Yuan Shishuo
Biography of scholars
Yuan Shishuo was born in 1929 in Yanzhou, Shandong. Literary historian, tenured professor of Shandong University. From 1951 to 1953, during his studies in the department of Chinese of Shandong University, he studied under Feng Yuanjun, Lu Kanru and other famous Chinese literary historians of the older generation, and stayed on to teach after graduation. He has successively served as a member of the National Leading Group for the Collation and Publication planning of ancient books, a member of the National Philosophy and Social Science Planning Discipline Review Group, the vice chairman of the Shandong Writers Association, and the president of the Shandong Classical Literature Society. He has published monographs such as "Annals of Kong Shangren", "New Examination of Pu Songling's Deeds and Writings", "Pu Songling's Commentary" (co-authored with Xu Zhongwei), "Research on Ming and Qing Novels in Literary Historiography", "Broom Collection" and other monographs, and edited "Yuanqu Encyclopedia Dictionary", "History of Chinese Literature (Four Volumes)" (Eighth Edition), "Selected Works of Ancient Chinese Literature", "History of Ancient Chinese Literature" (Marxist Theory Construction Project, referred to as "Horse Project"), "Pu Songling Zhi", etc., sorted out and proofread the "Collection of Qing Poems", and presided over the collation and publication of "The Complete Works of Wang Shichen". He edited and published "Feng Yuanjun's Collected Papers on Classical Literature", "Feng Yuanjun's Creative Translation Collection" (co-edited with Yan Rongxian), "Pu Songling Research Collection" (1-4 series) and so on.
The last time I visited Mr. Yuan Shishuo was in 2013, which coincided with the 60th anniversary of Yuan Lao's coaching. In the past eight years, Yuan Lao, who has exceeded the age of nine ranks, has still maintained a keen exploration and academic creativity of cutting-edge issues, and has worked tirelessly. What impressed later generations of scholars was that Yuan Lao's writings were often used in academic journals, showing his new thinking and new ideas. In 2021, the Collected Writings of Yuan Shishuo, edited by his disciple Sun Zhimei, was published. This set of five volumes of the Imperial Emperor runs through Yuan Shishuo's entry into the study of classical Chinese literature, and the results of his studies along the way are collected. The dark green cover is solemn and elegant, rubbing the handwriting of Yuan Lao's early manuscripts, and readers can follow Yuan Lao's academic life when they open the anthology, and relive the solid footprints of this classical literary circle.
Remember the style of my classmates
Yuan Shishuo was born in Yanzhou, Shandong in 1929. At that time, Yanzhou was also called Ziyang, and from the warlords in the 1920s to the Japanese invasion and occupation in the 1930s, this small county town in southwest Lu suffered from the turmoil of the times, and Yuan Shishuo's childhood and adolescence were spent in such an era environment. It is impossible to be born in the stormy old China, but Yuan Shishuo can always be optimistic, saying that the life he has walked is "luckier than most people, and every step is a natural success." At the age of his age, he was sent to a private school by the elders of his family, from the "Hundred Family Names", "Three Character Classic", "Thousand Character Text", "Dragon Whip Shadow", and read all the way to the "Book of Poetry". "The heavens and the earth are yellow, and the universe is flooded." The sun and the moon are rising, and the Tatsu su is listed..." Despite the passages that have passed more than eighty years, the chapters and sentences recited as a child are still catchy. The influence of ancient literature in his childhood also laid a good foundation for Yuan Shishuo to engage in classical literature research after that.
At the beginning of the 20th century, modern education such as offices and private schools began to be established in various places, and traditional private schools gradually declined. Seeing that many of his friends around him had gone to the "Foreign Academy", Yuan Shishuo was envious. After repeated insistence and "struggle", the elders of the family finally agreed to let 12-year-old Yuan Shishuo enter a local high school called "Weiyuan School". Yuan Shishuo, who got what he wanted, was extremely excited, and the rich courses taught in the school suddenly opened the young Yuan Shishuo's thirsty soul. In 1943, he graduated from high school and went to study abroad, but he had to face the pain of increasing the burden on his family. Fortunately, this year, The first middle school was established in Ziyang County, and he was once again able to continue his studies in his hometown. Yuan Shishuo in middle school loved science, especially obsessed with mathematics, although he did not engage in this aspect of research since then, in Yuan Shishuo's view, his pursuit of logical rigor and rigorous examination in literary research was partly due to the training of thinking norms in his early years of learning mathematics. In his later years, Yuan Shishuo maintained an interest in new discoveries and new advances in natural sciences, and such an open learning mentality and broad vision are indeed valuable in the humanities.
