He Bingdi (6 April 1917 – 7 June 2012)
Written by | Jiang Caijian
I don't remember when I really started to have contact with Mr. He Bingdi, but it must have been before I came to the United States in 1998 and began to write the biography of Yang Zhenning. He Bingdi and Yang Zhenning went to the United States in 1945 to study in the same ship, and the two have maintained a close friendship since then, and when I wrote "The Biography of Yang Zhenning", I lived near UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), not far from Irvine, where He Bingdi is located, so I would meet and talk with him from time to time.
Generally when talking about academic figures, I always like to talk about their titles, such as doctors, academicians, or winners of any award, but it is the same in any field in society, in fact, these same titles are mostly just a appearance, and there are also differences such as three, six, and nine. Whether a person really has a unique insight that is different or not needs many other criteria for judging.
I have a deeper understanding of He Bingdi, which should be after 1996. In June 1996, Yang Zhenning went to Taiwan to receive honorary doctorates from Hsinchu Tsinghua University and Jiaotong University, where a symposium was held at Tsinghua University, and in addition to Mr. Yang, the other two interlocutors were Ho Bing-di and Professor Chen Zhifan.
After the dialogue, I wrote an editorial for China Times entitled "Cultural Self-Confidence in the Process of Integration of Science and Technology and Humanities", with the subtitle "Talking with Academicians Yang Zhenning and He Bingdi", which mentioned that both of them touched on the so-called macro and micro issues in the methodology of science. I remember the impression at that time that He Bingdi, a historian, always seemed to forget the scientific method when talking about literature and theory, Yang Zhenning was a scientist, emphasizing that the scientific method was not surprising, and He Bingdi's attitude toward science seemed to be more fixed than that of Chen Zhifan, another student of electrical machinery.
There would be such an idea, which was really due to the shallow understanding of He Bingdi's work in historiography. After he completed his doctoral dissertation on land reform in Britain in the 1950s, He Bingdi soon decided to turn to the study of Chinese history, and the Ming and Qing dynasty population theory masterpieces that established his historical research status were completed by using thousands of local history materials in the Library of Congress and a large number of materials from the Harvard Yenching Library to support solid social science materials. He not only combed the vast materials of "the poor and the blue and fell into the Yellow Spring", but also was able to capture the profound meaning implied in the data with a clairvoyant vision, and he tasted that his historical research was not "discovery", but "invention", showing a kind of self-acceptance and pride for his academic insight.
Proving his innovative view of the significance of "Ding" and "Mu" in the literature put forward by his research on social class mobility in the Ming and Qing dynasties, his self-approval and arrogance can be said to be excessive for the challenges posed by the mainstream view of Chinese historical research in the West at that time.
Since 1996, I have had frequent contact with Ho Bingdi, and in January 1997 he wrote a special article for the "Times Science" edition of the "Times Science" edition that I was responsible for editing in China Times, which was published in two weeks. The title of the article is "The Indigenous Origins of Chinese Agriculture through Mutual Verification by Scientific Exhortations."
The reason why He Bingdi wrote such an article is mainly due to the fact that he began to work alone on the origins of Chinese agriculture since 1968, and had to "fight alone" in the face of the "siege" of overseas experts in related disciplines, he opposed the mainstream view of the historians at that time that rice farming originated in the two river basins of West Asia, and put forward arguments to conceptually refute their so-called nomadic farming.
In addition, it was because He Bingdi saw the Los Angeles Times at that time that he published an interview with a famous American agricultural archaeologist, saying that the important archaeological achievements of 50 archaeologists and related discipline experts in China and the United States in the past few years confirmed that the Yangtze River Basin is the cradle of the world's cultivated rice crops, which has been around for nine thousand years.
I suppose Ho must have been happy to have his article published in a scientific edition, because in his 2004 memoir, Sixty Years of Reading History, he wrote that when he began his march into agricultural history, he had a desire to publish at least one article in his lifetime in a journal of true science. Of course, before that, his article "American Crop Transmission" had already been published in the prestigious scientific journal "American Anthropologist", and it should be glad to be published in a scientific edition.
