Source: People’s Daily Online-People’s Daily Overseas Edition
Wang Chonglv Guo Hongsong painted.
Compared with Zeng Guofan, I admire Zhang Jian more. As an extremely complicated individual, Zeng Guofan can be said to be a "big book" with rich contents. After living in Beijing for ten years, he was a scholar, awarded Hanlin, and served as assistant minister of various ministries. After being released to the outside world, he set up the Xiang Army, created Westernization, and served as the governor of several provinces, ranking among the three. He became the person with the greatest meritorious service, the heaviest power and the highest status since the founding of the Qing Dynasty, and achieved the "three immortals" of virtue, meritorious service and self-examination. Moreover, through introspection, he became a sage, a saint inside and a king outside, and "worthy of the perfection of heaven and earth".
However, I vaguely feel that he has lost his id and the starting point of life. He not only wants to build extraordinary achievements, but also wants to be a perfect man between heaven and earth, so as to achieve all-round transcendence inside and outside. His pain also comes from both inside and outside: on the one hand, the court is afraid and suspicious of him, and at the same time, in order to establish a perfect image, he is cautious in his words and deeds, treading on thin ice and pursuing perfection in everything, which inevitably leads to melodramatic and pretentious. As he wrote in his diary: "I have been too anxious recently, and every day I swim in an open day, it is always because I am too eager for fame and popular opinion."
In contrast, Zhang Jian is like a pioneer in the long night.
Zhang Jian’s imperial examination road was very uneven. Seeing the defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, and thinking about 26 years of wasted time, 120 days and nights curled up and rested in a narrow test shed during the day, and the destruction of talents by stereotyped writing, the champion and he resolutely decided to abandon his official career and take the road of rejuvenating the country through industry and education.
After establishing the development idea of "father’s education and mother’s industry", he has founded more than 20 enterprises, involving textiles, printing and dyeing, printing, paper making, matches, soap, electricity, salt industry, animal husbandry, silkworm, oil, flour, telephone, shipping, docks, banks, real estate, hotels and other industries. Among the more than 370 schools he founded, apart from primary and secondary schools, the focus was on normal education and vocational education in agriculture, medical care, textiles, railways, merchant ships and river and sea engineering. He founded the University of Engineering and Nanyang University, supported his colleagues to establish Fudan College, merged the three colleges of medicine, textile and agriculture into the future Nantong University, and also contacted celebrities in the education field to brew the transformation of normal universities into universities, thus establishing Southeast University and creating a complete modern education system.
The "Big Student Model" he explored promoted the joint-stock system of modern enterprises in China. In terms of education and culture, his museums, normal schools, new theaters and meteorological stations are the first in the country. In addition to establishing a library, a society of performers, a more vulgar theater, parks and stadiums, he also set up charitable undertakings such as nursing homes, nursery schools, disabled homes, poor factories, shelters and welfare homes, with a view to transforming society and improving the quality of the people.
In terms of ideological and theoretical achievements, there has always been a difference in the evaluation between "following" and "going on" in academic circles. The former embodies inheritance, just like adding bricks and tiles to the inherent balcony; The latter pays more attention to innovation and is committed to re-building. As a pioneering practitioner, Zhang Jian belongs to the latter category. From a historical point of view, future generations admire a person, not only by examining what he has done to benefit the society and the people, but also by valuing what new things he has provided to the predecessors. In this sense, I said, "Fool is more approachable, and I am quite convinced by Zhang Jian."
No matter Zeng Guofan or Zhang Jian, or even thinkers, writers and politicians in China, what they said and did in their time reflected the influence of Chinese traditional culture and enriched this culture with their own practice. This is also the angle I chose to write "Context-History of Our Mind".
Culture is the root, blood and lifeline of a nation, and Chinese studies are an important carrier of Chinese spiritual culture. Throughout the history of human civilization, Chinese culture has unique ideas, wisdom, tolerance and charm, which has added a high degree of self-confidence and incomparable pride to the Chinese nation.
Many people equate Sinology with China’s traditional culture, which is unscientific and imprecise. They are two different concepts. The connotation of traditional culture is much broader, including material culture (such as utensils, clothing, food, architecture, etc.), institutional ritual culture and spiritual culture (knowledge, belief, art, religion, philosophy, law, morality, etc.); Traditional Chinese studies, however, is only a part of China’s traditional culture, and its scope is relatively narrow.
The so-called "national studies" are relative to western learning and new learning. At the end of Qing Dynasty, when European and American academics entered China, people called China’s inherent knowledge "Sinology", which generally refers to Chinese traditional culture and academics with Confucianism as the main body. Liang Qichao said that sinology is a knowledge about moral character, that is, a knowledge to sharpen one’s own character and virtue. In terms of disciplines, Chinese studies include today’s philosophy, history, religion, literature, manners and customs, textual research, ethics, edition, etc. In terms of ideology, there are three schools of thought, namely, pre-Qin hundred schools of thought, Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. For a long time, Confucianism has run through and dominated the history of China’s thoughts, while others are subordinate.
Theoretically speaking, Chinese traditional culture has three pillars: Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. Confucianism and Taoism are indigenous and first produced in China. After the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Chinese classics, Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Sui and Tang Dynasties, the introduction and spread of Buddhism, and Confucianism and Taoism formed a three-legged situation. As the traditional wisdom of Chinese life, they interacted and complemented each other. Confucianism stresses the enterprising spirit of joining the WTO, emphasizes vigorous and promising, and aims to cultivate self-cultivation, rule the country, and take the world as its own responsibility; Taoism pays attention to spiritual detachment, natural Taoism, calm and smooth, inaction, soft and rigid, and static braking. Buddhism pays attention to being born, emphasizing that everything is empty, eliminating interference, turning troubles into bodhi, indifferent to fame and fortune, and "putting down is the best." Once upon a time, there was a saying: "Treat the mind with Buddhism, the body with Taoism, and the world with Confucianism." (filial piety in Southern Song Dynasty)
History is a process of inheritance and accumulation, and the present and future of a nation are extensions of history. Some historical and cultural essays, with the help of the accumulation of historical materials, treat the exhaustion of the soul and make up for the absence of the spirit, obliterate the characteristics of prose expressing individuality and revealing oneself, regard the historical materials that should be the background as the main body of the article, and fail to see the dimension of spiritual display. In my writing, I pay special attention to strengthening the subjective consciousness, focusing on the pertinence of reality, and strive to infuse new insights, new discoveries, true temperament and sense of reality into historical materials.
Historical and cultural prose should be a mixture of literature and history, and it is an organic integration of philosophy, poetry and historical writing. They should rely on historical events, seek the source of passion from poetic nature, and obtain the ladder of sublimation on the philosophical level. Through the marriage of literature and history, the youthful smile of literature brings vitality and beauty, vitality and passion to the cold and solemn historical old man; After reading the vicissitudes of history, the literary beauty gets the enlightenment like the morning bell and the evening drum, adding a huge spiritual impact on the aesthetic value.
When writing the book "Context", on the premise of accurately understanding ancient books, I used prose forms and literary techniques to explain the facts and show the spiritual outlook of the characters; Try to set up some tension fields, information sources and shock waves, so that vivid images, vivid interesting things and thought-provoking inquiries can be danced from time to time, and strive to avoid the stagnation and rigidity of pure political theory, and reasoning will become a proper wake-up call or a necessary adjustment to lyric and narrative. This kind of "reason" comes from the perception of life and has a strong personality color. In this way, history has also become smart and full of fresh vitality.
The Chinese context is vast. We have entered the profound China culture, the complicated and changeable real world and the surging spiritual world.
