The second volume is full of glory and splendor in the capital, and the spirit is full of vitality in the foggy city. Chapter 193: The Banquet of Eight Horses (Part 2)
Subtitle of this chapter: Let’s talk about ideology first
Let me make it clear that our Master Yuan has long known that the three great Harvard scholars are studying at Harvard University, which is not far from him.
In fact, he used the Master Ball system to make a "Master Map", and he knew the location of all the people in the world who could be called masters.
However, Yuan Yanshu did not take the initiative to look for him. The reason... was very complicated.
Wu Mi and Chen Yinke were about to leave the United States. The fame of "NY of NY" was so resounding that the young Harvard Three were curious and eager to meet Neo Yuan. This led to the dinner.
Master Chen Yinke raised his glass and said to Master Yuan with emotion, "I still remember the time when we were in Nanjing in 1902. It's been almost twenty years now. I never thought we would meet in New York today. Brother Hongjian has become famous both at home and abroad, and is well-known in the literary world..."
"Come, I'll give you a toast."
Oh my god, it turns out that my great-great-uncle and Chen Yinke were childhood friends.
"Brother Heshou, I feel embarrassed for what you said. I can only drink first as a token of my respect."
Yuan Yanshu also smiled and drank a glass with him, then stood up and filled his glass, saying, "Brother Heshou, you are now very knowledgeable and highly praised. I heard that you will be going to the Berlin University Graduate School to continue your studies soon..."
He poured himself a glass of wine and said, "Come, I'll toast you too. I hope you can soon become a bridge connecting Chinese and Western cultures."
Master Yuan’s title of “a bridge connecting Chinese and Western cultures” is not just a casual remark. There are indeed many masters in the Republic of China who are well-versed in both Chinese and Western culture, but the one who best deserves this title is Chen Yinke.
In 1949, the descendant of Tianmo visited the Soviet Union, and Uncle Iron Man asked him, "How is Mr. Chen Yinke in your country?"
It turns out that his book On the Problem of the Chinese Revolution quotes Chen Yinke's works in many places. It can be said that Master Chen's views have profoundly influenced Uncle Iron Man's views on China.
If Uncle Iron Man wants to understand Seris, he needs to read Master Chen’s articles. If he is not a bridge, who else could he be... Well, now there is also Master Yuan who is "made of special materials".
So when Chen Yinke heard the word "bridge", he immediately felt like he had found a close friend. The two smiled at each other and drank another glass.
After two glasses of wine, Master Chen was a little tipsy and said bluntly, "Brother Hongjian, I have read your article "Wives and Concubines"..."
Mr. Hongjian's first vernacular novel, "Flowers bloom outside the wall and fragrance is strong inside the wall," caused a sensation in China and then spread back to the United States. At that time, Shen Zhuohuan, the editor-in-chief of the "Chinese Students Quarterly in the United States", wrote a letter to Yuan Yanshu requesting a reprint.
This gentleman was studying at Columbia University and also returned to China in June of this year. Coincidentally, he lived in the same cabin as Wu Mi.
Master Yuan readily agreed and generously refrained from accepting royalties. Consequently, many Chinese students studying in the United States have read Wives and Concubines.
"But, Brother Hongjian, a son should not blame his father for his mistakes. Your novel is a bit too much."
“Snap!”
Yuan Yan suddenly lit a cigar without saying a word, feeling very unhappy.
As a person born in the 1990s, why would he care about the saying "a son should not speak of his father's mistakes"? Besides, Mr. Yuan was not his father but his great-grandfather. They had not met each other for too many generations, so it was impossible to get close to him even if he wanted to.
He coughed and said, "Brother Heshou, I beg to differ with you. If we continue to cling to the system of ruler-ruler, subject-minister, father-father, son-son, how can our country catch up with the advanced Western countries? Moreover, the concubine system is backward, reactionary, and uncivilized in today's world. It is totally unacceptable..."
