My research room is in the Rite Hall, next to the Mei Hall, two classical red brick buildings from 1914, standing on a hillside, looking out in the direction of the South China Sea. The old house is the same as the old man's house, and there is a story in every room and every wrinkle. I soon found out that the Rite Hall and Mei Hall were originally student dormitories, and that Eileen Chang, who had just graduated from high school and was only 19 years old, had come to the HKU campus with a large and bulky suitcase. But the one she lived in had already been demolished.
The "cold-blooded" Zhang Ailing
So I went back and read "Ember Aftermath", around 1944, two years after Eileen Chang left Hong Kong, she reminisced about her beacon years at HKU. Other writers may write about war with indignation and passion, pain and intensity, but Zhang Ailing writes sparsely and empty, as if looking at the most sacred thing from a concave and convex mirror, and the sense of absurdity is magnified to the extreme:
We gathered in the dark box room on the lowest floor of the dormitory, and all we could hear was the machine gun "Telala clapping" like rain on lotus leaves. Because of the fear of stray bullets, the little sister didn't dare to go to the window to wash the vegetables in front of the bright, so our vegetable soup was full of worms...
She writes about the "joy" after the fall of Hong Kong:
I remember how after the fall of Hong Kong, we were all over the streets looking for ice cream and lipstick. We bumped into every eatery and asked if there was ice cream. Only one promised that it might be tomorrow afternoon, so we walked ten miles to fulfill the promise the next day and ate a plate of expensive ice cream full of ice chips.
She sharply compares Shanghai and Hong Kong:
Hong Kong has rediscovered the joy of "eating...... In post-war Hong Kong, every five or ten steps on the street, a well-dressed foreigner squatted on the street, frying a kind of hard-ironed yellow cake on a small wind stove. Hong Kong is no better than Shanghai, and new speculative business is developing very slowly. For a long time, the food on the street was still monopolized by small yellow cakes.
We stood at the head of the stall and ate the boiled fried turnip cakes, and the bruised corpses of the poor lay at the feet of the feet. Is it the same in winter in Shanghai? But at least not so sharply affirmative. Hong Kong is not as cultured as Shanghai.
There is a detachment from her selfishness and coldness, as if she has elevated the anatomy of the cadaver to the level of art to be appreciated:
There was a man who had a strange smell of erosion. The pain was extreme, and the facial expression was close to ecstasy...... His eyes were half-open and half-closed, his mouth was opened, and he smiled as if he couldn't catch it. All night he cried out: "O girl! Girl! "Long, trembling, tone-in-tone. I ignore it. I am an irresponsible, unconscionable caretaker. I hated this man because he was suffering there and finally a room full of patients woke up. They couldn't look past it and shouted "girl" in unison. I had to come out, stand gloomily in front of his bed, and ask, "What do you want?" He thought for a moment and groaned, "I want water." "As long as someone gives him something, he can do anything. I told him there was no boiling water in the kitchen and walked away. He sighed, was silent for a while, and then cried out again, unable to move, and hummed: "Girl...... Girl...... Hey, girl......"
She writes about the deep and dim human nature like a black hole, and writes about the desolation of life:
The car of the times is moving forward with a bang. We sat in the car, passing by a few familiar streets, but we were also thrilled by the firelight. It is a pity that we are too busy looking for our own shadow in the window of the shop that is fleeting - we see only our own face, pale, small: our selfishness and emptiness, our shameless stupidity—everyone is like us, and yet each of us is alone.
"Ember Aftermath" seems to have been written by a centenarian who has gone through vicissitudes, but Zhang Ailing was only twenty-four years old at the time. Reading "The Aftermath of Ashes", I found that all the qualities that make Eileen Chang's literature immortal are all ambushed in this short essay reminiscing about her career at HKU. From 1939 to 1942, a slender HKU girl who shuttled between the mountain paths of the Rite Hall, Mui Hall and Luk Yau Hall may seem "strange" to her classmates, but she was a rising wave in the great river of Chinese literature in the 20th century, influencing an entire generation of writers and forming the phenomenon of "Zhang Xue".
