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发表于 2010-2-6 01:14:46
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电子书网上不难找到，大家下载看看：http://ifile.it/frl1aes
单从书中这段话提到的内容，“自命甚高”、“竭力鼓吹自己”这样的话，如果说的是实情，似乎还不至于是ugly phrases。倒是作者那种倾向明显却不明言的态度，让我比较反感。
I ask if he remembers the names of any of the critics.
“Li Xueqin,” he says. “He wrote something saying that Chen’s research on
the oracle bones was wrong.”
“Was the criticism accurate?”
“No,” says the curator. “And he shouldn’t have written that paper at that
particular time. Chen already had enough trouble.”
“What’s Li Xueqin like?”
“Li Xueqin—” Ma shakes his head and thinks for a moment. “Buhao
shuo,” he says. “It’s not easy to say. But now Li Xueqin is at the top of the fi eld
of archaeology. For a period he was Chen Mengjia’s assistant.”
the curator won’t say more about the criticism. He drops the name and
leaves it at that, knowing that my curiosity has been raised. He has a reputation
for being politically savvy—during the Cultural Revolution, he reportedly
saved the museum’s artifacts by covering them with banners of Mao Zedong
slogans. Ma knew that Red Guards wouldn’t destroy the Chairman’s words,
and the Shanghai collections emerged intact. Today, the museum is considered
to be the best in all of China, and Ma is given credit for guiding the institution’s
expansion.
There are rumors that the museum actually profi ted from the Cultural
Revolution, when many intellectuals and wealthy people lost their belongings.
I ask the curator about this, and he takes the question in stride. “I was also
criticized,” he says. “We were just concerned with survival.” He tells a story
about a “struggle session” in which the curator and other museum staff were
lifted to a height and then dropped onto the marble fl oor. Ma says that he was
bruised but intact; another colleague landed on his head and died. The tale is
short but effective: I’m not going to ask any more questions about whether the
Cultural Revolution was good for the Shanghai Museum.
Before I leave, the curator photocopies Chen Mengjia’s last letter. The
handwritten document is dated January 26, 1966, the year that the scholar
committed suicide. The handwriting is beautiful, and there is no mention of
fear or political trouble. The characters are arranged as neatly as the furniture
in the Shanghai exhibit, and they feel just as empty:
We had a very pleasant talk last time, maybe you’ve forgotten, but it’s a
pity that we didn’t record it. You came to my home and the time was too
rushed. . . .
That yellow rosewood chair, it might date to earlier than the Ming dynasty,
and of course it should be donated to the Shanghai Museum. If you
like the other pieces, they can be donated as well. I hope that someone from
the museum can come here and pack them up. . . .
* * *
in beijing, i fi nd a copy of the criticism. It was published in 1957, shortly
after Chen Mengjia had been named a Rightist and an enemy of the Party. The
article consists of a long review of Chen’s book on oracle bones: the chrestomathy.
The review is sharply critical of Chen’s scholarship, and then, at the
end, the attack becomes personal:
Chen has not presented anything substantial enough to match his arrogance.
Chen has an extreme tendency to boast. For example, in the twenty
chapters of the book, Chen neglects many essays and theories of other
scholars, instead collecting only his own ideas. . . . This self-boasting attitude
should not be accepted by us.
It’s not hard to fi nd more information about Li Xueqin. In the fi elds of
archaeology and history, his name is everywhere—he publishes about oracle
bones, ancient bronzes, bamboo documents. He is brilliant and prolifi c; a
number of scholars tell me that he has the rare ability to do excellent research
while also deftly satisfying the Communist Party. One scholar of ancient Chinese
tells me bluntly that Li is a “toady”; a number of people mention his criticism
of Chen Mengjia.
In recent years, Li has been the director of the Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology
Project. Initiated in 1995, and funded by the central government, the project
was designed to establish exact dates for China’s early cultures. Previously,
the earliest date in Chinese history for which there was ample archaeological
and textual evidence was 842 B.C., but the Chronology Project came up with
a new timeline. Internationally, the project has been heavily criticized—many
foreign scholars believe that the Chinese are attempting to fortify their history
in ways that are more nationalistic than academic. Some say that the project
was motivated primarily by a sense of competition with the West, which has
earlier recorded dates for cultures such as ancient Egypt. During the Chronology
Project, academic differences about ancient dates were sometimes resolved
by voting—Chinese scholars gave their opinions, and the year with the most
votes won. Domestic press reports were often bizarre:
CHINA DAILY (December 16, 1998)—A PROJECT TO BRIDGE gaps in
China’s ancient history has made remarkable progress after two years of
research. China is world-famous for its 5,000-year history as a civilized
nation. Unfortunately, a 2,000-year gap in China’s development has concealed
the country’s true age. . . . The missing 2,000 years include the Xia,
Shang and Zhou dynasties and the time before that dating back to well
before 2100 B.C., says Li Xueqin, history researcher with the Chinese Academy
of Social Sciences in Beijing. . . .
