【Article/Observer Network Columnist Guo Chun】
In the summer of 1917, Luo Jialun enrolled in Peking University. His compositions were appreciated by the main examiners, and he received full marks; although his performance in other subjects was mediocre, he was eventually admitted to Peking University to major in English.
It was from this year that Mr. Cai Yuanpei began to serve as the president of Peking University. In his inaugural speech, he emphasized that "university students and advanced scholars" and advocated "freedom of thought and inclusiveness", so he invited many scholars from different backgrounds to teach at Peking University. As a result, among the teachers of luo Jialun's English department, there were Hu Shi, who was famous for advocating vernacular literature at that time, and Gu Hongming, who had previously regarded himself as a "widowed old man" and was known for his feudal conservatism.
There was no expected tit-for-tat confrontation between the thoughtful, spirited teenager and the old scholar who admired small feet and concubines, and Luo Jialun honestly read the "'English Poetry' course taught by Mr. Gu" for three years, and we can experience the "taste of it" in his memories in his later years:
"When Mr. Gu was talking to us about English poetry, he sometimes said to us: 'I teach you foreign 'Daya' today', sometimes 'I teach you foreign 'National Style' today', and one day he said whimsically: 'I teach you the foreign 'Departure' today.'" ...... At that time, it was not difficult to ask me to endorse the book, the hardest thing was to translate. What does he want us to translate? Asking us to turn a thousand words is really more painful than Sun Wukong wearing a tight hoop spell. ”
Although the content of the lecture looks grotesque and funny, Peking University students still have a respect for Gu Hongming's attitude. "Proficient in several Western languages such as English, French, German, and Latin", "Obtained thirteen degrees in literature, philosophy, science, and engineering", "Cursed foreigners in foreign newspapers, cursed Chinese people in Chinese newspapers", "the first Chinese to translate the "Four Books" into English"—Gu Hongming is worthy of the four words of "learning through Chinese and Western". However, what makes Peking University students curious is that Mr. Gu, who has studied in the West for more than ten years and drunk enough "foreign ink", why doesn't he wear a suit and leather shoes like other professors, still have a robe and a coat, and a braid behind him?
Gu Hongming
In 1878, Gu Hongming ended his more than ten years of studying abroad and returned to his birthplace, Penang, British Malaya. He was still a young man heavily influenced by Western culture, working in the colonial government of Singapore, dazed and ignorant of his future. During this period, he became acquainted with Ma Jianzhong, a scholar who studied in France, and after a long conversation, under the persuasion of the latter, Gu Hongming resigned from his colonial job and returned to China to seek a post, and soon after he was recruited into the shogunate by Zhang Zhidong, responsible for affairs such as translation and protocol.
Zhang Zhidong can be said to be an "alternative" in the late Qing Dynasty. He had a profound foundation in his old studies, and was admitted to the Rank of Tongzhi Jinshi, successively serving as a Hanlin and Cabinet Scholar. When he was studying politics in Sichuan, he established the Zun Jing College in Chengdu, hand-wrote two books, including "Xuan Xuan Language" and "Bibliographic Questions and Answers", teaching the scholars what books they should read, how to do learning, and how to cultivate their moral character. Although Zhang Zhidong broke away from the "Qing school" after the Sino-French War and became a "foreign affairs school", the eight-character policy of "middle school as the body and Western learning as the use" put forward in the "Persuasion Chapter" still allowed him to gain a firm foothold in several political struggles in the late Qing Dynasty and become a faction of his own.
At this time, Gu Hongming was just a young man of Chinese descent who did not even know a few Chinese characters, and the challenges faced by serving under scholarly bureaucrats such as Zhang Zhidong could be imagined. It is recorded that "when he wanted to learn the history of the scriptures from the people of the township party, he could not do it, and the scholars did not swim with it, which was called his habit of learning." The gentleman is striving alone, reciting the words of the hundred schools of poetry, although he cannot fully understand them, he also has to look at their general outlines, and he has not seen nothing in the Tao for several years. This remark shows that studying the Confucian classics is a necessary move for Gu to settle down.
If he wanted to do something under Zhang Zhidong's curtain, he had to be proficient in Sinology. From 1884 to 1909, Gu Hongming served as an aide at Zhang Zhidong's side for more than twenty years, an important period in his life. He changed from a "FanLao" who had to rely on the Kangxi Dictionary to learn the Analects to Luo Zhenyu's "Mellow Confucianism" of "Poor Four Books, The Mystery of the Five Classics, and Involvement in Qun Confucianism", which shows that his sinology skills have finally been recognized by mainstream academic circles.
Is such a "Chinese and Western learning" Gu Hongming as much as he himself expected? In fact, there may be "courtesy" there, but "favor" may not be. The Complete Works of Zhang Wenxiang (張文襄公) contains the commentaries written by Zhang Zhidong during his lifetime, from which there is no text indicating that he had raised Gu Hongming to the Qing court. Therefore, although Gu Hongming wrote many articles in the Western media during the Boxer Rebellion to vigorously defend the image of the imperial court and Empress Dowager Cixi, to a certain extent, it helped to bridge the "gap" between the Western invaders and the Qing court, but Gu was never promoted.
