The Rise of the Writers of the Republic of China - Chapter 1032

   When the Sino-British Science Cooperation Center was running smoothly, “The Fifteen Years of Wanli” was published as a whole book without being serialized in newspapers and periodicals.

  The original author of this book, Mr. Huang Renyu, just joined the Chinese Expeditionary Force as a captain’s staff. He originally studied in the Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering of Nankai University, but transferred to the Central Military Academy after the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War. It is not unusual for mechatronics engineering majors to switch to military.

   But what’s even more bizarre is that in the 1950s, Huang Renyu, who was 34 years old, picked up the book again and entered the University of Michigan to major in journalism. After a while, he switched to history. Huang Renyu was fired from his professorship by New York University at the age of 62 due to the lack of a new book for more than ten years.

In the second year of his dismissal, Huang Renyu’s “The Fifteen Years of Wanli” was published. It won the National Book Award and nomination for a good history book in one fell swoop, and was selected as a textbook by many universities in the United States. again and again.

  Huang Renyu fought against the Japanese at home, went to Burma as an expeditionary army, and fought the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. He has seen illiterate peasant soldiers, worked with senior generals such as Sun Liren, and fought against Shuai Lin in the Northeast. He has witnessed the apparent strength and rapid decline of the national army, and he has personally observed the composition of the people throughout the Republic of China.

  Huang Renyu said in his memoirs that what he wanted to write most was the history of the Republic of China, but in it, he was completely unable to write.

   “The Fifteen Years of Wanli” is not so much about the Ming Dynasty as Huang Renyu wrote his reflections on the politics, economy and culture of the Republic of China under the guise of people and events of the Ming Dynasty.

   The core of this book is two words: reflection.

  …

   Guilin.

  Li Siguang was standing at the door of Chen Yinke’s house, and Mrs. Chen’s Tang Yun opened the door and said, “It turned out to be Professor Li, please come in!”

   “Siguang is here, sit down!” Chen Yinke came to the living room.

   Li Siguang clasped his fists and said, “I heard that you are leaving, Lao Chen, so I came here to say goodbye in advance.”

   “It’s still early, I don’t know where to go.” Chen Yinke smiled.

  Chen Yinke came to live in Guilin last year, and his wife is from Guilin. Originally planned to move to Lizhuang to do research, but because of his exhaustion, and because Guangxi University tried his best to keep him, Chen Yinke lived in Guilin for a year.

   Now Guangxi University is taking final exams. Chen Yinke plans to leave after summer vacation, but he has not decided where to go. The Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica invited him to Lizhuang, the eighth brother invited him to Leshan, and his old friend invited him to Chengdu.

  Li Siguang took out a copy of “The Fifteen Years of Wanli” and said to Chen Yinke with a smile: “Old Chen, this is my farewell gift, and it was sent by a friend from Sichuan.”

   “The fifteenth year of Wanli?” Chen Yinke glanced at the cover and pondered, “Nothing big happened this year, why did Zhou Mingcheng use the fifteenth year of Wanli as the title of the book?”

   “Keep it for yourself and read it slowly. I heard that this book is highly rated in Sichuan.” Li Siguang laughed.

   The two have a very good personal relationship. Chen Yinke is a professor at Guangxi University, which was recommended and invited by Li Siguang. They chatted all afternoon, and it was not until after dinner that Li Siguang left Chen Yinke’s house.

  Chen Yinque’s illness has basically recovered, but his body is still a little weak. He lay on the bedside and opened the “Fifteen Years of Wanli”. After reading it for 20 minutes, he became impatient, and subconsciously felt contempt and disgust for this book.

   Chen Yinque’s method of governing history at this time belonged to the agglomeration of China’s Qianjia School and Western Ranke historiography. He not only criticized the Qianjia School for textual research for the sake of textual research, but also used to use the textual research methods of the Qianjia School, and carried out historical research according to the theory of Rank’s historiography.

   Coincidentally, “The Fifteen Years of Wanli” embodies the “grand view of history”, and the “grand view of history” comes from the “Yearbook School”, which was founded in the trend of opposing the “Lanke Historiography”.

   To put it bluntly, “The Fifteenth Year of Wanli” and Chen Yinke’s characters are incompatible. The historical theories of the two sides are quite different, and they are even enemies of each other academically.

