Character business card
Gao Mengdan
Gao Mengdan (1870-1936), known as Fengqian, was a Fuzhou Changle person. His father and his family moved to fuzhou, the provincial capital. When he was young, he studied with his eldest brother, took the boy exam, and made up for the doctoral disciples, because the Qing court was weak, he had no intention of pursuing a career, and he was tired of the eight-strand article, so he gave up his career and cultivated himself with pen. In 1896, with his eldest brother Fengqi helping Lin Qi, the prefect of Hangzhou, to run the school, three new schools in the local area, Qiushi Academy, Yangzheng Shushu and Silkworm Academy, the chapters of which were all drafted by the Gao brothers. Later, Qiushi Academy was expanded into Zhejiang University Hall, with Fengqi as the chief teacher and Mengdan as the teacher. In 1903, he entered the Commercial Press and successively served as the director of the National Culture Department, the director of the Compilation Institute, and the director of the Publishing Department. In 1915, he assumed the position of Acting General Manager. In the business for twenty years, for the company to seek talents, adhering to the "success does not have to be in me" life credo, promote the invention of the four-corner number check method but do not sign their own name, reward the late, introduce new learning, open the people's wisdom, is one of the most prestigious publishers in modern times.
If the pre-liberation Commercial Press is compared to a publishing kingdom, the founding fathers are naturally Xia Ruifang, Zhang Yuanji and Wang Yunwu are the leaders of the stage who strategize, and Gao Mengdan is an indispensable "minister of seeking the country". The Commercial Press, which has stood for a hundred years, relies on the spirit of high-level career, especially Gao Mengdan.
As one of the most accomplished and prestigious publishers in modern China, Gao Mengdan adheres to the way of "establishing oneself and establishing oneself, and one's own desire to reach one's own", with a discerning eye, seeking the wise and letting the wise, and seeking the country's demeanor and seeking book affairs. He shoulders social responsibility with a folk posture, replaces the slogan with hard work, "Success does not have to be in me", expects all people who have strength and are willing to work hard to achieve achievements, and all kinds of charms are intertwined, and hu Shi praised him as a "modern saint".
Gao Mengdan's original name was Fengqian, each taken from a word in the names of the two brothers "Fengqi" and "And Qian". He lost his father at the age of 16 and regarded his brother as a father, as can be seen from the name he took. In his early years, he was called "Chongyou" to show his interest in advocating practical things and hating clean talk. In his later years, he used the name of the table word "Mengdan" to show his lifelong pursuit of bright ideals. Gao Mengdan is low-key and humble, usually does not like to speak in front of everyone, does not take credit for himself, but is extremely cautious in taking names, and is full of affection between the name mingzhi and the rush.
Gao Mengdan's ancestors were the Wang clan of Longmen Village in Changle, Fuzhou, which lived in a group of people, commonly known as "Yangmen".
Li Xuangong, one of the "Four Elders of Commerce" of the Commercial Press and a famous publishing collector, once wrote a poem:
Indifferent to the career of self-shock, the protégé originally did not count the floating names.
If you talk about the wind festival by the door, you believe that the three highs are brothers.
The "three high brothers" mentioned in this poem refer to Gao Mengdan and his two elder brothers. The three Gao brothers were loyal and intimate, which was a good story at that time. The first three editors of the Commercial Press, in addition to Zhang Yuanji, the Gao brothers Gao Fengqi and Gao Mengdan occupied two seats.
The eldest brother Gao Fengqi (高凤岐), also spelled Xiaotong, was raised in the eighth year of Guangxu (1882). After the signing of the Treaty of Maguan in 1895, he wrote a letter with Lin Shu and Chen Yan to oppose the cession of Liaotai. He took the entrance examination and taught self-sufficiency in Fuzhou, and was tireless, and Lin Baishui, a pioneer in The Chinese press, was his high foot.
