On July 31, 1987, a news report titled "Tian Ziyu failed the college entrance examination twenty years ago, and today he is a self-taught associate professor" appeared in the newspaper. The "self-taught associate professor" was Tian Ziyu, who was 40 years old at the time. Now, more than 30 years have passed, and Tian Ziyu is already a second-level professor of Hubei University, a doctoral supervisor of Marxist theory and education, a doctoral supervisor of Central China Normal University and Nanjing Normal University, and a counselor of the Hubei Provincial People's Government.
"Scientific research is nothing more than four words—interest, direction, principle, and attitude. Interest is the best enlightenment teacher, the direction is the guiding light and the navigation, the principle of seeking truth from facts and the attitude of hard-working and hard-working are the guarantee of scientific research success. Tian Ziyu said. Scientific research is the basic function of the university and an important task of the university teachers. From the first article published in the Journal of Wuhan Normal University in 1975, to the current publication of more than 20 books, published more than 500 articles, the dedication and love of scientific research has allowed Tian Ziyu to find a path of unswerving struggle, and has achieved his lifelong ideal as a teacher and scientific research worker in colleges and universities.
Two steamed buns a bottle of water, a "bubble" in the library is a whole day
When he was a teenager, Tian Ziyu's greatest interest was reading, especially the history books related to Hubei. When he was in middle school, he loved to read Qu Yuan and felt the spirit of the Chu people. Lu Yu, Mi Fu and other brilliant stars on the heavenly curtain of Chinese thought have become the models of Tian Ziyu's life.
After failing the college entrance examination in 1965, Tian Ziyu went to Wuhan First Normal School and Wuhan Shengli Middle School to study and teach. During his teaching, he read extensively. After the opening of the Wuhan Library in 1974, every Sunday holiday, he would take two steamed buns and a bottle of water and soak there for a day.
Tian Ziyu is particularly interested in the history of Wuhan. He had seen a book about tea stories, which recorded that in the 1770s, Russian merchants opened a SF tea factory in Wuhan and built the first modern factory in Wuhan. Based on this clue, he went to Hankou Yanjiang Avenue Station Intersection, Lanling Road and other places to investigate, and wrote an article on the tea trade of Russian businessmen in Wuhan, which was published in the Journal of Wuhan Normal University. "That article made me get 20 yuan in writing fees, and my monthly salary was only 30 yuan at the time, so I asked my family and friends to feast on it." Tian Ziyu recalled.
In 1979, Tian Ziyu again published an article in the Journal of Wuhan Normal University entitled "The May Fourth Movement in Wuhan". These two articles, written out of interest, later became the "stepping stones" for him to join Wuhan Normal University (the predecessor of Hubei University). In 1980, he took to the university podium.
"The beginning of scientific research is interest, and interest is the inexhaustible driving force of scientific research." Tian Ziyu said that he has been engaged in scientific research for most of his life, has never taken it as a task or work, and always reminds himself to maintain his original intention and simple curiosity, and constantly think and explore.
"Historical materials are the soul of history, and must be based on first-hand information"
In 1986, Tian Ziyu published his first book, Yun Dai Ying Biography, which was co-authored with Ren Wuxiong and Li Liangming, and was the first monograph in China to introduce the revolutionary activities of Yun Dai Ying's life in detail.
"This is the official beginning of my scientific research." Tian Ziyu said. Over the years, from the study of Yun Daiying to the study of Li Hanjun and Dong Biwu, to the study of the history of the Republic of China in Wuhan, to the study of the history of the Communist Party of China and the early spread of Marxism in China, his research process is like a sapling, and finally grows into a towering tree.
His early masterpiece "Li Hanjun's Contribution to the Spread of Marxism" won the second prize of the Second Outstanding Paper on Party History of the National Communist Party History Society in 2001, which is the highest scientific research award in China's party history circles. He undertook the 2004 National Social Science Foundation "History of the Early Spread of Marxism in China", in which a major breakthrough was made in the study of Li Hanjun, filling the gap in the study of the ccp's founding figures.
After consulting a large number of precious historical materials, Tian Ziyu carried out in-depth research on the history of the Republic of China in Wuhan, and the "Hubei General History and Republic of China Volume" co-authored by others won the first prize of Hubei Social Science, which is considered to be a landmark achievement in the study of the history of the Republic of China in Hubei. He also wrote and edited the History of the Hubei Liberation War (co-authored) and the May Thirtieth Movement in Wuhan.
On this basis, in 2012, Tian Ziyu co-published the "History of the Spread of Marxism in the Early Days of China" with Professors Li Liangming, Cai Li and Xu Fangping, which was known as the "crowning work" of research in this field, and was included in the "National Library of Philosophical and Social Science Achievements" in 2011, and won the second prize of the 7th Outstanding Achievements in Scientific Research of Colleges and Universities and the first prize of the 9th Outstanding Achievements in Social Sciences of the Hubei Provincial People's Government.
In 1979, Tian Ziyu published an article entitled "The May Fourth Movement in Wuhan" in the Journal of Wuhan Normal University. This is his second published article and the first lesson he has tasted in his academic career.