The exact time marking the beginning of China’s ancient history will be
published late next year, said Li.
* * *
after researching li xueqin’s career, I arrange a meeting with a friend
who is a Chinese journalist. He works for Xinhua, the Party news service, but
in his free time he researches history and archaeology. He uses his offi cial position
to access restricted documents and explore forgotten events; someday he
hopes he’ll be able to publish it all. He likes to say that his left hand works for
Xinhua but his right hand works for himself. We are the same age: early thirties,
born in the Year of the Rooster.
I ask my friend for advice about approaching Li Xueqin, and he tells me not
to mention Chen Mengjia. I should arrange an interview on another pretext,
and then bring up the criticism.
I ask, “What if he refuses to answer?”
“Well, he might do that. But if you take him by surprise, maybe he’ll
respond.”
“What do you think he’ll say?”
“There’s a Chinese saying—‘Like the sun at high noon.’ That’s where Li
Xueqin is right now. He’s at the high point of his career. When he looks at that
review, I doubt that he thinks, ‘I shouldn’t have attacked my teacher in this
way.’ Instead, he probably thinks, ‘Look how much I understood when I was
so young.’”
The reporter continues, “Scholars in this country are like that. It’s a very
dark group of people—many of them did things that they shouldn’t have
done. I’ve heard that after Chen Mengjia killed himself, scholars went through
his offi ce, reading his notes, and some of them later published his ideas as their
own. There are many scholars who did things like that in the past, but they
won’t admit it. The Chinese don’t like to examine themselves in this way. It’s
rare for them to admit that they were wrong.”
At the end of the conversation, my friend encourages me to pursue the
story; he says that too much history of this sort slips away in China. “This
isn’t something that a Chinese journalist can do,” he says. “I couldn’t do it for
Xinhua, of course. But as a foreigner, you can do it.”
i meet li Xueqin in his offi ce at Tsinghua University. He is almost seventy
years old, with a high forehead and heavy bags beneath his eyes—the face of
a hardworking scholar. He wears a gray woolen suit, red tie, and slippers. He
tells me that he has spent time in the States, including a sabbatical at Dartmouth;
he speaks good English. I have told him that I’m interested in the Xia-
Shang-Zhou Chronology Project.
“It started with a man named Song Jian,” he says. “He’s a specialist in
cybernetics, but he’s always been interested in archaeology. In the early 1990s,
he traveled to Europe and the Mediterranean, and he visited many museums,
especially in Egypt, Greece, and Israel. Afterward, he thought, ‘Foreign chronology
is much clearer than in China.’ He came back and talked to me and
other scholars, asking if there was anything we could do. Basically, we decided
to get scientists more involved in archaeology and history.”
The professor explains that astronomers have helped track eclipses that
were recorded in ancient documents, and other scientists have contributed
their skills to carbon 14 dating. He points out that the project funded work in
Anyang—the surveys that fi rst turned up evidence of the underground city.
“There isn’t such a big difference between our chronology and the previous
views,” he says. “For example, let’s look at the end of the Shang dynasty, when
they were defeated by the Zhou. This is a critical moment in history, but in the
past there have been forty-four signifi cant different opinions about the date,
involving a range of one hundred and twelve years. Using the most reliable
sources, we narrowed it down to a range of thirty years—1050 to 1020 B.C. We
decided that the most exact date was 1046 B.C. Now we aren’t saying that this
is defi nitely correct. But from the information we have right now, it’s the most
appropriate.
“This is really just a start,” he says. “We’re preparing for another project
about the origins of Chinese civilization. Of course, some people have said
that we are trying to extend Chinese history, but that isn’t true. We just want
to fi gure out how China developed. It’s no different from studying ancient
Greece, or Egypt, or Israel. These other ancient cultures have all been studied
more than China. And Chinese civilization has a special characteristic: it still
exists, whereas the others have all disappeared.”
i wait for half an hour before changing the subject. I take the critical review
from my bag and set it on the table between us. If Professor Li has any initial
reaction, he keeps it hidden.
“I was reading some of your articles,” I say, “and I noticed this one about
oracle bones. I also saw that K. C. Chang praised your theory about the Shang
sacrifi cial names.”
“Yes, that meant a lot to me,” the professor says with a smile. “But I didn’t
even see what he had written until much later. He was in Taiwan when he fi rst
read my paper, and of course there wasn’t any contact in those days. I never
actually saw his remarks until 1971.”