Anyway, he can't take concubines now and can only keep mistresses, so naturally he has to strongly oppose the backward, reactionary and uncivilized concubine system.
"Since we've come to study in a civilized country like America, we naturally want to bring modern civilization back home. Civilization can be divided into material civilization and spiritual civilization. In addition to improving our country's material civilization, we must naturally attack our country's spiritual uncivilization. I think you should understand this..."
"And the most uncivilized spiritual aspect of our country is the Confucian ideals of ruler and minister, father and son, self-discipline and restoration of propriety..."
As a master of neoclassical liberalism, it's natural for him to say this. He couldn't possibly advocate pure freedom while also advocating the Three Bonds and the Five Constant Virtues.
"Brother Hongjian, be careful what you say!" Wu Mi, standing by, couldn't help but interrupt, "The relationship between ruler and subject, father and son is indeed a feudal dregs, but self-discipline and restoration of propriety is the supreme principle. Even my teacher, Professor Babbitt, highly praised it..."
Wu Mi’s teacher, Irving Babbitt, was not Chinese, but an American, Irving Babbitt (1865–1933). This Harvard-educated professor was one of the founders of the new humanistic aesthetics and a pioneer of comparative literature.
So what is the New Humanism?
This is something very important for the history of modern Chinese thought and must be introduced in detail.
Where there is new, there is old. The so-called old humanism is the ideological system formed during the Renaissance: opposing the constraints of theocracy and pursuing the liberation of individuality; opposing the concept of hierarchy and pursuing freedom and democracy; opposing obscurantism and pursuing the supremacy of reason...
In short, it means "taking humans as the measure of all things."
At the beginning of the 20th century, a new humanistic trend emerged, represented by Whitehead.
At the beginning, New Humanism was just a literary criticism theory, advocating that literature should restore the humanistic tradition with "moderation" as its core. They believed that naturalistic tendencies (including romanticism, critical realism and other thoughts) would sacrifice the full meaning of beauty and should be denied.
Later, this expanded beyond literary criticism. They criticized the moral decline and loss of humanity brought about by utilitarianism and romanticism in the modern West, calling for restraint of emotions and desires and the restoration of humanistic order. In short, ethics and morality are the foundation of human behavior, and this concept is very consistent with the Confucian concept of "self-discipline and restoration of rituals."
So, on the one hand, as Wu Mi said, Whitehead highly respected Confucianism.
Perhaps because his father grew up in Ningbo, Zhejiang, he developed a "partial preference for China." He realized that "China must be organized, capable, and equipped with Western machinery to avoid invasion by Japan and other major powers," and that "China must also shed its past blind obedience to old customs and the shackles of pseudo-classical schools." He also warned that "while striving for progress, China should never follow the Western practice of abandoning a child in a basin with the bathwater."
On the other hand, his Chinese students regarded the new humanism as a treasure and regarded it as a guiding principle.
In addition to the Harvard Three, other masters of the Republic of China who were influenced by him included Mei Guangdi and Liang Shiqiu, who were the Xueheng School, which was as famous as the Crescent Moon School in the 1920s.
Later, great figures such as Wang Guowei, Liang Qichao, Xiong Shili, Liang Shuming, Ma Yifu, Zhang Junmai, Feng Youlan, and Qian Mu would also join in. They were the first generation of "Neo-Confucianists."
In fact, if you think about it from their perspective, it is easy to understand why these people embraced the new humanism so enthusiastically.
Take Wu Mi, for example. A young Serbian intellectual with a strong desire to save the nation, he originally intended to study chemical engineering abroad. However, he was a prodigy with a photographic memory, so Tsinghua Academy President Zhou Yichun thought it was a pity for him to study science and instead suggested he study English literature in the United States.
But when he came to the United States, when Chinese students heard that he was there to study English literature, they all regarded him as a monster and a piece of trash, which made him feel very stressed.
