Original | Du Junli
Author: Du Junli, Guanzhongren, history writer, the main works are "Details of History", "Modern Course", "New Food Chronicle" and so on.
「 # 1 」
The common sense of man is thick from the past to the present. In Chinese history, there is a datong dream about the "rule of three generations". For Chinese readers, there seems to be an ideal country of "three generations", such as the May Fourth period, the Republic of China period and the 1980s. The rest of my life is also late, and I have not caught up with the "three generations". When I started reading, it was already after the millennium.
When I was in Shenzhen in 2000, I occasionally read Wang Xiaobo's novels, and I couldn't put down the books and read all his books in one sitting. At that time, there was no wang Xiaobo in the human world, which made me feel a deep sense of seeing each other and hating the night.
Wang Xiaobo said: "I live in the world, I just want to understand these truths and encounter some interesting things. If I can do what I want, my life will be a success. From this sentence, Wang Xiaobo is undoubtedly successful. In fact, after his death, Wang Xiaobo has more or less become the spiritual leader of an entire generation of Chinese readers. At least for me, it was his exemplary presence that lifted me up from the survival of the fly camp dog, to the death, and to the courage to find the meaning of life. Since then, I have gradually embarked on the path of writing.
Because of Wang Xiaobo, I know Mr. Xu Zhuoyun.
Maxima is often there, and Bole is not often there, in fact, teachers are also common, but Bole is still difficult to find. Mr. Xu is not only Wang Xiaobo's teacher, but also his Bole. What touched me the most was that when Wang Xiaobo was in the dilemma of writing and livelihood, Mr. Xu recommended his work to the Lianhe Bao Literary Award. It was this bonus that helped Wang Xiaobo get the last period of writing time he had before he died.
Manuscript of Wang Xiaobo's "Green Haired Water Monster"
White-haired people send black-haired people, and later I saw Mr. Xu's articles about Missing Xiaobo many times, and I felt infinite sadness every time.
In a sense, Wang Xiaobo was an alternative benchmark for the Chinese cultural upsurge of the 1980s and 1990s, and Mr. Xu was perhaps the last intellectual of the Republic of China. The encounter between the characters of these two golden ages of different cultures in China not only has a sense of history that inherits the past and the future, but also has a style of ancient gentlemen with high mountains and flowing water.
The great hero worries the country and the people; the small man saves people from distress. When he was young, Mr. Hsu wrote a large number of commentaries and did a lot of public opinion work for Taiwan's democracy and opening up, and later after moving to the United States, he wrote a series of historical and cultural works about Taiwan, China, the United States and the world, all full of home and country feelings and the world's worries.
Mr. Xu is eager and diligent, and these intellectual contributions as a public intellectual are well known, but in my opinion, this past between him and Wang Xiaobo is the truly moving Shilin story.
「 # 2 」
Man is an intelligent animal because man has a super-developed brain. The only drawback of the brain is that it needs the stomach and intestines to provide for it. If a person is self-indulgent and ignorant, then the head is just a "guy who eats"; but for people who like to "think wildly", how to solve the problem of the stomach and intestines is a small annoyance.
Chinese literati want to look for a peach blossom-like pastoral dream like Tao Yuanming. The core of traditional culture is to cultivate and read heirlooms, in fact, "rain and rain reading" can survive, but if you concentrate on reading and writing, eating has become a problem - "life is the way, food and clothing are fixed." Who is not camped, but in order to seek self-security? ”
Huang Renyu was a student of Yu Yingshi, who went through hardships in his life, went to the United States to study after middle age, and was dismissed at the age of sixty-one. His academic career was also rather disappointing, and he always faced financial embarrassment, and by the time "Fifteen Years of the Wanli Calendar" came out and became famous all over the world, he was sixty-four years old. Wang Xiaobo is roughly the same, resigned to write at the age of forty, cooked words to cure hunger, as a wanderer outside the system, it is difficult to publish, publishing is hopeless, he is even ready to take a driver's license, to become a big cargo driver.
