Proud of the bones of the world, Qiwen Jian ancient and modern
——Historian Chen Yuan and the Palace Museum
Author: Chen Qiusu (Deputy Research Librarian, Palace Museum)
【Everyone】
Biography of scholars
Chen Yuan (1880-1971), ziyuan an, Guangdong Xinhui, historian and educator. At the beginning of the 20th century, in the process of modernizing Chinese historiography, he summarized and transformed China's traditional historiography, and wrote monographs and papers such as "YuanyeLi Kewen Jiaojiao Examination", "Yuanxi Regions Huahua Examination", "Chinese and Western Hui History Calendar", "Interpretation of Collation Survey Studies", "Examples of Historical Records", "Ming Ji Dianqian Buddhist Examination", "Introduction to Chinese Buddhist History", "Tongjian Hu Zhu Table Wei" and other monographs and papers, which have made pioneering contributions in the fields of religious history, Yuan history, and historical philology. Chen Yuan was one of the early founders of the Palace Museum, and in the 1920s and 1930s, he made important contributions to the establishment, maintenance and development of the Palace Museum.
Chen Yuan profile picture
Nanyue pride first entered the Beijing Division
In the modern academic history of the gathering of masters, Chen Yuan is a special case, he is self-taught, neither a teacher nor a university, nor a foreign history, his life's learning all comes from the influence of traditional culture, from his thirst for knowledge, decades of reading and research. Chen Yuan named his study "Li Yun" to motivate himself to adhere to the spirit of cultivation.
In April 1925, Chen Yuan took a photo after discovering the "Four Libraries of the Whole Book" in the Forbidden City. Profile picture
Chen Yuan has been fond of reading since childhood, and two bibliographic works, "Bibliography Q&A" and "Four Libraries of Complete Books", have led him to the road of learning. Chen Yuan went to Beijing to participate in the imperial examination at the age of 17 but failed, and at the age of 21, he won the first place in the Xinhui County Examination. After the abolition of the imperial examination system, in 1905, Chen Yuan and others founded the "Current Affairs Pictorial" in Guangzhou to publicize anti-imperialist and patriotic ideas. In 1907, due to his father's stone, he was cured by Western medicine surgery, so he was admitted to the Boji Medical College run by the American Church to study Western medicine, and later because he was dissatisfied with the discrimination of American teachers against Chinese teachers and students, he co-founded the Guangzhou Guanghua Medical College with his friends. During the study, Chen Yuan deeply felt that the treatment of personal diseases, the diagnosis of pulse prescriptions, and the lack of concern for the country, for him who "aspires to learn the world", it is really a small way. When the Xinhai Revolution broke out in 1911, he edited the Aurora Daily and its supplementary magazine Chicken Song Record to meet the revolution, which means "the wind and rain are obscure, and the chicken is singing". In the process of running newspapers and studying medicine, Chen Yuan used his pen as a gun, wrote a large number of shiwen and medical articles, and paid attention to the cultivation of family and country feelings and scientific research methods, which had a far-reaching impact on his life.
Chen Yuan's "Tongjian Hu Zhu Table Micro"
In 1913, Chen Yuan was elected to the National Assembly as a newspaperman. Because the parliamentarians were full-time, he came to Beijing to settle down. After arriving in Beijing, Chen Yuan suddenly found too many favorable reading conditions, and many books that he did not dare to imagine when he was young could be seen at any time, which opened his eyes at once, especially after he came into contact with the Wenjinge "Four Libraries complete book" collected from Chengde into Beijing in 1915, the door of his life seemed to open. He realized that his life's ambitions were not political but historical. In 1917, Chen Yuan published his first important academic paper in his life, "Yuan Ye Li Ke Wen Kao", which attracted great attention from the Chinese and Japanese historians. This marked the official beginning of his historiographical career, but also made him realize that individuals can contribute to the country in different ways and help the country gain an advantage in competition with the countries of the world.
