Wenhui scholar | Cheng Zhangcan: Yanyuan remembers Honggong every time

[Ancient Chinese books are vast, and in order to facilitate the retrieval and use of them, it is necessary to scientifically sort out the classics. The number of reference books such as citations in traditional texts is small, and often not rigorous enough to be easy to use. Hong Ye believes that important classics must be compiled and introduced, and especially important classics must be compiled and quoted word for word. 】

Hongye's academic research methods and style have the characteristics of combining Chinese and Western. This is reflected not only in the selection of topics for his treatises, but also in his set of ideas and concepts that have been codified.

The reference reference book reading room of the Harvard Yenching Library is very spacious, and on the shelves are a set of 64 kinds of 81 volumes of Various Chinese Classics compiled and published by the Harvard Yenching Yingzhi Compilation Office. Hong Ye (1893-1980), with the name Zhengji, luling, simmering lotus, a native of Houguan (now Fuzhou), Fujian, was trained at a young age, studied at Fuzhou Yinghua College, and later studied in the United States, and obtained a master's degree from the University of Michigan. From 1923 onwards, he taught at Yenching University as a professor of the Department of History, concurrently serving as provost, director of the Department of History, director of the Library, etc., presiding over the Journal of Yenching and the Compilation Office. After 1946, he lived in Cambridge and continued to teach, research, and write books at the Harvard Yenching Society. In August 1995, I was invited to be a visiting scholar of the Harvard Yenching Society, and for the following year, I often sat in this reading room and read books, and the eyes of this sage ancestor looked down on me from the wall.

I first learned about Hong Ye when I was studying in the History Department of Peking University. The main body of today's Peking University campus is the campus of Yenching University, just like the name Yanyuan, there are traces of Yenching University everywhere on the campus. In the 1920s, Yenching University purchased land in the area of Zhongguancun, Haidian, on the western outskirts of Beijing, and built a new campus. Hong Ye participated in the planning and construction of the campus of Yenching University that year. Two of Hong Ye's early papers are related to the history of Yanyuan. One is "Ming Lu Qianzhai Lü Yuheng Fusun Second Epitaph Inscription Examination", originally published in the third issue of the "Yanjing Journal" published in 1928, and later included in the "Hongye Theory Collection" (Zhonghua Bookstore, 1981); the other is "Spoon Garden Catalogue Examination", published by the Peking Harvard Yenching Society in 1933. After reading these two articles and walking in the Yan Garden, you can not only get the guidance of visiting the ancients and thinking about the humor of the ancients, but also gain practical historical and geographical knowledge.

I entered Peking University in 1979. When I first entered school, the dormitory was arranged on the 32nd floor, and the following spring it was moved to the 38th floor, where it lived until graduation. At that time, the office of the Department of History was in the Second Academy, and all letters with the "Department of History of Peking University" written on the address were sent to the Second Academy. Most of the places where we take classes are in the Literature and History Building, the Biology Building, and the First Teaching, all in the north of Yannan Garden. The library is located directly north of Yannan Garden. Therefore, taking the dormitory as the starting point, whether it is to go to the department to get letters, to go to class, to go to the library, or to hang out in the unnamed lake, the most common shortcut is through Yannan Garden. In the past four years, the number of times passing through Yannan Park has been too numerous to be counted. I know that Yannanyuan used to live in many famous teachers from Yenching University, and there were also many famous scholars from Peking University at that time. I also know that No. 54 Yannanyuan was once the former residence of Hong Ye, and Hong Ye was not only a predecessor in the field of history, but also a sage of my hometown. Among the famous teachers of the history department of Peking University in the 1980s, there were many graduates of Yenching University, most of whom were protégés of Hong Ye.

According to Xiao Gongquan, who taught at Yenching University from 1930 to 1932, there were three kinds of dormitories and dormitories for yenching university staff at that time. The first is the newly built Western-style houses in Yandong Garden and Yannan Garden within the campus, the second is the Chinese-style houses built in the former Qing Dynasty in Langrun Garden, and the third is the private houses purchased or rented by the school and scattered near the school. The first kind of "foreign flavor" is the most sufficient, the second kind of environment is the most beautiful, and the third kind is the most convenient ("Asking for Advice and Sayings - Xiao Gongquan's Memories of Governing Learning"), each with its own advantages. Hong Ye came early, it can be said that he was the elder of Yanda, and he lived in Yannan Garden, where Yanda's "foreign flavor" was the most abundant. According to the "Biography of Hong Ye", this house was designed by Hong Ye himself, there was a garden outside the house, purple vines were planted, and there was a fireplace inside the house to withstand the cold. The study has an additional portal for easy access. Hong Ye was hospitable, and most of the colleagues who received visiting colleagues were in the study.

