Chen Guanzhong: A Navigation of Contemporary Historical Perspectives

Modern China on the Shelf: A Reading History of One Man, by Tang Xiaobing, Oriental Publishing House, March 2020 edition, 308 pp., 49.00 yuan

One

British writer C. S. Lewis wrote a book called The Devil's Epistles in early 1941, in which a senior magnate wrote a letter instructing the devil on how to make it bad, the twenty-seventh of which was called "Historical Perspectives". The Great Devil said: Human history contains infinite wisdom, and if people know how to learn and absorb it, and each generation corrects the mistakes of their predecessors, it will be a great obstacle to the cause of the devil. However, the devil said, don't worry, now many people no longer read history, regard history as "nonsense", only a very small number of mathematicians will study history, and they will soon be solved by the demon world, the way is to instill in them "historical views", let them not ask the truth or falsity of historical facts, but only look at the influence of different views of history and the mutual slander between opponents. Thanks to Satan and the "historical point of view," now the university, like an ignorant car repairman, does not get any nourishment from history. The Great Devil said: The Demon World cannot deceive the world forever, and the focus of our work is to cut off the historical lessons between generations of people in the world.

This devil's confession is true and counter-intuitive, but the demon world in Lewis's heart is not too evil. In time, as long as we learn from the Nazi regime of the same period the method of telling lies a thousand times to become the truth, and refer to the "Ministry of Truth" in Oceania described in the "1984" written by the novelist Orwell after World War II, the big devil will certainly be greatly inspired and instruct the little devil to make the ultimate plan, so that the devil can only do the task of writing human history.

Do you remember the sentence "Hu Shi said that history is a little girl dressed up by others"? This sentence has become one of the standard new historical views of the new generation of intelligent people, but in fact, it is not what Hu Shi said, but what was arbitrarily cobbled together and stuffed into Hu Shi's mouth by those who later attacked Hu Shi.

In the age of history, the fake is constantly being repeated into the real. At a time when all history is considered contemporary history (the second part of the wise man's new view of history), history is easily hijacked by propaganda. Ordinary people are covered by false history, cynical smart people no longer believe in history, and utilitarian smart people cut historical facts ideologically to match the present.

Here appears a paradoxical phenomenon of "when history meets power": because of the historical fault line of the previous generation, the truth is shielded, history can be dressed up, and the ancient is arbitrarily abused by the contemporary, which facilitates the continuous propagation of the historical view of the king and the defeat of the king, and the self and the other, and the manipulation of history has become a combined part of the imperial art, and because of the extreme asymmetry of the right to speak, the dissidents are light-hearted, and the defiant are often blamed, which is more conducive to the unification of the power-setting view of history.

There is only one path left to crack: unconvinced historians firmly carry the consciousness of contemporary problems, turn back to discover the truth, integrate events, still be old as old, respect facts, and do not avoid taboos, so as to reinterpret history, break stereotypes, dissolve the main theme into polyphonic and polyamory, save history from ideology, and revise people's universal view of history from detailing history.

This may be a better interpretation of Croce's "all true history is contemporary history" (Croce said that history is a "flutter in the brain" of contemporary historians). Paul Carterich, a scholar of ancient Greek history, also said that all history is present and personal, in order to illustrate the inseparable relationship between the interest of the present and the study of history. Collingwood, the historical philosopher influenced by Croce, and later E. Crowley. H. Carr and even Hayden White may also have the ideas that "the ideas of the past repeat in the minds of historians", "history is a continuous process of interaction between historians and their historical facts", "we choose the past in the same way as we choose the future", but these historical philosophers who advocate "living the past" do not agree with relativism or arbitrarily dressed nihilism, but pay attention to "evidence", "conscience of history", "sympathetic understanding", that is, on the basis of rigorous historical research and newly added empirical evidence, according to the facts, composition, Reproduce the events according to empirical evidence, and carefully examine the motives of the ancients.

This is also in line with the tang Dynasty Liu Zhiji's proposition of the three historians. Having both historical talent, historiography, and historical knowledge is the yardstick of Chinese historians. The historiography of examining historical materials and seeking the truth, interpreting the old theories and reconstructing the interpretation of historical talents, updating historical knowledge with historical evidence to revise the historical view, and then using the new historical knowledge and new historical concept to discover and add historical materials and inspire new interpretations -- historians should use this academic system to resist the impulse of the political system to determine the historical view of one statue.

Two

China's modern and contemporary history is a period of history that has been distorted by strong historical views and ideological dogmas, and it is not easy to correct it, because all kinds of distorted historical discourses are still full of anecdotes and are the mainstream. Although we know that scholars with three historians are still trying to write, often people can't find books, books can't find people, and readers need accurate and reliable navigation.

