Chapter 80 The loneliness behind the bustle
The Kuomintang government fled to Taiwan. Although there is only a tiny island left, it still maintains its old appearance in Nanjing, with all five courtyards and various departments.There is also a "Academia Sinica", which is regarded as the highest academic institution and is directly under the "Presidential Palace".
In the autumn of 1957, Zhu Jiahua, the original president of Academia Sinica, resigned. On November 3, the council elected Hu Shi as the candidate for president. On the 4th, Chiang Kai-shek designated Hu Shi as the president of the Academia Sinica.Hu was determined to go back because of Taiwan's encirclement and suppression of "Free China". In addition, the situation in Taiwan had temporarily stabilized at that time, and he was old and sick. Gladly obliged.Soon, Hu Shi wrote to Chen Zhifan, saying that he had decided to go back to Taipei.The letter reads:
My plan to go back is because I am 66 years old this year, and I should settle down and use the collections of the Nangang Institute of History and Philology to write out several unfinished works. ①
On April 6th of this year, Hu Shi flew out of the United States, ended his nine-year exile in the United States, and arrived at Taipei Airport on the afternoon of the 8th.
Hu Shi was greeted at the airport that day by Chen Cheng, the "Vice President" of the Kuomintang government in Taiwan, officials from various agencies, friends, and young students. It is said that there were five or six hundred people.Even the 80-year-old Mr. Yu Youren was sitting and waiting at the entrance of the airport, leaning on crutches.Hu was surrounded by the gangway of the plane, shook hands with officials one by one, took pictures under the flags of some student associations, and talked to reporters, making a fuss.The next day, it was full of guests again, and it was overwhelming.Hu Shi, who is very lively by nature, was naturally very happy.
On April 10, Hu Shi took office as the dean of Academia Sinica and presided over the third academician meeting.On this day, Chiang Kai-shek took the title of "President"
The honorable person came to give a speech and complimented the Hu family a lot.Hu Shi was busy shaking hands, giving a speech, and then electing a new academician. He was so busy that he was full of joy and smiling.
Since then, during the nearly four years of Hu Shi's life in Taiwan, the authorities and friends have relied on him to embellish "democracy and freedom". He also sincerely hopes that the Taiwan authorities will implement more "democracy and freedom". It will continue one after another.For example: In November of this year, Hu Shi moved into the dean's residence in Nangang, which was specially allocated for him by the authorities. At the beginning of 1959, the "National Long-term Development Scientific Plan" drafted by Hu Shi was formally passed, and a long-term development scientific committee was established with him as the chairman.In July of this year, Hu Shi received an honorary doctorate in humanities from the University of Hawaii, which was the last of the 35 honorary degrees he received in his lifetime. In June 1960, the former President of Columbia University and the current US President Eisenhower, whom he admired, visited Taiwan. Hu Shi attended the welcome banquet and had a meeting with Eisen at the Grand Hotel. In October 1961, his wife Jiang Dongxiu finally bid farewell to her poker friends in New York and returned to Taiwan to reunite with her family.In four years, he presided over three academician elections, and elected 30 new academicians including Yang Zhenning, Li Zhengdao, Wu Jianxiong, Yuan Jialiu, Yang Liansheng, Ren Zhigong, and Mei Yiqi;
Many of his old books were reprinted in Taiwan, as well as a photocopy of his beloved book Jiaxu.In addition, there are frequent speeches, banquets, visits, and birthday celebrations, and many other lively events. There are also "lace news" about him in the newspapers. December 17, 1960 was Hu Shi's 70th birthday, and the birthday celebration was "I'll go on stage after you sing", which was lively for several days; Chiang Kai-shek also presented a pro-book "Shou" frame, and specially held a banquet in the official residence Happy birthday to Hu Shih. ②All of these things seem to be the result of Zhiyu Tron, and he should be satisfied.
However, Hu Shi's life journey in the last few years in Taiwan was not smooth; behind the knowledge and excitement, many unpleasant things were intertwined with each other and happened one after another.
The first is that his health is getting worse.He had a heart attack; during the years in Taiwan, he was admitted to the Hospital affiliated to National Taiwan University four times, each time with a heart attack, each time getting worse.This is naturally unavoidable for the elderly; but some unpleasant events and circumstances are often the direct root cause of his old illnesses recurring one after another, and often lead to the deterioration of the condition.
