The famous historian and sinologist Jonathan D. Spence died at his home in Connecticut on Christmas Day 25 at the age of 85. He is one of the most high-profile American sinologists of our time, and his books such as "In Search of Modern China", "Taiping Heavenly Kingdom" and "The Death of Wang Shi" have become historical classics. According to the Associated Press, Shi Jingqian's wife, Annping Chin, revealed that the cause of death was a complication related to Parkinson's disease.
The history of learning takes Sima Qian as a model
Born in Surrey, England in 1936, his father worked in a publishing house and art gallery, and his mother was passionate about all things France. In 1954, after graduating from winchester College for boys, Shi Jingqian served in the army for two years before entering Clare College, Cambridge University. There, he became the editor of the school newspaper and began co-editing the literary magazine Grant.
In 1959, after receiving his bachelor's degree, Shi Jingqian went to Yale University for graduate studies under the famous sinologist Mary Wright. Through Rui Marie, Shi Jingqian met Fang Zhaoyao, an expert in Ming and Qing history, and under his guidance, Shi Jingqian became the first scholar in the West to use the Qing Dynasty archives of the National Palace in Taipei to do research. Shi Jingqian's Chinese name was also taken by Fang Zhaoyao, which means "Jingyang Sima Qian". Shi Jingqian's doctoral dissertation,"Cao Yin and Kangxi," focuses on the rise and fall of the family of Cao Yin, a favorite of Kangxi, and describes the interaction between the rulers and the representatives of the Jiangnan region, portraying the racial contradictions and social conflicts under the appearance of the Kangxi prosperity. In 1966, the paper was published as a book, and in the same year, Shi Jingqian joined the Yale faculty and continued to teach until his retirement in 2008.
▲ Shi Jingqian was in Yale.
Shi Jingqian's academic achievements have been recognized around the world, receiving a total of eight honorary degrees, and have been invited to become a visiting professor at Peking University and an honorary professor at Nanjing University. In 1979, Shi received the Guggenheim Prize; in 1985, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and in 1988, he received the MacArthur Genius Award. Shi Jingqian's first trip to China was in 1974, when he traveled with 14 Yale professors to Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
▲ In 2014, Shi Jingqian signed a speech for students at Peking University.
Shi Jingqian's marriage to his first wife ended in divorce. In 1993, he married his current wife, Kim An-ping. Jin Anping was also a disciple of Fang Zhaoyao and also taught in the history department of Yale University, specializing in the history of Chinese thought.
Classic "In Search of Modern China"
In his lifetime, Shi Jingqian wrote more than a dozen books on China, in addition to a large number of commentaries, essays, and speeches. One of the most famous is In Search of Modern China, a nearly 870-page work that dates from the heyday of the Ming Dynasty in the 17th century to the late 1980s. The book, as the title suggests, shi Jingqian introduces Chinese history like a detective novel, declassifying one of the world's largest, most populous and most complex countries for Western readers, the Associated Press said. Shi Jingqian mentions "models of generational obedience and the concept of obligation" and rebellions and revolutions aimed at breaking these patterns, whether it is the fall of the Ming Dynasty in 1644, the abdication of the last emperor in 1911, or the victory of the Chinese Communist Party in the 1940s.
"In Search of Modern China" has not only been praised by critics, but also made it onto the New York Times bestseller list, and the book is still widely used in American college classrooms. "No matter how complex the issue, the history he (Shi Jingqian) narrates is always vivid, always concrete, and always understandable," wrote Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, a New York Times book reviewer. ”
Shi Jingqian has been teaching at Yale for more than 40 years and is one of the most popular teachers in the school. Much of The Quest for Modern China builds on the content of his lectures. Susan Jakes, a former student, journalist and Chinese scholar, recalls that the pace of Shi Jingqian's classes was methodical and fascinating, taking into account both grand themes and precise details. "These lectures give the impression of a well-crafted short story, sometimes even a long novel. Their titles are deceptive: 'The Landscape Below', 'Everything is in Translation', 'Breaking into the World', 'Bombs and Pianos' – they progress layer by layer and end with amazing revelations or quiet verses. ”
"The most storytelling historian"
Shi Jingqian's literary brilliance has laid a model for the "narrative turn" of Chinese history and reached the realm of "unity of literature and history". His writing focuses on the interesting and informative nature of the text, and most of his works focus on the fate and struggle of individuals in the turbulent torrent of Modern Chinese history.
Shi Jingqian is known as "the most storytelling historian", and his "Death of Wang" is to extract from a few lines in ancient books a deceased Wang who has neither life nor emotion, is full of blanks, and does not even have a name, and then restores the "crime scene" of her being killed by her husband based on other historical materials. The historical materials on which "The Death of Wang" relies are both local chronicles and fictional works such as "Liaozhai Zhiyi", which makes the whole work have "imaginations" such as demons, spells, and assassins.
In another work, Kangxi, Shi Jingqian uses an unusual technique to bring the historical figure of Kangxi to the reader. "Shi Jingqian introduced us to the monarch in his own words," the historian and sinologist Frederic E. Wakeman said in a speech he gave when Shi Jingqian became president of the American Historical Association in 2004. The book is controversial because the emperor's speech is collaged from countless sources in different contexts. But Kangxi's voice was vivid and convincing, and the book pushed the boundaries of traditional sinologist audiences and reached the wider public. ”
The late American sinologist John King Fairbank said in his evaluation of Shi Jingqian: "By truly writing about the character of the characters and their situation, Shi Jingqian lovingly led us into the lives of these people, making us feel as if we had witnessed all this with our own eyes, as if we had direct communication with them." This feeling can only be given in the best historical works. Historian Xu Zhuoyun once said: "Give Shi Jingqian a phone book, he can start from the first page of the name of the person, and make up the last person's name." ”
News and image sources: The Associated Press, The New York Times, Sohu, some of the pictures are from the Internet
iWeekly Weekend Pictorial exclusive manuscript, please do not reprint without permission