Pastimes: From Art and Antiquarianism to Modern Chinese Historiography

Chapter 7 Wang Guowei—From Antiquarianism to History

121 7 Wang Guowei—From Antiquarianism to History Don’t let three hundred years of Qing scholarship snap like a thread. —Luo Zhenyu letter to Wang Guowei, 1916 When Wang Guowei returned from Kyoto, he entered a contentious intellectual world. On May 4, 1919, students took to the streets to protest the pro-Japan provisions of the Treaty of Versailles and to demand political liberalization. They also called for a critical reexamination of the country’s philosophical, historical, and artistic traditions, and this broad program, referred to as the New Culture Movement, advocated Western science and philosophy as crucial to national development. Traditional learning seemed so much in decline that the historian Chen Yinke (1890–1969) appeared almost comically out of step when he composed an entrance exam to Qinghua University that required students to be familiar with Ming novels and Song poetry.1 One of the most important outcomes of the New Culture Movement was its influence on the yigu or “doubting antiquity” trend in historical research. Yigu historians were extremely skeptical of traditional history in several respects. They questioned the veracity of the earliest Chinese dynasties like the Xia and Shang, and, like their Japanese contemporaries , were inclined to describe as myth any fantastic or unproven elements of the historical literature.They also hesitated to use many traditional methodologies of textual criticism, which they considered to be unscientific. Indeed, they expressed particular disdain for Qing philologists and their supposedly outmoded methods of interpreting texts and artifacts. In this way, the antiquity that was in doubt included at 122 Pastimes least three elements: the facts of the ancient past, traditional literature that described that past, and traditional modes of historical scholarship, particularly that from the Qing period. But not all scholars embraced this spirit of radical iconoclasm. Despite the fame of the yigu critique, historical studies of the period were arguably dominated by the xin kaoju (new exegetical research), inspired by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century techniques of studying ancient texts and artifacts. In fact, by the 1930s, kaoju auxiliaries like etymology and bibliography seemed on the verge of eclipsing Westernstyle historical and literary criticism in university curricula, to the consternation of modernists.2 The divergence between the supporters of tradition and the iconoclasts was profound. For a time it appeared that scholars who trusted antiquity—who relied on traditional literary sources as well as Qing methodologies—could never win the respect of the doubters, whose goal was to introduce Western historiography to China. In this fractious terrain, significant middle ground was achieved by Wang Guowei. An expert in the scrupulous documentation and logical argument of kaoju, he deployed its methods to craft historical studies of ethnic or national identity, make global comparisons, and examine the impact of society on the individual—all of which clearly reflected the preferences of Western scholarship.He also confidently utilized material artifacts in order to argue for the continuing significance of ancient history, using a method referred to as the erchong zhengju fa, or double-proof method of judging literary sources against material artifacts. Indeed, his enviable flair for studying antiquities like ancient bronzes and oracle bone inscriptions, along with his scrupulous use of literary sources and his sophisticated application of the latest foreign terminologies, all helped persuade members of the doubting antiquity clique that they could continue to research ancient history, and should do so in ways that utilized , at least to some degree, philological methodologies. In this way, he both preserved and irrevocably transformed Qing antiquarianism. The Appeal of Western Learning Wang Guowei became proficient in Western learning early. He was a member of that turn-of-the-century generation enamored of European literature and philosophy, perceived as the essence of Western civilization . He admired European philosophy for its universal and timeless concepts. Its Chinese counterpart seemed too narrowly political, or too Wang Guowei—From Antiquarianism to History 123 empirical—unable to resolve what he termed the “natural doubts of humanity and society,” namely, “What is our value for each other? Why do we exist? What is the relationship of mind and matter? How do we know the external world? And how can we determine truth from falsity?”3 Shanghai in the late 1890s welcomed many ambitious, dissatisfied young men like Wang Guowei. A promising student from a lower-gentry Jiangnan family (just like his mentor Luo Zhenyu), he was skilled at philology, but he was unable to overcome his...