Establishment of Modern Chinese Scholarship: Centered on Zhang Taiyan and Hu Shi

Author: Chen Pingyuan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: The book, except for the preface titled "The Westward Flow of the Tide and the Renewal of Old Learning," consists of nine chapters, with the titles of each chapter being: "Seeking Truth and Applying It"; "Official and Private Learning"; "Academia and Politics"; "Experts and Generalists"; "Literary History as a New Paradigm"; "The Debate on Confucian and Mohist Methods"; "The Ethos of Late Qing Reformers"; "The 'Wei-Jin Style' and 'Six Dynasties Prose' in Modern China"; "The Self-Representation of Modern Chinese Scholars." The author writes in the preface: "This book aims to address a broad topic—'The Establishment of Modern Chinese Academia,' yet its focus is narrow: at its extreme, it discusses only the cultural ideals, academic thought, research methods, and cultural attitudes of Zhang Taiyan and Hu Shih, as well as those of two generations of scholars during the Late Qing and May Fourth periods." The starting point is case studies, but the focus is academic transformation—this "small glimpse of the big picture" narrative strategy makes the book's structure different from both "general histories" and "case studies," as it is a thematic research centered on issues." This also highlights the unique aspects of the book in terms of research perspective, methodology, and framework. It is worth noting that Chen Pingyuan was one of the early scholars to begin studying the history of academia. He started writing this book in spring 1991 and completed it in summer 1997, taking six and a half years in total. During this period, he taught three specialized courses on "Modern Academic History" at Peking University. Chen Pingyuan writes in the postscript: "Treating academic history as a research topic and as a form of self-training." Starting from the case studies of Zhang Taiyan and Hu Shih, the book discusses the academic transformation of the 20th century, thereby conducting thematic research. To demonstrate the complexity of China's academic transformation, especially to uncover suppressed and marginalized voices and challenge the already well-established "modernization narrative" represented by the westward flow of Western learning, the author proposes a fundamental hypothesis: the joint efforts of two generations of scholars during the Late Qing and May Fourth periods contributed to the transformation of Chinese academia, and he supports this with extensive evidence and rigorous arguments.