【What the Reader Says】
Author: Jiang Feng (Visiting Professor, Department of History, Peking University)
About half a year ago, his brother Jiang Li launched a new work "Yang Liansheng Biography". After reading it, I kept itching my hands to write a book review. To tell the truth, as early as Jiang Li edited and published the late Famous Chinese-American Sinologist and our grandfather Mr. Yang Liansheng's books "Harvard Ink - Yang Liansheng Poetry And Literature Jane" (Commercial Press 2004 edition), "Hao Clan of the Eastern Han Dynasty" (Commercial Press 2011 edition), "Harvard Legacy Ink (Revised Edition)" (Commercial Press 2013 edition), "Sinology Book Review" (Commercial Press 2016 edition), "Liansheng Shujian" (Commercial Press 2017 edition), I have repeatedly moved the idea of writing book reviews. However, whenever I was ready to hit the keyboard, I always felt that it was not easy for my brother to write a book review for my brother.com. This is not easy, mainly "dip". It is difficult to speak freely when there is a kinship relationship in it; it is also difficult to defend criticism. However, whenever I think of the allusion that China still has the allusion of "raising the wise and not avoiding relatives", I feel that it is harmless to write a book review that I want to write and say what I want to say.
Mr. Yang Liansheng (1950s) Photo from "The Biography of Yang Liansheng"
Its place in the hearts of overseas scholars
In my impression, in the past 40 years or so, the China Social Sciences Press, the Chinese University Press, the CITIC Publishing House, the Hebei People's Publishing House, the Guizhou People's Publishing House, and the Anhui Education Publishing House have successively published a single edition of Mr. Yang Liansheng's works, but no publishing house has worked so the editing and publishing of Mr. Yang Liansheng's works like the Commercial Press. It must be said that the "old brand" of the publishing industry such as the Commercial Press is unique. Of course, the Commercial Press can do this, and the good academic and book relationship established by his brother Jiang Li and the editors for more than a decade is also inseparable.
According to my opinion, after Mr. Yang Liansheng's relevant works were published in Chinese mainland, there were not many relevant book reviews. I speculate that the reason for this situation is that Mr. Yang Liansheng has worked at Harvard University for many years in the United States. The years when China and the United States did not have diplomatic relations were the most brilliant years for Mr. Yang Liansheng's academic achievements, but the domestic academic circles could not understand it in depth, and it is still difficult to evaluate. The second is the "discontinuation" of scholarship. Mr. Zhou Liang, Mr. Wu Yuliu, who studied with Mr. Yang Liansheng at Harvard University in the United States, and some of the academic predecessors who interacted with each other have successively made ancient works, Chinese mainland there is no direct academic successor of Mr. Yang Liansheng among the current scholars, which also brings some difficulties to the commentary. The third is that Mr. Yang Liansheng's academic research is relatively esoteric and remote, good at "exploring the small and understanding the small", and likes to exhaustively investigate in case studies, making it difficult for later scholars to play academic games with them in a single item, and it is very difficult to comment.
What is the status of Mr. Yang Liansheng's sinology research overseas? I remember that in the 1970s, when Mr. Yang Liansheng returned to China at the invitation of Premier Zhou Enlai to visit his relatives, he once said to his relatives: "In Japan, if a scholar engaged in Chinese history studies does not know Yang Liansheng, he is not really engaged in the study of Chinese history." "At the time, I was in junior high school and decided it was a bragging word.
At the end of the 1980s, at the age of 29, I paid for myself. I remember one day in the 1990s, the famous American scholar Vogel gave a speech at the International Cultural Center in Tokyo. Afterwards, I wanted to interview him as a reporter for the Chinese-language media "International Student News", and he said: "I am not interviewed overseas. I said to him with Chinese: "I am Yang Liansheng's grandson." He immediately smiled and said with Chinese, "Really? Then I will definitely accept your interview. Because I worked with Mr. Yang Liansheng at Harvard University. ”
I remember that in the 1990s, I was studying for a master's degree at the Graduate School of Literature at Kyushu University in Japan, and I studied under Mr. Kawakatsumori, one of the "Four Great Experts in Chinese History" in Japan at that time. Once, in a research class, I inadvertently mentioned that Mr. Yang Liansheng was my maternal grandfather, and Mr. Katsumori Kawakatsu asked, "Really?" After receiving my affirmative reply, he got up from his seat, walked up to me, bowed deeply, and then said, "I made a special trip to Boston, USA, the other day, to visit Mr. Yang Liansheng." Their family told me that Mr. Yang was ill and could not see the guests. I did not expect to see the descendants of Mr. Yang Liansheng, whom I respected, in my research room. ”
In 2016, I went to Xi'an to participate in the 120th anniversary of the founding of Xi'an Jiaotong University. On the van to the event site, Mr. Tu Weiming, dean of the Institute for Advanced Humanities of Peking University, sat next to me. When I said that I was the grandson of Mr. Yang Liansheng, Mr. Tu Weiming, dressed as a doctoral supervisor, stood up and touched the roof of the car, bowed to me, and said, "I was once taught by Mr. Yang Liansheng." It's a great pleasure to see you today. ”
To talk about such past events is not to show off my family relationship with Mr. Yang Liansheng, but to reflect Mr. Yang Liansheng's position in the minds of overseas scholars. This status should be established by virtue of Mr. Yang Liansheng's nearly half a century of academic research and intellectual attainments, and at the same time, it is also built up by virtue of his generous and kind character. From here, I also feel that Mr. Yang Liansheng still exists warmly in the overseas Sinology community.