As a young senator, Chen Yuan was shrewd and capable, and his literary ability was excellent, and he was appreciated by Liang Shiyi, the head of the Transportation Department at that time, and successively served in the TaxAtion Office, the Internal State Debt Bureau, and the Mao Ge Reform Association presided over by Liang Shiyi. At this time, Chen Yuan was increasingly immersed in the study of literature and history, and did not appreciate the essential meaning of being an official. As the head of the Department of Communications, Liang Shiyi was committed to political and economic practice, and naturally expressed dissatisfaction with Chen Yuan's development direction. In 1919, Liang Shiyi wrote an inscription on the joint edition of Chen Yuan's works: "Consume a generation of heroes, so the paper pile asks death and life", in order to wake up Chen Yuan. Chen Yuan wrote in his family letter that Liang did not like people to read, so they really could not stay together for a long time, and the relationship between the two people was also growing day by day. In December 1921, Liang Shiyi was appointed Prime Minister, and Chen Yuan served as vice minister of education for about half a year, acting in charge of ministerial affairs (minister Huang Yanpei was not in office). On May 27, 1922, Chen Yuan resigned as vice minister of education and devoted himself to writing, and his relationship with Liang became increasingly weak. Chen Yuan described himself: "Seeing that the state affairs are getting worse and worse, the warlords have been fighting for many years, there is no way out of their own thinking, they feel that they were born in a chaotic world, they are at a loss, and they only feel that participating in such politics is a dirty thing, so they want to devote themselves to teaching and writing. This experience had a great impact on Chen Yuan's future learning. His lifelong learning has always been full of strong patriotism, and his academic focus has always been closely related to the development situation at home and abroad.
Participated in the creation and protection of the Palace Museum
After entering Beijing, Chen Yuan gradually had a deep friendship with Cai Yuanpei, Li Yuying, Shen Jianshi, Ma Heng, Gu Jiegang and other academic celebrities and social elites, and the scholarly character of these people influenced Chen Yuan. In January 1922, Cai Yuanpei introduced Chen Yuan and Li Yuying to each other, and the two became close friends and participated in the whole process of founding the Palace Museum.
In 1924, the Nationalist Army expelled Puyi from the palace. On November 20, the Qingmu Aftermath Committee was established, with Li Yuying as the chairman of the committee, and under the recommendation of Li Yuying, Chen Yuan served as a standing committee member and presided over the standing work. It can be said that Chen Yuan has been the core figure of the Forbidden City since the time of the Qing Chamber Aftermath Committee. The main task of the Qingmu Aftermath Committee is to coordinate the clean-up of public and private property, to publicize the public, and to demand that "when all is over, the palace will be closed and opened, and it will be used for the national library, museum, etc., so as to show culture for a long time." Li Yuying wrote to Chen Yuan on December 20, entrusting him to preside over the work of the Cleansing Committee "in order to handle everything." Yu Ying's other affairs are also very complicated, such as when leaving Beijing, all the positions of the president of the Association, please also ask Mr. To act as an agent at any time, so as not to mistakenly ask for justice. It is for the sense of the highest. In the same month, the Qingmu Aftermath Committee held its first meeting to discuss and adopt the "Draft Plan for The Inventory and Inspection of Qing Palace Objects". From December 23, Chen Yuan, together with other members of the Qingmu Aftercare Committee and representatives of relevant parties, began to inspect the contents of the palace as planned. In January 1925, continuing to inspect the cultural relics of the Qing Palace, due to the heavy work, the Committee invited many staff and students of the Departments of Literature and History of Peking University to participate, and also invited many scholars to participate in this work. The counting work is carried out in several groups, each of which is the responsibility of the members of the Clearance Committee, and the members of the group have their own division of labor. When each group of people arrives, the work can begin. After the check is completed, each needs to sign each other. The inventory of cultural relics by the Qingmu Aftermath Committee has laid a good foundation for the cultural relics clean-up work carried out many times since the establishment of the Palace Museum, accumulated rich experience, and cultivated a large number of talents.
On October 10, 1925, the Palace Museum was established, Chen Yuan served as a director of the board of directors and librarian, the library was divided into two departments, books and documents, Shen Jianshi and Yuan Tongli, vice president, officially performed the duties of collection, storage, display, research and publication entrusted by the new museum.