It was not until January 17, 1910, that the Xuantong Emperor specially opened the "Enke", and with his "study tour specially included in the first class", he gave Gu a "liberal arts scholar" origin. However, Gu Hongming did not seem to care about this hard-won title, and soon he resigned from the public office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and went to Shanghai to become the provost of the Higher Industrial School of the Ministry of Posts and Communications.
Zhang Zhidong
Although "Sinology" did not allow Gu Hongming to soar in the official arena, it expanded his horizons and made him realize his academic interests outside of Western studies.
Different from the "Qianjia Puxue", the scholar spent his life only to examine the chapters and sentences and famous things in the Four Books and Five Classics, Gu Hongming interpreted these Confucian classics more from the perspective of the meaning of the text or philosophy, and often compared the concepts in Western culture with which he was familiar, such as his belief that the word "freedom" in English corresponded to the Chinese "Tao", "the predicate of the Mandate of Heaven, the willfulness of the Tao", and "freedom" is both "the way of willfulness", that is, "the freedom to obey the Mandate of Heaven". He often played boldly with these classic texts, not limited by academic disciplines or teachers, and often had "innovative" words, such as his belief that the "Mandate of Heaven" that often appeared in the Analects was actually equivalent to the "law of God" in the West, and that Confucianism and Christian doctrine could be shared, and these views laid the groundwork for his subsequent translation of traditional Confucianism to the West.
Around 1888, Gu Hongming believed that the English translation of the Confucian classics circulating in the West at that time was too much in error, and most of the missionaries engaged in translation failed to fully understand the true connotation of Confucius's teachings, which made people misunderstood from time to time, so he began to translate the "Four Books" himself, of which the Analects, The Zhongyong and the University were published in 1899 and 1906 respectively, providing an important channel for Westerners to understand Chinese culture at that time.
It was also during this period that Gu Hongming became a thorough anti-Westernizer. He summed up his experience in studying traditional classics and his career as a staff member who "coordinated China and foreign countries", believing that relying on foreign military technology and even political systems could not change the situation of poverty and weakness in China at that time, and only the "way of Confucius and Mencius" was the scientific law and absolute truth that was not easy in the world. Chinese must adhere to their ancient "righteousness," despise the "benefits" of foreign affairs representatives, and carry forward the national cultural tradition of "righteousness" before "profit" and emphasis on "righteousness" over "profit, so that we can get rid of the predicament faced by Western countries and continue our ancient civilization." This anti-Westernization rhetoric abounds in his English editorials, where he complains about the Penghu Reform Law led by Kang Liang and the subsequent New Deal at the end of the Qing Dynasty, but explains to foreigners in a sympathetic and understanding tone the causes and consequences of the Boxer Rebellion.
This idea reached its peak in his English-language book The Story of the Oxford Movement in China. In October 1909, Zhang Zhidong died. The following year, in honor of Zhang Zhidong, Gu Hongming wrote the "Story of the Oxford Movement in China", which was translated into Chinese as "Qing Chuan" and published in Shanghai. The Oxford Movement was originally a series of movements launched by some conservative clergy of Oxford University in the 19th century to restore certain Roman Catholic doctrines and rituals in the Anglican Church, hoping to revitalize the social status of the Anglican Church.
The reason why Gu Hongming used the term "Oxford Movement" to refer to Zhang Zhidong's resistance to Westernization and its failure is partly because he believes that the goals pursued and the mistakes made by the cultural conservative movements of one China and one West have something in common, that is, they both want to resist the "erosion" of people's thinking and morality by highly developed material civilization, but the leaders of these two major movements have denied the absoluteness of relevant truths and immoral principles. Taking Gu Hongming's criticism of Zhang Zhidong as an example, he believes that Zhang's fundamental mistake is to believe in both Western studies and Kong Mengzhi studies, and try to reconcile the contradictions between the two, and Zhang's "utilitarian heart" and "external self-exaltation" led to his ultimate failure.
Gu Hongming believes that in the face of the destructive forces of modern European materialism, ancient China has its own way of dissolving, that is, by relying on the doctrine of Confucius and Mencius, first establishing a personal moral model, and then by extension, generalizing individual claims, it will certainly be able to gradually eliminate the scourge caused by Westernization.
In 1911, the famous German sinologist Wei Lixian compiled Gu Hongming's "Qing Chuan" and "Zun Wang" – which was a collection of editorials published by Gu Hongming in newspapers and periodicals such as zilinxi during the Boxer Rebellion – into a German book entitled "Defending China's Opposition to European Ideas: Critical Papers", which was well received by Neo-Kantianists such as Leonard Nelson and became a must-read for philosophy students at the University of Göttingen. And Gu Hongming himself has become like Tagore, so that Western celebrities rush to get acquainted with the "Oriental Celebrity", the famous British writer Maugham wrote after visiting him: "His study of Western philosophy ultimately only helps him to understand thoroughly: wisdom can only be found in Confucian classics in the end." He unreservedly accepted Confucianism, which responded satisfactorily to his spiritual needs, which in turn made Western learning fundamentally hollow. ”
The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 seemed to confirm Gu Hongming's long-predicted prediction that "the world of another day will be fierce, and micro-Chinese etiquette will not be able to overcome this disaster." After the outbreak of the war, European and American people in Beijing often gathered to discuss the prospects of the European war, and Gu Hongming, who was serving as a translator for the five-country bank group, was invited to give many Speeches in English, and in April 1915, he compiled these speeches into a book and published them in Beijing, that is, the book "The Spirit of Chinese", which was translated into Chinese as "Spring and Autumn Great Righteousness".