Biography of Yang Liansheng by Jiang Li The Commercial Press
Academic career and "circle of friends"
Brother Jiang Li's "Biography of Yang Liansheng". Frankly, I have a problem with the title. The so-called "other transmission" should be a supplement to the "positive transmission". So far, there has been no "Yang Liansheng Zhengchuan". Someone tried to write and copy 47 of Mr. Yang Liansheng's diaries, but then there was no result. Writing "Don't Pass" when there is no "canon", of course, there is the author's modest performance and willingness to use this to throw bricks and jade, but I also say a big word, in the future, there can be no "canon" that can surpass this "Yang Liansheng Bie Biography". Because the author's kinship with Yang Liansheng, the author's letters to Yang Liansheng, and the author's pen strength and emotions are all difficult for others to surpass.
Teacher Han Shishan said in the preface to the "Biography of Yang Liansheng", "Mr. Jiang's book may be called the end of the Jiren body." It can be said that it is a traditional Chinese history book style, which has opened up a new face. "I thought it was also an exaggeration. Traditional Chinese history books pay attention to the "three-body" - the chronicle style, the chronicle style, and the chronicle script. The "Twenty-Four Histories", which is the peak of the "Ji Chuan Body", has already written the biography of the characters vividly, and it is easy for posterity to "open a new face". Moreover, in recent years, such as "Hu Shi's Circle" (Shandong Pictorial Publishing House, 2010 edition) and "Lu Xun's Circle" (Oriental Publishing House, 2014 edition), these are all such "dating tests".
The valuable point of "Biography of Yang Liansheng" lies in the fact that the author not only outlines Mr. Yang Liansheng's vivid image of Mr. Yang Liansheng as a "first-class scholar in Western Sinology" and "overseas medium of Chinese culture" through the "circle of friends" of Mr. Yang Liansheng- the scholarly exchanges between the master and Hu Shi, Zhao Yuanren, Qian Mu, Xiao Gongquan, Miao Yu, He Bingdi, Yoshikawa Kojiro and other scholars at home and abroad, not only "palming the past" outlining Mr. Yang Liansheng as a "first-class scholar in western sinology" and "overseas medium of Chinese culture". These are all unknown to ordinary people and cannot be obtained by ordinary efforts. Because of this, this book, as a "reference book", can be placed on the desk.
Flipping through the "Biography of Yang Liansheng", you can not only see the academic career of the master, but also see some of the complexes of the master. For example, Mr. Yang Liansheng's strong "Peking University complex", the hidden "Japanese complex", and the deep "Hometown complex" - he wanted to study at Peking University in his early years; when Zhou Zuoren was the president of the pseudo-Peking University, he refused Zhou Zuoren's successive letters of appointment as lecturers and associate professors; during his stay in the United States, he promised Hu Shi that he would return to Peking University to teach; and one of his greatest wishes in his later years was to give an academic lecture at Peking University. He had many contacts with Japanese scholars, and had also visited and lectured at the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University, the "important towns" of Japanese history, admiring the refinement of Japanese studies, but there was a kind of dissatisfaction in his heart. In his later years, Mr. Yang Liansheng's thoughts about the old garden became deeper and deeper, and it was difficult to restrain his interaction with scholars at home and abroad. As a student, worker, and living in Japan for 30 years, I can't describe this with the word "empathy"!
Perhaps it is the difference in observation angle, or the difference in life experience, brother Jiang Li seems to be deficient in the writing point of Mr. Yang Liansheng's later life. Jiang Li and I once visited Mr. Ge Zhaoguang, a professor at Fudan University in Shanghai. As a visiting scholar at Harvard University in the United States, Mr. Ge once read 47 diaries of Yang Liansheng in detail, and wrote some articles after returning to China. I remember Mr. Ge saying something like this: "Mr. Yang Liansheng was crushed to death by the title of 'the first person in sinology'. He introduced to our brother the various "strong" that Mr. Yang Liansheng showed in his diary, and absolutely could not lose to the mentality and actions of Western sinology researchers, resulting in mental depression and illness, and the mental life in his later years was not pleasant. To tell the truth, later I also went to Taipei to read the "Diary of Yang Liansheng", paying more attention to Mr. Yang Liansheng's like to "make dumplings" in American life, and did not have Mr. Ge's in-depth and meticulous observation, so I felt a little regret that Mr. Ge's insights were not included in "Yang Liansheng's Biography".
This article can no longer be called a "book review", but can barely be called a "book talk". I would like to say that "The Biography of Yang Liansheng" brings back to people's vision a "scholar" who has become unfamiliar in Chinese academic circles, thus adding salary and continuity to the overseas dissemination of Chinese culture, which is worth reading.
Guangming Daily (05/12/2018)