The year after the establishment of the Palace Museum, the "March 18 Massacre" occurred, and Duan Qirui's government ordered the arrest of Li Yuying, Yi Peiji, and others on the grounds of involvement with the Communist Party. Li and Yi took refuge in Dongjiaomin Lane and later fled from Beijing. After Li Yuying left Beijing, he entrusted the relevant work to Chen Yuan. From March 1926 to June 1928, the Palace Museum under the elbow of the provisional executive government supported by the Beiyang warlords Anhui, Zhi, and Feng, went through four reorganizations, including four periods, including maintenance staff, custody committee, maintenance committee and management committee, in which Chen Yuan struggled to maintain and played an extremely important role.
On March 26, 1926, the Palace Museum held an emergency joint meeting of the board of directors and the board of directors, and elected Lu Yongxiang and Zhuang Yunkuan as maintenance staff to preside over the affairs of the hospital, and Chen Yuan was considered to be the actual person in charge. On April 4, when the Feng army bombed Beijing and threw a bomb at the South Third House of the Forbidden City as a deterrent, Chen Yuan, Zhuang Yunkuan, Shen Jianshi, Yu Tongkui, Li Zongtong, Ma Heng, and others inspected the scene and planted cypress trees here to commemorate the incident. The next day, the Palace Museum held a garrison handover meeting, and handled the procedures for the handover of the new maintainers with the old board of directors and the board of directors. In the chaos, the maintenance staff did not last long before disbanding.
On June 22, Du Xijue, who sympathized with the former Qing Dynasty, became acting prime minister. Du Xijue's cabinet held a meeting on July 10 to set up a custodial committee to reorganize the museum, with Zhao Erxun and Sun Baoqi as the chairmen and vice chairmen of the Qing Dynasty, and take over the Palace Museum. On July 14, the Forbidden City Preservation Committee was established. When Puyi returned to the palace, Zhao Erxun and Sun Baoqi took over the affairs of the Palace Museum, which aroused the vigilance of the forbidden city fans and all sectors of society. In order to protect the newborn Palace Museum, on July 23, the QingMu Aftercare Committee held a meeting, and Chen Yuan and others decided to adhere to three principles when handing over the Palace Museum: the government explicitly stated that the Forbidden City should not be returned to Puyi, the Forbidden City must not be sold, and the Forbidden City will not be destroyed; a handover committee will be organized to hand over and receive Qing Palace items item by item to clarify responsibility; and the Supervision Comrades' Association will be initiated to supervise the handling of handover matters. On August 2, Zhao Erxun and Sun Baoqi led their entourage to the Palace Museum to take up their posts, and the next afternoon, a banquet was held at the Qing History Museum to entertain Chen Yuan, Jiang Han, Wu Ying, and Yu Tongkui, representatives of the Qing Chamber Rehabilitation Association, to discuss the handover procedures. After the banquet, Chen Yuan, as the acting chairman of the Qingmu Aftermath Association, replied to the other party's request, and once again put forward the opinion of insisting on the handover procedures of the Qingmu Aftermath Association on July 23, "the clearance procedures are clear to clarify the responsibility", and the new custodian immediately objected. After the matter was reported to Prime Minister Du Xijue, after weighing it, Du agreed with the methods set out in the arrangements of the Qing Dynasty. Seeing that the responsibility was heavy and the handover time was delayed, Zhao and Sun decided to resign. Chen Yuan's performance in this process offended the reigning warlords and related people, and Zhang Zongchang sent the gendarmerie commander Wang Qi to arrest Chen Yuan on August 8. After being rescued by Zhuang Yunkuan and many other social elites, Chen Yuan was released at noon on the same day, but remained under residential surveillance for many days. During this period, Chen Yuan always behaved calmly and honestly, and at the same time continued to seriously study the knowledge and published many important articles. Chen Yuan's noble personality greatly impressed the gendarmes who monitored his residence, and the two sides also formed a good relationship. A few years later, Chen Yuan helped one of the gendarmes with the surname Gao find a job at Fu Jen University.
