Chapter 13 Abandoning Agriculture and Learning Literature

After sailing in the Pacific Ocean for more than half a month, Hu Shi and other 70 international students landed on the New World in San Francisco on September 9. ①Afterwards, Hu Shi changed to a train, crossed the United States, came to Ithaca in southern New York State, and walked into the campus of Cornell University. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the disaster-stricken motherland was in a dark age of extreme decline, decay, poverty and backwardness. Some advanced elements of the descendants of Yan and Huang have turned to the West to seek the truth of saving the country and the people; most of the students sent abroad are bloody patriotic youths.Hu Shi went to study in the United States, on the one hand, to seek a personal way out.In a little poem he wrote on New Year's Day of the 1911 year, he once stated: "It's a pity that it is a festival, and it is hard to win fame." ② What he said is the truth.But on the other hand, Hu Shi also embraced the patriotic purpose of "willing to obtain medicine from the west" and "serve the country with a pen".He wrote in his diary:

What I think about day by day, and what I dream about at night, is nothing more than the tragedy of the subjugation of the country. I have insomnia at night, knowing that "I don't care about my latitude, but worry about the death of my ancestor and Zhou", this is a matter of human nature and nature. ③ This feeling of traveling in a foreign land and nostalgia for the motherland is often revealed in his "Notes from the Zanghui Room". Hu Shi once wrote a song "Song of Sleeping Beauty", which is the most representative of his desire and patriotic spirit of "begging for medicine from the west".The poem was caused by a sentence of the French Emperor Napoleon.Napoleon once said that China is like a sleeping lion. When the sleeping lion wakes up in the future, the whole world will be shocked.Later, many people in the world followed suit.However, Hu Shi believed that "it is better to compare our country with a sleeping lion than with a sleeping beauty", because we are an ancient civilization in the East, and when we become strong in the future, we should contribute to the world in terms of cultural relics and morals, not in In terms of force.

Therefore, he wrote "Sleeping Beauty Song" to "bless the future of my motherland".The full poem is as follows: "Perfect oriental appearance, sleeping for a hundred years. Once the westerly wind blows, the jade arm is invaded by the curtain. The blue sea blows the flood, and the red building wakes up the beauties. The clothes of the past, long sleeves and high snails. Poor dreams come back to the sun, one by one with the world Violent. Thrush eyebrows are different shades, go out to be stabbed. Courteously send a group of servants, buy pearls into the city; change palace clothes in the east market, and ask for a new system in the west market. Return to serve the beautiful woman, a hundred times the old charm. Pretend to dance together, "The lord lives a hundred years Years old!" ④ Although the poem is not very clever, the implication is very clear. Hu Shi hopes to learn from the "new system" of the West, change the poverty and backwardness of the motherland, and make the Chinese nation prosperous and strong, so as to stand on its own among the nations of the world.

The choice of majors also reflected Hu Shi's patriotic purpose.When he was about to go to the United States by boat in Shanghai, his second brother came from the three northeastern provinces to see him off, and told him that because his family was in trouble, he should choose to study railway engineering or mining and metallurgy engineering when he went to the United States. When he came back, he could revive the family business and revitalize the industry for the country; he especially told Hu Shi not to study literature, philosophy, nor the politics and law of being an official, it was useless.When Hu Shi arrived in the United States, he discussed the choice of major with many people, but he was not interested in road mining; he couldn't live up to his brother's expectations, so he took a compromise method and chose to study agriculture, and entered the New York State Agricultural College affiliated to Cornell University. Want to be a scientific farmer, serve the country with agriculture. ⑤

However, Hu Shi was really not interested in the courses of the Agricultural College.In particular, a course of "Prology" has practice every week, and each student is required to sort dozens of apples and fill in the form.For example, the length of the stem, the size of the navel, the corners and roundness of the fruit, the color of the peel, the toughness of the flesh, the taste of sweet and sour, the record of fat and thin... etc., the items are very detailed.At that time, there were more than 400 kinds of apples in the United States, and they had to be subdivided one by one.Chinese students do not understand these many apples, and they feel very boring and headache when filling out the form, but the result is still full of mistakes and poor grades.Hu Shi felt that studying agriculture was against his personal interests.It turned out that Hu Shi already had a good foundation in Chinese classical literature and history; since studying abroad, he has a strong interest in English literature, and has also dabbled in German and French literature.Coupled with the success of the 1911 Revolution, which overthrew the Qing Dynasty and established the Republic of China, people from all walks of life in the United States wanted to know about the situation of the new Chinese government, so Hu Shi was invited to give several speeches on Chinese issues.This prompted him to study the background of the Revolution of 1911 and the lives of the leaders of the revolution, so he also became interested in political history.For these reasons, Hu Shi gave up agriculture in the spring of 1912 and transferred to the College of Liberal Arts of Kangda University to study philosophy and literature. ⑥