In the extracurricular reading of middle school, he has a stronger interest in literary and historical books, especially literary works, such as Lu Xun's "Scream", Yu Dafu's "Sinking", the ancient "Ancient Wonders" and "Liaozhai Zhiyi". The young Yuan Shishuo has keenly felt the infinite charm of literary language reshaping the real world. In 1948, on the eve of the founding of New China, the hearts of every young man were surging with enthusiasm for overthrowing old China and building a new China. Yuan Shishuo is no exception, and like many of his classmates, he was infected by the hope of finding light and bursting patriotic passion in the poems created by Shandong writer Zang Kejia. Not only reading poetry, as a literary youth, Yuan Shishuo also constantly tried to create personally, "I wrote my own poems in the poster, and I remembered that there was such a sentence - 'There are too many sins in the world, even God weeps.'" 'The teacher praised me after reading it.'" Looking back now, although these poems were very immature, they deeply buried a lasting love for literature in Yuan Shishuo's heart at that time.
However, considering the difficult family conditions, Yuan Shishuo in middle school did not have "extravagant hopes" for his future. In 1948, the East China Bureau of the CPC Central Committee decided to establish East China University, and in November of that year, it moved to Jinan. In 1949, after graduating from high school, Yuan Shishuo was successfully admitted to East China University at public expense. In 1950, the school, which aimed to train revolutionary cadres for new China, began to transition to a regularized university, which was later merged into Shandong University by the decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Yuan Shishuo also joined the Chinese Department of Shandong University with the merger of colleges and universities, and since then, Yuan Shishuo has formed a lifelong relationship with the study of Chinese literary history.
Emulate the rigorous learning style of the teacher
Shandong University is known for its literature and history. In the 1920s and 1930s, a number of literary masters such as Shen Congwen, Wen Yiduo, Hong Shen, Lao She, Fang Lingru and Liang Shiqiu taught the pulpit of Shandong University, and before the atmosphere was opened, Shandong University became a higher education institution for a generation of young people such as Yuan Shishuo. At the beginning of the founding of New China, Shandong University once again ushered in a brilliant era of brilliant development with a large number of masters and outstanding style, and the strong lineup of "Feng Lu Gaoxiao and Eight Horses in the Same Groove" in this period was passed down as a good story. Among them, Feng Yuanjun, Lu Kanru, Gao Heng, and Xiao Difei each have their own expertise in the field of literary history research, and Yuan Shishuo's greatest luck is to meet these best teachers at his best age. Being able to teach for a long time as a teacher, Yuan Shishuo especially cherishes the good time of studying at Shandong University, and every homework is hardworking. In the literary and art theory class, Mr. Lü Ying, who taught them, was white and innocent, and often used Russian literary works as an example to tell everyone about Marxist literary and artistic thought. It was in Mr. Lui's class that Yuan Shishuo realized the importance of Chinese theory in the interpretation of literary works. However, what Yuan Shishuo remembers most is the chinese literature history class taught by Lu Kanru and Feng Yuanjun. "Mr. Feng's lecture on 'Introduction to the Legends of the Tang and Song Dynasties' is rich and skillful in data, and the analysis and exposition are in-depth and refined, which is really worthy of the name." Yuan Shishuo's interest in learning was not only attracted to Chinese classical literature, he was also elected as a representative of Chinese classical literature class, and he was more serious about Mr. Feng's class. The excellent performance again and again quickly made Feng Yuanjun notice this young man. In a class nearing the end of college, Mr. Feng, who rarely asked questions about students in class, unexpectedly nodded Yuan Shishuo's name and asked him to read an ancient text. Yuan Shishuo, who was suddenly "mentioned", was extremely nervous, but he quickly calmed down and read the whole article without error. It turned out that Mr. Feng Yuanjun was looking for an assistant teacher for the Classical Literature Teaching and Research Department, and that "surprise" question was Mr. Feng's test of Yuan Shishuo's basic skills in ancient literature. After this test, Mr. Feng was more certain of the candidate in his heart and proposed to the school council that Yuan Shishuo stay in school. Afterwards, Yuan Shishuo heard that when the school council discussed the list of assistant teachers in each department, Mr. Feng actually sat outside the conference room and waited until the discussion was completed and the election was approved, and she was relieved to leave.
