Wei Feide (1937-2006), American sinologist and historian, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, was the president of the American Historical Society and the Society of Social Sciences, together with Kong Feili and Shi Jingqian, known as the Three Masters of American Sinology. His representative works include "Telling The History of China", "Hongye: The History of the Founding of the Qing Dynasty", "Shanghai Trilogy", "Spy King: Dai Kasa and Chinese Agents" and so on.
Hongye: A History of the Founding of the Qing Dynasty
Author: (American) Wei Feide
Edition: Nova Press
February 2017
It tells the most dramatic historical stage in the history of Chinese dynasties- the end of the Ming Dynasty in 1644 and the consolidation of the Qing Dynasty in the following 20 years. From the grand background of politics, economy, culture, society, nation, and national defense, the author conducts a general dissection and perspective of how one empire is in trouble and how another empire re-establishes order and becomes strong.
The Spy King: Dai Kasa and the Chinese Agent
"Spy King" takes the kuomintang military command agents as the research object, and takes the life and political experience of the "spy king" Dai Kasa as the clue, mainly studying the development process of his huge and mysterious spy kingdom.
I have had almost 20 years of intersection with the famous American sinologist Fredrick Wakeman from several different perspectives. First of all, he was my professor of master's thesis supervision; second, I had a lot of contact with him as a family member of his colleagues; and again, he was the godfather of my twin son, so we interacted a lot, although famous, but very approachable, whether it was a dinner table or a conference table, as long as I had him, there was vitality and vitality.
Today, with the development of the Internet, smart phones will provide all the material about Wei Feide: Born in 1937 in Kansas City, Kansas, USA, Wei Feide had the opportunity to travel to Europe and South America at a very young age due to the reasons of a successful playwright family, and was rich in experience and multilingual.
Everyone knows that he is the director of the Institute of East Asian Studies at the University of California, a famous sinologist, and a recipient of various academic awards. Moreover, because of his explosive IQ, it is said that he is above 160, so he was interested in him by the CIA during his studies at Harvard, and perhaps the CIA was not only interested in him? I think. Here I write down a few fragments of memories that are not available online and have been haunting my mind.
Master of "diplomacy"
As an old friend in the eyes of colleagues' families, Fury De
Whether he joined the CIA has also been a question in my head. One day in the early 1990s, at a dinner party at a scholar's house, after dinner, they were all talking with great interest that the CIA might have to declassify the identities and files of a group of people, so many members who had joined the CIA but had been working at all levels of society in other capacities were anxious.
Fred Wei Feide, who was sitting in the guest of honor, suddenly turned to me sitting next to him and whispered in Chinese, "What would Chinese mainland scholar think if he knew I was a member of the CIA?" I was stunned by his question, and just replied stupidly: "I want to think about it." A few months later, I asked him: Are you? He smiled, and his wise eyes instantly turned into a pair of bent moons. Entering two thousand years, once receiving a phone call from him, after a greeting, he leisurely asked Chinese scholars what they would think of an underground CIA member of the academic circle, undercoat CIA, remembering that he used the word. Until recently, I finally asked a few domestic scholars about Fury's question, and everyone actually said happily: We have long known that some people have dual identities!
Fury-de has a close relationship with the Clinton administration, and because he is familiar with the rules of the government's internal operation (including unspoken rules) and eats all Chinese mainland and Taiwan's academic circles, he will also help people walk through the back door on some small things. For example, Jin Shangyi, the old director of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, wanted to attend his son's graduation ceremony at Boston University, and found me after being refused a visa by the US Embassy. I immediately asked Fordon for help, and soon the U.S. State Department called me back. The next day Jin Shangyi went according to the instructions, and the US ambassador personally took him to apply for a visa. I've also heard that he's an expert on China at the Clinton think tank — which, I believe, feels like he's always just returned to California from Washington, or is about to go to Washington.
In Western public places, the behavior of civilized people is a certain norm, in order to maintain the image of civilization, some people's behavior will also make people with fear to cover up their displeasure, and elegant and decent and can smile calmly cope. Once, I invited my ex-wife, who was already in a terrible relationship and in the process of divorce, to a dinner party, and I also invited another couple of Chinese studies experts who were completely different from his political views and academic orientation. The two of them played the role of a good husband and wife all night, happy and harmonious discussion of various Chinese cultural topics.
Later, when other Chinese studies experts heard that the two couples were amicably celebrating my cooking skills in our house, they were shocked: Don't you know that these four people should never get together at the same table? After hearing my description of the meal, the listener was absolutely overwhelmed: it is really worthy of being the tallest of the tall. The manners and "face" required by their Western civilization actually made a night of laughter, friendliness and warmth; after leaving our house, the divorce that should be divorced, the competition that should be fought and fought. Fury de is a master of "diplomacy" who can transcend low-level temper and willfulness at any time.
Academic Tutor
As a teacher in the eyes of students, Wei Feide
Mr. Wei Feide is my master's supervisor professor at the University of California.
In the late 1980s, I came to the United States, and in addition to socializing and housework, I often went to the library to read books every day, looking for gao Juhan to translate the materials he needed. Although the rich collection and exquisite management of the library made me linger in the library, reading room, and good book library all day long, I suffered from the fact that my major at the Central Academy of Fine Arts was art theory, while the American academic community did not have such a major, and I felt at a loss for a while.