Although the change to liberal arts was due to his interest, it also contained his wish to "serve the country with a pen".In September of the year when he switched to liberal arts, Hu Shi translated the short story of France Daudet into Chinese for the first time, renamed it "Ceding the Land", and published it in the "Grand Republic Daily".Later, during the May 4th Literary Revolution, the original name was restored, and it was included in the first volume of "Short Stories" translated by him and listed as the first article.Since then, Hu Shi applied the vernacular translation of this well-known patriotic masterpiece, which has had a great influence and has been circulated in China for decades without fading.Later, he translated Byron's "Song of Lament for Greece", which is generous and mournful, and it is also a famous article that inspires the patriotism of the Greeks.These show that Hu Shi loves literature, and he is engaged in the translation and introduction of excellent foreign literature, in order to "serve the country with this", so as to inspire the patriotism of Chinese sons and daughters.

Cornell University has the "Browning Essay Award" to commemorate the British poet Robert Browning (Robert Browning 1812-1889) in the 19th century. In the spring of 1914, Hu Shi wrote an essay "On the Optimism of the English Poet Brown Yin" as a solicitation for this award. It was announced on May 7 that Hu Shi actually won the award, with a prize money of 50 US dollars.He won the Browning Essay Award as a foreign student, which is rare in the school, so people from all walks of life were somewhat unexpected. Newspapers also reported and commented on it, and newspapers in major cities reprinted it, and even published it in famous The New York Times.As a result, the influence was quite large, and some acquaintances came to congratulate one after another.Hu Shi was also unexpectedly happy. He wrote in his diary:

This mere fifty gold medals is not enough, but such honors are enough to win a little face for the student circles of our country, and it is also the end of "serving the country with a pen". ⑦ Obviously, Hu Shi linked the honor he won personally with the honor he won for the motherland. ① Hu Shi wrote in his diary on September 9, 1938: "Looking at this trip [according to the page of the diary printed with 'Admission Day (in California)'], I remember that I came to the United States on this day in 1910 and was in Jinshan Going ashore coincides with California’s 50th anniversary of joining the Confederacy. Now it’s 28 years!” (Note to the third edition)

②See Volume 1 of "Notes from the Chamber of Zanghui". January 30, 1911 was the New Year's Day of the Xinhai Year. A small poem said: "The eternal night is as cold as before, and the next year has changed. Layers of ice buried the road, and snow covered the isolated city. The past is the heart On this day, the strange books illuminate the eyes. It’s a pity that it’s a festival, and it’s hard work to win the name." The strange book refers to the "Five Foot Shelf" (Five Foot Shelf), also known as "Harvard Classics" (Harvard Classics) delivered that day. , is a series of books edited by Eliot, president of Harvard University, which collects ancient and modern masterpieces and prints them into 50 huge volumes, about five feet long, so it is called "five feet".Shanghai Yadong Library Edition, p.1.

③Volume 1 of "Zanghui Room Notes", March 24, 1911.Quoted "Yu doesn't care about its latitude, but worries about the death of Zong Zhou" , see "Zuo Zhuan" Zhao Gong twenty-four years.嫠, widow.Weft, the weft yarn used for weaving.It is said that widows are not worried about their lack of latitude, but are afraid of the destruction of the country.Later, because it was used as a metaphor for worrying about the country and forgetting home, it was also referred to as "Worry of Weiwei". ④ "Notes on the Canghui Room" Volume 9, written in December 1914, postscript on March 15, 1915.Shanghai Yadong Edition, pp. 587-589.

⑤Refer to Hu Shi’s speech "The Cultivation and Career Selection of Middle School Students" in Taitung County on December 27, 1952, see "Hu Shi's Speech Collection" (Edition A), edited by Taipei Free China Press in 1953, and published by Huaguo Publishing House. ⑥Refer to Chapter 3 of "Hu Shi's Oral Autobiography", "Abandoning Agricultural Science and Switching to Philosophy".Translated by Tang Degang, published by Taipei Biographical Literature Publishing House in March 1984. ⑦ "Zanghui Room Notes", Volume 4, "One by one won the Pu Langyin Essay Prize" (May 9, 1914), Shanghai Yadong Edition, p. 230.