Gao Jia's second and most humble, zi yi, graduated from the third manufacturing class of the Mawei Ship Politics School, studied in Germany and France, and served as the left minister of foreign affairs of Zheng Sanpin. In July 1909 and August 1911, he was twice commissioned to negotiate with Portugal on the demarcation of the boundary of Macao. Since then, he has successively served as the minister of the Republic of China to Italy and Belgium and the vice minister of foreign affairs, and is a competent diplomat. In the early years of the Republic of China, Gao Mengdan went to Europe with humility, traveled to several countries, and explored the reasons for the strength of the West.
Among the three brothers, only Gao Mengdan had a lifetime of clothing, but his influence was the greatest. The word Mengdan, as the name suggests, means to look forward to the arrival of the morning light in the long night.
When he was a teenager, he had an indifference that was different from ordinary people, and he did not only study in the name of utilitarian merit. He hoped that he would read for practical purposes, correct the vulgarity of the times, and engrave a seal on himself called "Reverence", in order to show his lifelong interest in advocating practical matters and hating clean talk.
Let me give you an example. Many traditional readers often have a common problem, and when they fail to fail in the examination room, they are depressed, and the title of the gold list is oblivious. When Gao Mengdan's examination talent was not in the middle, he treated it indifferently and had no complaints. To this end, Lin Shu praised it in the "Preface to the Gift of Gao Mengdan": "His art is not sold, he retreats to the first floor, he does not quit reading, and he is a Taoist of his kind." But if you are not in the same way, if you are not guilty, if you are happy to take care of your old karma, you will not be tired of it every day, and what can the unwise do? ”
Gao Mengdan's appearance is "old-fashioned" in Hu Shi's words, but he is "the kindest and most enthusiastic, and the old-fashioned appearance hides a most benevolent and warm heart" in his appearance. In the biographies of friends around him for Gao Mengdan, they all invariably mentioned Gao's good temperament, saying that he was "round in nature and sincere in his treatment of others.". Business people, origin, experience, interests, personality are not the same, Gao Mengdan to rational lobbying, more than 30 years can not be a big conflict, known as the indispensable "lubricant" of business.
Mengxi Pen Talk (Data Map)
In 1902, Zhejiang University sent ten students to study in Japan, and Gao Mengdan served as the superintendent of study abroad and led the trip. During his visits to the renovation, cultural, and educational facilities during the period, he deeply felt that to rejuvenate the country, it is necessary to attach importance to culture and education, cultivate new people, start with basic education, and reshape the character and spirit of the people. At that time, Liang Qichao was also in Japan, and Mengdan showed the old draft of the "Private Discussion on Changing the Calendar" that he had rewritten according to Shen Kuo's proposal to change the calendar in the "Mengxi Pen Talk", and Liang believed that the "New Calendar of The Thirteenth Month" was a new theory of changing the calendar in the modern world, and published it in the "Xinmin Cong Bao". When he returned to China in the winter of that year, he was hired by Zhang Yuanji, director of the Compilation Institute of the Shanghai Commercial Press, to serve as the director of the Chinese Culture Department of the Institute, and then succeeded him as the director.
He and Zhang Yuanji and others agreed with each other: "My generation should take it as our duty to support education", and publishing to assist the popularization of education and open up people's wisdom. At the same time, he began to publish the "Latest Chinese Language Textbook", the guiding ideology is that "all those who are indispensable for standing, staying at home, living in the world, and even the reasons for the shallowness of things and the indispensable places for life are gathered in this book." If it has the characteristics of our country, it will be vigorously commended; and the evils of our country will be vigorously corrected, so as to achieve social progress and improvement."
According to the prescribed school system, he edited the textbooks in different subjects, from primary schools to middle schools and teachers' training, and published them one after another. When Cai Yuanpei saw this set of textbooks, he was amazed and said that the seriousness of this book had changed the sloppy writing atmosphere of the entire publishing industry.
The Commercial Press has a long-standing reputation for printing and distributing textbooks such as "The Latest Chinese Textbooks", and has developed into a large-scale publishing institution integrating compilation, publication and distribution in modern Chinese history. Its scale, technology, and personnel once held a first-class position in the world's same industry, and such brilliant achievements were considered to be the "most cutting-edge people in the business of the Chinese people" at that time.