Wang Bo of the Tang Dynasty was born into a family and became famous as a teenager, leaving a sentence in the "Preface to the Pavilion of King Teng": "Feng Tang is easy to be old, Li Guang is difficult to seal". Zuo Si wrote a "Three Capitals Endowment" and Luoyang Paper Gui, who lamented in the "Epic of Yong": "The four sages are not great, and the relics of the light are written." When it is not encountered, the worry is filling the gully. Heroes have a hero, made up of ancient times. He Shi has no wizards, and his legacy is in the grass. "In a utilitarian economic society, an intellectual man is unique and tries to obtain spiritual and life freedom by writing, which in reality means many existential pressures and risks.
When Huang Renyu was at his most difficult, Yu Yingshi personally approached Wang Tiwu, the owner of Taiwan's Lianhe Bao, and asked him to fund Huang Renyu to write with peace of mind; later, "Capitalism and the Twenty-first Century" was published, and Mr. Yu enthusiastically wrote a preface and recommended it. This was all before the FifteenTh Year of the Wanli Calendar. In fact, Wang Xiaobo's precious prize money also came from Taiwan's Lianhe Pao. At that time, few people in China knew about Wang Xiaobo.
In 1979, at his home in Newptz, Huang Renyu and his wife, Geer, jointly proofread the manuscript
Mr. Yu and Mr. Xu are both world-renowned giants of contemporary history, and the two of them are not only the same year, but also a good mentor and friend who cherish each other, and the two know each other for most of their lives, and have achieved a period of learning and beauty. In 2006, "Yu Yingshi's Collected Writings" was published, and Mr. Xu personally wrote the preface; in 2018, Mr. Xu's "The Spirit of Chinese Culture" was published, and Mr. Yu Yingshi wrote the preface for him. At the end of the preface, Mr. Yu specifically quoted a passage from Gu Yanwu: "A gentleman is a learner, a man who is wise, and a savior." ”
Indeed, whether it is Mr. Xu or Mr. Yu, they are all true gentlemen who combine knowledge and action. They inherited the spirit of historians since Confucius and Sima Qian, benevolent and righteous. In addition to learning, they care about the world, sympathize with suffering, and have many anecdotes of chivalry.
Interestingly, Later Wang Xiaobo wrote a book review for "Fifteen Years of Wanli" ("No New < Wanli Fifteenth Year >"), which may be Wang Xiaobo's only book review. It was from this book review that I learned about "Fifteen Years of The Wanli Calendar" and Huang Renyu, and I have loved history ever since. Now it seems that Huang Renyu and Wang Xiaobo are very lucky, but Mr. Yu and Mr. Xu's kind of eager justice and righteousness are even more precious.
「 # 3 」
Huang Renyu is from a mechanical class, and Wang Xiaobo has worked as a worker in a semiconductor factory, which makes me feel very kind to them.
I started out as a mechanical major, then spent half my life in engineering, and when I started writing at the age of forty, I wrote a history of machine technology. I found that the ancients almost did not have any machines, the emergence of a large number of machines began with the industrial revolution, starting from clocks, watches, steam engines, the Western world relied on the rapid rise of machine civilization, thus conquering the world with "strong ships and cannons". A history of machines is actually a modern history, so I named this book "The Course of Modernity."
The book was written for almost six full years, and in 2016, the book was finally going to be published. Friend Feng Jun was quite righteous, took the initiative to ask for help, and was willing to say something to Mr. Xu; if Mr. Xu agreed, it could be printed on the waist of the book as a joint recommendation.
I know that Mr. Xu has written many books on modern civilization, such as "Fairness and Justice in Modern Society", "The Success and Failure of Modern Civilization", and "Is the World Sick?" and so on. These books are very bestsellers, I have read them, and I have also inspired me to write "The Course of Modernity", and even many references to his works in the book.
"The Course of Modernity" takes the history of modern civilization as the theme, which is obviously within Mr. Xu's intellectual vision, and if recommended by him, it is not too out of line. It's just that Mr. Xu is a Taishan Beidou-style person in the historical world, and I am just a fledgling amateur writer, and the status difference is too great. In fact, I have also invited some some well-known university professors before, all of whom have met with me, and when they say that they are recommended, they all politely refuse. Since ancient times, it is easy to add flowers, and it is difficult to send charcoal in the snow.
