honor team and band of the three armed services welcomed him at the airport. Mr. Qian thinks that this kind of ritual of modern people is not in line with the way of the ancients, and says that he brought a group of wolf dogs to welcome people - because the honor team carries guns. "I still remember that Mr. Qian complained that modern people need to apply for passports when they go abroad, and he said that Confucius didn't need to bring a passport when he traveled around the world." When I was studying history at National Taiwan University, when Taiwan's politics was about to be resolved, Wang Fansen said: "At that time, the teachers I was close to were all gentlemen who were inclined to democracy and freedom. At that time, the goal of intellectuals was clear, that is, democracy and freedom, and everyone criticized the authoritarian politics of the time. Wang Fansen said that when he was studying, he often went to the library of the College of Arts and Letters of National Taiwan University to borrow books, which made him interested and thought that they could answer the confusion about reality and cultural issues in his heart. Although I did not have the opportunity to read Yin Haiguang's teachings, "the large collection of books in the library opened a window for me, and there was a world wider than the world I was in." At that time, what NTU students learned in class was far less than what they learned outside of class, and the atmosphere was very free. Magazines outside the Party have sprung up like mushrooms, and many young people have been affected and gradually broke free from the ideology of the Kuomintang." After graduating from the Department of History of National Taiwan University with a master's degree, Wang Fansen joined the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica. Shiyu is known as the "first institute in the world", and has given birth to many important figures in modern Chinese academic circles. Wang Fansen often jokes that if you encounter an academic problem, ask it in the corridor, ask the first person he may not know, ask the second or third, someone will definitely know. After serving as an assistant researcher at the Institute of History and Philology for two years, Wang went to Princeton University to study for a doctorate, supervised by Mr. Yu Yingshi, a historian. Wang Fansen spent the most unforgettable reading career of his life at Princeton, and entered a new realm under the words and deeds of Mr. Yu Yingshi. After graduating from Princeton and returning to the Institute of History and Philology, Wang Fansen was soon recognized as a rising star in Taiwan's historiography, becoming the director of the Institute of History and Philology and an academician of the Academia Sinica, where he was able to navigate between administrative affairs and academic research. In the director's room of the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica, Mr. Yu Yingshi's calligraphy is hung in a conspicuous place. We had a lot of small talk, mostly anecdotes from the academic community. Talking about the early development of the Institute of History and Language, Wang Fansen said that the Institute was full of talents: "The wonderful thing about that generation is that they supported a kind of learning with all their knowledge. They have been cultivated in various cultures, and they are divided into many parts. Learning must be supported by many departments in order to be wonderful. When I first joined the Institute of History and Language, I was the older generation at the age of 90, the middle-aged generation at the age of 70 or 80, the teenager at the age of 40 or 50, and the kindergarten at the age of 20 or 30. Every time I go to a seminar in the office, I am nervous, and the old gentlemen who sit in front of me know everything. At that time, the Academia Sinica was relatively simple, and a colleague wrote a popular science article in the newspaper, and received a piece of paper from President Wu Dayou to ask him to meet. As soon as Dean Wu saw him, he said: You are so-and-so, and the article you wrote is too naïve. When it comes to the best time wasted by mathematicians in the Chinese world in sports, Wang Fansen sighed: "I remember once listening to Fu Cong playing the piano in the 1980s, and someone asked him during a break in the background: What sports do you like? He misheard and said: I'm afraid of sports! I said, "Once, Zhang Wuchang invited Liu Shikun to play the piano at the University of Hong Kong. Wang Gungwu, President of the University of Hong Kong, said after hearing this: How many geniuses was wasted in the 'Cultural Revolution'? Wang said: "Time is the most important thing. Research funding alone is not enough, and there must be enough time and freedom to improve the humanities. I feel that the academic community in Asia is depriving academics of time by competing fiercely under rigid indicators. Moreover, there are too many examinations and evaluations, thinking that knowledge can be predicted from this moment, leaving no elegance and space in it. The truly valuable learning is a journey without a map. "One night, Mr. Wang Fansen and I had dinner in a small restaurant at the entrance of National Taiwan University, and most of the people we talked about were Wang Fansen's teachers. The final topic centered on his essay "Why Geniuses Come in Droves". Wang Fansen believes that when a school is the most energetic and creative, it must be a group of people who not only do the work of "Baishou Taixuanjing", but also freely communicate and dialogue around one or two central figures in an informal manner. Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) was a frequent English thinker who was a frequent entertainer at a time when many in England feared that his over-social life would affect his learning, but in reality it was often the occasion for him to come up with new ideas. Once, when he was talking to a classicist at Barrio College in Oxford about the types of ancient geniuses, the scholar told him that the ancient Greek poet Alchinocus had a fragment of the line: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows only one great thing." Later, Berlin studied Tolstoy's view of history and found that Tolstoy, as a novelist, had a genius for describing human life in detail, but like a hedgehog, he wanted to find an all-encompassing theory, and Berlin stumbled upon the words "hedgehog" and "fox" to describe the ambiguity presented by Tolstoy's works. Berlin's long essay was originally published in Oxford's Slavic commentary under the title "Tolstoy's Historical Skepticism", which is not very noticeable. Soon after, at the suggestion of a bookseller, it was printed as a small book under the title "The Hedgehog and the Fox", which was immediately recited for thousands of miles. In my opinion, this discussion is exactly what Wang Fansen has learned from years of practice. After graduating from the Department of History of National Taiwan University, how did you enter the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica in your first job? Wang Fansen: At that time, the Academia Sinica had three five-year plans, and there were many more places. I was serving in the army at the time, and in addition to the book "Zhang Taiyan's Thoughts", I also wrote a long article (which later became my second book, "The Rise of the Ancient History Criticism Movement"). It was a long time before I learned that one of the examiners who was admitted to the institute that year was Mr. Yu Yingshi. Time Weekly: Mr. Yu Yingshi's writing in Chinese in the 1970s was an important turning point. Wang Fansen: I once said to Mr. Yu: "If you didn't start writing a lot of Chinese in the 1970s, you would be a successful professor in the United States. But by writing a lot of Chinese, you become an important part of this historical and cultural tradition, and you are not only a successful scholar. Mr. Yu did not object. When his writing began to intervene in society, everyone felt that it was very new: it turned out that ancient history and ideas could be talked about in this way. Time Weekly: Princeton University is the last stop of Mr. Yu's teaching, from the University of Michigan, to Harvard University, to Yale University, and finally to the paradise of Princeton University. Wang: I arrived in Princeton at the same time as Mr. Yu, who happened to be turning from Yale. When I was still working as a research assistant, I had already heard rumors that Mr. Yu was going to Princeton. When he went to Princeton to speak, it was as if he had written a poem, from which someone read that he meant to move to Princeton. Later, it was really implemented. Time Weekly: How does Mr. Yu Yingshi teach? Wang Fansen: He pays more attention to guiding you and letting you discover for yourself. He encourages students to experiment with possibilities. He reads a lot of Western books, which is very timely, and the old learning is also very strong, so he sees the potential of the topic very appropriately, knows where the possibilities are, where the limitations are, and knows how to lead to meaningful directions. This is not something that the average teacher can do. The average teacher may be good at theory, but they may not have such a deep grasp of that field and material. There was a discussion about a well-known scholar who said that this professor could only teach universities, but not research institutes, because the professor did not have a good grasp of the breadth and depth of the material. Mr. Yu Yingshi is a master of both, and has a greater impact on graduate students. It is usually difficult to meet teachers in universities, but there are not many students in Princeton, and students usually only need to knock on the door to meet professors. A lot of the time, knowledge is just talking.