In the early autumn of the southern country, the weather is still hot. I came out of my new home and came to Chen Yuan's former residence again. I can't tell you that this is the first time I have come to Chen Yuan's former residence, I decided to put the new residence less than 10 kilometers away from Chen Yuan's former residence, perhaps subconsciously I want to be closer to this historian, thinking that in this way, I can absorb some spiritual shows from the master's former residence.
Mr. Chen Yuan was born in 1880 in Tangxia Stone Village, Pengjiang District, Jiangmen City, Guangdong Province, is a pioneer and integrator in the fields of religious history, Yuan history, historical philology, etc., recognized as a world-class scholar in academia, on a par with Wang Guowei, and also known as "Er chen of history" with Chen Yinke.
Although a generation of masters passed away in 1971, Chen Yuan's former residence in The Pit Pond of Tangxia Stone Village is still well preserved. The former residence is a row of brick and stone bungalows in the style of late Qing dynasty architecture, with green-brown brick walls, mottled black wooden doors, verdant trees planted in front of and behind the houses, a turquoise pond in the front yard, and a small hill full of trees in the back. On the wall at the far edge of the bungalow, a cluster of emerald green bamboo stretches out long bamboo leaves, as if to greet visitors. In the main hall of the former residence, there is a huge group photo of Chen Yuan and Chairman Mao at the state banquet of Huairen Hall, and the two century-old people talk and laugh vividly, and their laughter seems to have spread through the years to the ears of the visitors.
In the courtyard of Chen Yuan's former residence, there are lyre leaf corals, ziwei, linden trees, longan trees, luohan pines, vermilion bananas, palm trees, like a small botanical garden. The Bodhi tree and longan tree at the entrance of the courtyard are very tall and shady, and in the middle of the courtyard is the bronze statue of the old gentleman inscribed "Portrait of Principal Chen Yuan" inscribed by Mr. Qi Gong.
Old Mr. Chen Yuan's solemn gaze looked into the distance, making people can't help but re-examine the land they were in. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in the last century, Mr. Chen Yuan served the country with scholarship and expressed his patriotic thoughts through historical research and writings, and "Tongjian Hu ZhuBiaowei" was his masterpiece of pinning patriotic ideas during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the main content of which was to express the "pain of national subjugation" in the three eastern provinces, in order to express his sorrow and indignation at the loss of the land and his patriotic stance of advocating resistance against Japan and opposing compromise. At the time of the fall of Peiping, the crowd urged them to evacuate, saying: "Yu Ru returned to the south, thousands of young people at Fu Jen University, who can educate Yu on his behalf?" If the occupied areas are righteous, who can support the advocacy on behalf of Yu? ”
Mr. Chen Yuanlao, who was the president of Fu Jen University at the time, once told the story of Confucius's opening of the Games to all the teachers and students of the university at a rally, saying that the three kinds of people who were subjugated by the country, the officials who served in the enemy and puppet regimes, and the three kinds of people who recognized thieves as fathers should be excluded from the people's lives, which greatly stimulated the anti-Japanese aspirations of all the teachers and students of the school. At that time, countless Jiangmen Chinese who were overseas responded to the call of the motherland, donated money and materials, and some people returned to China to fight bravely. Most of the members of the "Flying Tigers" who made the Japanese army feel frightened were young people of Chinese descent in Jiangmen.