The main purpose of "Spring and Autumn Great Righteousness" is to promote the spirit and values of Chinese civilization. Gu Hongming believes that the First World War declared the bankruptcy of European civilization, specifically the failure of the "cult of gangsters" represented by Britain and the "cult of force" represented by Germany. Only Chinese civilization can save its crisis and lead Europe out of a "dead end".
In the book, he uses pure Chinese, Chinese women and Chinese language as representatives to argue. He believes that Chinese have four qualities, that is, profound, broad, simple and subtle, other ethnic groups may have one or two of them, but they cannot be as "beautiful as Chinese", they study Chinese culture, can make up for their own shortcomings.
He also argues in a comparative way that Western society is based on law, while Chinese society is based on morality, because Chinese "sexual goodness", Chinese society as a whole is moral, Chinese despise "force", love peace, and do not have military aristocrats that have been passed down from generation to generation since ancient times. The "Confucianism" developed in this society has both "religious" and "political" functions, which is incomparable to Western Christianity.
In the part of "Chinese women", Gu Hongming defended the bad habit of Chinese "taking concubines" and talked about the Chinese way of husband and wife, not in the love of men and women, but in the responsibility to the family and society.
As for the third part, "The Language of China," it is filled with Gu Hongming's praise for traditional chinese language. He believes that compared with English, the text is more elegant and concise, and it is a text that can only be used by truly educated people. Wen Yanwen can render delicate emotions, and it epitomizes the "subtle" characteristics of Chinese nationality.
The year after the publication of "Spring and Autumn Righteousness", the German version of the book was published in Jena, which aroused widespread attention and strong repercussions in German society, and thus Gu Hongming's international influence reached its peak. Frankly speaking, Gu Hongming's criticism of Western society has many pertinent points, many of which coincide with the views put forward by the German philosopher Spengler in the famous book "The Decline of the West". Gu's insistence on solving China's problems in a Chinese way was unique in the surging wave of "pan-Westernization" at that time. However, looking only for this solution to the "Chinese and Western problems" in traditional Chinese culture may make Europeans who have been tormented by war feel refreshed, but for China, which has been trapped for a long time, it can only be a useless prescription.
In January 1917, Chen Duxiu published an article entitled "Reply to the Crime of "New Youth" in the magazine "New Youth", officially offering the banners of "Mr. De" and "Mr. Sai", clearly proposing to support democracy and oppose feudal etiquette; and to support science and oppose the idea of national purity. This became the core of the subsequent May Fourth Movement and the May Fourth spirit. As the birthplace of the New Culture Movement and the May Fourth Movement, Peking University put Gu Hongming, a teacher at Peking University, in a very embarrassing situation. If Peking University can still respect the different academic positions of teachers, students will never buy this kind of "old" thinking.
After the outbreak of the May Fourth Movement, Luo Jialun, who had just written the "Declaration of the Whole Of Beijing Academic Circles", took the lead in attacking Gu Hongming. He took the article written by Gu Hongming in the Japanese-run "Beihua Bao" scolding the student movement and asked: "Mr. Gu, we have read the "Spring and Autumn Great Righteousness" that you wrote, and since you talk about the Spring and Autumn Great Righteousness, you should know that the Spring and Autumn Advocate is 'Inner China and Outer Yidi'. Gu Hongming was blue in the face, unable to speak for a minute or two, and finally stood up and knocked on the podium with his hand and said: "I wasn't even afraid of Yuan Shikai, I was still afraid of you?" ”
Luo Jialun's words quite have the meaning of "treating others with their own way", which also shows the general view of Gu Hongming in the Chinese intellectual circles at that time: as a writer who let the Western world understand traditional Chinese culture, Gu was very successful; as a thinker who advocated "Zun Kong Nigu", there were not many fans. In 1920, Gu Hongming resigned from his teaching post at Peking University, and from then until his death, he spent most of his time lecturing in Japan, hoping that Japan, the "last inheritor of Han and Tang civilization, could shoulder the great responsibility of promoting oriental civilization."
We may be able to call Gu Hongming "the last scholar-doctor.". He is full of economy, heavy on righteousness and light on profit, and even the style of "not surprising and endless" between conversations has achieved his "celebrity temperament". When he first learned from the West and planned to return to China, he probably only thought about how to apply what he had learned to this ancient land; and the study of Confucian classics made him think that he understood the essence of Chinese culture and wanted to carry it forward. However, in the face of the torrent of China's modernization in the early 20th century, Gu Hongming was destined to be just a "contrarian traveler", holding the banner of "Spring and Autumn Great Righteousness", walking alone on the stage of history and ending the curtain alone.
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