I'm thirty out of eighty. Over the past decades, in addition to reading and writing articles by myself, I have assisted three gentlemen: Mr. Fan Wenlan, Mr. Zhang Shizhao, and Mr. Kuang Yaming. All three gentlemen have their own achievements, and in short, they are all famous figures of our time. Being able to help them do something has taught me a lot. The example and words of the three gentlemen have benefited me immensely to this day.
Mr. Fan Wenlan is a native of Shaoxing, Zhejiang. Shaoxing is not only a famous historical and cultural city, it also has a great relationship with the Xinhai Revolution. At the time of the Xinhai Revolution, there were three associations: the Huaxing Society, the Xingzhong Society, and the Guangfu Society, which together were the Alliance. Huaxinghui was founded by Huang Xing and others, and the area is mainly in Hunan and Hubei; Xingzhonghui was founded by Sun Yat-sen and others, and the area is mainly in Guangdong and overseas; The Restoration Society is mainly in Zhejiang, especially in Shaoxing. The celebrities of the Restoration Society, such as Cai Yuanpei, Xu Xilin, and Qiu Jin, are all from Shaoxing, so Shaoxing can be said to be the birthplace and base camp of the Restoration Society.
Fan Lao's former residence, I went to see it specifically, when I went to build a building, most of the Fan family's houses were demolished, the news media, social people did not approve of the demolition of Fan Lao's former residence, and a few that have not been demolished have been retained. There is a river opposite his home, and next to the river is the Datong School, which was founded by Xu Xilin and Qiu Jin. They founded this school in the name of educating students to prepare for the uprising. Train students to carry guns or something, in other words, there are weapons, and soldiers also have them. Fan Lao's home is across the river, this side is the Chase School, and this side is Fan Lao's home. Fan Lao's elder brother's name is Fan Wenji, who studied in Datong School and later stayed in the school. One day, Fan Lao's mother bought crabs and asked Fan Lao to go to the school across the river to ask his brother to come back and eat crabs. The next day, there was a report that the bandit Pham Van Ji had died for resisting arrest. In fact, it was a mistake, and it was another person who died, not Fan Lao's brother. But Brother Fan is fine, because he is not "dead". However, the name "Fan Wenji" can no longer be used, so later it is equivalent to saying that Fan Wenji no longer has a "name", which is a very interesting thing. This incident had a significant impact on Fan Lao.
Fan Lao studied in the middle school in Pudong, Shanghai, which is a good school, and the principal is Huang Yanpei. This has been related to me since then, so things often happen by chance. Fan Lao University is studying at Peking University, and the president is Cai Yuanpei. Cai Yuanpei is a native of Shaoxing, a Hanlin of the Qing Dynasty, and a veteran of the Xinhai Revolution. Fan Lao was appreciated by Cai Yuanpei and served as his secretary.
At that time, there were many teachers at Peking University, and there were three people who had the deepest influence on Fan Lao: one was Huang Kan, Fan Lao was called "Qi Chunshi", and Qi Chun was Huang Jigang's hometown. In the old days, it was the most noble term to call a person a place of origin. For example, it is a Chinese tradition to call Zeng Guofan "Xiangxiang", Li Hongzhang "Hefei", and Zhang Shizhao "Changsha". The other is to use an ancient person with the same surname as the person he is called, such as Mao Guangsheng, a descendant of Mao Kaijiang, who went to Beijing, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai both received him, and pretended to call Zhou "Lianxi", that is, referred to by Zhou Dunyi. The first is Chen Hanzhang, Fan Lao is called "Xiangshan Division". Chen Hanzhang does not seem to be as famous as Huang Kan now, but he was a very important figure at that time, and later he also taught at Central University. There is also Liu Shipei, but Fan Lao only calls him "Mr. Shen", not "Yizheng Shi", which is different from Huang Kan and Chen Hanzhang. This is probably because his character is not valued by Fan Lao. In fact, the biggest influence on Fan Lao should be Liu Shipei, because Liu Shipei is known for his scriptures, and Fan Lao was originally engaged in scriptures. His book "Introduction to the Classics of the Masses" was originally a lecture note when he was teaching at the university, and Liu Shipei was quoted the most, and even the whole chapter was cited. Among the Peking University classmates, Gu Jiegang had the best relationship, and later they organized the "Pu Society" in Beijing. Therefore, Fan Lao's early books were all printed by Park She, and now it is difficult to see.