Secondly, his financial situation also made him worry.Mr. Yang Shuren, who worked next to Hu Shi at that time, wrote a memoir article, in which there is such a description:
One night before he went to the United States for the last time in 49 years, I personally remember him saying to me: "I am not in the United States, and my wife alone plans to borrow a small piece of land in Southport to build a small house at his own expense. Immediately send it to the research institute. I think, when he spoke to me that night, the sum of money was gone. I heard that he had made the next best thing, intending to raise a small sum of money to support a small school in Taipei City. Mrs. Hu returned to China to live in the house. According to Mr. Wang Zhiwei (who was entrusted to handle Mr. Hu’s personal income and expenses), he told me that the income from a small amount of royalties (Mr. The rent deposits for the 15 stacked houses are not enough. I think there is no need to ask about the rest.
Later, Mrs. Hu returned to China, and I think Mr. Hu's financial situation has not improved much.Even the medical expenses of going to the hospital one after another feel difficult.The doctor always said that he needed to stay in the hospital for a few more days, and his friends also advised him, but he himself always insisted on leaving the hospital a few days earlier. ③
"People are afraid of getting old and poor." From this, it is probably not difficult for people to imagine the desolation of Hu Shi's late life.
What bothered and embarrassed Hu Shi the most was the many ups and downs that involved him in society.
The first one is "Hu Shi and the Fortune of Nations". ④According to Mr. Yang Shuren's article, the day after Hu Shi returned to Taiwan, someone gave him a booklet "Hu Shi and the Fortune of China".This is an abuse of "academic research"
In the name of Hu Shi, the book of insults and personal attacks against Hu Shi contains a total of four articles.Some said that Hu Shi himself wanted to be a leader, and his formula was:
The ideal nonsense leader = ignorance + incompetence + inaction + foreign college students = Hu Shi.
Some attacked Hu Shih's hole-in-the-wall store in the past, "breaking the fortress of the national spirit"; now he proposes the "three noes" president, "why not want to withdraw Taiwan's national defense today?" Obviously, these are in response to Hu Shih's birthday celebration for Chiang Kai-shek Wen's counterattack.Some said that Hu Shiwei was against Confucianism and classical Chinese in his youth, confused the hearts of the people in the mainland, paved the way for the Communist Party, and thus caused the Kuomintang to lose the mainland.And the author thinks——
Unexpectedly, someone said that Dr. Hu was going to give lectures in Taiwan, but I think the mainland has already told him about it.If he refuses to spare the lives of his compatriots who have taken refuge in Taiwan, and wants to tell Taiwan the base of revival, then our descendants of the Yellow Emperor will truly be doomed.
This blamed Hu Shi for the failure of the Kuomintang in the mainland.At the end of the book, there are also a few copies of "Shoulian", which are said to be "reproduced by social public opinion", but they are all boring words of abuse.
The article "Hu Shi and the Fortune of China" obviously has no academic theory at all, so Hu Shi didn't bother to pay attention to it.However, the publication and distribution of this pamphlet was very secretive, and it became a mysterious and strange book in the storm of Taiwan's real politics, which inevitably aroused Hu Shi's worries.This book appeared just before Hu Shi returned to Taiwan, apparently to give him a warning; and as soon as the book appeared, the Secretariat of Taiwan’s Executive Yuan immediately requested the public security organs to ban it, and Taiwan’s newspapers also unanimously condemned it. , to give Hu Shi a little face.But then things became more and more confused, and the Taipei City Government even avoided imposing a fine on the author of the book, and sent the case to the court, and there was no further action.On the day of "May 4th", the "banned book" "Hu Shi and the National Games" suddenly appeared on the newsstands all over Taipei! The next day, the first page of "United Daily News" published a large advertisement, by " "Student Publishing House" is famous, and it declares that "printing this book will avoid misinformation and damage the reputation of Dr. Hu Shi".They are actually sold to the public in large quantities, priced at five yuan per volume. ⑤ Isn't this a blow to Hu Shi?
