□ Zhou Weiqiang
In my essay "When Gu Jiegang Has Leisure", I said that Gu Jiegang was diligent all his life, and many territories left the fruits of his cultivation. But throughout his life, Gu Jiegang was mainly a professor of history, not a librarian, publisher, editor, and writer of popular historical and cultural books, and at first he was only a teaching assistant at Peking University, and then he jumped straight up to professor, skipping the two steps of lecturer and associate professor.
Gu Jiegang took a group photo with his grandmother when he was young.
From the perspective of career, we can ask: how did Gu Jiegang become famous? To put it from a more secular and utilitarian perspective, the question is: How did Gu Jiegang jump on the platform of professors and achieve "professor freedom"?
In the ninth year of the Republic of China, in 1920 AD, Gu Jiegang was 28 years old. In June of that year, Gu Jie had just completed his studies in chinese philosophy in the liberal arts at Peking University, and his higher education experience stopped there, and he never had a higher level of further education since then. During his studies, Gu Jiegang listened to Zhang Shizhao's logic class, Hu Shi's Chinese philosophy class (later changed to the history of Chinese philosophy), Kang Baozhong's ethics class, and Li Shizeng's biology class. Gu Jiegang graduated from Peking University and was hired as a teaching assistant, and his ministry was set to catalog the school library. In January 1921, in addition to continuing his ministry in the Peking University Library, Gu Jiegang was invited by Ma Yuzao to also manage the Reference Room of the Department of Chinese Literature. In November 1921, the Guoxue Gate of the Peking University Research Institute was opened, with Shen Jianshi as the director and Gu Jiegang as the assistant professor of the GuoxueMen. Two years later, Gu Jiegang left Beijing because of an incident. In early September 1923, Shen Jianshi invited Gu Jiegang to return to Beijing to work, and on December 13, Gu Jiegang returned to Beijing to return to peking university as a teaching assistant. Gu Jiegang worked as a teaching assistant at Peking University for six or seven years, and suddenly in August 1926, he directly sat on the position of "Professor of Historiography", which even Gu Jiegang himself could not believe.
In July 1926, Gu Jiegang was appointed to Xiamen University as an assistant professor at Peking University: a tutor at the Institute of Xiamen University and a professor in the Department of Chinese Literature. At that time, Beijing universities and colleges were in arrears, and Gu Jiegang's diary on May 8 said that he was "poor in Beijing to this point", and when he got this letter of appointment, he was naturally happy, and his family left Beijing on August 5. Gu Jiegang arrived in Xiamen on August 21, and on August 25, Lin Yutang, director of the Liberal Arts Department of Xiamen University, came to talk to Gu Jiegang and said that he would change the letter of appointment and change it to "Professor of Historical Studies." Gu Jiegang later said that he was "horrified to ask the reason" at that time, and he was shocked. Lin Yutang's explanation is: "After the publication of the Ancient History Discernment, the academic status has suddenly increased, so the title must also be changed. This was added to Gu Jiegang's diary in March 1975. Pan Jiaxun, who went to Xiamen University with Gu Jiegang, according to Gu Jiegang, still gave the title of lecturer according to peking university practice.
Xiamen University was able to attract scholars from Beijing to come south, mainly because at that time, Beijing universities were seriously in arrears in wages, and the warlord Zhang Zuolin entered the customs again, and it just so happened that the founder of the school, Chen Jiageng, gave Xiamen University a sum of money, so Lin Yutang was hired by the president Lin Wenqing in May 1926 to go south to Xiamen University as the director of liberal arts, and invited Shen Jianshi, Lu Xun, Zhang Xingxiu, Chen Wanli, and Gu Jie to come to Xiamen University to run the Institute of Traditional Chinese Studies. Gu Jiegang wrote to Chen Yuan on August 25, and in the letter, he also asked Chen Yuan for a draft, saying that Xiamen University was "rich in assets" and that the publishing budget was 10,000 yuan per year, and if it was a "famous book", it could also "increase the yu calculation". But none of this could be done, and it wasn't long before Chen Jiageng's capital turnover was not working well, the money could not continue to be invested, the National College was suspended, and these professors left Xiamen University one after another. Zhang Xingxiu's letter to Chen Yuan on October 16, 1926, also stated that the reason was "according to yun because the rubber business of Chen Jiageng, the head of the school, was not good in the second half of the year." Zhang Xingxiu's letter also said that Shen Jianshi "Mr. Jianshi has now decided to return to Beijing and does not want to ask about this matter again..." Zhang Xingxuan's "Records of Chinese and Western Traffic", which was originally listed as the first in the Xiamen Daguo Studies series, was also published and stranded, until May 1930, when chen Yuan, president of Fu Jen University, introduced it as the first printing line of the Fu Jen University series, and the title of the book was revised to "Compilation of Chinese and Western Traffic Historical Materials", huanghuang six volumes. Zhang Xingxiu returned to the north in 1927 and joined Fu Jen University in August as a professor and head of the Department of History. On February 22, 1927, Gu Jiegang wrote to president Lin Wenqing to resign as a "professor of liberal arts" (the previous day Gu Jiegang learned that he had been changed to a professor of liberal arts), and on March 16, he retired from the College of History and Research professorship. He then resigned and was invited by Fu Sinian to take up a post at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou. In the meantime, due to some historical wrongs and wrongs of Lu Xun, who was also hired to the middle age, Lu Xun said that Gu Jie would resign when he first came, and Fu Sinian said that if he did not hire Gu Jiegang, he himself would resign. Fu Sinian is the Dean of Literature at CUHK and the Head of both Departments of Chinese Literature and History. President Zhu Jiahua came forward as a mediator, entrusted Gu Jiegang and the director of the Chinese Department of the Library of CUHK to collect books in Shanghai and Hangzhou first, about half a year later, on October 13, Gu Jiegang returned to Guangzhou, and in the same month he was appointed professor and director of the Department of History of CUHK. At this time, Lu Xun had also left Guangzhou for Shanghai in September.
