Kang Youwei, the leader of the reform faction at the end of the Qing Dynasty, launched the "Book on the Bus", and Liang Qichao led the "Penghu Reform Law", and has always appeared as a positive figure in history textbooks, with many students and a high reputation, because he was a native of Nanhai, Guangdong, and was once known as the "Saint of the South China Sea". At the end of the nineteenth century, the beginning of the twentieth century, who did not know that there was a "Kang sage" in China?
Textbooks generally give Kang Youwei a very positive evaluation: Kang Youwei was the most influential thinker in the late Qing Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty, and in the last years of the 19th century, he led the Enlightenment movement in Chinese intellectual circles. First in 1895, he wrote on the bus, and then he wrote and advised on the way he set off a top-down political reform. Before Kang Youwei, no thinker dared to repeatedly present to the emperor their proposals and ideas for reforming China's political system as Kang Youwei did. In the history of our country, for the first time, he advocated the combination of Chinese and Western political systems, and was the first to propose a constitutional form of government in China, and put forward a specific constitutional plan: to revitalize civil rights, set up parliaments, conduct elections and local autonomy, and gradually learn from the Western constitutional experience under the premise of adhering to the Confucian tradition and imperial system. At the same time, some of the books he wrote, such as the Datong Shu, exposed the darkness of society to a certain extent, negated the feudal program and the common name religion, and poured out the suffering of the people. Many unique insights have been put forward, which have played a certain role in the awakening of the Chinese nation.
So, what is the difference between Kang Youwei and textbooks?
First, cling to the powerful. Kang Youwei, who had a bad career, never interrupted his political activities in Beijing, and in order to climb Weng Tonggong, Kang Youwei wrote a book "Guangyi Zhou Shuangyi" when he traveled to Beijing, touting Weng Tonggong's father and son as great calligraphers. Weng Tonggong therefore received Kang Youwei and recommended him to the Guangxu Emperor. In addition to attaching himself to high-ranking officials, Kang Youwei would write letters to officials at all levels to ask for money every time he entered Kyoto. If someone gives him 12 taels of silver, he will call him a "great sage"; if he gives him eight or four taels, he will call him a "great gentleman".
Second, the works are plagiarized. Both the "Examination of the New Study of The Apocrypha" and the "Examination of Confucius's Reformation of the System" are both representative works of Kang Youwei, which have been praised by later generations as masterpieces of traditional Chinese studies, and are suspected of plagiarizing Zhang Zhidongmen Sheng Liao Ping's "Zhisheng Chapter" and "Breaking Liu Chapter". Kang Youwei once visited Liao Ping, a master of scripture in Guangzhou, and most of the views in the book are borrowed from two books written by Liao Ping.
Third, he advocated equality between men and women and monogamy, but he had a large number of wives and concubines, and he was merciful everywhere. Kang Youwei, known as a reformist, had loudly advocated the abolition of the feudal vice of polygamy in China and advocated the civilized monogamy of the West, but he himself married one wife and five concubines. When Kang Youwei was 19 years old, he married Zhang Yunzhu, a 22-year-old, and gave birth to 4 girls and 1 boy for Kang Youwei. At the age of 39, Kang Youwei married the 18-year-old Liang Suijue as a concubine, and Liang Suijue gave birth to 2 girls and 2 boys for Kang Youwei. Kang Youwei was 51 years old, and when he was in exile overseas, he married a 17-year-old middle school student He Xuli as a second concubine, and she bore Kang Youwei a son and a daughter. At the age of 53, Yasuyuki married the 16-year-old Japanese maid Tsuruko Ichioka as his third concubine, and Ichioka Tsuruko bore Yasumi a daughter. At the age of 60, Kang Youwei married the young Liao Dingzheng as the fourth concubine, and Liao Dingzheng also gave birth to a daughter for Kang Youwei. At the age of 62, Kang Youwei married Zhang Guang, who was only 19 years old, as his fifth concubine.
Fourth, the authenticity of the "book on the bus" is questionable. According to the historical materials provided by Huang Zhangjian's "Research on the History of the Change of Law" and Zhang Jianwei's "Wen Gu Peng Shu Nian" and other works, in May 1895, Kang Youwei's so-called "joint bus of more than 1,200 people in eighteen provinces" by himself was actually fake, and the number of people was virtual. In fact, Kang Youwei did not really practice "shangshu" at that time! He only contacted some people from all over the world who had gone to Beijing in front of the Matsufuan Gate to discuss the preparation of the book. But in the end, it did not work. The reason was that Kang Youwei learned from an internal eunuch that he had passed the jinshi examination, and if he took the lead in the book, the "jinshi" name that was about to arrive would be canceled, so he flinched.
Fifth, after the textbook Kang Youwei went into exile, he gave speeches everywhere to rescue the Guangxu Emperor, but in real history, he forged a photo of himself and the Guangxu Emperor, as well as the edict, took advantage of the patriotic heart of overseas Chinese, deceived them that he wanted to return to China with money to rescue the Guangxu Emperor, and raised a huge amount of fifteen million yuan.
Have Kang Youwei's exploits ever been exaggerated? Are people today too harsh on Kang Youwei? Time will pay history a fair hand, I believe that with the study of historians, we will see an objective evaluation of Kang Youwei.
When discussing the political culture of the Song Dynasty, Mr. Yu Yingshi divided the scholars into two well-defined classes: professional bureaucrats and scholars who claimed to be promoting the Tao, and if this model also applied to the late Qing Dynasty, Kang Liang clearly belonged to the intellectuals who pretended to be self-reliant on the reconstruction of the way of governance and were "outside the system". However, in this part of the population, there is sometimes a contradiction between grand goals and responsibilities and their own character defects. Zhang Yaohe has a brilliant summary of Luo Longji: "He is a frank gentleman and a villain who is always related", so why not say that Kang Youwei is both an ideal "saint" and a mediocre person of practice.