How many of the 14,000 Hong Kong students today are familiar with Eileen Chang's work?
Zhu Guangqian walking
Behind the ceremonial hall, there is a mountain path, the bauhinia is gorgeous, the hundred-year-old camphor tree floats with fragrance, and the bougainvillea climbs beautifully. If you go up to the top of the mountain trail, you can see the scenery of the South China Sea. Then, by chance, I read Zhu Guangqian's recollection of his career at HKU:
As soon as we had some free time, we walked along the trail behind the Messer past Morrison House to the mountain... Hong Kong is always clear and clear, on the top of the mountain, the blue sky shrouds the blue water, countless small islands near and far stand green trees, red and white houses, paved in a colorful pattern...... This is what I cherish most about my life at the University of Hong Kong.
Zhu Guangqian is a pioneer in the field of contemporary Chinese aesthetic research, and has written "The Psychology of Tragedy", "On Beauty", "Psychology of Literature and Art", "Theory of Poetry", "History of Western Aesthetics", "On Beauty and Books", etc., among which "History of Western Aesthetics" is the first monograph in China to comprehensively and systematically expound the development of Western aesthetic thought. In Beijing in the thirties, Zhu Guangqian, who had returned from studying in Europe, presided over a literary salon at home, where he met once a month to recite Chinese and foreign poems and prose, and to discuss various issues of debating poetry theory and creation. The main members of the salon are Zhou Zuoren, Zhu Ziqing, Zheng Zhenduo, Feng Zhi, Shen Congwen, Bingxin, Ling Shuhua, Bian Zhilin, Lin Huiyin, Xiao Gan and others. The issues discussed and debated in the salon will radiate out of the small living room and become the issues of attention in the literary and artistic circles, or affect the development and flow of literature and poetry creation. This is a salon of Chinese liberal literati, which mixes the styles and visions of Europe and the United States, and has a catalytic effect on the formation and style of literature in the thirties, especially the literature of the "Beijing School".
Looking back on his academic career, Chu Guangqian said that the four years of HKU (1918-1922) "laid the direction for my lifelong educational and academic activities."
How many of the 14,000 Hong Kong university students today know who Zhu Guangqian is?
Chen Yinke, who does not eat "enemy flour".
Xu Dishan, there may be a little more people who know, and Taiwan people also read the sketch of "Falling Peanuts" in the early days. During the six years from 1935 to 1941, Hui not only reformed the curriculum content of the Chinese Chinese Department of HKU, but also devoted great efforts to the humanities education in Hong Kong.
However, what I didn't know before was how Hui Dishan brought Chen Yinke into the history of HKU.
Chen Yinke's academic process was surprisingly diverse and rich, almost like the European concept of "Renaissance man": in 1902 he enrolled in Japan's Hongbun College; Another Chinese student who enrolled in the school in the same year was Lu Xun. In 1910, he studied at the University of Berlin, the University of Zurich, and the École Supérieure d'Etudes Politiques in Paris. In 1914, he returned to China due to the outbreak of the European war, and in 1918, he went abroad again for further study, first studying Sanskrit at Harvard University, and then transferred to the University of Berlin to study Oriental paleography, while studying Central Asian ancient characters and Mongolia. Throughout his studies, he developed the ability to read more than ten languages such as Mongolian, Tibetan, Manchu, Japanese, English, French, German, Persian, Turkic, Tangut, Latin, and Greece.
In 1925, Chen Yinke returned to China and became one of the "Four Great Tutors" of the Institute of Chinese Studies of Tsinghua University, working with Wang Guowei, Liang Qichao, and Zhao Yuanren. In 1940, Chen Yinke left Kunming for Hong Kong in order to be hired by the University of Oxford in United Kingdom, preparing to transfer to United Kingdom, but the situation in Europe intensified, so he was "stuck" in Hong Kong. At this time, Xu Dishan became the middleman to retain talents.
