Speaking of Wang Xiantang, many people don't know much, even qingdao locals, may not be familiar with this gentleman. However, in the cultural circle of Traditional Chinese Studies, Wang Xiantang's name can be said to be unknown to everyone. It is said that Qingdao produced a South China Sea sage called Kang Youwei, in fact, in terms of academic research and achievements in traditional Chinese studies, Wang Xiantang's achievements are even higher than this "Kang sage". To this day, in Qingdao's Fushan Park, there is also the tomb of this master of traditional Chinese studies.
Photo of Wang Xiantang
Wang Xiantang (1896-1960), formerly known as Jiaju, later changed his name to Yao, the character Xiantang, Fengsheng, Rizhao, Shandong, studied at Qingdao Lixian Academy and Dehua Special Higher Special College. Before liberation, he served as the director of the Shandong Provincial Library and the deputy general manager of the Central National History Museum, and after the founding of New China, he served as the deputy director of the Shandong Provincial Cultural Management Association and the bronze researcher of the Palace Museum in Beijing. He is an outstanding historian, epigrapher, archaeologist and philologist in modern China, with a very wide range of research fields, involving history, archaeology, epigraphy, writing, phonology, exegesis, editions, bibliography and other disciplines, all of which have rich achievements, and can be said to be the best modern Sinologists. In that year, when the famous scholar Guo Moruo inspected Jinan, he paid a special visit to Wang Xiantang and honored Wang Xiantang, who was younger than himself, as "Wang Xiantang".
Wang Xian Tang Seal
Wang Xiantang was born in Rizhao Hanjia Village, Wang's ancestors were once officials, but also Shuxiang Mendi, to his father Wang Tinglin when he did not have a meritorious name, because the family road fell, but his father was fond of collecting, can only practice medicine to support the family. It is said that the name of "Xian Tang" was also given by his father, taking the allusion that "the people of the Western Regions offered jade to the Tang Dynasty". Wang Xiantang's academic achievements are related to the careful cultivation of his father Wang Tinglin. Under the education of his father, when Wang Xiantang was a teenager, he was famous for his calligraphy and painting at that time, and when he was a little older, he devoted himself to the study of ancient Chinese with his father. At the age of eleven, Wang Xiantang entered Qingdao Lixian Academy (now Qingdao No. 9 Middle School) to study, and at the age of nineteen, he was admitted to The Qingdao Dehua Special Higher Education Hall (Qingdao Dehua University), thus laying a solid foundation in Traditional Chinese studies and mastering a wealth of Western knowledge.
Qingdao Publishing House's Examination of Ancient Chinese Currency
In 1918, at the age of twenty-two, Wang Xiantang began his life in Qingdao as a special correspondent for Jinan's Business Times and Shandong Daily. At that time, Wang Xiantang lived in No. 13A, Guanhai 2nd Road, where celebrities gathered, including Yin Xinnong, Wang Tongzhao, Zang Kejia, Wen Yiduo, and many other scholars and celebrities. In 1922, Wang Xiantang was appointed deputy secretary of the Jiao'ao Commercial Port Supervision Office, and in September of the same year, he was appointed as the head of the taxation unit of the Finance Bureau, and until June 1926, he left Qingdao for Beiping. During his youth, Wang Xiantang wrote three volumes of "Gongsun Longzi Suspension Solution", which became famous in one fell swoop. In addition, Wang Xiantang wrote a lot of works in his lifetime, including sixty-two kinds of treatises such as "Yanhuang Clan Culture Examination" and "Ancient Chinese Monetary Examination", as well as a large number of papers, inscriptions and poetry works.
Old shadow of Shandong Provincial Library
From 1929, Wang Xiantang served as the director of the Shandong Provincial Library, and under his management, the then provincial library and jinshi preservation institute were known as "the important town of books and cultural relics in the north". In 1936, Zhang Danweng, editor-in-chief of Shanghai Jingbao, wrote to Wang Xiantang: "Looking at the Kui virtual collection from afar, admiring the five bodies of Shanzuo culture. "Sealing the Mud" is a masterpiece of a solid generation, and Mr. Shi has been passed down from generation to generation. "
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, important cultural relics and good books of the Shandong Provincial Library were carefully transported to Sichuan, the rear of the Anti-Japanese War, and Wang Xiantang did his best to fund his own food, and even if he did not have enough to eat, he also took out all his meager salary to protect cultural relics and ancient books. Famous scholars Zhang Zhengxiu and Xia Nailiang commented that Wang Xiantang was "a rare scholar in Shandong Province in recent hundreds of years".