Mr. Chen Yuan, who has a strong memory of the knowledge, has shown his talent since he was young. When he was five years old, he moved to Guangzhou with his business father and came across the Bibliography and Q&A, many of which were an eye-opener. Since then, he has not only studied The Confucian classics, but also begun to read them extensively. His father was very enlightened and very supportive of his love of reading, and generously spent more than 100 taels of silver to buy him the Twenty-Four Histories. In the Wuyi area of Jiangmen, there are many good stories of readers in Kaiping, Enping, Taishan, Xinhui, Heshan and other places. The Kaiping Diaolou, the two libraries of Situ and Guanshi, and the bronze statues of academicians of the two academies with up to 31 people on academician road in Jiangmen City, all show the inclusiveness, openness and enlightenment of this side of water, soil and culture. Therefore, Professor Chen Qitai of the Institute of History of Beijing Normal University said with emotion: "His growth path is that Jiangmen gave him ideological nutrition, and he is the pride of Jiangmen and the pride of guangdong." ”
Chen Yuan, who went out of Stone Village, has been teaching for 74 years in his life, serving as the president of the university for 46 years, and has taught primary, middle and university, and peach and plum all over the world. Many famous historians and educators such as Chai Degeng, Qi Gong, and Liu Naihe were his students. It is reported that in 1906, Mr. Chen Yuanlao taught at Jiangmen Huangzhuang Primary School for half a year, and his flexible and innovative teaching methods were quite popular with students. He had 11 children, and under his influence, all but two of them died in their early years were engaged in educational work, including university professors, secondary school principals, secondary school teachers, and librarians. In particular, his son Chen Lesu and grandson Chen Zhichao both studied history, and Chen became a historian for three consecutive generations, which was passed down as a beautiful talk in the academic circles. In Chakeng Village, a Xinhui town dozens of kilometers away from Shicun, he is seven years older than Mr. Chen Yuan, and Mr. Liang Qichao, a modern thinker and educator who went out from there, also cultivated a three-door academician and nine talents.
"I remember the strong flavor of my hometown, and the stone is excellent is roast goose." Although Chen Yuan only lived in his hometown for five years and only returned to his hometown for a short stay after becoming famous, he repeatedly mentioned his hometown to his children, especially the sages of his hometown, such as Chen Baisha, the Great Confucian of the Ming Dynasty, "Mr. Jinzhu" of the village next door to his hometown, the "Three Jies" of the late Song Dynasty at the Battle of Yamen, and also mentioned the children of his hometown Stone Village many times in his family letters. Living in Beijing, Chen Yuan has always spoken Cantonese at home. Moreover, Chen Yuan demanded that his children who grew up in Beijing must also learn Cantonese, and sometimes teach it himself. Chen Yuan's heart is related to the love of his homeland, which can be seen from this.
After the Third Session of the First National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in November 1951, when Chairman Mao Zedong held a state banquet at Huairen Hall, he introduced to the people present at the same table: "This is Chen Yuan, who has read a lot and is a national treasure of our country. At that time, the reading circles generally believed that the only person who had really read through the "Four Libraries" was Chen Yuan. The Siku Quanshu is the largest series of books in China's history compiled during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, containing 79309 volumes of 3461 kinds of books. Chen Yuan left five volumes of "The Beginning and End of the Compilation of the Four Libraries" and the "Examination of the Bibliography of the Four Libraries" for his descendants.
On January 28, 1959, Chen Yuan joined the Communist Party of China at the age of 79. In 2016, Jiangmen listed its former residence as an education base for party members and a patriotic education base in Jiangmen. Over the years, countless party members, students, and the masses have come to Chen Yuan's former residence to visit and study.
I stood under the Bodhi tree in front of Chen Yuan's former residence, feeling the coolness, thinking back to 136 years ago, five-year-old Chen Yuan was held by his father and set off from here, taking a passenger boat along the Xijiang River to Guangzhou. In front of me, the pond was quiet; above my head, the sky was blue. Not far away, Jiangmen is planning and developing in full swing to promote the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Although Mr. Chen Yuan has long passed away, the building he left behind, the grass and trees in the courtyard, has been lovingly guarding this land.
"The green mountains are still there, and the sunset is red several times." In Jiangmen, there are also the former residences of Liang Qichao, the "Three Elders" Memorial Pavilion, the former residence of Lin Zhenyun, the former residence of Lin Jilu and other celebrities and heroes, these former residences are like a thick humanistic history book, which makes us look in awe and urges us to work hard.
Courtesy of 丨 Bear is red
The author 丨 Xiong Zhenghong is a member of the Chinese Writers Association and a special guest author of the "Times Bay Area" column. He has published poems such as "The Ballad of the Wolf" and "The Solo Dancer"