Hong Ye concurrently served as the director of the Compilation Department at Yenching University, and organized personnel to compile indexes, which was one of his important tasks. To this day, on the shelves of reference books in many university libraries, you can still see this set of introduction books from the Harvard Yenching Introduction Compilation Office. In the 1980s, there were quite few reference books in literature and history, and this set of Harvard Yenching Society was the best tool book to use. When I was doing my master's and doctoral dissertations at Nanjing University, I often searched and used this set of reference books. My master's thesis is entitled "Liu Kezhuang Chronology", and to check the literature of the Song Dynasty, I often have to check the "Forty-seven Biographies of the Song Dynasty". The book was first published by the Harvard Yenching Inlethig in 1939, and reprinted by the Zhonghua Book Company in 1959 and the Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House in 1986, which shows the enduring influence of the book.

Hong Ye's contribution to this set of induced series of books is multifaceted. In addition to the orderly organization of personnel, the carefully selected bibliography and editions of classics, and the long preface with rich academic content, Hong Ye's contribution is also reflected in his creation of a set of search methods- Chinese characters. Ancient Chinese books are vast, even the most powerful human brain can not memorize them all, in order to facilitate the retrieval and use, it is necessary to implement scientific collation of classics to achieve "number and word management". Hong Ye has been familiar with ancient books since childhood, and deeply appreciates the pain of reading books without knowing how to use reference books, and the number of reference books similar to those in traditional classics is small, and often not strict enough to be easy to use. Hong Ye believes that important texts must be compiled and quoted, and especially important classics must be compiled verbatim, which he calls "concordance".

In order to change the concept that the Chinese people despise the compilation of introduction and neglect the use of introduction, he wrote a long paper on the scale of a monograph, "Introduction to Say", which elaborated on the necessity and importance of introduction, and also gave a specific explanation of how to compile the technical problems of introduction. The first issue involved in codification techniques is the problem of orthography. The existing various orthography methods have shortcomings of one kind or another. Although the pinyin character detection method is simple, but at that time China did not promote Mandarin, the pronunciation of local dialects is very different, not to mention that some strange characters Many people do not know the pronunciation, which is inconvenient to use. The orthography of the head of the department involves too many heads, and it is not easy to determine the affiliation. The stroke check method has a stroke calculation error and is not simple. The four-corner number detection method invented by Wang Yunwu was only promoted at that time, and then gradually expanded, but how to remember the four-corner number is also a problem. In Hong Ye's view, all of the above-mentioned orthography methods are not ideal.

In 1930, the Compilation Office began to run on a trial basis, and Hong Ye, with the help of Nie Chongqi, Li Shuchun, and Tian Jizong, introduced a new set of character checking methods: "Chinese characters? This is the name of this new orthography: and the five characters included represent the five fonts that we have strongly divided. 'Huh?' The word "put" and "take out" originally had the meaning of "put" and "take out", and we borrowed it to illustrate the stove of 'weaving' and 'detecting'. 'Compilation' is how the person who compiles the quotation turns the 'text' into a 'record', and compiles the 'record' into the introduction. 'Check out' is how the person who is drawn is led to the location of the recording and can be detected. "Chinese characters? The chinese character detection method divides Chinese characters into five fonts: single body (middle), baotuo body (guo), upper and lower body (character), left shell body (庋), left and right body (?), the five fonts are code names of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then each word takes four corner strokes, and arranges them in order of numbers, with the numbers small in front and the large ones in the back. This method of word checking refers to the four-corner number checking method in terms of four-corner stroke numbering, but there are at least three aspects of innovation. The first is to divide Chinese characters into five fonts, which are numbered as categories according to the font, which is the first number for this character; secondly, in terms of stroke numbering, according to "庋?". The stroke order of the two characters is to number ten strokes and their similar strokes in turn, such as (0), one (1), 丿 (2), ten (3), and (4), 扌 (5), 糸 (6), factory (7), mesh (8), eight (9). Again, after the four-corner number is obtained, the total number of squares contained in the word is calculated, and the number attached to it is counted as 0 if there is no square. In this way, each Chinese character has a 6-digit code, with fewer heavy codes, easy to remember and easy to check. This set of character checking method divides Chinese characters into five font structures, reflecting the original understanding of the glyph structure of Chinese characters, which has its own characteristics, and has its own advantages compared with the four-corner number checking method. Unfortunately, this set of typography methods was only used in the Harvard Yanjing Introduction Series, and did not promote more use in dictionary checking, so there was no four-corner number checking method popular. However, it still had a great impact on the series of books introduced by Harvard Yanjing, and together with the introduction of the series of books, promoted the scientific collation of classical documents and promoted the progress of traditional literary and historical research in the twentieth century.

