On August 1, 1979, Li Ji, the father of Chinese archaeology, died of illness in the Wenzhou Street Apartment in Taipei, and he published about 150 archaeological works before and after. After Li Ji's death, people recalled: "He was a person who was feared by his superiors, colleagues, juniors, and students, but he gave the greatest help to those who sincerely studied." In fact, it is not only "afraid", in the eyes of some people, this person is simply hateful. Taiwanese celebrity Li Ao once wrote an article calling Li Ji "the last charming scholar." Li Ji was convicted of being a "scholar" for his stubbornness, but Rao was as mean as Li Ao and never denied his "charming" side. Zhang Guangzhi, a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University, once said: "So far, in the vast land of Chinese archaeology, no one has surpassed him in terms of reaching the highest academic model." ”
Anyang Yin Ruins Museum
Li Ji's memories in "My Junior School Era - Education Before Studying Abroad" are full of respect for his father. He said: My father was originally an orphan who became famous through hard work. When his grandfather died, he was one and a half years old, accompanied by a half-year-old uncle. The grandmother relied on a few acres of thin land in the family to raise the two brothers into adulthood. My father's grades in school were very good when he was a child, so he received help from a number of close relatives and became very quick. At a very young age, he began to teach the family hall to supplement the family. After entering the school, he soon became the gentleman who taught the "Otaku" in the county, reading articles for adult children.
Private School
In 1907 (the thirty-third year of Guangxu), Li Quan was selected as a yougong by the local instructor of Zhongxiang and asked him to go to the capital to participate in the examination as a representative of Zhongxiang. Li Quan went to Beijing, took the exam, and obtained a seven-pin civilian official. At that time, most of the Seven Pins civil officials of the Qing Dynasty were editors of the Hanlin Academy. Li Quan could have gone to Fujian to serve as a zhi county, but he pushed off the opportunity to become an official outside beijing and chose to stay in the palace internal affairs office to resign. So Li Quan planned to relocate the family to Beijing. After Li Quan settled down in Beijing, he took his wife Tu Shi, his son Li Ji, his younger daughter Li Baohua, and a cousin and nephew from Hubei to Beijing. Li Ji, who was in a period of ignorance at the time, came to Beijing with his family. Li Ji's family lived at No. 16, Daziying, near Changdian, not far from the imperial palace.
Palace
This promotion of his father changed the fate of the whole family, and also had a huge impact on Li Ji's subsequent study career. Li Ji also said that if there was no relocation, perhaps his life would be an old-fashioned reader who "knows things on paper". Li Ji wrote in "My Junior School Era- Education Before Studying Abroad": Compared with the friends I made in my childhood, I only remember that I was not a particularly intelligent child; but most of my young friends were like gravel in the flood, settled to the bottom of the sea. I was fortunate enough to be transported by contractors to the building site, which formed part of the concrete, attached to a small corner of a large building.
Tsinghua Garden
After the summer vacation of 1920, Li Ji transferred to Harvard University to study in the Anthropology Department of Harvard University. At that time, the international students sent by Tsinghua Xuetang had sufficient official support, and international students did not have to worry about their lives. During his five years in the United States, except for one summer vacation when he worked in a factory for a month to "experience life", the rest of the vacation time was spent in the school library or workshop. Li Ji was sent to the United States by Tsinghua university in 1918, and in the first two years, Li Ji received a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's degree in sociology from Clark University, and transferred to the first-class Harvard University to get a doctorate in anthropology in the last three years. This was not an easy task at the time. Li Ji himself was quite hesitant and ambitious, in his words, "like a bun that has just come out of the cage, always with some heat." ”
Harvard University
From his return to China in 1923 until 1928, Li Ji worked as a typical American-style university professor and research scholar. He taught at Nankai University in Tianjin (1923-1925) and at the newly established Institute of Chinese Studies at his alma mater, Tsinghua University (1925-1928). From 1925 to 1926, Li Ji presided over the excavation of a Neolithic Yangshao cultural site in Xiyin Village, Xia County, southwestern Shanxi. The excavation was jointly organized by Tsinghua's Institute of Chinese Studies and the Freer Museum of Art in the United States. Li Ji thus became the first Chinese scholar to excavate an archaeological site. The year 1928 was a turning point in Li Ji's life, as well as a turning point in Chinese archaeology and history. From 1928 to 1937, Li Ji presided over the excavation of the Yin Ruins in Anyang, Henan, which shocked the world, turning the Yin Shang culture from legend to letter history, and thus pushing the history of China forward by hundreds of years. From this time on, Li Ji's academic career was no longer inseparable from the excavation of Anyang.
