"Changming education is a lifelong wish, so he strives to come to Shulin." This is a good field for cultivation, and there is an autumn harvest to fight the talents. ”
This poem by Zhang Yuanji is used to bid farewell to colleagues who struggled together in the Commercial Publishing House. In just four short sentences, he expressed his lifelong belief that books should improve knowledge and educate people's wisdom. This was by no means a grandiose-sounding empty word, and he spent almost all his life fighting for it, bowing to the best of his ability, and dying.
Zhang Yuanji had spent decades painstakingly collecting thousands of ancient books, but in the second year of the September 18 Incident, he was destroyed by a cannonball. In an instant, the fire raged in the Commercial Press, thick smoke, paper ashes fluttering, thousands of ancient books turned into knee-high ashes... Perhaps in turbulent times, wars should have been frequent, but the words of the Japanese Kou later proved that all this was premeditated. What's going on here? And what is the purpose of the Japanese people's deliberations?
In 1867, Zhang Yuanji was born in the Shuxiang family, and from an early age he was influenced by his knowledge and showed his outstanding talent for learning, and he was bent on obtaining a meritorious name and hoping to honor his ancestors with the glory of the Emperor. Han Window studied hard for more than ten years, at the age of eighteen, he took the exam to show talent, at the age of twenty-three he was a high school student, and at the age of twenty-six he became a jinshi again. Later, he entered the Hanlin Academy and served as the head of the Punishment Department.
Such a young examination of this meritorious name was already a genius at that time. For a moment, Zhang Yuanji can be described as an infinite scenery, his career is bright, and everyone feels that he will have a great achievement. But perhaps it was precisely because of his wisdom and transparency that Zhang Yuanji could easily see that the Qing Dynasty at that time was actually the end of the crossbow, and if it continued to develop corruptly, it would eventually lead to extinction.
Therefore, when the Guangxu Emperor summoned him alone, Zhang Yuanji unreservedly expressed his opinions on the reform of the reform of the reform. After forty articles of the Fa- and forty-point of view, he asked for the Holy Will, hoping to vigorously develop industry. Who expected that the next day, Empress Dowager Cixi would launch a coup d'état, and the restoration and reform law would come to an absurd end just one hundred days later.
Perhaps it was a mistake to pin hopes on the Guangxu Emperor, who had no real power, or on Yuan Shikai and the Western powers, but this movement was avant-garde after all, and to a certain extent, it promoted the development of ideas. Although it was meaningful, the ministers associated with it at that time suffered, Zhang Yuanji was directly dismissed from his post, and Cixi also said that he would never use it again, and Zhang Yuanji withdrew from the political stage in disgrace.
At the end of Zhang Yuanji's road, Li Hongzhang could not bear to bury his talents, and introduced him to the position of dean of nanyang public school translation college, mainly responsible for translating excellent foreign works. Under his management, Yan Fu's translation of "The Original Wealth" (that is, Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations") was successfully published, and this classic of economics was published.
Undoubtedly, Zhang Yuanji's ability can bear this "fragrant food", as long as he continues to do it safely, he can not only protect the family's food and clothing, but also fulfill the concept of educating people and strengthening the country in his heart. But three years later, Zhang Yuanji made a surprising decision - he resolutely resigned from the Nanyang Public School Translation College and chose to join the Commercial Press.
At that time, the Commercial Press was nothing more than a workshop-style printing workshop, which was different from the Nanyang Public School Translation College, and his move also aroused speculation from everyone, and later people learned from his farewell poem that he had already connected the Commercial Press with the modern revolution of Chinese education. Zhang Yuanji is eager to cultivate more Western-style talents, hoping to popularize education and strengthen the country, and nanyang public college's almost fixed scale will be difficult to meet his goals.
For the sake of the motherland's prosperity, some people have thrown their heads and spilled their blood to fight on the front line, some people have embarked on the road to serve the officials and the people, and some people have written a book to carve the soul of the nation into a word by word... Zhang Yuanji, on the other hand, chose to publish. He painstakingly collected and proofread a large number of ancient books that were scattered among the people, participated in all the book publishing projects in the Commercial Press, hired a large number of talents with educational aspirations, organized the translation of a large number of foreign works, and compiled a full set of textbooks from primary school to university...
Under the efforts of Zhang Yuanji, in 1926, the Commercial Press changed from a small factory to the largest publisher in the Far East, with branches throughout the country and becoming a cultural center for popularizing and disseminating new knowledge and new learning since the late Qing Dynasty.
In addition to compiling and publishing books, Zhang Yuanji spent the most effort on collecting ancient books. At that time, the political situation was turbulent, and many valuable books were displaced and lost. Worried that he would miss the collection of books, he put up a sign in front of his house to "buy old books". In order to find a suitable edition for publication, he not only sought out public and private bibliophiles to borrow and print them to achieve perfection, but also specially published advertisements for the acquisition of ancient books in newspapers, and bought rare books at high prices from the masses.