Another person who had an important influence on Fan Lao was Lu Xun. Lu Xun's friend Xu Shoushang is a relative of the Fan family. Lu Xun and many friends in his life inevitably turned their faces in the end, but Xu Shoushang and Lu Xun remained the same, and later died in Taiwan, China. When Fan Lao was studying in Beijing, he often went to visit Lu Xun with someone from the Xu family. The "Fan Yuntai" mentioned in "Lu Xun's Diary" is Fan Wenlan. Fan Lao was originally a descendant of Lu Xun, Lu Xun was already a lecturer at Peking University at that time, and later became comrades-in-arms with Lu Xun. After Mr. Lu Xun went to the south, he once went to Beijing to meet with the relevant personnel of the underground organization of the Chinese Communist Party, and it was at Fan Wenlan's house. Fan Lao is an underground party member. At that time, he was the dean of the Beiping Women's College of Arts and Sciences, and he also invited Lu Xun to give a lecture, and he spoke for half an hour, and then went to Fan's house for dinner in the evening. After Lu Xun's death, Fan Lao wrote an article to mourn, the most unforgettable words of which meant: Everyone said that Lu Xun loved to scold people, and I think Lu Xun is qualified to teach people. Fan Lao said that there are many people who may be good at learning, but their character is not necessarily good. And Mr. Lu Xun hasn't seen anything he has done badly. Fan Lao means: I have done the right thing, so I am qualified to teach others. This sentence represents Fan Lao's evaluation of Lu Xun.
When it comes to Chinese studies, I think people like Zhang Taiyan and Huang Kan are indeed qualified to teach Chinese studies. Among the new-style people, Fan Wenlan is qualified to teach Chinese studies. Because "Chinese Studies", as the name suggests, must be "passed", it is by no means a specialized study. "Specialization" is needed, but it is far from "national studies". Because the characteristics of China's "national studies" are broad and profound, it can be summed up in four words as a "subset of classics and history". In his early years, Fan Lao had works in all four books. The scripture department is "Introduction to the Qunjing", and the scriptures were actually the best at Fan Lao at that time, because he learned from Liu Shipei. As far as the school is concerned, it mainly belongs to ancient literature and classics, and at the same time communicates ancient and modern literature and classics, which is also the characteristic of Liu Shipei. The history department is "The Correct History", which is to test the 25 histories (24 histories plus the "New Yuan History"). The sub-part is "Zhuzi Luyi", this book was no longer found, and I was fortunate to find one when compiling the complete collection. Jibu is the most famous "Wenxin Carving Dragon Note".
There are two before and after the book "Wenxin Carving Dragon Note", which was originally called "Wenxin Carving Dragon Lectures", which was the speech of Mr. Fan Wenlan when he was a lecturer at Nankai University, printed in Tianjin, and the preface made by Liang Qichao. The Chinese Department of NTU has a copy with Fan Wenlan's inscription on Huang Kan, presumably after Huang Kan's death. Recently, I saw Mr. Wang Yunxi writing an article, and he thought that he had three of the best "Lectures on Shu" in the 20th century, and Mr. Fan Wenlan's "Wenxin Carving the Dragon on Shu" was one of them. From the "Lecture Shu" later developed into the "Wenxin Carving Dragon Note", there have been many versions of this book, and what you see today is the last version, which is the book of the People's Literature Publishing House, and it is also the best book at present. Comrade Liu Yuejin, a disciple of Mr. Cao Daoheng, once wrote an article talking about the value of "Wenxin Carving Dragon Note". In this book, Fan Lao has already applied the viewpoint of dialectical materialism in many places, but he does not publicize it. "Wenxin Carving Dragon Note" is added once every time. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Jin Chu served as a professor at Peking University, and later his department was adjusted and he entered the Institute of Modern History as a researcher. At that time, he was a professor, and later the department was adjusted, and he joined the Institute of Modern History as a researcher. At that time, Fan Lao entrusted Jin Yuhuang to find an old gentleman to proofread and correct the typos, which was corrected by Fan Lao. Fan Lao doesn't want a penny of manuscript fees, which I will talk about below, so the proofreading fee is paid by the People's Literature Publishing House in the manuscript fee, once a month, and Fan Lao signs a note to the publishing house to receive it. At that time, I was already in the institute, so I knew that this old gentleman, named Wang Shoupeng, was from Hebei, and he was already very old, and he was later retained by the institute. How did Jin Yuhuang know him? Kim often buys books, and sees that many books have been proofread by this person. The Wang family was originally a landlord, and they didn't worry about food and clothing, so they bought books and came to school. He told me that the "Collection of Books" contained a series of books engraved by his family, and he also gave me a collection of Tang Dynasty people with a very good version. Wang Shoupeng's family was originally rich, his seal was engraved by Wu Changshuo, Wu Changshuo carved the seal is very expensive, at that time there was a saying that "Wu Changshuo ruled the seal and won the Chinese property", which shows that his pen income is abundant. Later, when the Wang family was poor, the books were sold, and Jin Yuhuang bought the books of his school, and introduced them to Fan Lao, who specially wrote "Wenxin Carving Dragon Note" on behalf of him. How did he do it, he used two slips of paper, one on the book, the other on the proof, each with a hole, and only two words were seen. Word for word, this is the best proofreading, otherwise it will be missed at a glance. The more familiar you are with the content of the book, the more you can't proofread. I heard Mr. Ren Jiyu tell a story: When Zeng Guofan was the governor of Liangjiang, he asked someone to write a recital, and the person he was looking for was a good handwriter, but the article did not make sense. What is the reason? People who don't understand the article will not make mistakes by writing word for word, and at the same time, they will not divulge secrets. Mr. Ren presided over the Tripitaka and advocated that there was no need to find people with a high level, and it was because of this reason.
