Wangfujing Street East Factory Hutong, close to a secluded alley in the downtown area. This is the place I have been visiting in my heart every time I have traveled to Beijing for the past thirty or forty years. There was The office that Ms. Cai Meibiao had used until shortly before his death, in the former Institute of Modern Chinese History building, located in an alley.
On most occasions, without prior telephone reservations, when knocking on the door, you can always hear his footsteps coming out of the middle. After opening the door, you can always hear him smiling and saying, "Yo, you're here?" We sat face to face across his not-so-wide desk. To the juniors, he rarely poured tea to treat each other; occasionally he thought of handing over water, which was just boiled water. In his personality, indifference and calmness blend inextricably.
His way of talking is very artistic and makes you not feel cramped. You just have to ask a question or two, and he opens the box slowly and methodically. Then time will quickly slip away from the office without us noticing. Teacher Cai generally does not leave anyone for lunch, because he is accustomed to taking a nap on the fold bed on time after the meal; he does not leave anyone for dinner, because he always goes home for dinner. But every time we leave his office contentedly with a very rich academic harvest.
Looking back now, I regret that I didn't leave some memorable words after the fact. As the years passed, many of the conversations faded into oblivion. For example, he spent almost an entire morning recounting in great detail his views on a series of detailed issues in the history of the Ming Dynasty, which stunned me. At that time, he had just completed the revision of the manuscript of the Ming history of the General History of China. Many of the detailed discussions he mentioned obviously could not be written into that outlining work. I said to him, isn't it a pity that you don't write these insights into words and let them go? He still replied in his usual calm style: What can be done? He who can only know knows, and he who does not know does not know. From him, I understood the meaning of the phrase "from Bo back to the covenant" at a deeper level. He once recalled his past as a graduate student of Mr. Shao Xunzheng, saying that at that time, he would go from the city to Tsinghua to see Mr. Shao every two weeks, and then stop by to see Mr. Hu who was studying there, when they were not yet married. The introductory lesson assigned to him by Mr. Shao was to read the "Notes on Marco Polo" in combination with various historical documents. I remember that Teacher Zhou Liangxiao said that one of the important subjects when he specialized in Yuan history was also the intensive reading of the "Notes on Marco Polo".
Looking back now, I am a little surprised to find that in so many of the conversations between us, including the many conversations he had heard and witnessed with his contemporaries, he had almost never heard him say anything about many topics outside of academia, even though China had undergone several upheavals over the past few decades. Teacher Yang Ne mentioned the past of him meeting Teacher Cai in Wangfujing during the "Cultural Revolution": We didn't say a word, just looked at each other, and then passed each other. I always felt that I could see Teacher Cai's eyes in my imagination. It is with this kind of calm, calm look that he looks at anything else outside of his own field of work that he is fully concerned about. Research and writing, if not the Beijing opera he likes to listen to in his leisure time, is where his full attention lies. In the face of the ebb and flow of the tide, he was at ease, walking to work for decades, taking the bus home, honing his sharp eyes through history at that small desk, and unswervingly doing what he identified, not seeking knowledge or fearing people. From this point of view, Teacher Cai belongs to the kind of innocent people who rarely have it.
He is also a rare top real person. He served as the editor-in-chief of Fan Wenlan's Compendium of general history of China. We all know that unlike many "editors-in-chief" who only have a name, do not share the manuscript, and have not even read the manuscript, he insists on changing the manuscript from beginning to end, and has offended many authors who provided the first draft. When Hong Kong wanted to publish a traditional Chinese version of the "General History," he hesitated repeatedly, but he did not dare to agree. Using an electronic typesetting system to convert simplified characters to traditional text may seem easy, but there are bound to be many errors. He said that his energy is not as good as in the past, even if he can barely read through it, I am afraid it is not easy to check out the wrong words, not to mention that it may be difficult to even barely read through now. He always politely but uncompromisingly rejected all kinds of offers to be his nominal editor-in-chief.
Ms. Cai is the defense chair of my doctoral dissertation. He wasn't too happy with my dissertation, but didn't say it straight. On the way to dinner in the car after the defense, he said, "I was going to read your paper again last night." But your thesis is not as attractive as the play of a certain Peking Opera actor, so in the end I still gave up reading the thesis and watched the play. He was referring to a play that night on Beijing television; if I remember correctly, the play seemed to be "Picking Jade Bracelet"; the name of the actor he mentioned could not be remembered now. He is extremely strict with his own writing, but he is actually gentle and tolerant of others, especially the works of later generations.
His vision and endowment are first-class, and there are many clever points in scholarship that ordinary people cannot reach. For me, the most impressive thing is his ability to turn ease into magic. Reading his articles and listening to his lectures always seemed to give people the illusion of "nothing high" at first. However, as the discussion progressed, the brilliance gradually appeared, and finally the magic that ordinary people could not see emerged from the ease. He stands taller than the average person, so for many problems that we think we have seen clearly, he often deduces from them meanings that have not yet been recognized by us. But he never pretends to be profound, does not use new concepts of sandwiching, but always chooses to start from the easy place, leading readers and listeners to the realm of senran and thickness, and not making them feel that they can't keep up with the rhythm. Even if it is a speech of one or twenty minutes, every time something new must be distilled from the seemingly clichéd speech. This is consistent with his calm demeanor. Indifferent but not light and tasteless, from the indifference to the old, so that the novelty seems to be a natural water from the indifference automatically emerges.
The last time I saw him was at his house in the late spring of 2019. In the short conversation, he suddenly sighed that the Academy of Social Sciences had been swinging between scientific research institutions and government agencies more than once. None of us continued the topic at the time. Recalling now, behind this sentence, he may have had some deeper thoughts. As a necessary component of the collective wisdom and collective experience of the state and the people, historical memory is itself a natural member of the national think tank. Historians, as citizens of the country, should, of course, make some policy recommendations when needed by this or that government. There is no conflict between the two; but they are two very different kinds of work. These are not necessarily the meaning behind Teacher Cai's words, but he does ask us a serious question that is worth further consideration.
Teacher Cai took his clothes and left. He may not care what we think of him, and probably doesn't necessarily agree with what we say about him. However, Mr. Cai's academic and spiritual heritage is very precious to us. The older generation is withering away. When we ourselves are slowly becoming the "older generation", can we and our younger colleagues still maintain the calm and calmness of the old scholars, the kind of peace, the kind of innocence and authenticity, the kind of magical learning and skill that emerge from the ease? I thought that this was the most important thing to ask myself in my heart when remembering Teacher Cai.
Yao Dali