In the midst of the storm, Chen Yuan, as the main person in charge of the Forbidden City, was under extremely heavy pressure. He once wrote two poems for this purpose: "The city is full of chen yuan, and in the past fifty years this era." After being favored as a sage, The Fishman also passed on his name. "Not deaf, not stupid, not a teacher, the ancient language is more strange." One welcomes a dozen down, and the same door peach and plum branch out. The "sage" in the poem refers to Li Yuying, and Chen Yuan believes that he is adhering to the right cause. In this regard, Chen Yuan's later assistant wrote that when Chen Yuan was working in the Forbidden City, he must have felt extremely sad and unfair in the face of the slogans and posters of the opponents to "overthrow Chen Yuan".
Chen Yuan's suffering also received sympathy from his friends. On August 25, 1926, Gu Jiegang, who was far away in Xiamen, also sent a letter expressing his condolences to Chen Yuan, feeling "indignant" at the destruction of the Qingmu Aftermath Committee, and asking with concern, "Mr. Unknown has not worked hard for three years in vain?" Is the archives of the Military Aircraft Department still being sorted out? Can the antiquities and books museums still be carried out according to the scheduled plan? I was "surprised" and felt "surprised" by the current situation at that time when "the situation was uncertain and the rumors had been accomplished". On September 28, Li Yuying wrote to Chen Yuan, bringing some information about the current situation to reassure him: First, with Zhang Xueliang's instructions, the Forbidden City would be fully responsible for the Feng army; second, the relevant garrisons of the Great High XuanDian would also leave after finding a new place; third, at the present moment, the main thing was to do a good job in internal hosting. He asked Chen Yuan to "continue to maintain and go to work as usual, without any obstacle or danger."
On October 5, Du Xijue resigned and left Beijing, and the custody committee ended. On October 13, Li Yuying initiated the organization of the "Palace Museum Maintenance Meeting". On December 9, the founders of the Maintenance Association once again gathered in the European and American Returned Scholars Association, and through the provisional charter, Jiang Han was elected as the president, zhuang Yunkuan and Wang Pethui were the vice presidents, and continued to preside over the affairs of the college. On December 17, 15 people, including Li Zongtong, Ma Heng and Chen Yuan, were appointed as standing committee members. In January 1927, the Maintenance Association reorganized the Palace Museum and promulgated the "Provisional Organizational Outline of the Palace Museum Maintenance Association", which stipulated that there were still antiquities and libraries within the Maintenance Association, and the library had two departments under the library. On January 12 of the same year, the Palace Museum Maintenance Committee promulgated the "Rules for the Division of the Palace Museum", which stipulates that there will be units and divisions under the Standing Committee of the Palace Museum, and on March 21, it promulgated the "Interim Brief of the Library of the Palace Museum" and the "Provisional Brief of the Antiquities of the Palace Museum". The early establishment of the museum was initially completed at this time, and the scale system of the new museum of the Palace Museum was also initially established.
In June 1927, Zhang Zuolin was appointed Grand Marshal of the Navy and Army of the Military Government of the Republic of China, and exercised the presidency and organized the Cabinet of the Military Government. Li Zongdong sent a letter to Chen Yuan from Tianjin, hoping that Chen Yuan and others would continue to preside over the work of the Forbidden City, "The affairs of the court are not supported by Jing Zhou (Wu Ying) and others, and Mr. Shang Wang and the dukes of Jian Shi (Shen Jian Shi) and Shu Ping (Ma Heng) will serve as difficult, otherwise it will be difficult to ensure that there is no danger." In this case, Chen Yuan has been sticking to his post. On August 16, the State Council decided on two motions: first, the Qingtai Temple and the Tangzi Temple should be assigned to the Management Office of the Temple of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for safekeeping; the other was to transfer the archives of the Military Aircraft Department of the Great High Xuandian Hall to the State Council for safekeeping. With the active efforts of Chen Yuan and other members of the Maintenance Committee, the archives of the Military Aircraft Department were not allocated and could continue to be kept by the Palace Museum. In view of the new situation, on August 21, Chen Yuan drafted a report asking colleagues of the Palace Museum to meet to discuss the future direction of the museum, "This court has been established after two years of hard work, so that the people of the gonggong will be reborn." Now that there is a discussion of the reorganization of the government, and the relationship between the people is deep, it is impossible not to exchange views on this in order to solemnly do things. "Previously, the government began to accept the affiliated units of the Forbidden City, and then planned to fully accept the Forbidden City.