From 1959 to 1960, Hu Shi was involved in the political whirlpool of the presidential re-election issue.Since Chiang Kai-shek was elected as the second "president" in 1954, he has grown older and his term of office is about to expire.Under the constitution, he cannot serve three consecutive terms.Chiang's eldest son, Jingguo, was quite capable and influential in the Kuomintang political circles, so there was public opinion that Jingguo should be promoted as the presidential candidate. In mid-January 1959, Hu Shi, Chen Cheng, Wang Shijie, Jiang Menglin and others traveled to Taichung and Tainan for six days. Some people said that they were the "Shangshan Sihao" and the wings of Jiang Jingguo.The so-called "Shangshan Sihao" words later caused a political turmoil in Taiwan for several months. ⑥ Hu Shi also did not approve of Chiang Kai-shek’s re-election. He asked Zhang Qun, the secretary of the presidential palace at the time, to convey his opinion to Jiang, mainly hoping that Chiang would “clearly express respect for the constitution and not be the third president”; Hu Shi expressed the same opinion many times. Tell Huang Jilu, Wang Yunwu and other friends and government dignitaries. ⑦ He also repeatedly expressed "opposition to constitutional revision" and "opposition to re-election for three times" to reporters, all of which were published in newspapers. ⑧However, because Chiang Kai-shek did not want to abdicate, at the end of 1959, someone proposed the case of "modifying the temporary clauses" to create public opinion for Chiang's third term.Hu Shi didn't take this very seriously. He once said that a leader should train a successor. When the time comes, he should be elected and supported with all his strength.This is the style of a great politician.He believes that Roosevelt in the United States did not train successors, and only he was elected again and again. This was Roosevelt's mistake.It can be seen that Hu Shi clearly disapproved of Chiang Kai-shek's re-election. ⑨At the beginning of 1960, the "National Assembly" was approaching, and the issue of "president" re-election or succession became more prominent. Taiwanese newspapers even reported that Hu Shi "may not attend the meeting as a passive protest." ⑩
On February 20, the third meeting of the "National Assembly" was held in Taipei. Hu Shi still attended and became the chairman of the presidium of the assembly.At the banquet hosted by Chiang Kai-shek for the Presidium of the National Congress, Hu Shi made a point of talking about the history and advantages of "secret ballot", saying that it can prevent voters from being threatened and guarantee the freedom of voting, showing a little unwillingness to be manipulated by others .But his words were refuted on the spot by members of the Kuomintang. They said that democratic politics is party politics, and party politics must maintain party discipline, so secret ballots are naturally not necessary;Being besieged by such ignorance and arrogance, Hu Shi was very angry. He once said to people: "Now I would like them to vote by secret ballot. To vote by secret ballot, I will definitely vote."However, he worried that "they might use a show of hands instead of a secret ballot."Later, the third reading of the amendment to the provisional clause was passed and published in the newspaper, completing the legal procedures for Chiang Kai-shek's third consecutive term.Someone came to ask Hu Shi what his opinion was. Did Chiang Kai-shek mean to be re-elected for three terms? Hu Shi replied:
If it wasn't for his own intention, I don't think others would do this.The old man felt that his responsibility to the country was over, and he was in good health.Older people have his confidence, like Syngman Rhee of South Korea, who is ten years older than Mr. Chiang, like Aidenor of West Germany (according to, translated Adenauer), like Churchill before Britain, all of them are older over him.This is true of all the older generations who have been great leaders, and it cannot be said that they are wrong.The problem is that the constitution is being amended, especially for the purpose of re-election for three terms. This opens the door. Now the number of people present at the congress is legal, and anything can be done in the future.Since you amended the constitution for three consecutive terms, they have amended the constitution for issues such as the right to create and referee.The constitution is not unamendable. Once the door is opened to a group of people fighting for power to demand the creation of referendum, it cannot be closed again.
After a few days, Hu Shi was admitted to the hospital due to a heart attack, but he still went to the "National Assembly" to participate in the election.Naturally, Chiang Kai-shek was re-elected as the third "president".This time, Hu Shi did not go to send Jiang Zhi the "certificate of election".
Before and after the re-election of the president, there was another incident of organizing a new party; then there was the incident of Lei Zhen being arrested and sentenced to 14 years in prison.The storm caused by this series of incidents, and the many small whirlpools indirectly caused by it, made an old Hu Shi who wanted to live a quiet life in Taiwan and pay off his debts in the remaining years, almost making him restless and breathless. up.
The debt cannot be repaid, and "democracy and freedom" is also difficult to talk about, so Hu Shi had no choice but to "tolerate", talking about "tolerance is more important than freedom", "tolerance is the root of freedom"! Moreover, he said that his advocacy of tolerance "is not only against oppressive speech What the free man says, speaks to us who moderate our speech."In fact, his focus is to hope that "friends who write articles with a pen" will have a "tolerant attitude".According to him, although the person holding the pen is subjected to all kinds of "unreasonable oppression" and even "encirclement and suppression", he is still a "powerful person", so "absolutely must not abuse our rights."Talking about "freedom of speech" to such an extent, how desolate and sad Hu Shi's state of mind must be!
So someone commented like this:
In the past few years, don't think that there are so many people around him to stir up the excitement of presenting flowers and celebrating birthdays, and don't think that there are so many male and female reporters who regard him as the interviewee of "lace news", but I In the depths of Mr. Hu's heart, he has always been lonely! Always worried and angry!...In recent years, Mr. Hu is certainly a symbol of individual freedom, but he has increasingly become a sad figure of so-called "freedom and democracy" ! His reputation is gradually being embellished with this pitiful so-called "freedom and democracy", and it is in disarray! Don't you see many young people who embrace the ideal of freedom and democracy, in their conversations, fully reveal their "freedom and democracy" Disappointed with Hu Shi".Even so, the "encirclement and suppression of Hu Shi" issued by the "authoritarian leadership center" and its "cultural thugs"
The waves are still coming wave after wave. ... How could Mr. Hu Shi not feel lonely and worried?