Gu Jiegang rose from the "small teaching assistant" to become a "big professor", and the "springboard" was the letter of appointment of "professor of history" issued to Gu Jiegang by Lin Yutang, director of the Liberal Arts Department of Xiamen University, presiding over the Institute of Traditional Chinese Studies. Although this "professor of historical research" was less than a year ago, Gu Jiegang, who did not have a university history education degree and did not study in the East and West, has since had the qualification of "professor of history", and then went to Sun Yat-sen University, Yenching University, Yunnan University, Qilu University, Lanzhou University, Central University, Fudan University, and the School of Social Education... There are no longer any "procedural" obstacles to the appointment of professors of history. Gu Jiegang realized the "freedom of professors": it is not a question of whether to become a history professor or not, but a question of where to become a history professor, and where to be a history professor, the initiative has also been in Gu Jiegang's own hands. Gu Jie just ended the "little assistant teaching" career in 1926, at the age of 34. In March 1948, at the age of 56, Gu Jiegang was elected as an academician of the Humanities Group of the Academia Sinica, which should have been a highlight of Gu Jiegang's personal academic honors.
Gu Jiegang took a group photo with the editorial board of the Peking University Quarterly Journal of Chinese Studies in September 1924.
However, when we see Gu Jiegang's assistant professorship and direct promotion to professor of history, we cannot ignore the explanation given by Lin Yutang: the publication of "Ancient History Discernment" has made Gu Jiegang's "academic status suddenly high". Gu Jiegang has already made remarkable achievements in the position of a small teaching assistant. We look at the group photo of Gu Jiegang and the editorial board of Peking University Sinology Quarterly in September 1924, in which Hu Shi, Xu Bingchang, Shen Jianshi, Ma Heng, Zhu Xizu, and Chen Yuan have all achieved fame or have not yet entered the peak of personal scholarship but have become famous. It can be seen that gu Jiegang's status in the eyes of professors such as Hu Shi and Shen Jianshi is different from that of the "teaching assistant" usually recognized.
Gu Jiegang had a lot of clues about the antecedents of ancient history, and I won't say anything here. The direct academic cause, according to Gu Jiegang's later self-prologue in the first volume of "Ancient History Discernment", was that in the autumn of 1920, he read the preface of Hu Shi in the new punctuation book "Water Margin" issued by the Yadong Library, and was inspired, the history and evolution of the story in this book have many levels, thinking that when I was a fan of the play before, I experienced that the story of the play book also had multiple ways to play, and I remembered the debate Ida Zhiwen published by Hu Shi this spring, so I realized that the method of studying the story can also be applied to the study of ancient history. This is Gu Jiegang's self-statement, let's believe him first. In this way, Hu Shi and Gu Jiegang had a correspondence back and forth to discuss the authenticity of ancient books and distinguish the authenticity of ancient books, and Hu Shi introduced and knew Qian Xuantong, and discussed the authenticity of ancient books with Qian Xuantong back and forth, and distinguished the authenticity of ancient books by distinguishing the authenticity of ancient books. On January 27, 1921, Qian Xuantong wrote to Gu Jiegang, advocating that the scope of distinguishing "fake books" should be expanded, and that it was more important to distinguish "false things" than to distinguish 'false books'. In this way, the academic goal is condensed into the "ancient history discernment".
On June 11, 1926, Park She published the first volume of Gu Jiegang's "Ancient History Discernment". The first volume contains 64 articles, including letters from Gu Jiegang, Hu Shi, and Qian Xuantong discussing the issue of distinguishing "pseudo-books" and "pseudo-facts, as well as actual research on specific issues in ancient books and ancient history, and the authors include Hu Yanren, Liu Yanquan, Ding Wenjiang, Liu Yizheng, Wei Jiangong, Rong Geng, Wang Guowei, and Li Xuanbo. When the first volume of "Ancient History Discernment" had not yet been published, in February 1926, Gu Jiegang had already begun to compile the second volume of "Ancient History Discernment", and the authors of the proposed articles were Fu Sinian, Zhang Yinlin, Liu Fu, Ma Heng, Miao Fenglin, Yao Mingda, Zhou Yutong, Feng Youlan, Guo Shaoyu, etc. After the publication of the first volume of "Ancient History Discernment", it has aroused great influence and repercussions in academia and society. Hu Shi, Lu Maode, and Zhou Yutong all wrote high reviews. Gu Jiegang said that the book was reprinted many times in a year. Hu Houxuan said that 19 editions had been printed by 1937.