I point to Chen Mengjia’s name, which appears in the title. “I’m also interested
in this oracle bone scholar,” I say. “I’ve heard about him from people in
Anyang and also in Beijing. Were you his student?”
“He was a teacher here at Tsinghua, but I wasn’t formally his student,” Professor
Li says, and then he explains his background. Originally, Li Xueqin had
studied mathematical logic, but then, in the years after the Communist victory,
Beijing’s universities were reorganized. During an interruption in his formal
coursework, the young logician pursued his hobby of studying oracle bones.
“I had been interested in them since I was eighteen or nineteen,” he says.
“When I was young, I was interested in anything that I didn’t understand. It
might sound strange, but whenever anything struck me as symbolic or compli-
cated, I wanted to fi gure it out. That’s what attracted me to logic. And when I
fi rst looked at the oracle bones, I couldn’t understand them, and that made me
want to know more.”
He continues: “When the Kuomintang fl ed the mainland, they had taken
the oracle bones with them, but rubbings had been published in books. Many
of them hadn’t been studied carefully or even pieced together. In my spare
time, I worked on this; I arranged the broken pieces, fi guring out how they
fi t together. I had some success, and eventually it was brought to the attention
of Chen Mengjia and others. They asked me to work on the oracle bones
at the Institute of Archaeology. I was essentially a research assistant to Chen
Mengjia.”
There’s a slight shift in the man’s voice. His expression is unchanged—the
tilt of his jaw is the same, and his eyes hold steady. But he speaks faster now
and the pitch of his voice has risen. He tells the story:
“After 1957, he was named a Rightist—they put that hat on him. Those
were diffi cult years for him. And during the Cultural Revolution, people who
had been Rightists had even more serious problems. That was why he killed
himself.
“At that time, I was at a different research institute, so we weren’t at the
same place. I believe that he killed himself in the summer of 1966, but I didn’t
hear about it until the winter. When I found out, I was very upset. He was a
great scholar. And after the Cultural Revolution was fi nished, we took good
care of his things, his notes and books.”
His story is fi nished, but I open the review. In the center of the last page, the
personal attacks on Chen Mengjia stand out in ugly phrases:
“自命甚高”
“竭力鼓吹自己”
The professor’s gaze settles somewhere between the document and the fl oor.
“This isn’t something that we should talk about,” he says. “Chen Mengjia was
a great man, and I’d rather not discuss these things.”
“I’m just trying to understand what happened,” I say. “I’ve seen many criticisms
of him, and most of them were much worse. Everybody tells me that it’s
the way things were at that time. As a foreigner, it’s hard for me to understand
this kind of thing, so I wanted to ask you about it.”
Now the professor realizes why this interview is taking place. But the emotions
that I expected to see—annoyance, defensiveness, even anger—haven’t
materialized. If anything, the man just looks tired, the bags sagging heavy beneath
his eyes.
“It’s not diffi cult just for foreigners to understand,” he says. “It’s diffi cult
for young Chinese to understand. At that time, there was a kind of pressure on
us to write this sort of thing. The Institute of Archaeology asked me to write
it. I was very young and I couldn’t refuse. You’ll notice that I avoided saying
anything political. I never used the word ‘Rightist,’ or any of those terms. And
I put all of that criticism into a single paragraph, at the end.”
He’s right: the personal attack is condensed into a space of only fi ve lines.
“I didn’t want to do it,” the professor continues. “There was no problem
with the scholarly points that I made in the other parts of the essay. But the
personal criticism was something that I didn’t want to write. After that essay
was published, I rarely saw Chen Mengjia. But occasionally in the early 1960s, I
encountered him at the Institute of Archaeology, and whenever that happened,
I didn’t feel comfortable speaking to him. I just couldn’t hold a conversation,
because my heart felt bad. I always regretted that article.”
He continues: “I think that people understood. Much later, after he was
dead, I still had contact with his friends, and occasionally I saw his wife. None
of them ever attacked me. I think they understood what had happened, but I
still felt bad. Mei banfa. There was nothing I could do about that.”
Throughout the interview, I have been writing, and now Professor Li looks
at my notebook.
“I would prefer that you not write about this in the New Yorker,” he says
slowly. “It’s a personal problem. I’d rather you just wrote about the chronology
project and those things that we talked about earlier.”
I say that I won’t write about it unless I can explain everything fully.
“It’s hard to understand, apart from the fact that it was a horrible period,”
he says. “By the time the Cultural Revolution happened, if people criticized
you, then you truly believed that you were wrong. I was also criticized at that
time, and I believed the things that people said. Everybody was like that; it was
a type of social psychology. There were so many enemies—everybody was an
enemy, it seemed.” |
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发表于 2007-11-6 16:35:24
发表于 2011-3-27 22:01:33