Accidentally bumped into the class of Professor Richard Wollheim of the Department of Philosophy, was deeply attracted, and audited for a while, but soon encountered family resistance, could not continue to audit, felt that the academic psychological gap was too large, so he immediately returned to Beijing, went to the China Academy of Arts to check in and enter the working state. Because at that time, the Art Research Institute had regulations that required master's degree graduates to work for half a year before they could enter the research work, and after reporting in, they did not even find a place to live, and Thanksgiving came.
Back in the United States, at a series of gatherings between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day and several times met Mr. Wei Feide, he greeted me like everyone else and asked me how I felt about the United States and my academic pursuits. After he heard me laugh that there was no art theory major in the United States and was a little confused, he said a decisive sentence: If you want to engage in academic research and stay out of the academic circle for more than two years, it is difficult to come back. Although he had applied for a master's program at the University of California's Institute of Asian Studies, he listened to his words and decided to return to Beijing to work and end his wandering state.
I was assigned to organize Spanish books in the library. It is said that this batch of books has been sealed since mid-1966, and I was the first person to get involved in this batch of books in twenty years. As I sweep through books in various European scripts that are at least half a millimeter thick, catalog them, type out two cards for each book, and categorize them on the shelves, I can't help but miss the library of the University of California, when did China have such a library. The institute's library is largely closed, and the answers given by people who come to borrow books are basically no or can't be found. Whenever I come across an English book, I read it very carefully, and over the course of a few months I have been reading some of these works on fine art, art philosophy, and Western art history during my lunch break—although they are books from the 1940s and 50s, they are still readable. Before the six-month deadline arrived, I was arranged to fly back to California due to the social storm.
After returning home, I found that I had been admitted to the Institute of Asian Studies, and my library experience for several months made me cherish this opportunity to read more, so I did not hesitate to choose Wei Feide as my master's supervisor professor in the list of professors. At this time, he carefully studied the files of the Shanghai Police Department during World War II declassified by the CIA, and I had many conversations with him who knew some about Shanghai life. I was very impressed with his teaching and thesis tutoring and had a huge impact on my scholarship.
I note the Six Classics
"We're not doing China studies"
Wei Feide's thoughts on recalling the Study of Shanghai are quoted in many places on the Internet: "When I look out from the guest rooms of the Jin Jiang Hotel, I see a dark and misty patch – Shanghai in the early 70s is different from today. The city's dim lighting and its night depressions cover the thrill of its past. I felt an impulse in my heart: I wanted to penetrate the dark and low-key dimensions of the city and reveal what it had been. Almost no one mentioned the word "extraordinary" as the academic nucleus of his historical research, and through the process of tutoring my master's thesis, I suddenly realized that what he was pursuing in the process of studying Dai Kasa was an extraordinary historical writing, and all his academic ideas ran through this construction of "extraordinary".
As I prepared to write my master's thesis, I collected a large amount of first-hand material. When I couldn't hide my excitement to discuss my research with him, he asked: Tell me the most extraordinary story or event you found? He said, "Let me tell you a story." Before China opened its doors to the West in the 1970s, suffering from the lack of first-hand materials, overseas scholars of Qing history lamented that the opportunity to visit China's first historical archives in the future would certainly be able to solve all their doubts about Qing history.
He asked me: When he first came to China and stood in a room full of sacks and sacks of Qing Dynasty documents that had not yet been fully sorted out, "Do you guess what I thought at that moment?" I stared at him intently, waiting for an answer. He said that the material is important, but the historical view is more important, there is no clear historical view, the finished documents are still the materials, and the historical writing is the focus. I understand, this is the difference between the Six Sutras and my Annotations! After I taught, I always asked students to find ten statements from the literature, of which there was a high probability that there would be something extraordinary and that would change the previous view of the problem. This concept of "extraordinary" comes from Teacher Wei Feide.
Sinology research is not simply the study of Chinese literature, let alone the accumulation of literature, but the study of China issues— I often hear Wei Feide express such views in and out of the classroom. Looking back at his research, whether it is Hong Ye (History of the Founding of the Qing Dynasty), The Spy King: Dai Kasa and Chinese Agents, the Shanghai Police, or The Stranger at the Gate: The Social Unrest in South China Between 1839 and 1861, each book points to a specific, small, and profound central problem of Chinese society: the way in which the order and laws of Chinese history are constructed and the key lack of its structure.
As a "stranger" who has entered China's national history, Wei Feide is not combing through Chinese history, but using world history to look at China's problems. He was the original intention of President Hoover's advocacy for the establishment of the Hoover Institute at Stanford University and the establishment of the China Research Center at various large comprehensive universities: to study for the United States to understand China, to look at the cracks in China's social structure, and to find targeted problems to understand this society. When tens of millions of points are connected together, they form a network covering the study of various issues in China, and generations of sinologists have established a huge sinology network to understand China's politics, society, culture, human feelings, customs, traditions and history in the past two or three hundred years, especially since President Hoover issued the call.
Overseas sinology research in the 20th century, with the United States as the most important, American sinology research is The study of Chinese problems rather than Chinese studies. If you don't understand this, you can't understand Sinology, you can't understand Wei Feide—at best you can appreciate his writing and humor.
□ Cao Xingyuan (Social Association art historian)