"I am a dog, I can only bark, bark for a hundred years, and I have not woken up China", such a tragic statement came from an old man. This is Ma Xiangbo. His life was bumpy and sad, and he lived to be forty years old, until he finally found his mission and became a great educator.
Ma Xiangbo, formerly known as Ma Zhide, was born on April 7, 1840 in Yangmajia Village, Jiangsu Province, because his parents were Catholics, Ma Xiangbo was also baptized and later came to shanghai to study at a church school. In the ninth year of Tongzhi (1870), Ma Xiangbo received the title of Doctor of Theology at Xujiahui Grand Seminary.
Ma Xiangbo's family is well-off, his father is a businessman, and he is a doctor, and he has been accustomed to suffering from illness since he was a child, so Ma Xiangbo has a compassionate thought.
In the eighth year of Tongzhi (1876), there was a huge drought in China, "Ding Pengqi Famine", which lasted for four years, and the disasters in Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Zhili and other provinces were serious, and the major grain-producing areas such as Jiangsu, Anhui and Sichuan were also affected to varying degrees. Tens of thousands of victims fled to Shanghai, and when Ma Xiangbo heard about this, he immediately took action and did his best to raise 2,000 taels of silver and extend a helping hand to the victims. Unexpectedly, he was instead imprisoned by the church and "saved". Ma Xiangbo, in his grief, resolutely broke away from the church and began to engage in diplomacy and foreign affairs.
During this time, he traveled to Japan, the United States, France and Italy. Traveling in these countries has greatly broadened Ma Xiangbo's horizons. He was deeply touched by the results of the reform of the Japanese Restoration, and gradually realized the way to make the country rich and strong, and also saw the importance of education. He is well versed in the principle that "the way of self-improvement is to cultivate talents, and the way to save talents is especially to set up schools first", and he is determined to destroy the family and establish a new type of school to cultivate talents.
In the twenty-sixth year of the Qing Dynasty (1900), Ma Xiangbo, who was even in the year of Ershun, made a decision that shocked everyone: he wanted to donate all his family property, 3,000 acres of good land, as a fund for the establishment of a new-style school.
At that time, there were indeed many foreign universities funded by rich businessmen, and even some were world-renowned universities, such as Harvard University and Yale University. But in China, Ma Xiangbo was "the first person to eat crabs."
In the twenty-eighth year of Qing Guangxu (1902), a sensational "ink bottle time" occurred at Nanyang College in Shanghai, which triggered the collective withdrawal of nearly 200 students. Under the coordination of Cai Yuanpei, Mr. Zhang Taiyan's "Patriotic Society" accepted some students and allowed them to continue their studies. But what about other students, we can't just watch them drop out of school. Taking this as an opportunity, Ma Xiangbo founded Aurora College in the 29th year of Guangxu (1903) and renamed it Aurora University in 1928.
Aurora is Sanskrit and has the beautiful meaning of "the sunrise in the east, the future is immeasurable". Aurora University is the first private university in modern China. Don't look at its small scale, but the strength can not be underestimated, the teaching staff is extremely strong. At the time of its establishment, even Liang Qichao personally sent congratulatory messages and personally wrote teaching materials to teach. Soon, Aurora University became a famous university in China that could stand on a par with Peking University and Tsinghua University, and was known as the "University of Paris of the East".
Unfortunately, in 1952, when the national colleges and universities were adjusted, Aurora University was abolished, and its related departments were merged into eleven schools, including Fudan University, East China Normal University, and Tongji University.
Ma Xiangbo's contribution to education is not only that. In the thirty-first year of Guangxu (1905), the church wanted to turn Aurora College into a church university, forcing Ma Xiangbo to hand over the power to control the school on the grounds of "recuperating from illness". At that time, when Ma Xiangbo looked at the students' withdrawal signature books, he burst into tears and was determined to advance and retreat with the students. With the strong support of Zhang Qian, Yan Fu and others, he also organized Fudan Public School. The establishment of Fudan Public School also went through several twists and turns, but fortunately it persisted in the end and achieved good results. In 1917, Fudan Public School was renamed Fudan University. In 1942, it was renamed Fudan University again. Today's Fudan University is not only among the best in China, but also has a good reputation in the world.
"The clouds and mountains are clear, the rivers are mighty, the wind of Mr. Mister, the mountains are high and the waters are long." This sentence is probably the best annotation to Mr. Ma Xiangbo's century-old legendary life. Although by the time of his death he had not been able to see with his own eyes the day when China drove out the Japanese invaders; although his name as the founder of these universities had faded slowly in the course of history, his exploits would surely be immortal.