Reviews are fairly objective.Behind the excitement, Hu Shi's heart was lonely and worried, which reached an unbearable level.
① This letter was written on January 11, 1958; the other said it was written in 1957.The original letter has not been seen, but it is quoted from Wei Zhengtong's "Hu Shi Biography" ("Modern Chinese Thinkers [7]", Taipei Giant Publishing House, 1978 edition, p. 7).In the same way, he also said in his letter to Li Ji that he wanted to borrow a piece of land in Nangang with his own money and build a small house in order to use the collection of books of the Institute of History and Philology to continue his research work. (Refer to Li Ji's "Preface to the Collection of Papers in Commemoration of the Former President Mr. Hu Shi" and "Mr. Hu's Contribution and Influence to the Academia Sinica", see Taipei "Biographical Literature" Volume 2, Issue 3, Volume 28, Volume 5 Expect)
②See Hu Songping's "Mr. Hu Shizhi's Chronicle Long-Edited First Draft", published by Taipei Lianjing Publishing Company in 1984, Volume 9, pp. 3402-3420.
③Mr. Yang Shuren was the secretary of the Academia Sinica and the executive secretary of the Long-term Development Science Committee; he wrote "Recalling the Fall of a Great Star—Recording the Last Three Years of Mr. Hu Shizhi", published in Taipei's "Wenxing" magazine No. 13 Volume No. 4 (76 issues in total), published on February 1, 1964.
④ "Hu Shi and the National Games", published by "Student Bookstore" in Taipei in 1958.Accepted four articles: (1) "Hu Shi's Desire for Leadership", author Zhu Xin, a pseudonym; (2) "Please See the Unprecedented Dr. Hu and Why I Admire Him", author Zhu Guanghan; (3) "Respect "Inaction" is Mr. Hu Shizhi's birthday", author Li Boai, probably also a pseudonym; (4) "Chinese translation of Byron's mourning Greek poems", author Wang Aiwei.Whether the author is alone or not, and his real name is unknown.One said that after investigation by the government, the book was written by several people, one of whom was Xu Ziming, who graduated from the University of Wisconsin and was a colleague of Hu Shi when he was at Peking University.
⑤ See Du Heng's "Human Nature and Freedom——Re-discussing Hu Shi and Taiwan", published in Hong Kong's "Free Man" on May 14, 1958.
⑥Refer to Hu Songping's "Mr. Hu Shizhi's Conversations in His Later Years", Taipei Lianjing Publishing Company, 1984 edition, page 56, March 15, 1960".
Shangshan Sihao originally refers to four elders in their 80s who lived in seclusion in Shangshan at the end of the Qin Dynasty, including Dongyuangong, Mr. Li, Qiliji, and Xiahuanggong.It is said that in the early Western Han Dynasty, Liu Bang went to hire them, but they refused to come out.And Empress Lu used Zhang Liang's strategy to make the prince humiliate the car and invite the four elders.When Liu Bang saw him, he thought that the prince's wings were complete, so he gave up his attempt to change Zhao Wang Ruyi as the prince.Taiwan's political circles refer to Chen Cheng, Hu Shi and other four as Chiang Ching-kuo's wings, and naturally regard Ching-kuo as the "prince".
⑦Refer to the manuscript of "Hu Shi's Diary", Taipei Yuanliu Publishing Co., Ltd., December 1990 edition, Volume 18, November 15 and 23, 1959. (Third Edition Note)
⑧Refer to Volume 18 of the above book, attached newspaper clippings on December 25, 1958 and February 21, 1960. (Third Edition Note)
⑨ Same Note ⑥ Page 37.
⑩See Hu Shi’s talk recorded in the article “Before and Behind the Scenes of the National Assembly” in the “Weekly Column” of Taiwan’s Zili Evening News on February 7, 1960.
See also note ⑥ written on March 14 on page 53.
See Note ⑥ written on March 5 on page 52.
Note ⑥ written on March 12, page 53.
See "Tolerance and Freedom" (speech at the 10th anniversary of "Free China"), originally published in "Free China" Vol. Published in June.
The postscript of Hu Xuyi's translation of "Two Concepts of Democratic Politics" was published in Taipei's "Democracy Tide" Volume 12, Issue 6, published on March 16, 1962.There is a subtitle under the title of the translation: "Respect for Mr. Hu Shizhi".