More than 100 years ago, on the campus of Peking University, there was such a scene:
An old man slowly walked up to the podium, only to see him wearing a big coat, a melon skin hat, and a thin braid behind his head.
The students under the podium had clean short haircuts, each one was fresh and neat, and they looked at the appearance of the old man in the Qing Dynasty and laughed.
The old man straightened up and said without hurrying, "I have braids on my head, don't you people who cut braids have no braids in your hearts?" ”
The students were suddenly quiet.
This old man, named Gu Hongming, is an English professor at Peking University and a famous translator in China.
He translated the Analects, The Mean, and The University, and was the first Chinese scholar to translate traditional classics to the Western world, and the first person to let Westerners understand Chinese classics.
These translations have shocked the world since they were published, and at the same time made Gu Hongming famous overseas.
At that time, there was a saying in the Western world that when you go to China, you can not look at the Three Great Halls, but you must not look at Gu Hongming!
Lin Yutang praised him, the English surpassed the outstanding, and he has not seen his right in two hundred years.
Sun Yat-sen praised him, there are three and a half English talents in China, and Gu Hongming is one of them.
However, in the eyes of more people in his contemporaries, Gu Hongming is a conservative and strange old man.
In fact, he is not eccentric, but has a love - a love for the motherland, a love for Chinese culture.
Full of enthusiasm, I don't know where to go
According to the bloodline, Gu Hongming is a mixed-race child.
He was born in Penang, Malay Peninsula to a Chinese father and a Portuguese mother.
The Malay Peninsula during the Republic of China period was a British colony, and his father, Gu Ziyun, worked for the Englishman Brown. Since Brown had no children, he adopted Gu Hongming as his adopted son.
Since childhood, Gu Hongming has been in a pluralistic cultural atmosphere. The advantage of this kind of growth environment is that it has a broad vision; the disadvantage is that it is difficult to have cultural identity.
At the age of 12, Brown decided to take Gu Hongming to Europe to study.
Before leaving, his father called Gu Hongming to him and said, "Wherever you go, who are around you, The British, the French, or the Germans, don't forget that you are Chinese." ”
When he first arrived abroad, Gu Hongming often bowed to his ancestors to the east according to his father's instructions.
After each prostration of his ancestors, the landlady would deliberately tease: "When did your ancestors come to eat these wines and food?" ”
He always smiled and replied, "It was when your ancestors smelled the flowers you had sent." ”
However, with the passage of time, Gu Hongming's lifestyle gradually westernized.
Once, he was mistaken for a girl by a waiter when he went to the men's restroom at a restaurant in Britain.
Gu Hongming struggled to make the other party believe that he was not a girl or a pervert.
In order to reduce trouble, he simply cut off his braids and changed into a suit to show off his Western style.
Perhaps even he himself did not expect that the insignificant braids at this time would be loved by him in the future.
At the same time, Gu Hongming came into contact with a large number of Western classics and was able to recite Shakespeare and Faust in their entirety.
During his 11 years of studying in the West, he traveled to England, France and Germany, learned not to speak the languages of these countries, and studied at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Berlin.
During his university years, he majored in Western literature, and studied mathematics, natural philosophy and other disciplines, and was a rare generalist.
It can be said that in Gu Hongming's youth, his understanding of the West was far greater than that of the East.
For Western civilization, Gu Hongming quoted and talked endlessly; but for Chinese culture, he could only rely on sporadic childhood memories to understand.
Nevertheless, he did not develop a sense of identification with Western civilization.
After receiving his master's degree from the University of Edinburgh, Gu did not stay in Europe, but immediately returned to the Malay Peninsula, where he was born.
Chernyshevsky said that human activity becomes empty and small without the inspiration of ideals.
The same is true of Gu Hongming.
He found a job close to home in the British colonial government of Singapore, where he had a lot of money and little money, and lived as a small civil servant.
For Gu Hongming at that time, although he was full of enthusiasm, his heart was empty and he did not know where to go.
When you meet Bole, fang knows what you are looking for
During his time in Singapore, Gu Hongming was not satisfied with a stable life, he was always looking for a goal worth fighting for a lifetime.
When he heard that the scholar Ma Jianzhong was passing through Singapore on official business, he took the initiative to visit.
The two talked freely for three days and three nights, and Ma Jianzhong systematically introduced the essence of Chinese culture to Gu Hongming, which made Gu Hongming germinate his yearning for his mother country.
Regarding this meeting, Gu Hongming commented: "The meeting with Ma Jianzhong in Singapore was the most important experience in my life. It was Ma Jianzhong who made me change into a real Chinese. ”
After this meeting, Gu Hongming immediately resigned, re-braided his hair and put on a horse coat.
Later, some people ridiculed him, saying that he cut his braids during his study tour in Europe, but when he returned, he had braids instead, which was deliberately unusual.
In fact, it is not the case, a person to show who he is, the image is the most intuitive declaration.
What's more, he didn't just change his image, but also his heart.
After resigning, Gu Hongming studied hard at home for a year, learning Chinese culture from scratch and reading all the traditional classics he could search for.
In order to get more learning resources, he moved to Hong Kong, where he read a lot and regularly returned to his ancestral hometown of Fujian to learn Chinese with his teachers.
As he learned more about Chinese culture, so did his interest in Chinese culture.
Once on a boat returning to Hong Kong from Fujian, he excitedly explained Chinese culture to foreigners.
Fluent English caught the attention of Zhang Zhidong's subordinate Zhang Yushu, who introduced him to Zhang Zhidong.