Gu Jiegang's ancient history is self-prologue in the first volume.
Gu Jiegang was not only a personal and diligent researcher, he organized and led a school of historical research: the "Ancient History Discernment" school ("Ancient History Discernment" by June 1941, seven volumes were successively published, with a total of 350 articles and more than 3.25 million words). This school is like the "New Youth" magazine in the New Literary Movement, which suddenly hit the "pulse of the times" and let historians find an outlet for academic "blowout". Gu Jiegang should have the arrogance of an "academic leader", and the first volume of his compilation of "Ancient History Discernment" also included articles questioning him, such as Mr. Liu Yizheng's "On the Example of the Friendship of The Prophet who Proves History". This is the amount of grace that an "academic leader" should have.
To become an "academic leader", I am afraid that there are two basic conditions in terms of personal qualifications: one is academic eyesight, which can bring up "big problems" (great problems), and the other is to have the attitude of academic tolerance of dissent. Fu Sinian also has the qualifications to be an "academic leader", Fu and Gu lived together in the xizhai Bingzi no. 12 dormitory when they were studying at Peking University, and Gu Jiegang said in the preface to the first volume of "Ancient History Discernment" that Fu Sinian was "the most daring to speak highly, and from his remarks often increased my courage to criticize." Unfortunately, Fu and Gu, who both had the temperament of "academic leaders", by the spring of 1928, because of the disagreement in the preparation of the Institute of History and Language of the Academia Sinica, "fifteen years of friendship were shattered" (see Gu Jiegang's July 1973 diary), Gu Jiegang said that Fu Si Nian "abused me with paternalism", but I speculated that this was Gu's after-the-fact statement. Leave it alone.
The first volume of "Ancient History Discernment" was published, and Gu Jiegang became famous in one fell swoop, so that in August of the same year, Lin Yutang gave the letter of appointment of "Professor of Historiography", which surprised Gu Jiegang himself. Gu Jiegang worked tirelessly in his assistant position to learn, and only then did he have the "capital" to rise in the air. Lin Yutang hired him for this position, which was well deserved.
Incidentally, in the past two or three decades, there have been a series of works arguing that Gu Jiegang's ancient history discernment ideas originated from the Japanese sinology circles, some simply saying that Gu Jiegang's ancient history debate was copied from the Japanese scholar Shiratori Kuji's "Yao Shun Yu Obliteration Theory"; some speculate that when Gu Jiegang was studying at Peking University or as a teaching assistant, he saw articles on ancient Chinese history in Japanese newspapers and periodicals such as the Journal of Oriental Studies, Sinology, Historiography Magazine, and East Asian Studies, which were collected in the Peking University Library around the 1920s. I think that this issue may also be discussed from another perspective, that is, the Japanese academic origin of the study of ancient Chinese history in recent times. It doesn't have to be a circle around whether it's plagiarism or not.
Gu Jiegang took a group photo with Sun Yat-sen University in 1928.
Gu Jiegang did a lot of things during his teaching assistant period, "ancient history discernment" can be said to be "1", and other things are "0" after this "1". Without the preceding "1", all the "0s" in the back can only be "0". With the previous "1", the "0" that is constantly added later will increase the weight of the previous "1", like a tiger. Gu Jiegang went straight from assistant professor to professor to achieve "professor freedom", which is also a meeting of the storm, to paraphrase the words of Song Ren Su Xun: Things must come, and there is certainly reason.
After Gu Jiegang's father, Zi Qigong ( 虬公 ) , after the Gengzi Rebellion , Guangxu was sent by Jiangsu Province to study at the Normal Hall of Beijing Normal University ( the predecessor of today 's Beijing Normal University ) in 1904 , but eventually dropped out of school in the spring of the following year due to lack of family needs. Zi Qiu Gong deeply regretted it. Gu Jie had just graduated from middle school, and Zi Qiugong ordered Jie To take the peking university exam, and Zi Qiugong said: "I am trapped in housework and give up halfway, and now Ru can not worry about this." My ambition will be completed. "Zi Qiu Gong told Jie Gang that he was unable to complete his studies at Kyoshi University because of his family's poverty, and now you don't have to worry about housework, and my ambition will be completed by you." When Zi Qiugong died in Suzhou on January 8, 1939, Gu Jiegang was a professor at Yunnan University in Kunming. At this time, Gu Jiegang not only completed his studies at Peking University, but also realized the "freedom of professors" and made a series of careers, which may be able to comfort his son.
First draft on August 24, 2021, revised on August 27, Hangzhou Xixi Residence
About author: Weiqiang Zhou, Editor. He is the author of "Jimen Dusk: Essays on the History of the Yuan", "The Shadow of the Unlearned Back: Celebrities of Education and Culture and Hangzhou", "Old Stories of Xuelin", "Nineteen Commentaries on Ancient Poems" and so on.
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