Feng Jun was enthusiastic, and I was naturally grateful, but I didn't care too much, because I felt that this thing was impossible.
Who knows not long after, Feng Jun called and asked me to send him the electronic version of the manuscript, and Mr. Xu wanted to see the manuscript and then decide. This made me overjoyed, but after the manuscript was distributed, I always felt uneasy - this manuscript has 600,000 to 700,000 words, and there are a lot of notes, for an eighty or ninety-year-old man, reading on the screen must be very eye-consuming, and Mr. Xu has just recovered from a serious illness.
This uneasiness lasted for a long time, and it was not until later that it slowly dissipated, and I began to reassure myself that Mr. Xu must not have paid attention to it, or looked at it a little, and then forgot about it. After all, Mr. Xu has a lot of things, and his health has not been very good. So, don't think about the recommended things.
「 # 4 」
"Modern Course" was published in August 2016, about three months before publication, when I suddenly received a strange letter in my e-mail address, opened it, and it turned out to be a recommended preface written by Mr. Xu. This email was sent by Mr. Xu himself.
I was so excited that I couldn't get back to me for a long time. I remember that day, I read Mr. Xu's sequence over and over again for a whole day, and the next day I got up and looked at it again. In the preface, Mr. Xu has a lot of encouragement and praise for me, which makes me feel very confused and uneasy about this wrong love. However, Mr. Xu's historical review and worries about the future of the outline of modern civilization in the preface really made me feel the heavy weight of history. For the book "The Course of Modernity", Mr. Xu's recommended preface is like a shocking tree, which is indeed an unparalleled wonderful opening.
After a few days, Feng Jun called, and I figured out the reason for the matter.
It turned out that after Feng Jun sent the manuscript to Mr. Xu, Mr. Xu only cared about reading the manuscript, and when three months passed, the manuscript was finished, and he not only agreed to recommend it, but also gladly wrote a long preface. Obviously, this preface is written in one go and is extremely emotional.
After writing the preface, Mr. Xu found that he had forgotten who had sent the manuscript. In desperation, I asked his assistant to look for him, and the assistant Mr. Chen went to the publishing house according to my name, and the publisher told him my e-mail address. In this way, Mr. Xu sent the preface directly to me. Jiufanggao is good at soma, but often can't remember the color of the horse, and Mr. Xu is probably the same.
Feng Jun also learned afterwards that Mr. Xu actually wrote me a preface.
Later, I wrote to Mr. Xu to express my gratitude and told him that I was a native of Qishan and was very fond of his History of the Western Zhou Dynasty. Mr. Xu has been to Xi'an many times before, and has also been to Qishan Zhouyuan. After the publication of "Modern Course", I sent the book and followed his instructions to pay the manuscript fee to his relatives of the Xu clan in Jiangsu as a public welfare fund for the clan.
With the blessing and endorsement of Mr. Xu's recommended preface, "Modern Course" was well received by all walks of life after publication, and its sales were also very good, and at the end of the year, it was selected as the "Top Ten Good Books" of the year and the Recommended Books of the National Library Wenjin Book Award. After I told Mr. Xu the news of the award, he was also very happy. Every time I send an e-mail to Mr. Xu, he will reply quickly, and between the words, like spring wind and rain, yin yin warmth. Mr. Xu's earnest encouragement also made me gradually have confidence in my writing.
Du Junli, The Modern Course: A Note on the Evolutionary History of Machines and Humans, Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, 2016
For me, half of my life is drifting, struggling at the bottom, reading the darkness of society, and tasting the cold eyes of the world; but since I wrote, I have received countless things, and I have received far more than I have paid, and every time I think of this, I feel ashamed. Life is like this, what do you want?
「 # 5 」
Since the publication of "The Course of Modernity", I have been asked the most about how a "grassroots" like me can get Mr. Xu's favor. Every time I have to tell the above story, and every time I tell it, I feel that I have received help from Mr. Xu again.
As far as I know, Mr. Xu has not written a preface to other people's works, especially for a writer like me who has not even gone to college, which makes me feel extremely honored and precious. In 2018, "The Course of Modernity" was published in Taiwan ("Biography of Human-Machine Civilization"), and the publisher "Capital letter" specifically told me that it was precisely because of Mr. Xu's recommended preface that they chose my book.