The cleverly titled "A Man's Reading History" is an excellent navigation. In 2003, the author Tang Xiaobing went to the Department of History of East China Normal University as a graduate student, obtained a master's degree, postdoctoral stayed on as a teacher and a graduate supervisor, and his main research directions are: the history of newspapers and periodicals and intellectuals in the late Qing Dynasty; memoirs, oral history and historical memory of 20th century China; left-wing culture and the Chinese revolution in the 20th century.

The discipline training enabled Tang Xiaobing to read a lot of books, and he established the coordinates of his thoughts, so that he had a judgment on the books. For those who love to read, it is rare that Tang Xiaobing has been writing book reviews with an almost pious but "resistant" serious attitude, commenting on important works on modern and contemporary Chinese history published since 2003, as well as the new works of individual humanities and social scientists, and is committed to "making book review writing form a common bottom line". That is to say, reading this book review, readers can find some of the most contemporary historical works (including memoirs) and ideological humanities and social sciences that should be read in the past ten years.

From the book, it can be seen that Tang Xiaobing already has a thoughtful and mature view of history, neither crowded nor cloudy, nor swaying left and right, and it is not difficult for the reader to read some of the guidelines of the author himself as a historian. Tang Xiaobing said in the book: "Historians are three talents, and especially historical knowledge is the most convincing." In today's historical controversy, I think this in-depth and simple collection of book reviews can help readers revise some historical knowledge of contemporary Chinese history, so as to adjust the historical view, that is, the author said that "in addition to book reviews, they should also provide an increase in knowledge and culture." In other words, the commentary on this book is not only a guide in the sea of books, but also plays a role in "loosening" the rigid and stubborn historical obstacles of the Chinese people.

Three

Tang Xiaobing had the confidence to recommend good books. He commented that Yang Guoqiang's "Scholars and The World in the Late Qing Dynasty" is "undoubtedly the most worthy of study." Yet he didn't just praise and not to depreciate. For a famous sinologist's famous book, Tang Xiaobing pointed out that "the love of the house and the wu in a certain period of history and too idealistic and romanticized may damage the search and narrative of historical truth." For the work of a scholar who is quite famous in China, he bluntly denounced it as "'Tai Chi'...'Rhetorical Alchemy' that plays between several mainstream discourses." ”

Many of the quotations in the book reviews also reflect Tang Xiaobing's own attitude toward history. He said: "As a serious historical researcher, we should avoid being swayed by certain subjective emotions and make the search for the truth our task. The search for the truth does not mean that everything is 'looked backwards' and 'backwards', and the final judgment can only be based on facts. "The scholarly attitude of this book is to strive for every judgment to stand on solid and reliable material, to curb the impulse of over-interpretation, to hold a reverence for the complexity of history; to focus on excavating the logic of history itself, rather than making simple moral and value judgments, and to refuse to frame history in some established framework."

What he admires is the historian's "confusion about some specious views, and the openness to some of the latest valuable research results and fully absorb them... The attitude of historians who treat contemporary Chinese history with no resentment, no extremism, and no concealment. "Upholding the proper sense of distance and calmness of a Chinese political researcher ... Like most scholars in China, they will not deliberately glorify another era in order to oppose one era, or deliberately demonize another era that has just disappeared in order to affirm or legitimize an era. ”

He is not without words about the utilitarianization of the field of historiography. He used Wang Fansen's quotation from Wang Fengsen to comment on a passage in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Ming Dynasty: "The development of scholarship exists only in its independence. However, the academic circles in our country today, on the one hand, should break through the views of China and foreign countries, and on the other hand, they should not think of themselves as the means of political theory, and they can have developed the day! He then commented: "In contrast to the increasingly narrow pattern of scholars from all walks of life in China today who talk about the subjectivity of Chinese scholarship, as well as the phenomenon of the intellectual circles that are attracted to the study of politics and politics and ultimately harm the study, we have to lament the cycle of history." ”

He believes that professional historians may wish to have public care: "Attracting professional scholars with public concern to discuss political issues and social issues, so as to raise the quality of public discourse and the 'water level of ideas', and effectively promote communication between the academic community and the press." This kind of exchange is naturally a win-win situation: it is not shrouded in a stale, self-circulating academic atmosphere, nor is it eroded by the political consciousness of nationalism, and at the same time, the press does not stay at the low level of stereotyped writing on the facts or self-repetition, so that people in the press can follow up on the latest research results of the academic community, and restore 'theory to ideas and insights', thus enriching the level and appearance of public opinion. ”

He also asserted: "Judging the quality of a political theory is often not the complexity and simplicity of its theory, the application of common sense, or the level of moral consciousness, but whether it has profound insight and foresight to illuminate our blind spots and moral blind spots." ”