After the article was published, Tian Ziyu read another article in the Jianghan Forum, "The May Fourth Movement in Wuhan", co-written by teachers from Wuhan University and Central China Normal University. After comparing the two articles, Tian Ziyu found that there were many details in his articles, "My investigation of historical materials at that time was limited to the Wuhan Library, and most of the content was written based on second- and third-hand materials. The author of another article specially organized a team to Go to Beijing to conduct more than a year of research, and their historical materials are very detailed. ”
In the subsequent scientific research, he paid great attention to the collection of first-hand information. "I study history, and historical materials are the soul of history, and we must mainly use first-hand materials such as archives and newspapers and periodicals." In 1999, he published a monograph "History of the May Fourth Movement in Wuhan". In the afterword, he wrote: "In the past twenty years, I have lost track of the number of visits to Beijing, Nanjing, and Shanghai, and have read them over and over again in archives, libraries, museums, and other units, searching for them in the vast sea of historical materials. ”
In the process of studying the martyr Li Hanjun, Tian Ziyu placed Li Hanjun's activities in a specific environment and conducted realistic observations. He interviewed the martyrs' former comrades-in-arms and relatives, and traveled to Beijing, Shanghai and Japan to search for historical materials. From 1980, when he began to pay attention to Li Hanjun, to 1997, when he wrote "Li Hanjun's Contribution to the Spread of Marxism", he spent 17 years.
Over the years, Tian Ziyu has traveled all over the world, collecting more than 200 texts scattered in libraries, museums, archives and private hands at home and abroad. "If you find the text, you will have a foundation for research, and the level of research will go to the forefront of the country." "History of the Early Spread of Marxism in China" was included in the 2011 "National Library of Philosophical and Social Science Achievements," Tian Ziyu concluded.
After being promoted to associate professor in 1987, Tian Ziyu was successfully awarded the title of professor in 1992, and later worked part-time as a doctoral supervisor of Central China Normal University and Nanjing Normal University. In 2014, after retiring at the age of 68, Tian Ziyu became a distinguished professor of the Red Boat Spirit Research Center of Jiaxing University, a special researcher of the Compilation and Research Center of "Mazang" of Peking University, and a member of the Expert Advisory Committee for Publicity and Popularization of the Central Compilation Bureau. In 2017, Hubei University broke with the norm and rehired him as a researcher at the Center for the Study of the Founding History of the Communist Party of China.
The process of searching for historical materials is like finding treasure
During the Spring Festival in 2017, Liang Weinian, then propaganda minister of the Hubei Provincial Party Committee, visited Tian Ziyu's home and saw two walls of historical materials in the room, and he proposed to organize these precious historical materials into a book. Soon, a research team with Tian Ziyu as the core was formed, and began to compile the "Selected Works on the Early Spread of Marxism in China (1920-1927)". In May 2018, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Marx's birth, the Ministry of Education's major project in philosophy and social sciences, "Selected Works on the Early Spread of Marxism in China (1920-1927)", was published. The anthology is a compilation of 92 texts with important historical status, widely disseminated influence and unique ideological value from more than 200 kinds of early works of Marxism in China mastered by Tian Ziyu, and is divided into four parts according to their content characteristics. On the morning of October 14 this year, on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the founding of Hubei University, the "Series of Works on the Early Spread of Marxism in China (1920-1927)" edited by Professor Tian Ziyu was grandly released.
Shi Zhongquan, a well-known expert in party history, spoke highly of the anthology, believing that this anthology is a groundbreaking, basic, systematic, and epochal important achievement in the field of early Marxist dissemination research.
"Marxism was widely spread in China, and the texts of these early works were the carriers of dissemination. It can be said that the "Anthology" bears witness to the original intention of the Chinese Communists and the original intention of the sinification of Marxism from the text. Tian Ziyu said that the collection, collation, and publication of the texts of Marxism in the early works of China was the starting point of the Mazang Project and the beginning of the "Red Four Libraries Complete Book," which had very important historical and cultural value.
"We've been collecting everywhere for over 30 years." Tian Ziyu said that this set of books has witnessed the process of going to collect historical materials at home and abroad for many years to study party history. He went to the United States three times and collected copies of Chen Gongbo's master's thesis "The Communist Movement in China" written in 1924; went to Stanford University to collect the "Draft Program of the Communist International" published in Hankou in 1927; and went to Singapore and Japan several times, as well as in China and in Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan to treasure the books of the Republic of China period. In the process of collecting, he did not miss any place where historical materials might be found, and in the library of a middle school in Yangzhou, he found a special issue of the Wuhan Review commemorating Lenin during the Great Revolution.
Tian Ziyu said that the process of searching for historical materials is like the process of finding treasure. Although it is hard work, blowing out the wild sand begins to reach gold. "Whenever we open a dusty, smelling newspaper that has turned brittle yellow, we are thrilled because we are turning over a sealed history that, thanks to our efforts, has been able to see the light of day. The hardships and joys in between are incomprehensible to ordinary people. In the afterword to the book "Li Hanjun", Tian Ziyu said so.
"I originally only had a high Chinese, hubei university hired me in an eclectic manner, and then hired me as an associate professor, I was also the first batch of second-level professors in the school to report to the province, along the way, the school has been kind to me, and I must do my best to do a good job in teaching and scientific research." (Wu Shan, Li Yi)
Source: China Youth Daily