Mr. Ho Bingdi's academic autobiography "Sixty Years of Reading History".
In 1998, I went to Los Angeles for a long time, began to interview and collect information on Yang Zhenning's biography, and from time to time went to Turtle Rock, where He Bingdi lived, which he called Guiyan Village, to visit him.
He Bingdi's home is a white, quite modern style of independent house, there is a rather large yard behind, the first time I went back, he especially took me to see some flowers and trees in the yard. Overall, in the often sunny environment of Southern California, such a trendy and small house is not easy to connect with the tall He Bingdi.
Most of my meetings with Ho Bingdi come to his house at ten o'clock in the morning, where we talk for about two hours, and then drive to a Chinese restaurant in a small shopping mall near my home for lunch. He Bingdi always goes to the same one, the restaurant owner also knows him very well, usually orders a few dishes, He Bingdi is not particularly moderate, there are seafood and meat, usually I eat a bowl of rice, he sometimes has to eat three bowls, in the next few years he can also eat two bowls of rice, "cheap and old, still able to eat rice" always appears in my mind.
Because of our acquaintance with Yang Zhenning, it is inevitable that the conversation will talk about Yang Zhenning many times. He Bingdi mentioned Yang Zhenning's "Forty Years of Reading and Teaching" several times, saying that he greatly appreciated that book and admitted that he was influenced by the book, and later used a similar title like "Sixty Years of Reading History and Reading the World".
He also likes to say that Yang Zhenning is luckier than him, because the scientific community has a clear and clear standard, unlike the humanities world, he has been attacked and wronged by many nonsense, which means "wa cauldron thunder". He Bingdi and Yang Zhenning were admitted to the sixth gengbu in 1944 to stay in the United States at public expense, and he often said that his average score was 78.5 points, which was 7 points more than Yang Zhenning.
In 2000, I went to Los Angeles to meet with Fu Jianzhong, an old friend of my China Times colleague who had traveled there from Washington to cover the Democratic Party congress, and went to visit Ho Bingdi. Fu Jianzhong has a clear account in his mind for the modern Chinese historical figures, and his memory is outstanding, and he Bingdi has a lot of talk, both of them have a big voice, you come and go, at that time He Bingdi's wife Shao Jingluo was not in good health, usually did not come out to see guests, that day actually went to the living room to look at it, probably wondered who came, than the loud public voice at home.
He Bingdi did not write much ink on his wife in "Sixty Years of Reading History and Reading the World", but in his memoirs, there is a special section of his teacher Lei Haizong, in which Lei's mother Zhang Jingmu recalled Teacher Lei, saying how thoughtful Lei Haizong was. With He Bingdi's respect and admiration for Teacher Lei, this passage in his memoirs may have the taste of his own state of mind. I have many opportunities to observe the situation of He Bingdi and Shao Jingluo getting along, and He Bingdi, who has given outsiders a strict and fierce image, gets along with his wife, although I cannot say that he is tender and tender, but his sympathy for his wife is indeed naturally revealed.
After the publication of He Bingdi's "Sixty Years of Reading History and Reading the World", of course, it attracted a lot of attention, but whether there was a Luoyang paper expensive, and whether he himself was satisfied with the social reaction, I had some observations, and I also had some understanding of He Bingdi's state of mind. I read in "Sixty Years of Reading History" that he first refused to be invited by the History Department of the University of Chicago to be a visiting professor, but was particularly impressed by the period when he was interviewed by the History Department of the University of Chicago for a few days.
In June 1962, on his way from Vancouver to the East Of the United States, He Bingdi stopped at the Department of History of the University of Chicago for a few days. The head of the department at the time, the famous historian William Hardy MacNeil, hosted a family dinner on the night of his arrival. The next morning, at the meeting of a group of well-known historians in the History Department of Zhida University, He Bingdi, with his solid research over the past ten years, with his profound and extensive involvement in Chinese and Western cultures, and his conceit of controlling the English language, surprised all the scholars in the audience and were amazed that he could make such a profound conversation in and out of the east and west and lead the way without any speech.