After Yuan Shishuo stayed in school, Mr. Feng took the initiative to guide the young assistant teacher, not only formulating a detailed and specific training plan for him, but also carefully tutoring him in addition to his busy teaching and scientific research work. Mr. Feng specializes in the study of classical Chinese opera, and Yuan Shishuo began to familiarize himself with the literature and accumulate professional knowledge in the annotation work of the "Song and Yuan Opera Examination" under the guidance of Mr. Feng. "I later edited the Yuanqu Encyclopedia Dictionary, which also benefited from the accumulation of my further studies in that year." What Yuan Shishuo admires and upholds is Mr. Feng's rigorous study and humble learning style throughout his life. In the 1960s, when Yuan Shishuo participated in the work on Selected Poems of Chinese Dynasties (Part II), edited by Feng Yuanjun, he involved the estimation of the period of two poems by the late Ming and early Qing poets Wu Weiye, "Yuanyuanqu" and "Chu Liangshengxing". Yuan Shishuo, who had just completed the "Annals of Kong Shangren", confidently gave the basis for his analysis, "However, Mr. Feng re-examined it carefully when finalizing the draft, overturned my opinions in the first draft, and came to a convincing conclusion." This incident embarrassed me at the time, but it also made me respect my husband even more."
In 1979, four years after Feng Yuanjun's death, Yuan Shishuo undertook the task of sorting out, editing, and publishing the Collected Papers of Feng Yuanjun's Classical Literature. When sorting out the notes of the first teachers and students, Yuan Shishuo exclaimed, "How many books does Mr. Sir have to read to obtain materials useful for research topics!" "Feng Yuanjun's famous article "Ancient Youxie", although it is only more than 60,000 words, she has read dozens of times the text materials." If the study of the humanities is merely to write articles, it is a misunderstanding of the humanities. If you only collect some materials on the side of the road just to write articles, and refuse to make efforts to excavate and analyze materials, just as you are unwilling to do more experiments and obtain more experimental data in natural science research, it is impossible to make realistic understanding and exposition of the object of study, let alone invent and achieve something. "Influenced by his predecessors, Yuan Shishuo entered the field of classical Chinese literature research, and also regarded the rigorous and truth-seeking spirit of learning as the first meaning of his down-to-earth learning." In the early 1980s, I began to study "Liaozhai Zhiyi", and it was in this way that I excavated relevant literature and materials, and spent several years writing "New Examination of Pu Songling's Deeds and Writings". ”
The origin of the masterpieces of famous scholars
Nowadays, in the eyes of many young scholars, as soon as Yuan Laofu entered the study of ancient literature, he established a high starting point for his academic path. This "high starting point" refers to Yuan Shishuo's "Annals of Kong Shangren" completed in 1961 and published by Shandong People's Publishing House in 1962. Yuan Shishuo was deeply influenced by Mr. Feng Yuanjun's scholarship after staying in school, and extensively read yuanming miscellaneous dramas and ming and qing legends. I have to say that he chose his "Shandong hometown", the early Qing Dynasty drama writer Kong Shangren and his work "Peach Blossom Fan" as a research topic, also out of a potential local complex. In order to examine Kong Shangren's life deeds, Yuan Shishuo went to the libraries in Qufu, Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, Hangzhou and other places to collect materials. However, Yuan Shishuo's "Annals of Kong Shangren" can be different from the general "Annals" arrangement, but focuses on the people and things related to the creation of "Peach Blossom Fan" in The experience of Kong Shangren. The different editions of the History of Chinese Literature written after this cannot avoid the importance of this chronology when referring to the Peach Blossom Fan, and the use of the information provided in it as a basis for commentary shows its importance. The "Opera Music Art Volume" and "Chinese Literature Volume" of the Great Encyclopedia of China list the chronology as an "important bibliography" after the entry of "Kong Shangren".
After 25 years, under the strong appeal of academic colleagues, in 1987, the Qilu Book Society republished the "Annals of Kong Shangren". This revision and addition is actually a revised version, although the style is still the same, but "double the length of the original", using the new materials obtained, adding some important personnel that have been examined, such as the complete examination of the personnel mentioned by Kong Shangren in "The End of the Peach Blossom Fan", and after synthesizing the examination of various relevant materials, a reasonable judgment was made on the historical "doubtful case" of Kong Shangren's dismissal, which is another improvement of Yuan Shishuo's research on Kong Shangren. More importantly, the revised version adds a lot of content that can be seen in Kong Shangren's heart, reflecting the mental journey of the master's life as much as possible, and providing a detailed basis for understanding Kong Shangren's motivation and leading ideas for creating "Peach Blossom Fan".
