Chapter 31 Preface to "Biography of Mr. Zhang Jizhi" in Nantong

Preface to "Biography of Mr. Zhang Jizhi" in Nantong Biography is the least developed branch of Chinese literature.There are probably three reasons for this: the first is that there is no atmosphere of worshiping great figures; the second is that there are many taboos; the third is the obstacle of writing. Biography begins with commemorating great heroes.Therefore, Plato and Xie Nuofan never forget their teacher who died for the truth, but there is a biography and dialogue collection of Socrates.Therefore, Brutarch commemorates the great heroes of the past, but there is his "Heroes".All the slightly readable biographies in the history of Chinese literature contain the meaning of worshiping heroes, such as Sima Qian's "Benji of Xiang Yu" is an example.The monks in the Tang Dynasty worshiped Xuanzang who had been seeking scriptures for seventeen years, so "Biography of Master Ci En" is the most detailed biography in the Middle Ages.Neo Confucianists in the Southern Song Dynasty worshiped Zhu Xi, the Taoist leader who died under the ban of the party, so Zhu Zi's Chronicle became the earliest detailed chronicle.

But the atmosphere of hero worship is the least developed in China.For a great person who has passed away, when he just died, we may send an elegiac couplet or write a sacrificial oration.Soon it was all forgotten!There are upstarts who should be flattered, and new bosses who should be flattered. Why bother to settle the bad debts for the deceased?So no matter how great a person is, if he wants a biographical epitaph after his death, he has to pay a high price to buy it from those scholars who specialize in flattering tomb articles!Biographical articles are not based on love, respect and worship, but on the sale of money. How can there be truly touching works?

The most important requirement for a biography is the factual facsimile, but we Chinese literati lack the habit of telling the truth the most.There are taboos about politics, taboos about the people of the time, and taboos about the deceased himself.When a sage writes history, there are still some fallacious examples of tabooing the venerable, the relatives, and the sages, not to mention the flattery of future generations!Therefore, "Tan Gong" records that Kong's wife was born, that Confucius did not know his father's tomb, and that Confucius wanted to go to the Buddha's pilgrimage.In the later articles on steles, there were more taboos and even more flattery. There were only words of praise, and there was never any loss of morality to remember.Occasionally there were slanders, and most of them came from the mouth of enemies. For example, Song Confucianism slandered Wang Anshi, and even forged "Debate on Traitors".The disadvantage of this kind of villain's behavior is to hide evil and promote good.Therefore, the biographical articles written for thousands of years, if they are not flattery, they are not slanderous, they are both taboo, and they cannot be reported in the same way.

The most important thing in a biography is to be able to describe his real identity, real expression, and real tone of voice, so that readers can feel as if they have seen the person, and make the reader feel that they can really be friends with the person.But China's dead characters can't take on this kind of vivid sketching work.In recent years, I have studied Buddhist historical materials and read countless monk steles in the Six Dynasties and Tang Dynasty. Ninety-eight nine percent of them are full of parallel couplets. I don’t know what they are talking about.It was not until Li Hua, Dugu and below that there were some readable biography on the stele.But the later "ancient prose" writers were poisoned by the theory of "righteousness and law", paying attention to the ancientness of words and sentences, and not paying attention to the truth of facts.Forcibly put lively people into the bad formula of rigid ancient prose, so there are only bad ancient prose, and there is absolutely no living biography.

For these reasons, there has been hardly a readable biography in the past two thousand years.Because there is no biography that can really paint life and life, so there is not a big person who can make people love, respect and adore in two thousand years!It's not that there are no epic careers, it's just that they are all buried in those dead ancient prose and parallel prose.It's not true that there are no great figures who can make people love, worship, and feel inspired, but they are all killed by those bad-toned literati. There are several important figures in modern Chinese history, which can be used as materials for new style biographies.Hong Xiuquan, Hu Linyi, Zeng Guofan, Guo Songtao, Li Hongzhang, and Yu Yue were farther away; Sun Wen, Yuan Shikai, Yan Fu, Zhang Zhidong, Zhang Jian, Sheng Xuanhuai, Kang Youwei, and Liang Qichao were closer—these people are related to the life of a country. They should all have vivid sketches to record their lives, use the meticulous work of embroidery needles to search and verify their facts, and use bold and profound insights to judge their status in history.Many university history professors and students, why don't they come here to get some field training and do some practical historical work?Is it fear of difficulty?Is it the lack of the psychology of worshiping big men?Or lack of historical talent?

Mr. Zhang Jizhi is a great failed hero in the history of modern China, which no one can deny.He independently opened up countless new roads, and has been a pioneer for 30 years, feeding millions of people, benefiting one side, and affecting the whole country.In the end, because he opened up too many paths and took on too great a cause, he had to die with many unfinished wishes.Such a man deserves a detailed biography, if not many. His son, Mr. Xiaoruo, vowed to devote all his energy to writing the biography of Mr. Ji Zhi in recent years.He has spent several years editing all the works of Mr. Ji Zhi, sorting out and reading them himself.This collection is a great historical material.There are also nearly 10,000 letters of Ji Zhi's friends preserved in Nantong, which are also important historical materials.Mr. Ji Zhi himself compiled a chronology, up to the age of seventy, and diaries, which are extremely valuable materials.With these materials as the foundation, Xiaoruo has a solid foundation and a solid framework for the work of pre-transmission.

Xiaoruo still has a few very important qualifications to be the first biography.First, he loves and worships his ancestors the most in his life, so his work becomes a work of love and a work of religion.Second, he was born in this era of the budding of new historiography, influenced by modern scholars, he knew to love the truth, he knew that family biography is the material for the history of the country, he knew that there is nothing more to love the ancestors than to tell the truth, and to be taboo for the ancestors It is to humiliate the ancestors, so he once said to me that he should try his best to achieve the realm of documentary facsimile in his first biography.Thirdly, this time he decided to use the vernacular as the preliminary biography, decided to break all ancient writers’ method of biography on steles, and decided to adopt the method of Wang Maohong’s "Zhu Zi Chronicle" and my "Zhang Shizhai Chronicle", fully citing Mr. Ji Zhi’s writings and documents. The materials for biography are always aimed at fully showing the personality and aspirations of his great father.

With these qualifications, we can believe that Xiaoruo's pre-biography will definitely open up a new era for his son to be a family biography, and it will bring a lot of understanding and respect to those of us who love and respect Mr. Ji Zhi. December 14, 1929 Volume 8 of "Three Collections of Hu Shi's Essays"