Henan Yin Ruins
In 1941, during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Li Ji moved to Lizhuang, Yibin, Sichuan. Li Ji held both the central museum and the institute of history and language, and the central museum was relocated to the Zhangjia Ancestral Hall on Shanghe Street, and it was very inconvenient for Li Ji to run at both ends, so he only went up the mountain once or twice a week to work. Since the archaeological work cannot be carried out for the time being, Li Ji's energy is more focused on the development of the Central Museum, actively preparing for the establishment of the natural museum, and has successively held a series of exhibitions such as "Guizhou Yimiao Clothing Exhibition", "Some Ethnic Classic Clothing and Accessories Exhibition", "Chuankang Ethnic Religious Painting Exhibition" and so on. At the same time, Li Ji paid attention to the recruitment and cultivation of talents, and set up the position of "special design committee member" during the Li Zhuang period, recruiting Guo Baojun, Wu Jinding, Yin Huanzhang, Wang Tianmu, Zeng Zhaoyao, Li Lincan, Zhao Qingfang, Pang Xuanli and other talents, and cultivating a new generation of academic teams for China. For the time being, the situation in the country has become increasingly critical, and Fuzhou and Hong Kong have fallen one after another. The aggression against China is not only political, economic, military, but also a large number of cultural aggressions, Japanese scholars and the military collude to carry out rampant excavations of China's scenic spots and monuments, and a large number of cultural relics are lost overseas. Inspired by patriotic feelings, Li Ji wanted to compete with the Japanese in academia and science, igniting the ambition of field archaeology. In 1941, Li Ji organized a Sichuan Kang expedition with the purpose of conducting a large-scale survey and excavation of historical sites in Sichuan and Xikang provinces.
Lizhuang Ancient Town
While Li Ji was busy with the affairs of the Central Museum and the Chuan kang delegation, the unfortunate haze hung over the Li family. Li Ji's eldest daughter, Li Fengzheng, was already seventeen years old at the time, and she died of infection with wind and cold, which made Li Ji despair. I have not yet come out of my sadness, and I have encountered something that makes people extremely angry. Li Ji's family lived at No. 6 Yang Street at that time, and signed a two-year rental contract with the landlord, but just one year later, the old landlord had sold the house to Luo Fuzhou, and Luo Fuzhou directly let Li Ji's family move out. Li Ji rejected Luo Fuzhou's unreasonable request according to the contract, and Luo Fuzhou hated to leave. Who knows that a few days later, Luo Fuzhou colluded with the local soldiers surnamed Deng to put pressure on Li Ji, who still argued on the basis of reason and refused to hand over the house. Later, the army of soldiers surnamed Deng was raised, and Luo Fuzhou became even more vicious after losing his patron, and hired local hooligans to move the stone strips into Li Ji's house to hinder the travel of the Li family. Li Ji couldn't bear Luo Fuzhou's behavior, and found the district chief to complain to him, and after the district chief learned about the original commission, he explicitly ordered Luo Fuzhou not to harass the Li family again, and the matter came to an end. Li Ji, director of the Archaeology Group of the Academia Sinica and director of the Preparatory Department of the Central Museum, is an elite intellectual in society, but he was bullied to such an extent by a hooligan who could not help but sigh.