On September 20, 1927, the State Council decided to establish the Management Committee of the Palace Museum to replace the Palace Museum Maintenance Committee, and appointed a new chairman and committee member. On October 21, the Management Committee took over the Palace Museum, and the maintenance meeting was invisibly canceled, and Chen Yuan and most of the old people were excluded.
After the success of the Northern Expedition in 1928, Yi Peiji and others took over the Palace Museum. In November, the Nationalist government promulgated the Organic Law of the Palace Museum, appointing 37 people, including Li Yuying and Chen Yuan, as directors. In February 1929, the Palace Museum held a board election, with Li Yuying as the chairman of the committee, Yi Peiji as the president, and Chen Yuan no longer holding specific administrative positions. However, as a director, he has been involved in the work related to the Forbidden City, especially academic research.
The peak of academic research in the Forbidden City of the Republic of China
As one of the early founders of the Palace Museum, Chen Yuan made important contributions to the development of the Palace Museum. At the same time, as a scholar, Chen Yuan also achieved the peak of the Forbidden City's scholarship during the Republic of China period. In the nearly thirty years from 1917 to 1945, Chen Yuan did many pioneering or summative works in the fields of religious history, Yuan history, historical chronology, avoidance of secrecy, and collation and surveying. These are closely related to the palace museum's rich collection of archival documents, among which the use of the Siku Quanshu and the Ming and Qing archives constitutes one of the characteristics of his works in this period.
When he was in Guangzhou, Chen Yuan longed to see the Siku Quanshu, but at that time he was just a young man far away in Guangzhou, and he thought that it would be difficult to see this book in this life. After coming to Beijing to work, in 1915, the Wenjinge "Four Libraries complete book" of the original Tibetan Rehe Summer Resort was transported to the Beijing Antiquities Exhibition Center, and handed over to the Beijing Normal Library after October. Hearing this news, Chen Yuan was inexplicably excited and decided to study it carefully. At that time, Chen Yuan's family lived in the southwest corner of Beiping City, and the Jingshi Library, which stored Wenjinge's "Four Libraries of Complete Books", was in the northeast corner of the city. And because there is no direct road between the east and west streets before and after the Forbidden City, it must be detoured, and the round-trip journey takes more than 3 hours, rain and snow, and even more than 4 hours. Every morning he took lunch to see the Four Libraries, and the library arrived as soon as it opened, and did not leave until the librarians left in the afternoon when they left work. On August 22, 1920, the investigation and inventory of Wenjinge's "Four Libraries of The Whole Book" was basically completed, and he benefited greatly from the study and reading of the "Four Libraries Complete Book". After participating in the work of the QingMu Aftermath Committee, Chen Yuan was able to gain an in-depth understanding of Wen Yuange's Siku Quanshu. In January 1925, Chen Yuan personally boarded Wenyuan Pavilion to inventory the Siku Quanshu, which enabled him to have a more personal understanding of the original layout of the Siku Quanshu. He said that in the past, he only knew that the seven pavilions of the "Four Libraries" were built in the style of Ningbo Tianyi Pavilion, which was the pavilion of the upper six, but he could not think of how to open the doors of the six houses and how to arrange the stairs. When I first ascended the Wenyuan Pavilion, I suddenly realized that the rightmost room of the six rooms was a narrow house, and the number of six rooms was enough, that is, there was a staircase here. Later, Chen Yuan drew the "Wenyuan Pavilion Four Libraries Complete Book Arrangement Diagram" based on this, and often told people about this academic story that made him excited. From 1915 to 1925, Chen Yuan spent nearly 10 years to thoroughly understand this large series of books including more than 3,000 kinds and more than 30,000 volumes, compiled the titles of the books and the index of the authors, and completed a series of articles related to the Four Libraries, and the "Four Libraries" was also founded, which was An important contribution of Chen Yuan to the academia of the Forbidden City and modern Chinese scholarship.