It can be seen from this that Fan Lao is a person, typos are to be eliminated, and the manuscript fee is not wanted. If he was asked to make another preface, he would not do it.
Fan Lao's four books in his early years represent the achievements of his four books: classics, history, children, and collections. All four departments are connected, and can be called the teacher of "Chinese Studies". In addition to this, there are some small books that may not be important to him, but they are more interesting. For example, "Water Jing Annotation Writing Jing Wen Banknote", "Water Jing Note" Everyone knows that this book is a text banknote that writes the scene in "Water Jing Note". His point of view is: Liu Zongyuan's landscape record is a masterpiece through the ages, but Liu's landscape record is modeled after the "Water Jing Note". This view is correct. The study of knowledge pays attention to the source of the examination mirror, and this is an example. Of course, there is also a preface to this book, in which he mainly exerts his political opinions, saying that the scenery of "Notes on the Water Classic" is beautifully written, and now we have many good gardens, but they are occupied by bureaucrats and landlords, making a miasma and so on. This is a view outside of academics. At the beginning of the Anti-Japanese War, he wrote a book "The Great Husband", which was published by Kaiming Bookstore. This book is a smaller thing than "The Annotation of the Book of Water and the Jingwen Banknote", but it talks about some heroes in Chinese history and commends their spirit, with the purpose of propagating anti-Japanese resistance, patriotism and national spirit. In this major matter, he is also engaged in popularization work.
Fan Lao was arrested twice. At that time, he often lectured on Marxism-Leninism in class, and of course he was inevitably arrested. Once it was Cai Yuanpei, and once it was Xu Shoushang and some other professors, bailing him out. Their reason is that Fan Wenlan is such a nerd, he will never engage in communism. Fan Lao talked to us about his transformation from a patriot to a communist, mainly from the anti-Japanese resistance. When he was young, he was influenced by Qiu Jin, Xu Xilin, Cai Yuanpei, and Lu Xun, and he had a patriotic spirit very early. He hated the Kuomintang the most for not resisting Japan, and supported the Communist Party for resisting Japan.
Fan Lao did not participate in the earlier May Fourth Movement, and he looked down on some people in the May Fourth Movement, believing that some people were "impetuous". He also did not approve of vernacular writing, believing that what could be expressed in vernacular could be expressed in classical Chinese, and there was no need to change the style. Later, he accepted Marxism, and the most important article of Marxism was "the proletarians of the whole world unite", and he felt that this sentence could not be expressed in Chinese, so he thought that it was necessary to write in the vernacular. The books he later wrote were all vernacular, but there was still a shadow of pun in his vernacular text, and when he wrote it proudly, it was four or six sentences, because he was most in favor of Liu Yanhe, and he thought that "Wenxin Carving Dragon" expressed such a difficult truth, and it was more comfortable to use pun than prose, and the use of pun text to this point can be said to have reached the supreme realm. One of Professor Mo Lifeng's female doctoral disciples, I don't know her personally, one of her books was published, and Professor Mo was originally asked to write a preface, but Professor Mo politely refused to do it, so he asked me to do it, and I quoted Mr. Fan Wenlan's words. In addition, Chen Yinke's words were quoted: When is the best text, one is six dynasties, and one is the Song Dynasty. Because of the freedom of thought in the Six Dynasties and the Song Dynasty, the text is equivalent to dancing in shackles, and if the mind is not free, there is no way to do it well. Mr. Chen Yinke said that the reason why Yu Xin's "Mourning Jiangnan Fu" is well written is because there are real feelings, as long as there are real feelings, the prose can still be used freely. When the Southern Song Dynasty fell, the edict of the Empress Dowager of the Song Dynasty came from Wang Yanzhang, which was difficult to write, but he wrote it very well and was very touching. The two masters, Fan and Chen, are invariably the same, and they do not reject the pun style.