In the early days of the Commercial Press, it was at the time when the West was learning from the East, and the Commercial Press "was the first to really get the atmosphere", when the "Heavenly Speech" of yanfu of the Min people and Lin Shu's "La Traviata" had been engraved and printed, but the number was small and the influence was limited. After being typeset and published by the Commercial Press, it was widely disseminated and did not go away. Since then, Lin Shu's translation has been unstoppable, and he has translated 184 foreign literary works in collaboration with others. Yan Fu's translations of "The Theory of Heavenly Speech" and "Original Wealth" have been published and reprinted many times in the Commercial Press, and "Heavenly Speech" alone has been published in the ninth edition by 1909.
The publication of Yan Fu and Lin Shu's works in the Commercial Press is not unrelated to Gao Mengdan's recommendation. According to Zheng Zhenwen, director of the Changle Township Party and the Department of Physics and Chemistry of the Commercial Museum, "In the early days, the literary, philosophical, political and economic books and periodicals produced by the Commercial Press, Fujian writers occupied a considerable position, mainly because the Gao brothers and Fujian people such as Yan Fu and Lin Shu had friends in the same year, encouraging them to write to enrich the source of manuscripts. ”
Textbooks of the Republic of China published by the Commercial Press.
In the modern history of the Commercial Press, it is recognized that there are "two xings": the first xing in Zhang Yuanji, and the second xing in Wang Yunwu. But behind these two dazzling names, there is an often overlooked but indispensable "sage" - Gao Mengdan.
The Commercial Press can become bigger and stronger in a very short period of time, which is inseparable from Gao Mengdan's discovery and support for talents, as well as his unique insight, foresight, courage and sincerity.
After the May Fourth Movement, the 51-year-old Gao Mengdan, believing that he "did not know much" about the new study, voluntarily resigned as director of the Compilation Institute of the Commercial Press, and in the late spring and early summer of 1921, he personally went to Beijing to invite Hu Shi, a professor at Peking University who was less than 30 years old, to come and take over.
Although Hu Shi, the initiator of the "literary revolution", has already "gained great fame", his seniority still belongs to the younger generation compared with Gao Mengdan, who has a pure heart and insists on entrusting the cause he fought for to Hu Shi, who has just passed the year of establishment.
Although Hu Shi did not take office, he recommended his teacher Wang Yunwu. At that time, Wang Yunwu was not famous, and those who doubted his talent were "both inside and outside the business bookstore." However, Gao Mengdan spent 3 months to help him familiarize himself with the work in the museum, and tried his best to assist after Wang took over. Some business elders were puzzled, and Gao Mengdan explained: "The company is also in Judah. Those who seek the country should not be dead, but seek merit for the country... The country can be long-lasting. ”
Sure enough, in the 1932 "January 28" incident, the Commercial Press was bombed by Japanese aircraft, almost into ruins, wang Yunwu only half a load, the "business" to restore vitality.
Many years later, Hu Shi recalled this history and said: "He took a fancy to a young scholar, and he wanted to entrust him with his life's business: Later, after listening to a few words from this young man, he entrusted this important cause to a person he did not usually know." This is the painstaking effort of old adults to ask for a great cause, and this is the demeanor of a great politician seeking the country. ”
Gao Mengdan knows talent, and loves talent as fate. He promoted the young Shen Yanbing to be the editor-in-chief of the Novel Monthly, but the latter put forward three harsh requirements for him: first, the existing manuscripts could not be used; second, all of them were changed to the number five characters; and third, the museum should let him have full authority and not interfere with the editorial policy. Gao Mengdan agreed in full.
Before he fell seriously ill, he used his salary for many years to set up the "Gao Mengdan Scholarship", in 1935, Qian Weichang, the nephew of the master of traditional Chinese studies Qian Mu, was admitted to the Institute of Tsinghua University, the first to receive the Gao Mengdan Scholarship, and later studied abroad to obtain a doctorate and became a famous scientist.
