Even friends who are not familiar with the history of the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China should be familiar with kang Youwei's name. "Book on the Bus" and the Pengshu Change, there are his figures, it can be said that he is one of the operators behind the scenes.
However, since the six gentlemen of Wushu were beheaded and Kang Liang's disciples fled abroad, our impression of this famous scholar at the end of the Qing Dynasty has faded a lot.
But in his less eye-catching years of escape, there are actually interesting things that we did not expect.
The failure of the Wushu Reform law was marked by Cixi's order to arrest and behead the pioneers of the reform. Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao's master and apprentice received timely information and reliable channels, so they escaped the massacre and fled abroad. Liang Qichao mainly went into exile in Japan and the United States, while Kang Youwei began a "tour" of many European and American countries that "went into exile for sixteen years, traveled around the land for three weeks, traveled all over four continents, traveled 600,000 miles through thirty-one countries, never entered the government all his life, and became a hobby of traveling".
In addition to forming royalists in Canada, Kang Youwei spent most of his time in Europe, Italy, France, Britain, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Spain and other countries have left his footprints. Although he went abroad to escape the pursuit of the Qing court and belonged to the "escape", the actual life of this old gentleman was not as bad as the ordinary fugitives we think.
During his exile abroad, Kang Youwei was generally calm. It's just that the completely different Western culture makes this scholar who has been influenced by traditional Chinese culture for decades still feel a little uncomfortable.
At the end of the twenty-fifth year of Guangxu (1899), Kang Youwei, who was on his way to the United States, once lamented: "Yu Zi has lived in the valley for hundreds of years, inhabited the valley, the uncle and brother of the clan, and cultivates and reads, and does not ask about the world, such as the people in Taoyuan." For the remainder of nine years, nai began to tour other counties; Seventeen years after his birth, he began to travel to other provinces, and he had no great ambitions, and he dreamed that there was no such thing as the world. The afterglow is completely flawless and does not carry impurities of the townspeople. Once upon a time, being driven by the great forces of the nineteenth century world tide made me have to serve the people of my country, and the baptism would make me have to serve the people of the world. "
In the balance between the identities of "villagers" and "world people", Kang Youwei also felt the inexplicable entanglement. "The man of the world" highlights his "in the era of globalization, not limited to the national consciousness, with an international vision, with the world in mind, in other countries or cities in the world can find a sense of belonging" side. But the "townspeople" is also a symbol of his sense of belonging as part of native China.
With this ambivalent mood, Kang Youwei shuttled through western buildings and very different crowds. While he was investigating the West and exploring the political doctrines of Westerners, he was comforting his wandering heart. Fortunately, he found a place — a park.
Parks in Western countries were completely absent from China at the end of the Qing Dynasty. But these "modern municipal facilities that have emerged to deal with the public health and safety hazards of European and American cities" have given Kang a sense of belonging. Because china also has traditional gardens for people to gather and relax.
However, Kang Youwei "lived in the United States, India, Canada, seven tours, five in Switzerland, one tour in Portugal, eight tours in England, frequent travel, Belgium, Dan, that, long lived in Sweden, sixteen years outside, nothing to do", just go to those parks full of foreigners is also difficult to get rid of the nostalgia in his heart. So during his time in Sweden, he worked hard to do a "big thing" - buying land to repair private gardens.
When in Sweden, Kang Youwei felt that "Sweden's hundreds of billions of islands, buildings and terraces in countless months... There are islands outside the lake outside the island, and the mountain is the city of Zhongshan... I want to live in the house.". So he ended up choosing a treasure in a small town southeast of the Swedish capital, Stockholm.
This treasure land is located in a small town called Dune Baden. When Kang Youwei came here, it was already a beautiful and wealthy settlement popular with the upper class. Kang Youwei, who was thinking of his hometown, spent millions of dollars here and bought a small island. Subsequently, he spent a lot of money to build a traditional Chinese garden on the island, and named it "Beihai Caotang".
Finally, there is no longer a need to squeeze in the middle of a group of foreigners to taste a grass and a tree, to recall the joy of drinking tea with friends, Kang Youwei's heart is much less depressed. So he stayed in Sweden, on this small island, for three years. Three years is also enough for him to feel swedish culture again and again, to precipitate his thinking about political gains and losses.
Traveling through Europe for more than ten years, from a passer-by to a settler at the beginning, Kang Youwei's understanding of Europe and its culture has become more and more profound, and finally converged into the "Travelogue of Eleven European Countries" and circulated in the world.
It's just a pity that his Beihai Caotang has been turned into a ruined wall in the cold wind for more than a hundred years.
"Sixteen years after his death, three weeks of the earth, traveling all over the four continents, passing through thirty-one countries, traveling 400,000 miles" Kang Youwei has long passed away, and Kang Youwei Island has long changed its appearance.
Today the island has another name, "Restaurangholmen", or "Hotel Island". However, the local Chinese are still accustomed to calling this island "Kang Youwei Island", or willing to tell others the story of this island and Kang Youwei.