Four

"A History of One's Reading" talks about nearly 50 books, most of which are about history, and the history of China that people are most concerned about at the time is the history of the Qing Dynasty, the history of the Republic of China, and the history of the Republic. Approaches vary, first of all, political history, followed by intellectual history, cultural history, social history, commercial history, and even academic history. The scope can be national, or it can be domestic local history, urban history, industry history, ethnic history, character studies, memoirs, or cross-border regional studies, inter-civilization transportation history. In addition to Chinese and foreign historiography, the discipline has at least introduced cultural anthropology, historical sociology, political science, political philosophy and sinology. From some of the heavy articles in the collection of this book, careful readers can also easily sort out the theme of "intellectual history", which is enough to taste the different historical knowledge and historical views of contemporary historians. Try to list one and two as follows:

The problems of Chinese intellectuals in the 20th century may have laid the foundation of history in the transformation of scholars in the late Qing Dynasty into modern intellectuals.

Historian Chen Xulu believes that the emergence of modern Chinese intellectuals is the historical legacy of the Wushu coup.

When the generation of scholars in the middle of the 19th century vigorously advocated 'self-improvement' and 'prosperity and strength', this concept that contributed to the Chinese national consciousness and national consciousness was high-pitched and one-sided in response to the Western tide, and its fixed purpose did not leave enough room from the beginning to include the people's foundation and people's livelihood that were integrated with the state and the nation, and then the 'rich and strong' were often anxious because of the four difficulties, and often obliterated by the people's humanism and people's livelihood that had been in the same line of Confucianism for two thousand years because of eagerness. So Gu this lost the other act as a resistance to the slug.

In modern times, the intellectuals are aspiring, the more distant the intellectuals and the sages are, and the closer they are to the Haojie mentality, the intellectuals ignite their personal will with chivalry.

How can the gossip of intellectuals win the trust of history and conscience, even if it can be sensational?

Thinking that they have mastered the ultimate and only truth and truth, so they look at the world, point out the country, stimulate the text, and be proud of the people, under the premise that their own thoughts must be correct, the remaining problem is how to lead the facts (or even fabricate the facts) to argue the truth, that is, the so-called "theme first" "political propaganda" and "public opinion guidance" of today's people, which can easily lead to "thought" becoming something that can arrange the plot, and the narrator and narrative in the political text often cannot withstand serious collusion and proof.

It is very easy for intellectuals who have just tasted 'overnight to gain fame through public opinion' to breed illusions, and when intellectuals are more and more obviously at the center of the world, they also lack more and more independent rationality and lack a sense of responsibility for making a statement.

In modern times, how the Chinese intellectual circles have lowered their minds and humiliated themselves and gradually dwarfed themselves in spirit and mentality, the effort to save the dead has finally created a hollowed out self and individual in capital letters.

Five

Since Liang Qichao's "New Historiography" opposed the "history of emperors and generals", Chinese historiography has transformed from tradition to modernity, and it can be said that there have been four major changes, namely, "history has become shorter, space has become larger, historical materials have increased, and problems have been complicated" (Ge Zhaoguang). In the preface written for the "Harvard Imperial History of China", Ge Zhaoguang once explained that what he called "complicated problems" means that the changes in the positions, angles, and methods of observing history are varied and new, and historians have to re-understand "China" and "history" again. He also believes that as far as historiography is concerned, the view of history is still the most important, all major controversies are conceptual, and the basic position of writing history, the angle of observation, the selection of historical materials, and the writing technique (that is, "allegory and depreciation in narrative") are inseparable from the view of history.

Different historical perspectives bring out different historical new narratives, and the effect is not that the great devil in the "Devil's Epistles" will deprive the world of the nourishment of history, but will inevitably dissolve any solipsistic hegemony of history.

This involves two opposing pulls in contemporary historical writing: the research level of rigorous modern and contemporary Chinese historians inside and outside the academy has reached a stage of accumulation and controversy over historical views, the problems are complex, the viewpoints are diverse, and if they are allowed to be published in the public domain and engage in reciprocal discussions, it will open the eyes of the world; but the pull of advocating public power to intervene in historiography, to submit to ideology, and to compile the view of history into one statue has always been overwhelming, and it is still fierce.

These two pulls are inevitably also reflected in the study of national history, especially in the modern and contemporary history of the Qing Dynasty. Tang Xiaobing chose to review the book this time, and seems to have consciously made an attempt to sort out the many historical knowledge of modern and modern Chinese history in a limited space, and to serve as a navigation for a diversified contemporary view of history.

This article is the preface to "Modern China on the Shelf", which is published by The Paper with permission.