In 1948, after the collection of cultural relics, Wang Xiantang carried out meticulous layout planning, opened to all sectors of society, showed the ins and outs of cultural relics in detail, and wrote a preface by himself, so that the audience could understand the history of development and facilitate research. At that time, it was known as, "Jinan's victory is not in Daming Lake, but in the library." "
Pages of ancient books donated by Wang Xiantang
Wang Xiantang never hid his collectibles. In 1930, he donated many rare books to the Shandong Provincial Library, such as "Ding Shoucun Chronicle Self-Memoirs", "The Portrait of King Xiangui of Wei", "The Interpretation of the Tuoben Supplement", and the "Rhyme Character Book". In 1951, he donated to the Shandong Ancient Cultural Relics Management Committee the Song carved sutra "Dafang Guangfo Huayan Sutra Joint Engraving". In 1953, he donated the treasured cultural relics of Li Zicheng in the Ming Dynasty to the Beijing History Museum for "Breaking the King's Seal" and the Gou Jian Sword in the Spring and Autumn Period. After his death, his relatives donated his relics to the Shandong Museum, counting more than 1,600 pieces.
Wang Xiantang took a group photo with friends
According to family recollections, Wang Xiantang, who is already a famous scholar, has no celebrity shelf, can chat with the city vendors, and daily life is very simple, and there are no requirements for eating and wearing. His life is frugal, but he is very strict in his studies, which can be said to be a family style that does not forget, and his original intention does not change. It is said that Wang Xiantang wanted to examine a word, every night he slept on the pillow, fell asleep and had inspiration, immediately got up and wrote, sometimes got up four or five times a night, the rigor of the attitude of learning can be seen.
Wang Xiantang's love book is also famous. In the article "A Generation of Guoxue Grandmaster Wang Xiantang", it was once recorded that wang Xiantang had taken reading and collecting books as a lifelong pleasure since he was a child, and every good book was "glad to forget to eat, happy to sleep, and love and not to be released." It is said that Wang Xiantang's collection of books can be described as an exhaustion, and almost all of his salary is used on it, and he even pawns clothes when he is strapped for money. Even so, whenever you encounter a rare and rare book, you will "get it" and then quickly.
Tomb of Wang Xiantang
In November 1960, Wang Xiantang died of illness in Jinan and was buried in the Wanlingshan Cemetery, where an inscription was written by the famous scholar Lu Dahuang. During a decade of turmoil, the cemetery was razed to the ground by fanatics. In 1993, the Shandong provincial government decided to relocate wang xiantang coffin to Fushan in Qingdao. On the tombstone of Wang Xiantang, the inscription was inscribed by Kong Decheng, the seventy-seventh grandson of Confucius and the thirty-first generation of Yanshenggong, which reads, "The tomb of The Prince of Wang Xiantang, on the auspicious day of the first month of 1991 AD, Qufu Kong Decheng worshiped the inscription."
Wang Xiantang Memorial Hall
What is the connection between Mr. Wang Xiantang and the Qufu Kong clan? In 1937, when the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression broke out in full swing, Wang Xiantang, then director of the provincial library, planned to move the cultural relics out of Jinan in order to prevent the destruction and plundering of rare cultural relics in the collection. When the plan was submitted to the provincial government, it was rejected by Han Fuyu, who was the chairman at the time, and there was no funding. Fortunately, thanks to the financial support of the society, wang Xiantang moved south to the Great Buddha Temple in Leshan, Sichuan, with five boxes of cultural relics, and the remaining twenty-six boxes were deposited in Qufu, and at the same time, it was agreed with kong Decheng, the last Yan ShengGong, that if the country was defeated, then the twenty-six boxes of cultural relics would be left to the "Fengqi Official's Palace", and if the country was restored, they would be returned to the provincial library. In September 1948, after the liberation of Jinan, Wang Xiantang returned the books and cultural relics stored in the Confucius Fengqi Official Palace and the Leshan Giant Buddha Temple in accordance with the preface, and the Shandong Ancient Cultural Relics Management Committee preserved them on their behalf. This is the memory of Qian Huanqing, a reporter of The Jinan Times, in an article. Wang Xiantang's rescue of precious cultural relics from the war-torn national disaster can be said to be immeasurable.
(Image from the Internet)