<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="1" >01 Why can't China have a millennium school? </h1>
This thing sounds quite magical, China's five-thousand-year civilization, but until the beginning of this century, there are few universities that are more than a hundred years old, and there are a large number of institutions of higher learning in Europe, which was once a barbaric land.
Not to mention, the self-made America, Harvard University in the United States is said to have been built in 1639, and now it is almost four hundred years old, older than her mother's "United States of America"; South Korea on the fringes of Chinese civilization, sungkyunkwan University history claims to be more than 600 years, longer than the Forbidden City in Beijing...
Sungkyunkwan, Korea: Founded in 1398
Some people have said that your concept is wrong, you are talking about the modern universities that originated in the West, in this regard, we belong to the "copy homework", and the history of this school is of course short.
This is strange, in the history of China, in the pre-Qin dynasty, there was The Yong, the Han Dynasty had Taixue, and the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties had the Guozijian (sometimes called Guozixue), which is a higher education official system that has been in the same vein for thousands of years; there are also various types of colleges and academies at different levels, covering the whole process from enlightenment to higher education.
Guozijian
You say these are not modern universities?
Well, let's admit it.
But those who were born in oxford, Cambridge, Salamanca, the university of Paris in the Middle Ages... Even a modern university?
It is said that the school was founded during the Chongzhen period of the Ming Dynasty, and it did not even have the right to award degrees at the beginning, and it needed to be recognized by Oxbridge in the "Old Continent", such a "Harvard College" (later called Harvard University), even if it was a "modern university"?
Sungkyunkwan, South Korea, which claims to have been founded during the reign of Daming Hongwu and is clearly "copying homework" to China, is considered a "modern university"?
To be fair, whether you are a Western university or a Chinese academy, you have experienced historical evolution from ancient, modern to modern, and the forms of education in different periods are certainly different. When our Chinese academies talk about self-cultivation, family unity, governing the country, and peace in the world, aren't Western universities also talking about theology and worshipping God?
Of course, later Western universities were slow and active "gradual change", and our Chinese academies were rapidly "suddenly" under the "great changes that have not occurred in three thousand years", but this is only a difference in the process, and everyone has the same destination.
So why can Western universities have the courage to trace the history of the school back to the medieval seminaries, while our Chinese universities only dare to trace the history of the school back a hundred years? This is not to say that there is nothing to do idle, borrowing the name of the ancestor to put gold on his face, but that the "well-known double standard" calculated by your school history has an inner flavor, right?
Let's talk about Hunan University, known as Shangcheng Yuelu Academy, a century-old famous school of the Millennium Academy, and the matter of the Millennium Academy, the controversy is quite large. However, we will not correct the name of Huda today, only the history of the school, in the end, if the standard is unified, how far worse than those Western universities?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="116" >02 From academy to academy: the first westward migration to Yuelu</h1>
Today's emblem of Hunan University, in the middle is an ancient building, the background is a distant mountain, there is the word "976" below, here is the main gate of Yuelu Academy, behind which is the famous Changsha Yuelu Mountain, 976 is the year of the creation of Yuelu Academy, in other words, it is the Song Taizu Zhao Kuangyin Kaibao nine years - if this is placed in Western Europe, it can be regarded as a "thousand-year famous school".
Let's talk about the facts, not to talk about the point of view, let's talk about the original site of Yuelu Academy, how did it become Hunan University?
It is said that since the northern song dynasty was founded and extended to the late Qing Dynasty, the academy has actually embarked on the pace of transformation into a modern university. The last mountain chief of the academy, roughly equivalent to the current president of the university and the chairman of the school council, was the famous scholar and expert on the study of the Book of Han, Wang Xianqian, who began to significantly renovate and reform the college as early as 1897.
Lao Wang first ordered the reformist "Shi Ji Bao" for the academy to pave the way for teachers and students to make public opinion, and half a year later he implemented curriculum reform, broadening the monthly courses of the academy from the traditional classics and history to the five disciplines of classics, history, palm history, arithmetic, and translation, arithmetic is also mathematics, and translation science was originally called "dialect", which is actually a foreign language.
Wang Xianqian
The scriptures, histories, and palms here are still Wang Xianqian's own supervision, and the old gentleman of arithmetic and translation studies can't do it, so he invited external teachers to teach.
