Odes, Elegies, and Hymns

Author: Fang Ning
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2007-01-01
Features: When Gu Hongming first started teaching at Peking University, the students couldn’t help but laugh when they saw his long queue. He, however, calmly walked to the podium, glanced at the students below, and said in a composed manner, “You laugh at me because of my queue. My queue is tangible and can be cut off. But the queues in your heads are not so easy to cut.” On January 1917, when Cai Yuanpei took office as the president of Peking University, he bowed respectfully in return to the school servant who greeted him. In the past, the presidents of Peking University had never paid attention to the school servants. After that, he took off his hat and bowed to the school guards every time he entered or left the school gate. When new students enrolled at Peking University, one of them, carrying a large package, saw an old man on the side of the road and called him over: “Old man, let me check my package, I’m going to register.” The old man waited for an hour without moving to let him check the package. Later, the new student saw the old man again at the opening ceremony of the school—he was Ji Xianlin. This book collects the old stories of over 100 teachers, divided into four parts according to the four stages of growth of all living beings: Spring Planting, Summer Busy, Autumn Harvest, and Winter Storage. “Spring Planting” mainly features the old masters of traditional Chinese studies led by Yu Qiyuan. They were the transitional generation, the sowing generation, inheriting the Qian-Jia school and paving the way for the new learning generation. “Summer Busy” was the creative generation, including cultural saviors like Chen Yinque. “Autumn Harvest” was the generation of professional scholars, where the knowledge of the previous generation was harvested, such as the students of the “Tsinghua Institute of Chinese Studies” and the students of the “Southwest Associated University.” “Winter Storage” was the inheriting generation, twisted by politics, with great dragons hidden in hiding, temporarily storing themselves away.