In the eyes of many people, Mr. Xu's greatest promotion to the late generation in his life is to help Wang Xiaobo become a "self-employed writer", thus allowing him to realize the dream of a writer with a pen as a plough. But in fact, Mr. Xu's righteous deeds are not the only ones.
I was able to go from being a migrant worker living at the bottom of society to having the privilege of becoming a history writer who lived on royalties, and also depended on Mr. Xu's full strength at a critical moment. Perhaps in Mr. Xu's view, this is just a show of hands, and he may not understand my embarrassment and wandering at that time, but out of his own goodwill and public heart, he inadvertently did a "small thing" that changed my destiny - for him it was just a trivial little thing, and for me it was a big thing. I often think of Wang Xiaobo, who was less talented, but much luckier because I caught up with an Internet age, which saved the tragedy in the movie "Li Chun".
Rivers and rivers are eternal, and people's hearts are not easy. From Wang Xiaobo to me, in a historical river where a person floats and sinks, he will always occasionally encounter a "noble hand", so that we, as latecomers, avoid the turbulence of dangerous beaches and walk out of the canyon of life. This kind of luck is not for everyone; but if it is, it is worth remembering for a lifetime.
As the old saying goes, "The son of the extraordinary will be born differently, and the one who is of great virtue will have his life." "Mr. Xu's body was congenitally disabled, but he has a quiet temperament, compassion for people, ancient morality, high moral integrity, and has influenced countless people at home and abroad with the wisdom of history and the goodness of human nature, including his relatives and friends, as well as his student readers, as well as low-level migrant workers like me." In my opinion, at the age of 91, Mr. Xu walked through China and the world, through the Qin and Han Dynasties and Rome, not only living out the height, living out the thickness, but also living out the temperature and realm.
He said to himself: "The crippled, undefeated, undefeated, not to argue, not to complain, to go inside, to settle themselves first." "In front of us, he is a tall back, and everything is just like he said, and the road that the whole world has traveled is the road he has walked.
The way of heaven has no relatives and is always with good people. Mr. Xu has studied chinese and Western, experienced ancient and modern times, been diligent in thinking, has worked tirelessly, written countless works, and written countless books, and his books have a broad vision, such as climbing Mount Tai and the small world; what he thinks and feels, is long and profound, such as Daigo empowerment. Mr. Xu advocates learning without class, caring for all sentient beings, never pretending to be an elite, and being the highest of the ivory tower. Xu Zhuoyun has written many good books on history for ordinary readers, he said: "Today's readers of history are different from the old days, in this civilian era, most people with high school education or above may be interested in history. They care about things that are projected into the past by themselves, hoping to understand where they came from and where their current way of life came from. ”
In my opinion, Mr. Xu himself is a truly perfect big book, so that the latecomers can look up to the mountains and stop the scenery. He used to say, "A thousand, ten thousand, as long as two or three people hear in their ears and hear him go in their hearts, I am satisfied." "The perfection of Mr. Xu's life is mostly due to his benevolent and broad spiritual world, and he especially rewards post-learning, encouraging young people to read more, understand more history, have foresight, and transcend what they have not seen."
"A person can find his own way from the minimum reading ability and thinking training foundation." Mr. Xu's existence as an elder and a wise man is like a torch of traditional civilization and a mirror of modern civilization, so that we still have awe of this history, hope for the world, and vigilance for ourselves.
In this article, I would like to congratulate Mr. Xu on his birthday.
Attached is the original text of Mr. Xu Qiuyun's recommended preface:
Received Du Junli's masterpiece "The Course of Modernity", a work of more than 800 pages, which describes the process of continuous progress in various aspects of modern civilization that originated in Europe since the development of modern science and capitalism.