At the end of 1948, Li Ji's family arrived in Taiwan, and his son Li Guangmo lived in Taiwan for a total of fifty-five days. Li Guangmo was reluctant to complete his studies at Tongji University and insisted on returning to his alma mater to complete his studies despite the persuasion of his parents. On the evening of February 22, 1949, Li Guangmo left his parents' side and returned to the mainland in a merchant ship against the wind and waves. A family, different choices, as parents, Li Ji and his wife respect their son's choice. Since then, Li Guangmo has embarked on a new path of life.
Eleven years later, on only one special occasion did Li Ji and his wife meet their son. In the autumn of 1959, Mr. and Mrs. Li Ji were invited to the United States for an academic visit, and returned to Taiwan through Hong Kong in August 1960. After the mainland learned of this information, it wanted to take this opportunity to persuade Li Ji to return to China. The mainland put forward three options for Li Ji to choose from: to stay in the mainland to live and work; or to visit Beijing and other places, to travel freely; or to go to Guangzhou to meet his family and people in the archaeological community. All three plans were rejected by Li Ji. Li Ji said: If I return to the hinterland, I will not make a great contribution, but it will be detrimental to the country, the nation, and culture; if there are too many people involved, my relatives, friends, and students in Taiwan will certainly suffer great misfortune; even if I just visit and visit, there will be great risks in going back.
Li Ji and Fu Si Nian
In fact, how could Li Ji return to the mainland at that time? Because the academic atmosphere in the two places is completely different. In 1959, the mainland archaeology community, represented by Archaeology magazine, launched a fierce "encirclement and suppression" of Li Ji. Li Ji's son, Li Guangmo, even collected an issue of archaeology that year, and criticized Li Ji for the entire issue. I don't know how Li Ji reacted to this kind of "encirclement and suppression", but he once made a severe criticism of the archaeological excavation reports on the mainland after 1949, believing that there was a lack of practical materials, full of political terminology, and the contents of the land, artifacts, and sizes were actually claimed to be "confidential" and so on.
In 1995, Li Guangmo returned to Taiwan to participate in the centenary birthday of his father Li Ji, and when sorting out his father's relics, he found manuscripts, books, letters and other objects left by his father, including some things that Li Guangmo left in his home in Taiwan. It is not difficult for us to imagine that whenever he thinks of his son, his father Li Ji will always look at what his son Li Guangmo left behind, as if his son has never left himself. In the process of sorting out his father's anthology, Li Guangmo may be able to understand why his father Li Ji had to go to Taiwan with the Yin Ruins cultural relics in the first place, and understand what his father's perseverance was for, which was a dialogue between father and son.
Archaeological site
Since his early years of studying in the United States, Li Ji has not held any prejudices against Chinese and foreign scholarship, and is determined to do a science to serve the country and choose the good and stubborn, but he is not involved in political activities. The antiquities excavated at the Yin Ruins in Anyang were the goal of Li Ji's lifelong research. After that, Li Ji never left them again. While serving as the head of the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica, he also founded the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology of National Taiwan University, concurrently served as the head of the department, and trained a group of well-known archaeologists abroad; he and Dong Zuobin and a group of participants in the early Excavation of Xiaotun Yin Ruins in Anyang continued to publish research results. The English and Japanese editions of Li Ji's Anyang were published in 1977 and 1982. The Chinese translation of Anyang was first published in mainland China in 1989.
Photo of Li Ji working in Taiwan
After Li Ji's death, his students erected an epitaph for him on the campus of National Taiwan University, which read eight big characters: "Clear Standards and Self-Preservation, Teachers and Hundreds of Generations", summarizing his lifelong learning ethics and personality. Mr. Li Ji was the first anthropologist in modern China; he was also the first scientific archaeologist in China; one of the great characteristics of his archaeology is that he has the characteristics of anthropology, which is extensive, not narrow and specialized; it is heavy on comparison, open to the outside, not closed to the outside. Li Ji is worthy of the title of "father of Chinese archaeology". (Peng Zhongfu/Collation; reference to Li Ji Biography)