In particular, the teaching of translation studies, in the college set up spelling, sentence writing, composition, oral, translation, etc. 11 courses, modern foreign language teaching, involved in phonetic grammar, vocabulary writing, oral listening and speaking, translation, etc., here are readily available, but also in accordance with the standards of Western modern universities, the implementation of payment admission, deadline graduation, sub-subject class system, percentage system, graduation thesis system, regular fixed points to and from class and so on - if you do not look at the ancient Chinese buildings of the academy, change into a dress to sit in the house, you can say, Isn't this a modern university?
However, at that time, you not only had to innovate, but also innovated slowly, even if you were a "conservative", when the reformists founded the Shiwu Academy in Changsha, and later restructured into the Hunan Provincial City University Hall, that is a more radical "back wave".
In 1903, Zhao Erxun, then the governor of Hunan, restructured the Hunan Provincial City University Hall into Hunan Higher School, and then ordered the merger of the school and Yuelu Academy, and the new Hunan Higher School was officially moved to the old site of Yuelu Academy in 1905.
The above is the famous first "westward migration to Yuelu", which absorbs the Hunan Higher School.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="118" >03 Hunan Higher Division and Hunan Engineering College: Two consecutive "westward migration to Yuelu"</h1>
Hunan Higher School sat on the site of Yuelu Academy for a few years, in 1912, the Republic of China opened the new century, the Beiyang government promulgated a new style of Nonzi school system (later expanded to nonzi decoction ugly school system), Hunan Higher School became the "front wave", thus discontinued.
So what about students in school?
According to the volunteers, they were diverted to Hunan Higher Normal School and Hunan Higher Industrial School to continue their studies, but many of them did not move to the local area at all.
Why?
Because Hunan Province restructured the hunan excellent normal school into a Hunan higher normal school, it soon moved into the old site of Yuelu Academy to run the school, and the students who were diverted to the high school did not have to go anywhere, changed their names in situ, and continued to study.
This is the famous second "westward migration to Yuelu", which absorbed the Hunan Higher Normal School.
The "Chronicle of Hunan Higher Normal School" of that year clearly recorded:
Hunan Higher Normal School, that is, the former Yuelu Academy.
In the 29th year of the Qing Dynasty, the academy was abolished as a higher school.
In the first year of the Republic of China, the higher school was abolished, and the higher normal school was moved here, and everything remained.
That is to say, whether it is subjective will, or objective school site, school property, and student source, Hunan High School has inherited Yuelu Academy, "everything is still there".
However, Gao Shi was also ill-fated. In the sixth year of the Republic of China (1917), the Beiyang government, which was tight on money bags, drastically downsized the national high divisions across the country, and the Hunan high school was ordered to be suspended and merged into the Wuchang Higher Normal School (the predecessor of Wuhan University).
However, the information found so far is that Changsha does not intend to give blood transfusions to Wuchang, and the principal, provost, teachers and students of Hunan Higher Division, books, instruments, teaching materials and other movable property are all in place.
What are they going to do, raise their own money to run the school?
Yang Changji, then a professor of the Hunan Higher Teacher and later a great benefactor and father-in-law, twice wrote to the Ministry of Education of the Beiyang Government, to the effect that since the suspension of the Higher Education Department was a national policy, it could not be disobeyed, but Hunan could not do without institutions of higher learning. Of course, your Beiyang government has no money, so we in Hunan will set up a provincial university ourselves.
Mr. Yang Changji
So in August of that year, Tan Yanmin, the governor of Hunan Province, issued this document:
"Hunan Provincial Governor's Office Approves Yang Changji and Others to Petition for the Establishment of a University Preparatory Office and Delineate the Borrowing Lots of Industrial Colleges".
There are probably two things that are said here:
First, with the official approval, on the basis of the former Hunan High School, the Preparatory Office of the Provincial Hunan University was established, with Professor Yang Changji as the director; second, during the preparatory period, this treasure land of the former Hunan High School and Yuelu Academy should not be idle, and it should be temporarily lent to the Hunan Public Industrial College for use.
To say that this Hunan public industrial college is really not an outsider, remember the closure of Hunan Higher Education Hall in 1912? Some of the students went to Hunan Gaoshi, who moved west to Yuelu to inherit Yuelu Academy; the other part went to Hunan Higher Industrial School, which later changed its name to Hunan Public Industrial College.
This is the famous third "westward migration to Yuelu", which absorbs the Hunan Engineering College.
Coincidentally, The Hunan Institute of Technology had just accepted Yuelu's students five years ago, and five years later, instead, the whole family had defected to Yuelu, and this time, they would not leave.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="122" >04 Hunan University was officially named</h1>
Why not leave?