Fan Lao has joined the party twice. After joining the party for the first time, he lost his relationship, and the second time he joined the party was in Henan. At that time, he was in his forties, teaching at Henan University in Kaifeng, and the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression had broken out. Fan Lao gave up his teaching at Heda and began to participate in guerrilla warfare in the local area, and he also wrote articles on guerrilla warfare. At that time, Liu Shaoqi was probably active in that area and recommended Fan Lao to go to Yan'an. At this time, someone suddenly went to Fan's hometown to search, and he swallowed Liu Shaoqi's letter into his stomach, otherwise it would be troublesome to find out. Later, he went to Yan'an, and then became a historical adviser to Mao Zedong.
Fan Lao lectured in Yan'an, and Mao Zedong, Dong Biwu and others all went to listen. After hearing this, Mao Zedong wrote a letter to him, saying: You have taught the scriptures very well, and you are using the viewpoint of dialectical materialism to teach the scriptures, but this is not an urgent need at present; The urgent need at present is to write an easy-to-understand general history of China for our revolutionary cadres. Because Chairman Mao had a point of view, if you want to make a revolution, you must not only know China's today, but also know China's yesterday. China's yesterday is history. So I gave this task to Fan Wenlan. This is how Fan Wenlan's "General History of China" was written, with the purpose of providing the vast number of revolutionary cadres with a supplementary study of Chinese culture, understanding China's yesterday, and better carrying out the revolution. Fan Wenlan's "General History of China" was written in a cave in Yan'an, and life in the cave was very difficult, erecting a board and using a small oil lamp, the oil lamp was not a soybean oil lamp, but a miscellaneous oil lamp, and he wrote day and night under such circumstances. Fan Lao is a very serious and responsible person, and I will talk about a lot of things in this regard. Because this writing broke his eye, he worked with one eye in his later years. Next door to Fan Lao's cave is Liu Shaoqi's cave, and his relationship with the three top leaders of the Communist Party of China, Mao Zedong Dong, Liu Shaoqi, and Zhou Enlai, is very good.
At that time, there were two research rooms in Yan'an, one was the Political Research Office, with Chen Boda as the director; One is the Historical Research Office, director Fan Wenlan. These two directors, although Chen Boda was later more prominent than Fan Wenlan, because Fan Lao refused to be an official, but the final outcome was very different. Chen Boda later became a pseudo-Marxist, so there is no need to talk about it, while Fan Lao has always been famous. This is a big lesson for us: a person should be indifferent to fame and fortune. If Chen Boda hadn't been driven by the desire for profit, he would not have come to such a fate, mixed up with Lin Biao and the "Gang of Four", and was called a "fake Marxist liar" by Chairman Mao.
Fan Lao had several assistants, and they were all famous after that. Among them, there is a person who was inconspicuous at first, Tian Jiaying. Tian Jiaying took the book for Fan Lao, Fan Lao said that he wanted a "Book of Song", so he went to get the "Book of Song" for Fan Lao, and if he wanted a "Book of the Old Tang Dynasty", he went to get the "Old Tang Book". Tian was born as a primary school apprentice, but he was very smart. The Historical Research Office and the Political Research Office often come and go, and Chen Boda came to Fan Lao, and when he saw that Tian Jiaying was a very good person, he said Fan Wenlan, you give me this person. At that time, Tian Jiaying did not write books, so Fan Lao also gave him to Chen Boda's political research office. It was with Chen Boda that Tian Jiaying was appreciated by Mao Zedong, and later became Mao's political secretary, and remained the director of Mao Zedong's office. Mr. Zhang Shizhao told me: On behalf of Chairman Mao, it was Tian Jiaying who went to his house to spread the word. Tian Jiaying is grateful to Fan Lao for life. Fan Wenlan and Mao Zedong were born on the same day, the same month, the same year, but died at different times. There is such a coincidence in the world! So whenever Chairman Mao has a birthday, Fan Lao has to invite a few assistants who live in his house to dinner, he is not saying that he has a birthday, but that Chairman Mao has a birthday. On this day, in order to celebrate Fan Lao's birthday, Tian Jiaying will invite Fan Lao to dinner, and a few friends will accompany him. The relationship between Fan Lao and Tian Jiaying is indeed very good. Fan Lao has always been very good to people, so although Tian Jiaying later had an important position, he never forgot Fan Lao.