At this time, Wu Mi met Mei Guangdi (1890-1945), the first Chinese to earn a doctorate in literature in the United States. Mei Guangdi was not only a fellow Huizhou native of Hu Shi but also his mortal enemy in the New Culture Movement. It was he who introduced Wu Mi to Babbitt.
Well, a young intellectual who has received a traditional Chinese education has already painfully admitted that traditional Chinese culture is not good enough and has no choice but to learn from the West. Now he meets a well-known Harvard professor who tells him that Chinese culture is actually quite good, even better than modern Western mainstream thought...
What would this Chinese intellectual think?
So this group of people naturally became conservatives among liberals. They compared and integrated new humanism with Eastern Confucianism and promoted it widely in the country.
These "neo-Confucians" sincerely believed that this was the only way to save the nation and preserve traditions.
Now you understand why these people became masters of Chinese studies after returning from studying in Europe and the United States and consuming a lot of Western knowledge.
In January 1922, Mei Guangdi, Wu Mi, and others founded the journal Xueheng, which immediately engaged in a debate with New Culture Movement leaders like Hu Shi and Lu Xun. As you can imagine, those who survived past 1949 were all labeled "rightists."
According to Yin Chuisi, the Xueheng school, which advocated for retrogression, experienced a resurgence in the 1980s, succeeded by the third generation of "New New New Confucianists." Later, Nanjing University established the Xueheng Research Institute, which published the New Xueheng magazine and posited the concept of "glocalization."
In fact, the real third-generation new new Confucianism is still quite reliable. After all, in a certain major Eastern country in the 21st century, it is one of the three major mainstream thoughts that can compete with Marxism and the total Westernization faction.
It must be said that the existence of Neo-Neo-Confucianism is reasonable. If a person is unable to sit on the side of the proletariat, and their head cannot accept the "good idea" of complete Westernization, then they have no choice but to follow those masters.
However, the so-called "Scripture Reading School" and "Female Virtue School" under the guise of Neo-Confucianism are really nonsense and can be described as a riot of demons.
To sum up, after New Humanism was introduced to China in 1922, it profoundly influenced the traditionalists among the liberals, and New Confucianism was born; since then, some people have been trying to modernize Confucianism, which gave rise to the second generation of New Confucianists represented by Mou Zongsan and others; after the 1980s , New Humanism remained the theoretical basis for the third generation of New New Confucianists.
After talking about the Xueheng School and New Humanism, let’s talk about our Master Yuan’s position.
In the ideological field of the Republic of China, there were three distinct cultural trends, namely, radicalism on the far left, conservatism on the far right, and liberalism, which was neither left nor right.
Yuan Yanshu can only choose liberalism now, and according to his heart, if he wants to be a liberal, he must be a radical among the liberals, that is, a total Westernization faction.
Now you know why he doesn't want to get close to the three Harvard geniuses. People with different ideals cannot work together.
"Hahaha..." Our Master Yuan laughed heartily, looking up to the sky: "Restrain yourself and return to propriety?! Hahaha..."
He laughed heartily as he recited : "Yan Yuan asked about benevolence. The Master said: 'To restrain oneself and return to propriety is benevolence. If one restrains oneself and returns to propriety for one day, the world will return to benevolence. Is benevolence up to oneself or to others?'"
Of course, not to mention Wu Mi, the child prodigy with a photographic memory, who among you hasn't memorized the Analects? Who doesn't know this crucial Confucian saying?
Yuan Yan's laughter suddenly stopped, and he glanced at Wu Mi and asked, "Brother Yu Seng, when Yan Yuan asked about benevolence, whose benevolence was he referring to?"
Of course, Master Wu said without hesitation: "Brother Hongjian, it is naturally the kindness of a gentleman..."
"Go ahead! That's the kindness of a gentleman!"
Our Master Yuan interrupted Wu Mi loudly.
After looking around at everyone, he suddenly raised his hand, pointed at one person and said, "Then he is the only one among us who can be called a gentleman!"