In 1980, Hong Ye died of illness in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The following year, his protégés compiled a book called "Collected Works on Hongye Theory" and published it at the Zhonghua Bookstore as a tribute to Hongye. In 1996, Hebei Education Publishing House published a series of books entitled "Modern Chinese Academic Classics", and among the first bibliographies was the "HongYe Yang Liansheng Volume". As the name suggests, this is a full affirmation of Hong Ye's contribution to modern Chinese scholarship. Judging from the "Main Works of Mr. Hong Ye" attached to this volume, Hong Ye has very few monographs in his lifetime, except for "Introduction to Say" (Beiping Yingde Compilation Office, 1930), "Spoon Garden Catalogue Examination" (Beiping Harvard Yanjing Society, 1933), "Three Kinds of Qing Painting Biographies" (Beiping Harvard Yanjing Society, 1933), and "China's Greatest Poet - Du Fu" (Harvard University Press, 1952), the rest are single papers. However, none of these single papers are empty, and most of them are long, and the academic weight is heavy, which is where Hong Ye's lifelong academic strength is condensed. For example, his treatise, "Corlegia's World Map," is 70,000 or 80,000 words long, equivalent to a monograph. The Spring and Autumn Classics are both nearly 100,000 words long. The Book of Rites also contains 80,000 to 90,000 words, "is a carefully structured examination of the origins of the Two Han Rites, which elucidates the difficult issues that have been debated for a long time in the classical and non-classical literature records of Chinese dynasties for two thousand years, examines the historical materials taught and compiled by the Book of Rites and three other rituals, the Book of Rites, the Li Gu Jing, and the Zhou Guan", "Because the Preface to the Introduction of the Book of Rites was first published and published in a variety of quotations, (Hong Ye) won the 1937 Stanislas of the School of Epigraphy in Paris, France Julien, a work of Ru Lian) bonus" (Wang Zhonghan, "A Short Biography of Mr. Hong Ye"). The RuLian Prize has a high reputation in the European and American sinology circles, and Hong Ye is the second Chinese scholar to receive this award. In 1936, the Chinese scholar Wang Jingru won this award for the first time, a year before Hong Ye.

As a scholar, Hong Ye's experience is quite different from others. In his early years, he received an education in traditional Chinese homeschool in China, and then was admitted to a new-style middle school and then studied at the Church-run Heling Yinghua College. After graduating from high school, he went to the United States to study, earning a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts degree, followed by a Bachelor of Theology degree. Hong Ye stood at the junction of the new and the old, The Middle and the West, from the perspective of educational background, the education he received was a combination of East and West, and his academic research methods and styles also had the characteristics of both East and West. This is reflected not only in the selection of topics for his treatises, but also in his set of ideas and concepts that have been codified. He likes to take the form of monograph-scale long papers, overcome difficulties, and introduce a new paradigm for modern Chinese historiography, which is particularly worthy of attention. During his teaching at Yenching University, he devoted himself to cultivating a number of historical talents, many of whom became the leaders of Chinese historiography in the twentieth century. Unfortunately, because he has been in China for a long time, fewer and fewer people in the country know his name.

In the spring of 1995, Ms. Chen Yuxian, the author of "The Biography of Hong Ye", and her husband, Professor Ronald Egan, went to Nanjing University to give a lecture. Professor Elonno was invited to give an academic lecture at the Faculty of Letters of NTU, accompanied by Chen Yuxian. That's how I got to know two professors. While chatting after the lecture, I learned from Chen Yuxian that the simplified version of her "Hong Ye Biography" Chinese was about to be published by Peking University Press. Soon after that, I went abroad to visit the Yenching Society at Harvard for a year. In and out of the Harvard Yenching Society and the Harvard Yenching Library, I often hear Hong Ye's name mentioned, and I often hear anecdotes about him. At that time, Hong Ye had been dead for 15 years. Listening to his memories, I can only think of the brilliance of my predecessors on the one hand, and sigh with joy and lateness on the other hand.

Professor Han Nan, who was then the director of the Harvard Yenching Society, told me that in the 1930s, when the Yenching University Library bought books in Beiping, it often purchased books for the Hanhe Library of Harvard University (later the Harvard Yenching Library) at the same time, sharing resources with each other. This can be confirmed in the "Biography of Hong Ye". The biography of Hong Ye writes that when Hong Ye was the director of the Yenching University Library, he "not only contributed a lot to the Yenching Library's collection, but also to harvard's East Asian collection." He asked Qiu Kaiming, who was in charge of Harvard University's East Asian book collection, to yanda to rectify the books. Later, when I bought Chinese, Japanese or Korean books for the Yenching University Library, I also bought a copy for Harvard. When I came across a good book, because Harvard had more money, I bought it for Harvard, and photocopied a copy for Yanda's collection. Books that had research value and could not be bought on the market, he tried every means to borrow and photocopy, one for Yanda, one for Harvard. "Once, on the shelves of harvard's Yenching Library, I found a manuscript of the late Qing Dynasty Fuzhou scholar Lin Changyi's notebook "Yan Geng Xulu". Perhaps this manuscript is included in the Harvard Yenching Library, which is related to Hong Ye.

In the autumn of 1996, I returned to China after my study tour, and soon Bought the "Biography of Hong Ye", which was published at the beginning of the year. Winter vacation back to the province, travel by train, I took the "Hong Ye Biography" to read on the way. Reading a passage in which Hong Ye was unconscious and spoke Fuzhou to his grandchildren around him, I couldn't help but be moved.

Author: Cheng Zhangcan, Professor, School of Letters, Nanjing University

Editor: Chen Shaoxu

Editor-in-Charge: Junyi Li

*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.