After Gao Mengdan's death, his epitaph was written by Hu Shi. Hu Shi had great respect for him, and in the "Biography of Mr. Gao Mengdan", Hu Shi wrote: "He loves the country and society, so he loves people like life." ”
"The Latest Chinese Language Textbook" (data map)
"Success does not have to be in me" is Gao Mengdan's life creed, writing like this, doing things is the same, there is no desire to compete for fame and profit, like to achieve the success of others' careers.
The most worth mentioning is the invention of the four-corner number check method.
While compiling the character book and the word book, he was determined to innovate the method of using the Kangxi Dictionary to check the characters by the side. After a long period of hard thinking, according to the characteristics of Chinese characters with form as the mainstay, he merged the 214 heads listed in the old dictionary into 80 heads with similar shapes, and determined their subordinates, which became the prototype of the later "four-corner number", but it was never published.
Later, he found that Lin Yutang had studied the reform of Chinese characters, so he proposed that the Commercial Press provide subsidies to encourage Lin Yutang to continue his research, and gave Wang Yunwu all the manuscripts he had painstakingly studied. Wang Yunwu became interested in this in the process of inviting Lin Yutang to study, and he was out of control and worked hard at home to study. Half a year later, "accidentally invented the number checking method" and "it took another year of work to invent the four-corner number checking method".
When the four-corner number checking method first came out, there were still many inappropriate points, such as too many words in the same code, Gao Mengdan repeatedly studied and proposed to increase the number of auxiliary angles to solve, and vigorously promoted, and also laughed that "the four-corner character detection method of the son raised by the surname Wang has been passed on to the surname Gao." However, until the four-corner number checking method was widely used throughout the country, Gao Mengdan did not sign his name.
In 1926, the "Four-Corner Number Checking Method" was published in a single line, and Wang Yunwu solemnly declared at the beginning of the book: "Gao Mengdanjun is the inventor of the character detection method with horns." And for the various problems of this orthography, it solves a lot for Yun V. This orthography can have the current results, thanks to the strength of Mr. Gao, hereby thank you! ”
Gao Mengdan is very interested in research and has many achievements, but the achievements are not satisfactory. In the process of compiling the textbook, Gao Mengdan felt that the structure of Chinese character strokes was too complicated, it was not easy to recognize and write, and it was difficult to popularize, so he compared the similarities and differences between their forms and forms, evaluated the advantages and disadvantages, tried to choose between them, and then studied the Chinese character reform plan with Lao Naixuan and Wang Zhao, "discussing back and forth, accumulating books and inches." When it came to The results of Lao Naixuan's research on simplified characters, he still did not sign it.
In addition, such as the reform of the weights and measures system and the electricity code convenience program, he has innovated and provided it to the relevant authorities for adoption, benefiting from a large number of people, but he does not mention it to others, nor does he leave a manuscript when writing. He worked in the Commercial Press for more than 30 years, but published his own works, only two small volumes, "The Thirteen-Month Calendar" and "The Collection of Tessie Maxims".
"It is as light as a chrysanthemum, and it is as pure as a lotus." On Gao Mengdan's sixtieth birthday, Hu Shi made a small vernacular poem to congratulate him:
The saint spoke out for salvation, no more, no less. A lifetime of dreams is bright, sixty do not know old.
Representative works
The Four-Corner Number Checking Method (one of the inventors, insisting on not signing), the Thirteen-Month Calendar, the Collection of Tessie Maxims, etc.
Wang Yunwu (modern publisher and former general manager of the Commercial Press): Mr. Hu Shizhi's call him one of the modern saints is definitely not excessive.
Zhuang Yu (publisher, educator): Success does not have to be self-sufficient, and fame does not have to be in my purpose. Ancient people, unattainable also!
Hu Shi (thinker, writer, philosopher): A holy flame of the new era that can understand people, understand people, help people, warmly, love people, and be able to love people. He loves his friends, he loves society, he loves his country, he loves the world. He loved truth, worshipped freedom, and believed in science. Because he believed in science, he hated xuan tan. He loves and respects Mr. Zhang Jusheng (i.e., Zhang Yuanji) as much as his two older brothers. He cherished our young friends as much as he loved his own children.
Past reading
Focus on the culture of Mindu and explore the spiritual power of Fujian culture