He Bingdi himself considered it one of the most successful academic conversations of his life. The next day McNeil took out an offer from the history department of the University of Chicago in his office and asked Ho to sign it, saying he readily agreed. He later quoted the famous historian Professor Liu Guangjing as writing, saying, "In the history of China in this state, the balance of power has changed!" It can be seen that he has been exhausting the scriptures since the Library of Congress in the 1950s, and issued the "See whose writings really deserve to be hidden in the famous mountain!" The lion roared down, confident and conceited about his academic work. From this point of view, he may be somewhat disappointed in the reaction to "Sixty Years of Reading History".
To put it more strictly, one of the tragedies behind Ho's successful academic career is that he always believes that he has not been able to "name the world". The reason for his feelings is not entirely the "personality defects" he himself admits, "intolerable stupidity", and the disharmony with Chinese and foreign academic figures, but more importantly, there is an overly obsessive simplicity of scholarship, unwilling to recognize that it is not only a contest of intelligence, but also full of human calculations.
In addition to the "Ming and Qing Population Theory" and "Ming and Qing Social History" to establish his historical status, He Bingdi also devoted himself to the study of the history of ancient Chinese thought in his later years, and the thesis that Sun Tzu Thought was the root of China's ancient thought put forward by him can be said to subvert the basic views of many mainstream studies in the past. He once showed me an article entitled "From the Theoretical Evaluation of Love< the > of the Dream of the Red Chamber", which compared Paradise Lost and Dream of the Red Chamber to explore the differences in the attitude and value of love in Eastern and Western cultures. These works show that he is not only deeply thoughtful, but also widely involved, and also obeys the self-expectation of "never doing second-rate topics" throughout his life.
Although his self-promise of "coming out of nowhere" comes from within, it also brings him a lot of unpleasantness and even pain. He Bingdi was elected president of the Asian Historical Society in the United States in 1974, and the reason why the Asian Historical Society has a lofty position in the United States is due to the factors of the times that China has long been weak and the right to interpret Chinese history has fallen to the "Fanbang". He Bingdi is based on his solid data-based historical insights, and has the English ability of "going in and out", as well as the fighting spirit of "although tens of millions of people are looking forward to it", and the tongue battle is also a hero, although he has won his due status, but his heart must still be deeply emotional.
That's why he was angry that another historian, Yu Yingshi, won the Kluge Prize because he had won the presidency of the Asian Historical Society in the 1990s but lost to a Japanese-American female historian, Evelyn Rawski. In his speech as president of the Asian Society in 1996, Luo Youzhi openly challenged former president He Bingdi on the issue of Sinicization, and He Bingdi immediately responded strongly, which attracted the attention of the academic community, and the issue of Sinicization once again became a focus of discussion in the academic community. Luo Youzhi did not respond after that, and it seemed that Merle conceded defeat.
Because of Yang Zhenning's sake, He Bingdi treated me with a friendship of the year, and he did not say much about the discord between Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao. He Bingdi also had a personal friendship with Li Zhengdao, and Li Zhengdao's son Li Zhongqing was one of his few proud disciples. Ho praised Lee's art collection taste, but he and Yang Zhenning had always been close friends, and after his death, his son once emailed Yang Zhenning, saying that his father finally told him that Yang Zhenning was his best friend.
The last time I saw Mr. Ho was in 2009, when my wife was deceased, and he was also a little sick, and the family had a son who came back to accompany him. That time, I took a few pictures of him in front of his home, which was obviously old in his twilight years, and then we went out to eat and noticed that he had only eaten one bowl of rice, which was really "cheap and old".
More than two years later, there were two opportunities to pass through Los Angeles, but there was no time to visit him, and the news of his death in June 2012 was unexpected.
He Bingdi often said that he would walk a few miles around his home at dusk, and I could imagine his tall figure, hurrying in the sunset of Guiyan Village, or walking around the room at home, and sometimes felt that he was like a trapped tiger dragon, with many feelings in his heart that others could not understand, and some blocks that could not be spit out.
Note: This article was originally published in Observation in June 2014, the author is a scientific and cultural worker, and Mr. Sai is authorized to forward it.