Once, Zhang Yuanji learned that the extremely precious Collection of Song edition books "Song Lou" was about to be acquired by the Japanese, and without hesitation, he immediately left for the collector's descendant Lu Shi and tried to keep this precious national treasure, even if he needed one-fifth of the assets of the Commercial Press at that time, he generously gave it, but this was still 20,000 yuan different from the "100,000" asked price of Lu Shi.
Seeing that the collection of books was about to fall into the hands of the Japanese, Zhang Yuanji was so anxious that he persuaded rongqing, the minister in charge of books, to allocate funds for the acquisition, but the latter ignored it. Helpless, Zhang Yuanji had to borrow money to raise money, but in the end the collection was still bought by the Japanese, whenever he thought of this, Zhang Yuanji was full of guilt, he said in a letter to his friends: "I regret it now, every time I think about it, I feel heartache." ”
Zhang Yuanji worked hard and put all his energy and efforts on books, and although he was so successful in business, he lived a life of frugality and frugality, and a lot of money was used to collect ancient books. From the very beginning of his career at the Commercial Press, he received no salary every year, only received dividends, and demanded that his dividend share be lower than others. Not only that, he never put on a feast, did not waste extravagantly, did not covet cheap, and even paid off the money that others helped him wash his photos and write telegrams, and in the end, his salary was all given as an education fund to those in need.
Year after year, day after day, in the wind and rain, in the collection of books, proofreading, and annotations, the collection of ancient books and rare books in Hanfen Building (the main building of the Oriental Library) even exceeded that of the National Library at that time, and was also known as the first library in Asia. Later, Zhang Yuanji built the famous Oriental Library on the basis of Han Fen Lou and opened it to the public, he did not hesitate, never forgot his original intention, and hoped that more people could see ancient documents and appreciate the charm of learning.
But who would have expected that the ancient books that had cost him decades of painstaking efforts would be destroyed under the gunfire of the Japanese Kou. In 1932, during the "1.28" Songhu War, a bomb landed in the ink warehouse, and in an instant, the raging fire swallowed up the Commercial Press like a blood basin. Screams, cries, panicked footsteps... The sound was incessant, and the dissolved lead word spread and flowed on the ground. Immediately afterward, the Japanese invaders also lit another fire in the Oriental Library, and the ancient books that had been painstakingly collected by Zhang Yuanji for twenty years were reduced to ashes as the fire turned into ashes, smoke rose everywhere, and paper ashes scattered everywhere.
When the fire was extinguished, the Commercial Press lost 80% of its assets, and the 460,000 books in the Oriental Library were all destroyed, and the paper ashes burned out were even buried in the knees. These 460,000 volumes include more than 3,700 kinds of rare books and more than 35,000 volumes, and these few remaining treasures of Chinese civilization have disappeared into the world and cease to exist. Seeing this, Zhang Yuanji wept bitterly and sighed in the sky: "Twenty years of painstaking efforts into baht inches, a flash of books for ashes." ”
Later, Zhang Yuanji also said to his wife: "This is my sin! If I don't collect these books, if I don't keep them in a centralized way, and still scatter them all over the country, I won't be able to escape this catastrophe!"
In fact, Zhang Yuanji was also dizzy, if it was scattered all over the country, it might be bought for the great powers! But the result is truly sad.
Later, the Japanese invaders said: "I blew up a street of you, and tomorrow I can repair it, but if I blow up the Commercial Press, you will never be able to recover." And this also proves that this irreparable national disaster is actually premeditated by the invaders. They not only want to invade the land of the Chinese nation, but also want to deprive the Chinese people of their minds and let the people live under ignorance forever and sleep forever.
But they did not expect that the strong resilience of the Chinese nation, in this nation, there are heroes like Zhang Yuanji who are willing to burn their lives in order to popularize education. After the commercial press was hit by a fire, Zhang Yuanji spent the next few decades devoting himself to revival work.
Zhang Yuanji and his family
Seeing that the Japanese invaders were becoming more and more arrogant, the eight-year War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression began. Zhang Yuanji adheres to the bottom line and will never serve the Japanese. Even if life is hard, even to the point where he needs to sell words to survive, he has not hesitated to waver. In 1941, Zhang Yuanji and Ye Jingkui lost their homes and actually set up a library, until the founding of New China, the library had a collection of 220,000 books, which was so unimaginable in those stormy days!
On August 14, 1959, Zhang Yuanji died at the age of 93. He left behind a poem:
"Good stinky skin bag, busy for you for ninety years, and now it is time to hand over; In such a new world, even though I have not lived to be a hundred years old, I have seen peace in my body. ”
Zhang Yuanji dedicated all his life to the motherland, to the people, to books, and his whole life was devoted to the rise of the country. Even if the Japanese invaders devoured hundreds of thousands of books with shells and flames, they could never kill the loyalty of a patriot!