As Dickens quotes at the beginning of the book: "This is the best of times, this is the worst of times." The development of modern civilization, in the past four hundred years, the pace has become faster and faster, the magnitude of change has become more and more grand, if the human race from Africa, scattered everywhere as the beginning, if the long period of twenty-four thousand years, as a day, the beginning of human culture is only within ten thousand years, the beginning of civilization is only three thousand years, modern civilization accounted for four hundred years, if calculated from midnight, to the second day of midnight, these four hundred years, in the clock, is already eleven fifty-eight. Recently, the wizard of science, Hawkins, predicted that human development will end the history of life on Earth, and at that time, it will not be more than 100,000 years away from now. We calculate from eleven fifty-eight o'clock, and it probably doesn't take five or six o'clock to go down, but it may be at one or two o'clock, or two or three o'clock, and it will be out of control.
This sense of urgency about crises has been constantly felt by human beings since ancient times. During the Warring States period, Qu Yuan once examined the historical pictures on the wall and issued them as "Heavenly Questions"; the Jewish and Christian faith often reminded everyone that the disaster was coming; and the buddhist teachings often reminded the world that they were doomed. The rapid and profound changes of modern times have been constantly warned in the last half century, and the atmosphere in the academic circles of the twentieth century is completely different from the optimism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but the complex emotions of the intersection of sorrow and joy. "The Course of the Modern Era" quotes Dickens's sentiments and reflects the same sentiment.
The author of this book states that the world is not only a main line, but the intersection of two issues: one is the development process of modern civilization, and the other is the question that Chinese often asks, why has China been stable for more than two thousand years, but it has been absent for a long time in the competition of the development of modern civilization, so that to this day, it is still catching up with "modernity"? The second axis is that, since the nineteenth century, almost two hundred years ago, on the Chinese side, Li Hongzhang, Liang Qichao, Sun Yat-sen, Hu Shi, Liang Shuming, and others have another "heavenly question." In Western academic circles, this is also a subject that Marx, Weber, Needham, and even a number of sinologists and historians in Europe and the United States have constantly raised.
Although the title of Mr. Du's masterpiece is "Modern", in fact, the importance of his second axis, in his mind and in the mind of the reader, rather than the statement of the first axis.
Personally, I believe that the "modern" competition, in which the West participates, and China's long absence, is due to the fact that in the hub era of the beginning of civilization, the tunes of the East and the West had different fixed tones. When human beings put forward the subject of transcendence, both the eastern and western saints basically assumed that there was a transcendent rationality, which was "tao" in the East and "sacred" in the West. The "Tao" expounded by Confucianism must take into account the will of the individual and the well-being of all mankind, and the "holy" proposed in the West is to hope that the individual's ability and will can be exerted, and can do its "best" to be worthy of God's grace.
Suppose, in this endless universe, there is a small group of nebulae, in which there is a small galaxy, and in the galaxy there is a small solar system, and there is a more subtle Earth. For this tiny individual, there is a "Creator," the personified "Tao" and the "Holy," who gives two instructions, written on both sides of the same page, half of which are read in the east and half in the west; and so the east tries its best to find the greatest balance and stability in the environment god has given it, in order to settle its body and establish its destiny; since Judaism, the West has always tried its best to seek performance, development, and even to destroy its own parasitic earth. Today, humanity, the cancer of the earth, is about to destroy its host. To this day, a quarter of the world's population, Chinese, who had not intervened in the great competition before, have even thrown themselves into the last section of the competition. What would it be like to be a "Tao" and "holy" personified Creator?
Mr. Du himself stated that he was not a professional historian, and it was precisely because he was an intellectual who cared for all sentient beings, not an expert, and that he could care about greater issues than the experts, that is why we had such a good book.
Over the past few years, all parts of China's cultural circles, whether it is the Chinese headquarters or other areas outside the headquarters, including overseas Chinese, seem to be alert to the urgent need for changes in the world, and in various fields, there are people who care about future development. Everyone's emotions often present a situation of "mixed sorrow and joy", and Mr. Du Junli's "Modern Journey" is a very commendable and good book among many works. As a reader, I thank him; as one of the equally concerned, I also agree with many of his insights. We hope that another work by Mr. Du ("The Details of History") will soon come out and be read as soon as possible.
Xu Qiuyun remembered.
Du Junli: The Details of History (all five volumes), Tiandi Publishing House, 2021
Responsible editor| Zhao Xin
Headlines were compiled | Josie He