   In Chen Yinke’s opinion, “The Fifteen Years of Wanli” was written too plainly and was more suitable as an introductory book on history. And even as an introductory book, “The Fifteen Years of Wanli” is not enough, because the subjective color of this book is too strong. The Ranke historiography that Chen Yinke respected precisely requires that no value judgments be made on history, and is opposed to any study of history with subjective emotions.

   Fortunately, Zhou Hexuan did not write “Those Things in the Ming Dynasty”, otherwise it would be more plain and subjective, and Chen Yinke would never insist on watching it for three minutes.

   The first chapter of “The Fifteen Years of Wanli”, Chen Yinke read it with a critical attitude. Although he insists on academic freedom and doesn’t like to engage in disputes between academic factions, he belongs to the “rank historiography” school after all, and Zhou Hexuan was regarded as the founder of the “yearbook school” as early as ten years ago. Disliked.

  The first chapter is about the Wanli Emperor, describing the political reform from the perspective of the Wanli Emperor. Many of the contents are subjective conjectures of the author, which are extremely imprecise to Chen Yinke.

  The second chapter is about Shoufu Shen Shixing, which is also subject to various subjective speculations, but Chen Yinke gradually sees the interesting point.

   Looking at Chapter 3, Chen Yinke couldn’t help but smile, the creative intention of this book was as he expected. He did not continue to read, but turned back to the first chapter and re-read, while understanding the author’s hidden brushstrokes, while looking for any historical citation errors.

  Thanks to Zhou Hexuan’s careful revision for several months, otherwise, with Huang Renyu’s original work, Chen Yinke would have easily found the mistake.

   His wife, Tang Yun, urged him to sleep several times, but Chen Yinke could not bear to release the book. It was the next morning when he finished reading the book. After breakfast, Chen Yinke fell asleep with his head covered, and woke up in the afternoon to continue reading.

   “Wanli Fifteen Years” is indeed a subjective guess from the perspective of historical figures, but the whole book has selected many characters such as Emperor Wanli, Shen Shixing, Hai Rui, Qi Jiguang and so on. The identity, position and focus of each character are different, which together vividly reflect an era.

  Especially the discussion of the social economy of the Ming Dynasty in the book made Chen Yinke refreshing. Here, Zhou Hexuan deletes the “numerical theory” in the original work, because this theory is too far-fetched, mechanical and one-sided, but argues from the perspective of political system and culture.

   Another evening, Chen Yinke put down the Fifteen Years of Wanli in his hands.

  Chen Yinke belongs to the top historians. He can clearly find that “The Fifteenth Year of Wanli” alludes to the Republic of China everywhere. This is extremely difficult for ordinary readers, but extremely easy for Chen Yinke.

  Who is Chen Yinke?

  In the historical web novels of later generations, writing the Three Kingdoms will inevitably refer to the “eunuch group” and “Scholar-official group”, and writing about the Sui and Tang Dynasties will inevitably refer to the “Guanlong Group”. These concepts were put forward by Chen Yinke during the Republic of China. He is very good at analyzing and summarizing historical political system factions, and is also very sensitive to the culture and economy of the past dynasties, and “The Fifteen Years of Wanli” vividly describes the politics, economy, and culture of the Ming Dynasty.

   When Chen Yinque read “The Fifteen Years of Wanli” for the fifth time, he not only focused on the Republic of China, but also on China in all dynasties from the Tang and Song Dynasties to the Ming and Qing dynasties.

   At the end of the book, the author’s writing intentions are revealed. He summarizes the reasons for China’s backwardness and discusses China’s future development direction. The “Fifteen Years of Wanli”, when the world was peaceful, was alluding to the Republic of China at this time, and the Republic of China at this time was even more unbearable than the “Fifteen Years of Wanli”.

“In the fifteenth year of Wanli and the second year of Dinghai, on the surface, it seems that the world has risen to a level, and nothing can be remembered. In fact, our Ming Empire has reached the end of its development.” – This sentence is related to the analysis of Ming Dynasty society in the previous article, When we contact the social conditions of the Republic of China again, we are undoubtedly saying: “The Republic of China has reached the end of its development.”

  Chen Yinke’s mood is hard to calm. After reading this book, he no longer thinks about whether the war of resistance can be won, but thinks hard about the future of Chinese society.

   Putting down the pen and paper, and sitting for a long time, Chen Yinke began to write a comment: “Feelings of Reading Mr. Zhou’s Fifteen Years of Wanli.”