Mao Zedong wrote a famous book in Yan'an, "The Chinese Revolution and the Communist Party of China", the first paragraph of which is "Chinese Society", on which he said: This paragraph was co-written by me and several comrades in Yan'an. The first draft was written by a comrade in Yan'an, who was Fan Wenlan. Chairman Mao called Fan Wenlan a "living dictionary", and he was often consulted about everything, because Chairman Mao needed to refer to historical things when making decisions. During the "Cultural Revolution", Qi Benyu and these people wanted to defeat Fan Wenlan, and at that time called him the ancestor of the royalist party in the historical circles, saying that there were two people under him, one was "South Batian" and the other was "North Batian". "South Batian" is Liu Danian, and "North Batian" is Li Shu, both of whom are the deputy directors of our institute. As a result, when Mao Zedong met with Fan Lao on Tiananmen Square, he shook hands and said: Now that someone wants to defeat you, I will resolutely protect you. Therefore, no one dared to defeat him. Fan Lao is not a politically ambitious person, Mao Zedong sees people very clearly.
Fan Wenlan began writing the General History of China in Yan'an, and the plan at that time was to write three books until the May Fourth Movement. Later, due to the "rectification", it was stopped, and only two books were written, which were written about the ancient part before the Opium War. The modern history part was added later. Therefore, the style of the two parts is different, in Fan Lao's words, the first part is written in chronological order, and the later part of modern history is the end of the chronicle, such as one chapter on the Opium War, one chapter on the Boxer Rebellion, etc. The reason is that Fan Lao no longer has the energy to write, and it is very troublesome to write according to the chronological style, while it is relatively easy to write according to the chapter-by-chapter chronicle. Therefore, it was later published in two books: "A Compendium of the General History of China" and "Modern History of China". In fact, "Modern History of China" was supposed to be the third volume of "General History of China", but because of the different styles of later books, it was divided into two books.
The Compendium of the General History of China, which was published not only in Yan'an but later in other regions, was the first general history of China written from a dialectical materialist point of view. At that time, because Zhou Enlai was conducting peace talks between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party at the Zhou Mansion on Sinan Road in Shanghai, the manuscript fee for publishing this book in Shanghai was brought back to Yan'an by Zhou Enlai. At that time, life in Yan'an was very difficult, but Fan Lao saved the money in the fold, and he never used it until he died, and paid the party dues when he died.
The "Compendium of the General History of China" was later continued to be the "General History of China", with a total of ten books.
During the "Cultural Revolution", Mao Zedong sent his daughter Li Ne, who was born to Jiang Qing, to Fan Wenlan's house to convey Chairman Mao's words: China needs a general history, and you need to write it. Fan Wenlan said: My views are old and I can't write about them. Mao's daughter said: My father has thought about it, and before the new point of view appears, he will still write what you think according to your point of view. Fan Lao accepted it and didn't fall asleep all night. Later, it was arranged, and a meeting was held in the office to arrange it. Of course, it was not written in the end, but this incident can show that Mao Zedong always trusted him very much.
Fan Lao died during the Cultural Revolution and died of a heart attack at night. Originally, a few of our assistants lived in his house, and his family was small, so he lived downstairs and we lived upstairs. What kind of place do you live, it is a place where a high-ranking cadre lives opposite Beijing Normal University today, and they are all small buildings. Next door to him is Hua Luogeng, in front of him is Rong Yiren, and over there is Zhou Jianren, all of whom are well-known people. Because Zhou Jianren, Hua Luogeng, and Rong Yiren all have secretaries, this place also organized a secretary canteen, and we lived in Fan's hometown and ate in this canteen.
That's all I will talk about in Fan Lao's life.
[Bian Xiaoxuan (1924-2009), a native of Yangzhou, Jiangsu. Self-named "Holly Old Man", the room name "Holly Book House". After graduating from secondary school, he worked in a bank, studied at Lixin Accounting College, and studied literature and history on his own. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he served in the People's Bank of China and the China Democratic Construction Association, and was still engaged in literary and historical research in his spare time. In 1956, he worked at the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 1976 he taught at Yangzhou Normal University, and in 1984 he taught at the Department of Chinese at Nanjing University. He has written more than 30 kinds of works, such as "Liu Yuxi's Annals", "Yuanzhi Annals", "Tang Dynasty Literary and Historical Treatises", "Liu Yuxi's Cong Examination", "Holly Books' Notes", "Tang Legend New Exploration", "Tang Novels and Politics", "Zheng Banqiao Cong Kao", etc., published more than 200 papers, and edited "Chinese Canon, Literary Dictionary, Sui and Tang Five Dynasties Literary Dictionary", etc. 】