In the 1980s, the spring breeze of the era of reform and opening up activated the once-silent academic community. Yuan Shishuo, who has exceeded the age of knowing his destiny, is like regaining his youth, ushering in the second peak of his academic career, that is, the "Pu Xue" that he has devoted the most energy to and achieved the most achievements. As early as his youth, Yuan Shishuo was once fascinated by "Liaozhai Zhiyi", in which the image of the flower demon fox left a deep impression in his mind. For a long time, domestic researchers of classical novels have mostly focused on long vernacular novels such as "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "Water Margin", but in comparison, the research of Pu Songling and "Liaozhai Zhiyi" is "snubbed". After many years, Yuan Shishuo once again set his sights on this unpentified research garden. In order to make his research have sufficient literature as a basis, Yuan Shishuo visited Pu Songling's hometown of Zibo City many times, and also read the "Liaozhai Relationship Library" literature of Keio University in Tokyo, and collected a variety of precious materials that had not been discovered by previous researchers. Using these little-known documents, Yuan Shishuo made a detailed reconstruction of Pu Songling's life's deeds, travels, and writings, and at the same time investigated and analyzed several early manuscripts of "Liaozhai Zhiyi" and early periodicals that were not widely passed down, thus providing the basic principle for rearranging a "Liaozhai Zhiyi" that was close to the original appearance of Pu Songling's original manuscript. Based on the examination based on Pu Songling's friendship with Him, Yuan Shishuo successively wrote more than ten articles in a few years, such as "Pu Songling and Zhang Duqing", "Pu Songling and Sun Hui", "Pu Songling's Bijia in Xipu", "The Beginning and End of Pu Songling's Interaction with Wang Tuchen", "Pu Songling and Zhu Zhen", and other more than ten articles, together with articles examining the edition of Pu Songling's works, which became the foundation work of "Pu Songling" research. After reading this work, the American sinologist Bai Yaren commented: "The author fills many gaps or places that are not informative in previous research, and greatly enriches our understanding of Pu Songling and his works. ”
Careful readers will notice that whether it is the "Annals of Kong Shangren" or the "New Examination of Pu Songling's Deeds", Yuan Shishuo chose to start from the study of classical literary writers. Regarding this research "preference", Yuan Shishuo explained, "From a subjective point of view, I firmly believe in one truth: to read his books, you must know his people and discuss his world. This truth is not difficult to understand, because any writer lives in a social environment formed by certain historical conditions, and literary works are the products of a writer's spiritual creation, and in the final analysis, they are the crystallization and reflection of some of his life experience in a certain period." In the life deeds of Kao Suo Pu Songling, Yuan Shishuo found many people and things that are intrinsically related to the story of "Liaozhai Zhiyi". Yuan Shishuo believes that most of the previous research has ignored the source of life in "Liaozhai Zhiyi". Through Pu Songling's investigation of his own people and his affairs, it can be found that Pu Songling's "Liaozhai Zhiyi" is not all "smelling and ordering" style of telling the anecdotes he heard, but also has stories woven according to his personal experience and feelings. At the press conference of the publication of "Yuan Shishuo's Collected Writings", Liao Kebin, a professor at Peking University, noticed that "Mr. Yuan Shishuo is taking an academic road from point to surface to line. Based on the case studies of Kong Shangren and "Peach Blossom Fan" and Pu Songling and Liaozhai Zhiyi, he expanded his research field horizontally into a comprehensive study of ancient Chinese novels on the one hand, and extended vertically to the study of the history of ancient Chinese literature on the other hand, and conducted in-depth discussions on the theories and methods of chinese literary history research."
"If you don't enter the mainstream, it's difficult to be first-class." Yuan Shishuo became famous from the "Annals of Kong Shangren", then turned to Pu Songling and "Liaozhai Zhiyi", and then led the collation and research of the "Complete Works of Wang Shizhen". In the view of Zuo Dongling, a professor at Capital Normal University, the research objects selected by Yuan Lao, from a geographical point of view, are all Shandong writers, but from a high point of view, they are all works of first-class writers; from the perspective of genre, they belong to different literary categories of opera, novels and poetry, covering the most important genres of ancient Chinese literature, especially Qing Dynasty literature, reflecting Mr. Yuan's ability to control the overall situation of literary history and carrying out three-dimensional research on literature.