Zhang Zhidong was the governor of Huguang at that time, in charge of foreign affairs, and there was a shortage of talents like Gu Hongming who were proficient in Western studies.
As a result, Gu Hongming became Zhang Zhidong's staff.
It was also during this period that Gu Hongming found that many foreigners had a very one-sided view of China.
They are caught up in their own cultural thinking, taking it for granted that "Chinese barbaric and uncivilized", and have too many misreadings of Chinese culture.
When reading the translation of the sinologist Li Yage, Gu Hongming was particularly angry. Because in Liyag's translation, Confucius, who we regard as a sage, is interpreted by him as a rural villager who has no faith and is good at talking big.
To this end, Gu Hongming wrote an article, "Arguing for the Motherland and the People", signed as "A Chinese".
This article was published in the English newspaper "Zi Lin Xi Bao", and since its publication, it has attracted the attention of western media, and many well-known newspapers and periodicals have expressed their views on this article.
Among them, the London "Times" believes that this article cannot be written by Chinese, because the English wording is extremely noble and elegant.
While Gu Hongming was secretly proud, he also understood that it was far more difficult than imagined to let the world know About China.
Therefore, he established a lifelong career to spread Chinese culture to the world.
It took Gu Hongming 30 years from birth to clarify who he was and what kind of ambition he should have.
Many people say that you should make up your mind early, but there is a sentence in the "Preface to the Tengwang Pavilion", "The East Corner has passed away, and Mulberry Yu is not late." ”
In the journey of life, it is more important than determination to persevere.
Only by persevering can we avoid fantasies and really make a difference.
After several twists and turns, the enthusiasm has never diminished
Gu Hongming originally thought that returning to China meant returning to his own cultural circle.
However, things did not go as smoothly as expected.
When he first returned to China, Gu Hongming's braids had not yet grown, and a handful of short hair was left behind wantonly, looking a little unusual.
There were many people in the shogunate who pointed out behind their backs, thinking that Gu Hongming was a fake foreign devil.
On Zhang Zhidong's 60th birthday, Gu Hongming rose on a whim and compared the Chinese and Western cultural systems. Everyone actively joined the discussion and expressed their own opinions, except for a jinshi named Shen Zengzhi, who sat there with disdain on his face and did not say a word.
Gu Hongming couldn't help but ask him, "Why didn't your excellency say a word?"
Shen Zengzhi said: "I understand everything you say, and if you want to understand what I say, you still have to read twenty years of Chinese books!" ”
Shen Zengzhi's contempt aroused Gu Hongming's fighting spirit.
He began to re-read the Four Books and Five Classics, carefully cutting through the true meanings of them word for word. Since he couldn't look up the Kangxi Dictionary, he had a hard time reading it.
Maybe excellent people are born to be favored, and after this matter was known to Zhang Zhidong, Zhang Zhidong decided to teach him personally.
Under the guidance of Zhang Zhidong, Gu Hongming was able to read a wide range of books.
After years of accumulation, when Shen Zengzhi visited Zhang Zhidong again, Gu Hongming sent his men to move Zhang Zhidong's collection of books to the living room.
Shen Zengzhi was puzzled, and Gu Hongming said:
"Ask Shen Gong, which book can you memorize, and I can't?" Which book do you understand that I don't? ”
Shen Zengzhi understood that Gu Hongming had achieved success in his studies, and he responded affirmatively: "In the future, the burden of inheriting Chinese culture will fall on your shoulders!" ”
In fact, Gu Hongming did not disappoint Shen Zengzhi.
After the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War, Japanese Prime Minister Hirobumi Ito visited China and met with Zhang Zhidong in Wuchang.
As a staff member, Gu Hongming attended with him.
Between cups and cups, Gu Hongming gave Ito Hirobumi a copy of his own translation of the Analects.
Ito Hirobumi deliberately asked, "I heard that you are proficient in Western scholarship, but don't you know that confucius's teachings can be practiced more than 2,000 years ago, but not in the twentieth century today?" ”
Gu Hongming heard the sarcasm in the other party's words, cleared his throat, and replied without humility:
"Confucius taught people that the method is like the mathematician's addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, which thousands of years ago was three to nine, and today, the method is still three to nine, not three to eight."
Ito Hirobumi was speechless for a moment, and he couldn't return to his senses for half a day.
Many people regard Gu Hongming as a stubborn royalist because of his defense of Chinese civilization.
But his royalist was fundamentally different from most of the royalists who worked for their own benefit.
He himself once said: "Many outsiders laugh at my foolish loyalty to the Qing Chamber. But my loyalty to the Qing Dynasty is not only loyal to the royal family that has been blessed by the Emperor, but also to the politics and religion of China, that is, to the civilization of China. ”
Zweig famously said: "The greatest fortune in a man's life is to discover his mission in life halfway through his life, that is, when he is rich and powerful." ”
Gu Hongming was undoubtedly lucky.
Although he was born in Nanyang and studied in the West, he met the right mentor and friend at the right time, and thus found a lifelong love.
It is precisely because of his love that he can not be afraid of difficulties and learn Chinese culture from scratch;
It is precisely because of his love that he can be true to himself without fear of others.
Wang Zengqi said: "People always have to stay in something and indulge in it. Only by gaining something can we confirm our own existence and truly show our own value. ”
We should also be like Gu Hongming, find the love of a lifetime, and live out our true selves!
Author | Pi Hai, reading history under the lamp, writing to the end of the world.
Image | Stills from The Age of Awakening