In addition to the "Four Libraries of the Whole Book", Chen Yuan's collation, research, and protection of the forbidden city documents, the ming and qing archives and historical materials, and the collation of Dunhuang documents have all made achievements that have attracted the world's attention. In the early days of the establishment of the Palace Museum, Chen Yuan, as the director of the library, chose Shou'an Palace as the site of the library, and he selected the ancient books in the palace, except for the "Four Libraries of the Whole Book" and the "Four Libraries of the Whole Book" that were still placed in the Wenyuan Pavilion and the Zao Hall, and the rest of the scattered books were moved to the front and back halls of the Shou'an Palace, and the Yanlou of the left and right belongings. Chen Yuan believes that the Palace Museum has a special responsibility for "having historical materials of the Qing Dynasty, preserving and compiling", so he attaches great importance to the collation and protection of the archives of the Qing Palace. In order to return to the archives of the Qing Dynasty Military Aircraft Department in the back building of the Zhongnanhai Jiling Temple, he once wrote to the State Council, "This court now intends to preserve the cultural relics of the Qing Dynasty, and use a special letter to ask your court to transfer the archives of the old military aircraft department to the Documentation Department of the Palace Museum for collation." On January 29, 1926, the State Council handed over to the Palace Museum the archives of the Qing Dynasty Military Aircraft Department, which had been sealed in the back building of the Zhongnanhai Jiling Pavilion, and the Guanhai Hall collection of Yang Shoujing at the end of the Qing Dynasty.
In March 1930, Chen Yuan completed the writing of "The Aftermath of the Dunhuang Robbery", which attracted worldwide attention. The production of this achievement also has a great relationship with the Forbidden City. In 1924, when the Dunhuang Scriptures Collection Association was established, Chen Yuan was elected as the director of the Interview Department through the Forbidden City's Noon gate History Museum, and he drew up a work plan to compile the Dunhuang scriptures collected by the public and private institutions into a general program, but "there were very few people who reported the newspaper in the month." Fortunately, Chen Yuan persisted on his own, and after seven years of hard work, he completed the "Records of the Dunhuang Robbery", and made a detailed record of the No. 8679 Dunhuang documents in the Beiping Library (now the National Library). Chen Yinke wrote in the preface: "Dunhuang scholars, the new trend of scholarship in the world today is also ... There are only three scholars in our country whose writings are listed among the forest of Dunhuang studies in the world... Xinhui Chen Yuan'an Mr. Yuan... His books are exquisite, and the world reads and knows them... Shu Ji Nei can live up to the only remaining national treasures of this history, and there are scholarships that will enter the world in the future. ”
As a director of the Palace Museum, in the 8 years from 1937 to 1945, Chen Yuan, who was in the occupied areas, adhered to national integrity, used his pen as a knife and gun, and used the lecture hall to fight in the battlefield, and wrote monographs such as "The Chronicle of the Doubtful Year of shi shi", "The Examination of Dianqian Buddhism in the Ming Dynasty", "The Slander of the Monks in the Early Qing Dynasty", "The Examination of The New Taoism in Hebei in the Early Southern Song Dynasty", "Introduction to chinese Buddhist History", and "Tongjian Hu Zhubiaowei". Among them, the "Records of the Doubtful Year of the Shi Dynasty" and the "Ming Dynasty Dianqian Buddhist Examination" make extensive use of the materials collected by the Palace Museum, especially the "Jiaxing Collection". In 1939, upon learning of the news of the discovery of the Jiaxing Collection in the Forbidden City, Chen Yuan was overjoyed and called out that he had discovered a "treasure cave buried for three hundred years" and immediately led his assistant to read and copy it. On March 26, in his family letter, he also wrote specifically: "Yu wrote the "Records of the Doubtful Year of the Shi Dynasty", which has now been sorted out, and inadvertently found that there is a collection of "Jiaxing Collection" somewhere, there are more than 200 kinds of quotations from the early Qing Dynasty, and there are many people who can collect the tower, so it is necessary to transform the eleventh and twelfth volumes, which is also an unexpected gain. And excitedly said, "The books I have written in the past thirty years have been used as a pleasure for the left and right." In the reprinted afterword, it is also said that "entering history with quotations is the author's first attempt, which is unprecedented." Since no one had been to that place in the Forbidden City courtyard for a long time, it was dark and damp, and there were many mosquitoes, Mr. Chen swallowed quinine pills before entering the hospital every time in order not to interrupt his work. It is precisely because of these precious materials collected by the Palace Museum that Chen Yuan's works are more distinctive. Chen Yinke commented in the preface to the "Ming Ji Dian Qian Buddhist Examination" that "Yin Ke was quite fond of reading the internal scriptures and lived in Yunnan, while Mr. Yu was the source of the book, and those who had not seen it were 78 out of 10." After reading this article, Shen Jianshi commented on Chen Yuan even more: "Proud bones support heaven and earth, Qi Wen weeps ghost gods." A solemn recitation, wind and rain affection. "The cultural relics and documents of the Forbidden City are of great significance to Chen Yuan's scholarship.
