The thinker Wang Tao once took the imperial examination, but unfortunately his name fell behind. His profound knowledge retreat did not attract the attention of the Qing government, so he actively supported the Taiping Rebellion, and for this reason, he was also wanted by the Qing government. In order to avoid being wanted by the Qing soldiers, Wang Tao sailed out of the Huangpu River in October 1862 aboard the British yacht "Runa" of jardine matheson & Co. and sailed south to Hong Kong. In Hong Kong in the 1860s, under the british management, industry and commerce had a certain degree of prosperity. Wang Tao recorded this in the "Wandering Record":
Hong Kong is a desert island, and the flat land under the mountain is only looking for the sea. The Westerners spared no effort in painting and management, almost learning the reclamation of the sea and following the example of the foolish public to move the mountains. The land is golden, and the price is endless. There are many shops along the coast, and the mountain is divided into three rings: the upper ring, the middle ring, and the lower ring, and then added to the fourth ring, which is also known as the "nepotism road", all of which are similar to their shapes. The Cantonese people originally took Jia Juqi as a shang, a cone knife disciple, and pursued profits, so the trade was particularly wide... The upper and central cities are dense and wide, and the walkers are staggered and shoulder-toe, and they are very noisy. The lower ring is shaded by trees, colorful greenery, and there are several homes near and far, with village meaning. In the area of "Bohulin", the Doxi people's summer house, the scenery is hidden, and there is a lot of silence. [1]
However, this is a flashback text after Wang Tao later traveled to Europe. After all, he was a "criminal" wanted by the imperial court, so Wang Tao, who had just arrived in Hong Kong, did not have such a calm mood to appreciate the exploits of the British. He was exiled to Hong Kong, and the most direct problem was that food, clothing, shelter and transportation were not smooth, and the rice served every day was very hard and difficult to swallow. Grilled fish is often not cleared of scales. This is not to mention, every day to his wife and daughter because of the water and soil to miss their hometown and crying and crying, wang Tao is upset. Wang Tao felt as if he had fallen into the gates of hell.
Wang Tao is a person who is active and likes to make friends, and when he first arrived in Hong Kong, the unfamiliar city and face made him feel lonely. It was also when Wang Tao felt lonely and lonely that he met a missionary named Li Jacob. Born in 1815 to a Protestant peasant family, Jacob joined the London Evangelists after graduating from university and was sent to Malacca in 1839 as the head of anglo-Chinese college. In 1843, Anglo-Chinese College moved into Hong Kong, and Jacob followed. Jacob received special training in Chinese, had a high degree of Chinese proficiency, and wrote a number of books on Chinese culture, including "Chinese On the Concept of Gods and Ghosts", "The Life and Doctrine of Confucius", "The Life and Doctrine of Mencius", "Religion in China: Commentaries on Confucianism and Taoism and Their Comparison with Christianity", which have a wide influence in the European sinology community.
Wang Tao fled to Hong Kong, much to the delight of the English missionary Richard James. At this time, he was translating Chinese cultural works, and it was very necessary for knowledgeable and proficient Chinese and Western languages to act as assistant translators. The British missionary Mai Hua was busy mentioning Wang Tao in front of Li Jacob many times, so this time Wang Tao fled to Hong Kong, and Li Yago immediately went to contact him and gave him active help in life, and he was courteously hoping that he could help translate traditional Chinese cultural works. Wang Tao's poems repeatedly talk about The help that James helped him when he was desperate, and he wrote in his poem "Journey to the South":
He wrote in a poem in "Journey to the South":
Lu Liancheng went to the sea, and the pawn boarded the post...
Late at night canopy back to the rain, and teardrops...
In the middle of the sea of the island, the new is the Westerners.
Ask the house to meet and gather the souls.
The host was kind and merciful to me in Qu'e.
The Translation Library gathers Qunshu, and wu yan lives vendetta. [2]
With the help of Li Jacob, Wang Tao's life has been greatly improved. Since then, he has devoted himself to the translation of books. Wang Tao has been familiar with the Four Books and Five Classics since childhood, and has a profound foundation in traditional Chinese studies, and the level of ordinary missionary sinologists is far from comparable. Moreover, he has more than ten years of work experience in the Shanghai Mohai Library, and his translation of Western studies and Sinology is more familiar than that of ordinary translators. These advantages, coupled with Wang Tao's sense of gratitude to Li Jacob, greatly accelerated the translation progress of the Chinese Classics. Through the active efforts of Li Jacob and Wang Tao, by July 1865, the translation of the Book of Shang was completed, and Li Jacob named the book the third volume of the Chinese Classics, which was published in the world. Subsequently, the fourth volume of the Chinese Classics, a translation of the Book of Poetry, was published in 1871, and the fifth volume of the Spring and Autumn Classics and the Zuo Chuan translation of the Chinese Classics was released in 1872. In his translation work, Wang Tao gradually accepted some Western ideas and culture because of the convenience of the Yinghua Academy. He was in Hong Kong, then a British colony, and his lifestyle and ideas changed greatly. He has seen vaguely the intrinsic relationship between China's absolute monarchy and poverty and weakness. Similarly, in his inner world, the wealth and strength of the Western countries seem to have some intrinsic relationship with their bourgeois political systems. Unconsciously, he began to doubt China's traditional etiquette, ethics and feudal system. He found that the West is not only advanced in terms of "instruments", but also seems to be more advanced in the "Tao" of the West than in China.
In Wang Tao's view, the "Tao" of the West pursues democracy and freedom, while Chinese Confucianism makes people conform to the rules. In addition, for the Western powers to invade China, in addition to hating the corruption and weakness of the imperial court and the brutality of the great powers, he also felt that China at that time was stuck in its own ways and conformed to the old ways, and it was urgent for a group of enlightened people to go abroad to seek good strategies for enriching the people and strengthening the country.
[1] Wang Tao: A Wandering Companion, Vol. 1, p. 65. Yuelu Book Club 1985 edition
[2] Zhang Hailin, A Biography of Wang Tao, p. 101, Nanjing University Press, November 1993