Chapter 82 temperament

In 1928, Qian Mu's wife Zou Shi, the newborn baby and his elder brother Qian Shengyi passed away successively.After losing three relatives one after another, Qian Mu began to pay attention to health preservation. He said: "It is a great sin to live a short life", so he pays attention to daily routine and exercise in daily life, strengthens the awareness of survival, and wants to escape the "doom" of fate. Qian Mu smoked since he was a child, and later taught in elementary school. There was a section in the textbook on how to persuade students to quit smoking. He thought to himself: I am addicted to smoking, so why teach students, so I quit it resolutely, and did not smoke for decades.People close to Qian Mu said that no matter what he did, he "can afford it, let it go, free and easy, and not burdened by things."

Yanda issued notices in English mostly.Once Qian Mu received a utility bill payment notice, which was all in English.At that time, utility bills had to be paid on a monthly basis. Because his English was not good, he was very angry when he received the notice in English, so he simply refused to pay. At the end of the year, someone from the school asked him if he had received the notice, and he said he had.The person who came asked again: Why not pay the fee on a monthly basis?Qian Mu replied angrily: I am a Chinese teacher, so I don’t need to know English, so why do I issue notices in English in Chinese schools?The other party was dumbfounded for a moment.

Qian Mu insisted on his own opinion and never concealed his views.When talking about ancient history, Qian Mu said: "Things are suspicious, not only in ancient times, but there are many suspicious things in ancient times. For example, if someone's surname is Qian, this Qian's surname belongs to ancient times, so there is nothing suspicious. Recently, someone has changed their surname from Qian to 'Suspect the ancients', what's the point!" This is a nickname for Qian Xuantong's "suspecting the ancients and Xuantong".Someone told him that the son of Qian Xuantong, a famous Peking University professor who advocated doubting ancient times, was in the class, and asked him to pay attention to his lectures so as not to cause trouble. ".Soon, Qian Mu and Qian Xuantong met at a banquet, and Qian Xuantong said, "My son believes your words very much, and won't listen to mine!"

In the summer of 1941, Qian Mu went back to his hometown to visit his relatives.His teacher Lu Simian invited him to give a lecture at his alma mater, Changzhou No. 5 Middle School. Qian Mu obeyed respectfully, and Qian Mu still regarded himself as a student in front of his former teachers.He earnestly warned those young alumni: "This is a teacher who was the head of the school 40 years ago. He led an old student 40 years ago and ordered him to give a speech here. The material aspect of housing construction has changed greatly, and the aspect of personnel. A pair of teachers and students a few years ago, their emotions are like yesterday, and they are still in front of you. This is a rare event in the history of the school. Today, the speech of the old students 10 or 40 years ago is nothing like four It was said in the mouth of the teacher ten years ago. For the rest of the speech today, I deeply hope that the new students who have been present for 40 years will remember it, and I also hope that the teachers who have been present for 40 years will teach it. The school has cultivated people for a hundred years, and its spirit lies in this.”

When he first arrived in Hong Kong, Qian Mu served as the dean of "New Asia Academy". Qian Mu, who was active in running the school, regarded himself as simple and lived in the simple New Asia school building when he founded the school; I took a bus to school; later moved to a remote village next to Xiling Monastery in Sha Tin, and still took buses and trains to attend classes every day, and never applied for public subsidies from the school. In January 1960, Qian Mu, who was the president of New Asia College at the time, was invited by the Department of Oriental Studies of Yale University to give lectures for half a year, and was awarded an honorary doctorate by Yale University.Qian Mu, who never went to university in his life, did not want to be ostentatious in wearing a square cap. He still wore ordinary clothes at the presentation ceremony to emphasize that he was accepting the title of honorary degree as an ordinary person.

After Qian Mu's "Outline of National History" was published, it was censored by the national government and asked Qian Mu to change his evaluation of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom before it was printed.Qian Mu insisted on not changing it, so it took half a year to publish it. Taiwan Confucius and Mencius Society once invited Qian Mu to write the book "The Narration of Confucius".Qian Mu changed his habit of writing histories of his life, started from the doubts of various Confucian deeds and stated theories, and formed his own opinion, and insisted on historical arguments not written by Confucius.This made the Confucius and Mencius Society very dissatisfied and asked Qian Mu to revise the manuscript, otherwise it would refuse to publish it.But Qian Mu insisted on not changing it, and handed over the manuscript to other units for publication.

In 1985, Jiangsu Ancient Books Publishing House put forward the idea of ​​publishing the complete works of Qian Mu, but was rejected.One is that Qian Mu does not agree with the publication of Chinese academic works in simplified characters; the other is that many of his unpublished or upcoming new works have not been included in the publication plan; in addition, Qian Mu made some political remarks before and after the confrontation between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. Responsibility for the text, opposition to revisions and deletions, this dispute was temporarily settled after several coordinations.