Chen Yuan, with the attitude of taking scholarship as a public instrument, presided over the collation and publication of the books and archives of the Forbidden City. During his tenure as curator, whenever he encountered an uncommon book, he asked for it to be brushed and printed for wide circulation. According to Zhu Jiahuan's recollection, under the leadership of Chen Yuan, the library published a series of weighty bibliographies, such as Zhang Yunliang's "Bibliography of the Forbidden City", Tao Xiang's "The Existing Catalogue of the Library of the Ancient Palace", and He Chengyi's "Ordinary Bibliography of the Forbidden City". For the literature, Chen Yuan also advocated publishing archival historical materials as soon as possible for academic research, and the Literature Department took the lead in publishing the "Palm History Series" in 1928, and then compiled and printed the "Historical Materials Monthly Journal". Chen Yuan also demanded that the published archives be bound in thread so that readers could disassemble and reassemble according to different needs, and this concept was also adhered to by Shen Jianshi, the curator of the Archives later. The timely public publication of the books and archives of the Forbidden City, Jiahui Yilin and QiMu Houxue, is still praised by people.
The golden bell of the wooden duo spread all over the world
Mr. Chen Yuan's boundless academic passion stems from his determination to regain the central position of sinology research in China, which reflects the patriotism of a historian with a conscience. In 1923, when he held a meeting at the Guoxue Gate of the Institute of Peking University, he said: "Now When Chinese and foreign scholars talk about sinology, they don't say how Paris is, or how Japan is, and they don't mention China. We should take the Sinology Center back to China and Beijing. "He has mentioned this many times on different occasions." To take the Center of Sinology back to China", this is also the sense of mission of a passionate patriotic historian like Chen Yuan, who has been studying hard for decades, his firm protection of the Palace Museum, and his selfless behavior of publishing rare documents and historical materials. In 1948, on the eve of the liberation of Peiping, the Kuomintang repeatedly asked Chen Yuan to go south, but in another major political change, he refused to leave and chose to stay in Beiping to welcome the arrival of a new society.
On June 21, 1971, Mr. Chen Yuan died at the age of 92. In accordance with his last wishes, the family donated more than 40,000 books and a large number of cultural relics to the country. Today, it has been almost 50 years since Mr. Chen Yuan left us, but we will not forget his contribution to the Palace Museum, and we have inherited the seeds of learning he left in the Forbidden City. This year marks the 600th anniversary of the forbidden city, the 95th anniversary of the establishment of the Palace Museum, and the 140th anniversary of Mr. Chen Yuan's birth, in such a day, we reorganize the past between Mr. Chen Yuan and the Palace Museum, look back at the history of nearly a hundred years ago, remember Mr. Chen Yuan's declaration on the history of history, and take the center of sinology back to China. Building a history with Chinese characteristics, Chinese style, and Chinese style will become the mission of my generation.
Guangming Daily (November 16, 2020, 11th edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily