Chapter 147 10. Liang Qichao

Current Affairs School is the first school in China that focuses on promoting reform, democracy, and civil rights. It is one of the important symbols of the reform movement.During Liang Qichao's tenure as the chief teacher of the school, he trained a group of famous modern Chinese politicians such as Cai E and Qin Lishan. After the failure of the Reform Movement of 1898, Liang Qichao has been hovering between reform and revolution.The failure of the reform made Liang constantly reflect. "There are so many things in the world, and the sun and the moon are throwing people in a hurry. How can a young man suddenly be thirty." In 1902, Liang Qichao, who was thirty years old, was full of vitality and amazing energy. "Xin Min Shuo", "On the Power of Academics Dominating the World", Works such as "New Historiography" were published in succession, causing huge waves in China's political, moral, academic, and literary circles.

Liang Qichao conducted in-depth research on the thoughts of Western Enlightenment thinkers. He realized that: "People's morality, people's wisdom, and people's power are actually the foundation of politics, learning, and skills." Behind the success of political system reform, there is actually a broader Cultural support is national quality or "national character".Therefore, he proposed to transform the "national character" and create "Xinmin", and used "Xinmin of China" as his pen name to publish the article "Xinmin Shuo" in "Xinmin Congbao".

Liang Qichao summarized the backwardness of the Chinese people in "Theory of the New People" as follows: slavery, ignorance, selfishness, hypocrisy, cowardice, inaction, weak patriotism, and being a bystander. He proposed two methods to cultivate the new people. One is to strengthen what it has and make it new, and the other is to supplement what it doesn't have and make it new.Chinese citizens must have modern spirits such as public morality, national thought, rights thought, free thought, self-government, martial spirit, group thought, duty thought, good private morality, etc., before they can become Chinese new citizens.

Liang Qichao believed that "the country is weak if the people are weak, and the country is strong when the people are strong", and the quality of the people determines the quality of a country's political system. It is precisely because of the backwardness of the Chinese people that China can only be ruled by an autocratic government and has fallen into a cycle of tyranny. abyss.In view of this, Liang Qichao devoted all his energy to the work of cultivating new people in China. He firmly believed that "if there are new people, there will be no new system, no new government, and no new country."

Liang Qichao read Western history, read that Copernicus' theory of the circle of the earth opened up the United States, Bacon and Descartes' philosophies swept away the slavishness of Europe's academic circles for thousands of years, and he realized that "the progress of a country must be based on academic thinking. , and the customs and politicians are all their descendants." In 1902, Liang Qichao wrote the article "On the Power of Academics Dominating the World", which focused on the great power of academics to change the world. In the same year, Liang Qichao's "New Historiography" set off a "historical revolution", and Liang also became the founder of China's "New Historiography".In "New Historiography", Liang Qichao regarded Sima Qian, Du You, Zheng Qiao, Sima Guang, Yuan Shu, and Huang Zongxi as the "Six Gentlemen" in Chinese historiography. "Twenty-Four Histories" is just a "family tree" of twenty-four surnames, and it is "one of the most unprecedented books on the earth".Liang Qichao advocated that historiography should be made for the people, used to record the deeds of the people and promote the spirit of the people.

Liang Qichao believed that classical Chinese was too much a hindrance to the spread of new ideas among the people, so he began to advocate a revolution in the transformation of language to facilitate the popularization of culture. This was the "revolution in the literary world."Aiming at the current situation of the popularity of classical Chinese among the upper class and literati at that time, Liang Qichao proposed that "it is appropriate to use slang and write a large number of books today" in order to open up the people's thinking and intelligence. When Liang Qichao wrote his essays, he deliberately used colloquialisms to write, sweeping away the old-fashioned and rigid style of classical Chinese.His articles are easy to understand, appealing to both refined and popular tastes, and his writing style is vivid, lively, fresh, well-organized, "indiscriminate in his vertical strokes" and full of emotion, which was called "new style" by the people at that time.The popularity of the new style opened up a big situation for the later vernacular movement.

The "novel revolution" initiated by Liang Qichao completely changed the embarrassing position of novels in history. In 1902, Liang Qichao founded China's first magazine dedicated to publishing novels, "New Novels". He not only perfected the theory of novels and opened up novel positions, but also translated and created a large number of excellent novels, such as "The Adventures of a Beautiful Woman", "Italian Fifteen Heroes", "The Future of New China" and so on. In 1899, Liang Qichao first put forward the idea of ​​"revolution in the poetry world".He proposed that new poems should have new artistic conception and new sentences, and pay attention to the combination of "new artistic conception" and "old style".In "Poetry in the Drinking Ice Room", he further elaborated the theory of "revolution in the poetic world".

The "novel revolution" and "poetry revolution" proposed by Liang Qichao greatly improved the status of literature in society, and novels and poems therefore possessed magical powers and had a profound influence on society. Liang Qichao once put forward a package of revolutionary ideas, such as drama revolution, moral revolution, advocating emancipation of the mind, advocating women's liberation, monogamy, no foot binding, opposing narrow national revanchism, and advocating political revolution instead of racial revolution, etc. Liang Qichao was the first to put forward the concept of "Chinese nation" and is considered one of the founders of modern nationalism.

Liang Qichao published a series of articles in "Xinmin Congbao", which systematically analyzed the scholarship, thoughts and viewpoints of jurists and statesmen from Aristotle to Hobbes, Montesquieu, Rousseau and modern Japan. Introduce and comment, and vigorously promote modern constitutional theories such as equality for all and separation of powers.He published "Constitutional History of Various Countries" in succession, publicized and analyzed constitutional regimes, and explained modern democratic political terms such as Congress and cabinet, "making most people in a country know about constitutionalism, hope for constitutionalism, and take the lead in seeking constitutionalism."

Liang Qichao was the first Chinese to mention Marx in his works. In 1902, Liang Qichao wrote the article "The Theory of Evolutionary Revolutionary Jiede" under the pen name of "China's Xinmin". The "Maikes" he mentioned in the article was Marx. Liang Qichao introduced and publicized Tolstoy, Copernicus, Watt, Descartes and many other Western celebrities in the fields of culture and science to Chinese people, enabling Chinese people at that time to have a preliminary and systematic understanding of Western culture. Liang Qichao's article influenced a generation of Chinese people.It was through Liang Qichao's "enlightenment" that many revolutionaries came into contact with the social and political theories of the Western bourgeoisie. Some revolutionaries even copied large sections of Liang Qichao's articles when they wrote articles advocating revolution. For example, Zou Rong's "Revolutionary Army".

Young Mao Zedong was deeply influenced by Liang Qichao. At the age of 16, Mao Zedong began to read "Xinmin Congbao" and "read it again and again until he could recite it." He often imitated Liang Qichao's new style of writing when he was studying in Hunan No. 1 Normal School. And imitating Liang Zi's name Ren Gong, he named himself Zi Ren. In the spring of 1911, 18-year-old Mao Zedong posted his political blueprint for the future of China on the wall of a school in Changsha, Hunan. In Mao’s blueprint, Sun Yat-sen would become the president of the new China, Kang Youwei would be the prime minister, and Liang Qichao would be the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Later, Li Dazhao and Mao Zedong established societies in Beijing and Changsha respectively, named after "Young China" and "Xinmin". Liang Qichao was "a man whom Zhou Enlai admired for a long time" when he was a teenager. On January 23, 1918, Zhou Enlai mentioned Liang Qichao's poem in his diary: "A man has no extraordinary achievements at thirty, and he vows to return the mere seven feet to God", and wrote in his diary Record: "I read "The Collected Works of the Ice Drinking Room" in the evening, and I felt very impressed... I picked up Liang Rengong's collected works and read, "Ten years later, I will think about me, and the whole country is like a crazy desire to talk about who; the world has endless wishes, and the sea and sky are vast Li Duoshi' A few lines of the poem brought tears to my eyes. Suddenly I thought that when Ren Gong wrote this poem, he was only 27 or 28 years old, and now I am 19 years older. I have accomplished nothing, and I really feel ashamed of my predecessors." Liang Qichao went to Nankai to give a speech. Zhou Enlai, who was about to graduate, made a transcript of the speech as a student reporter, and gave the transcript as a composition to the teacher for correction. Mr. Gong’s wonderful truth. How can this talent be measured.” Afterwards, Liang’s speech and Zhou’s “Reporter’s Knowledge” were signed together as “Zhou Enlai’s Transcript” and published in Nankai’s “School Spirit” newspaper. Zhou Enlai wrote before studying in Japan that the poem "Dajiang Song Stop Turning Toudong" was born out of Liang Qichao's "Going to the Country". When Hu Shi was 12 years old, he saw "Xinmin Congbao Compilation" for the first time, and he was immediately fascinated. Twenty-eight years later, Hu Shi said in "Forty Self-Reports": "I have personally received infinite favors from Mr. Liang. Looking back now, there are two clearest points. The first is his "Xin Min Shuo", and the second is his "The General Trend of Changes in Chinese Academic Thought".... When we read such texts at that time, none of us were moved by his shock....The articles of "Xin Min Shuo" opened up a new world for me, and made me completely believe There are also very high-level nations and very high-level cultures outside of China; "The General Trend of Changes in Chinese Academic Thought" also opened up a new world for me, making me know that there are academic ideas in China besides the Four Books and Five Classics." Lu Xun was also greatly influenced by Liang Qichao, and his tireless work on the reform of national character was obviously inspired by Liang's theory of Xinmin. Lin Changmin's "Shandong Is Dead!" "The article played a huge role in the outbreak of the May Fourth Movement.And his article originated from the telegram Liang Qichao sent back from Paris.Liang's telegram informed the situation of the Paris Peace Conference at that time, and proposed methods to fight for rights and interests.Therefore, many researchers believe that Liang Qichao was the one who really lit the fuse of the May Fourth Movement. American scholar Zhang Hao believes that Liang promoted the transformation of Chinese culture and Chinese people from tradition to modernization earlier than the May Fourth New Youth. Xiao Gongquan said: Almost none of the leaders of the May 4th Movement had not been inspired by reading his words. Xu Jilin commented on Liang Qichao's "Xinmin Shuo" and said: "China's enlightenment did not start from the May Fourth Movement, but actually began with "Xinmin Shuo". The enlightenment thinkers of the May Fourth Movement, whether it is Hu Shi, Lu Xun, or Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, Mao Zedong received the baptism of "Xin Min Shuo" in his youth... "Xin Min Shuo" can be said to be the virgin land of Chinese enlightenment thought." Hu Shi spoke highly of Liang Qichao's enlightenment role: "Liang Rengong is the greatest hero of our country's revolution. This gift cannot be slandered by a hundred beaks. Last year’s revolution in Wuhan, which was able to respond to the whole country in one fell swoop, has penetrated deeply into the people’s ideological and political thoughts, so the momentum is like a bamboo ear. Even if there is no Liang’s pen, even if there are hundreds of Sun Yat-sen, Sun Yat-sen, Huang Keqiang, how could he succeed so quickly? In the poems of modern times, "The day of writing, the time of global revolution", this second language is only worthy of Liang."