The harmony of the interaction of the theory of history
The "Annals of Kong Shangren" and the "New Examination of Pu Songling's Deeds" made Yuan Shishuo famous in the academic circles for his examination of kung fu. Although it started from the examination of literary history facts, it is not the ultimate purpose of research, or it can be said that Yuan Shishuo's research on literary history is "not here". As far as pu Songling and the study of "Liaozhai Zhiyi" are concerned, Yuan Shishuo did not stop at the completion of Pu Songling's life deeds, but on this basis, through the examination of the skills and sources of the Liaozhai story, he entered the careful reading of the text, placed it in the literary history development context of the Zhiwei novel, and then analyzed the various components and factors within the text of "Liaozhai Zhiyi", and understood its unique connotations, art, and creative techniques, "Linked with the previous works, you can detect the growth and variation of certain factors in the structure of the novel text. Thus discover the historical trajectory of the novel's evolution. Under the guidance of this clear methodology, Yuan Shishuo made a further theoretical breakthrough in Lu Xun's thesis to "Liaozhai Zhiyi". In his view, although "Liaozhai Zhiyi" seems to adopt the same "legendary method" as the Tang legend, it is not hunting for curiosity in "Zhiwei", which is qualitatively different from the previous Zhiwei novels. "The story of the fox ghost and the flower demon that the writer invents is not the ontological content he deliberately expresses, but the carrier of the content that deliberately expresses the writer's personal feelings, perceptions and yearning." Not only that, Yuan Shishuo also realized that in the creation of "Liaozhai Zhiyi", along with the change of content to form and method of strange things, there were also changes in the mysterious meaning of religion and the function of Shinto concepts. Mr. Yuan Shishuo's contribution to the field of ancient literary history research does not stop at every "discussion of facts", but always carries a deep concern for the theory and methods of ancient literary history research. Since the 1980s, Yuan Shishuo has written a series of theoretical articles on the nature of literary history, literary history and history, literature and philosophy, literature and religion, literary history and ethics, literary history and refutation, literary history and hermeneutics, literary history and literary theory. As Liao Kebin observed, "Among the scholars of ancient literature of similar age, almost no one has made such systematic thinking and exposition on the theoretical and methodological issues of literary history research as Mr. Yuan." Yuan Shishuo traced his theoretical self-consciousness back to his youth. "When I was a student, I took philosophy classes, and the most profound benefit was reading a batch of correspondences written by Engels in his later years on historical materialism, which discussed the motives, routines, and intricate forms of the development and evolution of various ideological departments, and I made the most reading notes in my life during the study of this part of the literature." Later, in the early days of teaching in the school, Principal Huagang gave philosophy lessons to the teachers, Yuan Shishuo studied particularly seriously, and often thought philosophically in connection with the phenomena in the history of literature, forming the starting point of his thinking on the history of ancient Chinese literature, "that is, for ancient literary works, the emphasis is on knowing the reasons from historical connections, rather than simply affirming or denying them."
After the formation of the modern academic genealogy, under the influence of this academic tradition and Western academic methods, the two "circles" of literary history and literary theory have long been estranged from each other, the former being influenced by the older generation's academic methods and focusing on literature and research, and the latter has a bias to talk about theory away from literary history or literary works. In this regard, Yuan Shishuo put forward reflection very early on, and stressed many times on various occasions that "the study of literary history should grasp and use literary theory, and it can also generate and deepen literary theory, and the two should be interactive." For example, he said that many outstanding theorists in ancient and modern China and abroad have put forward theories and constructed their own theoretical systems from the criticism and interpretation of ancient and modern works, such as Liu Xun and Jin Shengsi in China, and Hegel and Belinsky in the West. Yuan Shishuo himself also practiced what he preached, trying to deepen his understanding and understanding by analyzing and interpreting the works of writers in the history of literature, and discovering the universal problems behind the phenomenon, thereby enhancing or enriching literary theory.
In his later years, Yuan Shishuo maintained an open attitude of continuous learning and thinking about literary theory. However, as his disciple Wang Ping, a professor at the School of Literature of Shandong University, commented, Yuan Shishuo's approach to Western literary theory was not completely accepted or simply rejected, but took the initiative to contact and carefully analyze. In 2003, Yuan Shishuo studied Gadamer's Truth and Method and its derived theory of acceptance relations, and wrote several articles to make pertinent criticisms of his philosophical hermeneutics.
A great wine for teaching and learning
As a university teacher, he undertakes the task of teaching; at the same time, as a scientific researcher, he also faces the pressure of scientific research, which is regarded as a "dilemma" by many contemporary scholars. Yuan Shishuo admitted that he had never felt any contradiction in teaching and scientific research, but when asked which identity was more important, he always said very firmly, "I am first and foremost a teacher of ancient literary history in my life", and "my research is mostly due to my thinking in the teaching process". In 1955, Yuan Shishuo was "commissioned" to take the university podium to teach the History of Chinese Literature in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Novels are the highlight of the teaching of literary history in the Ming and Qing dynasties. At first, Yuan Shishuo felt very difficult. "In order to have a good lesson and answer the students' questions, I had to carefully study the novels stipulated in the syllabus." In the 1950s and 1960s, there was a lot of controversy over several Ming and Qing novel masterpieces, which could not be avoided in teaching and answering questions. When preparing the speech, he repeatedly thought about the controversial issues in the academic community, and wrote these thoughts into the lecture, brought them to the classroom, and after repeated polishing, he wrote an article. "Most of my early publications were formed in this way." Yuan Shishuo tasted the sweetness in the interaction between teaching and scientific research, "The department arranged new teaching tasks, such as telling a Vietnamese student about the relationship between Literature and philosophy in the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties in China, I took it over, and later published "Romantic Thought in Literature in the Middle ming Dynasty", which is a section in the lecture manuscript that I find interesting." Wang Xin, a professor at the College of Letters of Chinese Min University, lamented that he had studied under Mr. Yuan for six years, "The most beneficial thing is the courses on the history of novels and operas that Mr. Yuan has opened for us. His lesson is not to interpret the intellectual historical significance of the work in general and to praise the artistic achievements of the work, but to reflect on the novel text from the point of controversy and find the entry point for in-depth analysis." In Wang Xin's view, this is the "golden needle" of Yuan Shishuo's zhixue.
Yuan Shishuo took a group photo of the 65th anniversary of teaching, and the participants were mostly yuan old students. Mr. Yuan Jun/Courtesy photo
Out of his inner attention to students and university podiums, Yuan Shishuo always adheres to the principle of "learning and teaching, teaching and researching". In 1998, the academic articles produced in more than 40 years of teaching and research interaction were included in the anthology "Research on Ming and Qing Novels in Literary Historiography". Looking at this collection, there are 9 papers on "Dream of the Red Chamber", 6 papers on "Water Margin", 4 papers on "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "Journey to the West", and 3 papers on "Jin Ping Mei". These essays, which make up the bulk of the anthology, embody Yuan Shishuo's academic vision, which, as he often exhorts his students, "must have the courage to respond to important problems that have not been solved by previous generations, so that the research has a continuous and structural depth." Yuan Shishuo's academic creativity did not fade away by the twilight of the year, and in January 2021, Literary Heritage published his latest masterpiece, "Three Examinations of Yuan Miscellaneous Dramas", which was admired by Houxue.
Nowadays, many of the students trained by Yuan Shishuo have become the backbone of the study of ancient Chinese literature, especially in the field of "Puxue", and this academic garden reclaimed by Yuan Lao has long been full of talents and has shown a thriving trend. In this regard, Ning Jiayu, a professor at the College of Liberal Arts of Nankai University, said, "Mr. Yuan is both an outstanding scholar and an excellent academic gardener." Although some later scholars were not personally popular with Elder Yuan, they were also widely influenced. Ning Jiayu told reporters that not long ago, he received a handwritten letter from Elder Yuan, which raised a discussion on an issue he had studied in recent years, but it was limited to the exchanges between the two and did not expand the discussion. "I will always treasure this letter, which shows the rigor of his consistent management of learning, and even more so, it can be seen that Elder Yuan's high style and open mind are bright and open-minded."
Yuan Shishuo summed up the spirit of governance he taught to his students as a proverb of eight characters: "Work must die, heart and eyes must live." In 2003, on the occasion of mr. Yuan's 50th anniversary of teaching, "Yuan Men" disciples from all over the country compiled their representative works written in their professional fields into a collection as a special gift to repay their teachers. In the afterword to this commemorative collection, the eight-character proverb is still recited among future generations, and the scholarship and spirit are passed down from generation to generation.
Source: China Social Science Network - China Social Science Daily Author: Zhang Qingli