Because of the turmoil, the preparatory department of Hunan University was not opened, and by February 1921, the Preparatory Office was abolished, and all the school property under its name was assigned to the current resident: Hunan Gongzhuan.
According to what I said earlier, let's make another squeeze -
Yuelu Academy - Hunan Higher School (the first westward migration to Yuelu) - Hunan Higher Normal School (the second westward migration to Yuelu) - Hunan University Preparatory Office - Hunan Public Industrial College (the third westward migration to Yuelu), this is the original site of Yuelu Academy, the transmission route of the learning vein.
As for whether it is a bloodline or not, there are many opinions in China, and we will not comment here.
In November 1925, Hunan Province once again established the Preparatory Office of Hunan University, and Article 1 of the Provincial Decree on the Preparation of hunan University Plan stipulates:
All industries of the Public Law and Politics College, the Commercial College, the Industrial College and the former Yuelu Academy are fully allocated to the property of Hunan University, and the Preparatory Office shall identify and accept them.
That is to say, Yuelu's academic pulse flowed again, and it fell to the new Preparatory Office of Hunan University.
In 1926, the provincial Hunan University was finally proclaimed, and "Hunan University" was named, which is also the origin of the word "1926" on the emblem of Hunan University in the future.
The school buildings, books, instruments, etc. of the former Yuelu Academy, including the most important financial source "Xuetian" and the "Wenmiao Tian" managed by the trustees, all fell under the name of the provincial Hunan University, and in 1937, it was renamed "National Hunan University". The 1949 "Summary Report of the University Property Group of the National Hunan University Takeover Committee" has a detailed record of these industries.
The above is only the material level, from the "campus culture" point of view, Zhu Xi's inscription of "loyalty and filial piety and honesty", the Qing Dynasty jinshi Ouyang Zhenghuan's "neat and serious", in the form of inscriptions set up in the lecture hall of Yuelu Academy, to the Hunan High School period, these eight words were embedded inside and outside the lecture hall, used to train tutors and students, and the National Hunan University period, the "loyalty and filial piety and honesty, neat and serious" eight characters, set as the school motto, to reflect the inheritance of the concept of running the school.
In the "Chinese Education Yearbook" collected during the Republic of China period, there is also such a record:
Provincial Hunan University: The school was originally Yuelu Academy.
……
National Hunan University: The beginning of the school, Yuelu Academy.
National Hunan University was changed to Hunan University in 1949, and then in the 1950s, in just 6 years, it experienced the period of Zhongnan Institute of Civil Engineering and Architecture, the period of Hunan Institute of Technology, and then restored the name of "Hunan University" in 1959, and in the following decades, it experienced many diversions and mergers, and developed to today's 985 and double first-class schools.
05 The Strong and the Rules
Huda's story is over, so how is her school history calculated? According to Hunan University's own caliber, it is a "thousand-year-old institution and a century-old famous school". I will not comment here, but only quote one expert as saying:
Now we recognize the history of the predecessor of a certain higher education school, and the Emergence of Chinese High Schools that hold school celebrations for hundreds or even thousands of years
And other schools, the general Chinese may be difficult to accept.
Is it "hard for the average person to accept"?
So if Yuelu Academy is placed in Western Europe, according to European and American standards, according to the "Eurocentrism", should it be regarded as a thousand-year-old famous school?
In the past two hundred years, Europe (including later North America) has developed, riding on the outlet of the industrial revolution, becoming a "flying pig", the so-called international standards, international rules, and international trends in the world today, in fact, the standards, rules and trends of the European and American powers.
It is not the rules that make the strong, but the strong who play with the rules.
Even so, rule-makers still have to engage in some "double standards" from time to time to maintain their central position in the world.
Over the years, everyone has become accustomed to it.
For example, if the university determines, can it only have the form under Western standards?
Many famous universities in Europe have continuously calculated the history of the medieval theological seminary period, so is the "great academy" in China a kind of ancient university form?
Further, in this thousand-year-old country of the East, is there a thousand-year-old famous school?
unimportant.
These are actually small problems.
What is important is that the great powers of the East are firmly returning to their original positions, to the center of the world stage.
Many things that were once commonplace are now about to change.
A very important point in this is to break the "rule oppression" of those powers and have their own right to speak - to put it bluntly, I am back, we have to discuss everything, why just listen to you?!