Chen Yinke stayed and became a professor at HKU. Hong Kong fell at the end of 41, and Chen Yinke closed his studies under hunger. One of his most important works, A Treatise on the Political History of the Tang Dynasty, was completed during this difficult period, and the preface ends with the preface "Xin Si New Year's Day Chen Yinke's Book at the Residence at 369 Prince Road, Kowloon". A generation of academic masterpieces, pondered in the stormy room, was written on the campus of the University of Hong Kong.
When Liang Qichao recommended Chen Yinke as a tutor of the Tsinghua Institute of Chinese Studies, he once said: "I am also a good writer, but it is not as valuable as Mr. Chen's few hundred words." "When Mao Zedong visited the Soviet Union, Stalin asked about Chen Yinke's condition and expressed concern; Chen Yinke was quoted in Stalin's "Problems of the Chinese Revolution". After the Japan occupied Hong Kong, it is said that they had done two things to Chen Yinke: one was to send him flour. At that time, life was extremely materially difficult, "probably a Japan scholar wrote to the military department, asking them not to trouble Professor Chen, the military department wrote to the Hong Kong commander, and the commander sent a gendarmerie to take care of the Chen family and sent many bags of flour, but the gendarmes moved into the house, and Mr. Chen and Mrs. Chen dragged out, just not eating the enemy's flour." The second is that it is said that "the Japanese in Hong Kong forcibly paid Yin Ke 400,000 yuan a day to set up the Oriental Culture Institute, but Yin Ke refused and was exempted."
How many of the 14,000 Hong Kong students today have heard of Chan or read his writings?
George Bernard Shaw of "propaganda communism".
At this time, some people may say, Long Yingtai, you are too demanding. Hong Kong is a United Kingdom colony and is not familiar with Chinese culture.
But I have another discovery. I found out that in 1933, before the people in Beijing and Shanghai were preparing to welcome the 77-year-old "Old Man of Peace" to China, George Bernard Shaw first came to Hong Kong and gave a lecture in the auditorium of the University of Hong Kong. In casual conversation, George Bernard Shaw said that in college, students must first learn to "forget" – "many of what we hear and learn are incorrect and lead us astray." You have to learn in school, you can't finish if you don't learn, but you have to forget, you have to forget what you have learned."
However, I also found that on February 14, 1933, the "Reuters" news reported that George Bernard Shaw had given a speech at the University of Hong Kong, and the headline of the report was "Speech to Hong Kong University Students: George Bernard Shaw's Propaganda of Communism", and the news was published in various Chinese newspapers.
At this time, I connected George Bernard Shaw's trip to Port Shaw with Lu Xun's article. Lu Xun praised George Bernard Shaw's "greatness" because of Shaw's HKU speech:
However, his greatness can only be known from the Hong Kong "Reuters" on 14 April when the University of Hong Kong said to the students: "If you are not a red revolutionary at the age of 20, you will become an impossible stone at the age of 50, and if you want to become a red revolutionary at the age of 20, you will have the opportunity not to fall behind at the age of 40."
George Bernard Shaw was the Nobel Prize winner in literature in 1925, and his literary works, political ideas, and social interventions, as well as the zeitgeist in which he lived, were an important part of the English-speaking world. How much do we know about the 14,000 Hong Kong university students today?
Universities are the source of the human spirit
After coming to HKU, I made various discoveries, but the biggest discovery is that people generally do not know that HKU once embraced and nurtured such an important cultural heritage. Dr. Sun Yat-sen is a graduate of the University of Hong Kong, and everyone knows and talks about it, but I can't help but have some "villain heart" and guess that the reason why Sun Yat-sen is widely known at the University of Hong Kong is that it is a political yardstick to measure the value. Great statesmen, people remember; Great writers, great historians, great thinkers, no one knows. No one knows, is it because people don't care too much about the value of humanity?
With its long history and abundant financial resources, the University of Hong Kong has been cultivating two kinds of people for Hong Kong: excellent government officials and excellent professional elites, such as lawyers and doctors. In the context of Hong Kong's values and context, I have also noticed that the core of social concern has always been Hong Kong's economic development, and the government officials who make decisions and the professional elites who influence decision-making are obviously extremely important pillars.
However, in terms of politics, lawyers, and doctors, which profession can not be based on a deep understanding of "people"? If we don't know enough about "people", politics will not bring us true happiness. If we don't know enough about "people", the law will be just a rope of words, and it will not be possible to bring us true justice. If we don't know enough about "people", all kinds of medical research and inventions, divorced from the ultimate care of people, may become a competition of technology and a game of brainpower, and it is impossible to bring us real peace. How much do the students we train have a deep understanding of "people" if they want to lead this society into the future in the future?
The so-called humanistic qualities, including aesthetics, literature, historiography, and philosophy, which are exactly what Zhu Guangqian, Zhang Ailing, and Chen Yinke represent that I am talking about today, are actually specialized studies that study "people". You could say that the humanities are the basic sciences of all disciplines. And if the students we train, future government officials, lawyers, and doctors, all have first-class skills, but they lack the humanistic qualities and the deepest understanding of "people", will you be very uneasy?
When you understand that HKU once had cultural heritages such as Zhu Guangqian, Zhang Ailing, Chen Yinke, and Xu Dishan, you will find that, yes, there seems to be a fault line in the humanistic spirit. Vice President Li Zhuofen reminded me that this fault line is very related to the "de-Sinicization" that the colonial government has deliberately promoted since the 50s because of its anti-communism and fear of the Communist Party. At present, the "fault" between Hong Kong and Chinese humanistic thought is not only a problem of the University of Hong Kong, but also a problem of Hong Kong as a whole.
How precise his diagnosis was. When Japan colonized Taiwan, it also worked hard to cultivate professional and technical personnel in agriculture and medicine, while suppressing the pursuit of ideological disciplines by Taiwan people. "De-Sinicization" may still be superficial, but "de-ideologization" is the core of colonialism. Today, if we are aware of the problem and deepen the cultivation of the humanistic spirit, will it not be even more important to make it the primary goal of education?
In today's speech, I was particularly touched to see the presence of the President and several Vice-Presidents, and to see that the alumni are so concerned about the future of HKU. While the stereotype of Hong Kong people in the outside world is "utilitarian" and "snobbish", my own discovery is that there are a lot of idealistic people in Hong Kong, always looking for opportunities and ways to contribute to society.
Two suggestions
So today I have two specific suggestions, one of which is relatively small. That is, I hope that HKU will spend a small amount of money to conduct a thorough research and investigation of the history of HKU, so that the history of HKU's humanities can emerge: at the door of Xu Dishan's office, in front of Chen Yinke's research room, the demolished ruins of the dormitory where Zhang Ailing once lived, the campus trail where Zhu Guangqian once lingered, and the Lu Youtang where Sun Yat-sen and George Bernard Shaw once gave speeches... Every point with humanistic significance can put up a small sign, telling us through history that generations of 19-year-old young people who continue to arrive at the campus "with suitcases": the university is a source of humanistic spirit. All scientific, technological, economic or commercial inventions must have "people" as their fundamental concern. Leaving the humanities, a university, not a university, just a technical cram school.
Another suggestion is relatively large, that is, I hope that HKU will make the most significant and serious investment in humanities, and re-weld and start anew the humanistic tradition that has been passed down from Zhu Guangqian, Zhang Ailing, Chen Yinke, Xu Dishan, and even George Bernard Shaw to a broken humanistic tradition. HKU was founded 100 years ago with the aim of nurturing talent for China. Today, we don't have to narrowly understand it as cultivating talents for China, but cultivating talents for Chinese culture is an unavoidable obligation. Hong Kong may be too thin at the moment, but with its unique geographical location and historical conditions, it has more potential than Shanghai and Taipei to face the entire Chinese-speaking world, build a platform for humanistic thought, and become a cultural focal point.
Then given time, perhaps the future HKU will cultivate a new generation of Zhang Ailing, Zhu Guangqian, and Chen Yinke. It is not a writer, historian, or aesthete who occasionally comes south or accidentally "stuck" in Hong Kong, but a talented person who grows in Hong Kong's own soil. This is the responsibility of the University of Hong Kong as I imagine it.
Text/Lung Yingtai
