Modernity inside Tradition:
The Transformation of Historical Consciousness in Modern China

Q. Edward Wang
Rowan College of New Jersey

Many studies of modern Chinese intellectual history have noted that, although radical intellectuals in the May Fourth/New Culture movement of 1910s and 1920s yearned for modernity, they did not, consciously or unconsciously, sever their ties with tradition.^{(1) (2)} This is neither surprising nor uniquely Chinese. It occurs at almost every turning point of world history. In fact, successful social transformations are often based on complex relationships between past and present. In his analysis of the humanists' accomplishment in the European Renaissance, for example, David Lowenthal has pointed out that

Aware of their need both to admire and to transcend the classical past, they [humanists] did not simply oscillate between devotion and rejection, worship and sacrilege, preservation and transformation, but kept these contrarieties in balance.⁽³⁾

One of the reasons modernity cannot depart entirely from tradition is that both are indispensable to history, or the human experience. Indeed, in English, the term "history" includes both past and present, meaning "a narrative account of events." While the events took place in the past, the narrative, or "inquiry" in its Greek origin, "has also often been present." History thus refers to a present approach to the past. From the Renaissance onward, history was further regarded as "a continuous and connected process" of human self-development. Accordingly, history not only connects the past to the present, but also to the future.⁽⁴⁾

"History" (shi or lishi) in Chinese seems to mean something a little different.⁽⁵⁾ In ancient China, shi refered first to an official responsible for holding records of events. Later it came to mean both the records of events and the events themselves.⁽⁶⁾ In contrast to the Western idea of history in which the present organizes the past, in Chinese, history primarily means preserving records of the past. People in China thus held a more subservient attitude toward the past than people in the West. In imperial China, historians of each dynasty not only made great efforts to preserve, annotate, and interpret records, they also followed diligently the forms, styles, and moral principles established in these early histories to compose their own histories. For them, ancient histories stood for a cultural tradition that was always impeccable.⁽⁷⁾

Interestingly, the term "tradition" also has different connotations in Western languages and in Chinese. In English, tradition means knowledge or doctrine handed down from past generations to new generations. The process is an active and selective one in which "surrender or betrayal" occur at the same time. In other words, new generations not only pay respect to tradition, they also betray it as necessary. By contrast, tradition (chuantong) in Chinese is a combination of chuan (to hand down) and tong (to rule or unite), which simply refers to ideas, cultures, and institutions bequeathed to new generations.⁽⁸⁾ Thus again, the Chinese appear more compliant to tradition than do Westerners.

But late in the mid-nineteenth century, after a period of intensive and disruptive contacts with the West, the Chinese people began to question their age-old allegiance to tradition. China's military defeats not only forced people to open their eyes to the Western world--which manifested incidentally quite a different tradition--but also prompted them to seek new inspirations within their own civilization. Supported by some open-minded scholar-officials like Lin Zexu (1785-1850), quite a few historians in the late nineteenth century attempted to write foreign histories and add new dimensions to traditional historiography. By the end of the nineteenth century, China had failed to respond to Japan's challenge in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95). Serious suspicions were therefore thrown on tradition and a critical attitude toward the past was encouraged. This changing outlook on tradition was shown in the historiographical revolution (shijie geming) launched by Liang Qichao (1873-1929) in the early twentieth century. Frustrated by his failure at political reform, Liang embarked upon cultural reform. In 1902, while in exile in Japan, Liang wrote his Xin shixue (New history), launching attacks on traditional historiography. For Liang, the major flaw in the traditional historical practice--he called it that of "old historians" (jiu shijia)--was its failure to foster the national awareness necessary for a strong, modern nation.⁽⁹⁾ He argued that history must show human progress and its causes. For the first time in China, therefore, history was not perceived as a way simply to preserve and present the past, but a means by which one could achieve a goal of the present. Liang's call for new history not only pointed to a new orientation for historical writing in China, it also indicated the rise of modern historical consciousness among Chinese intellectuals.

To be sure, modern historical consciousness takes various forms and extends into different dimensions, but one of its key elements has been total skepticism of tradition, as shown in the history of modern Europe where historians constantly adjusted their attitude toward tradition. As the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century brought to light the myth of the cosmos and consequently changed people's faith in church doctrine about the relationship between heaven and earth, it also generated agnosticism and historical Pyrrhonism, in which ancient historical narratives, at least to Descartes, were not considered trustworthy accounts of the past. In fact, such skepticism was not entirely new to Europeans at the time. In their endeavor to revive classic culture, Renaissance humanists and antiquarians had adopted a critical attitude toward ancient texts. In the eighteenth century, the philosophes not only continued such skepticism and aimed to clear up (Aufklaerung) all traditional notions and religious influence by resorting to the exercise of reason, they also searched the laws of human society and attempted the writing of cultural history. Their optimistic contemplations on the fate of mankind contributed to the rise of the philosophy of history, positing the idea of progress in history. Although their strong belief in the progressive nature of historical movement made them lean toward anti-historical thinking that denied the historical value of the past, their effort to throw suspicion on tradition freed people from their bond to antiquity and promoted the need for writing modern history.⁽¹⁰⁾

In the nineteenth century, by adopting the scientific method that had been invented in the study of nature in the scientific revolution, European historians furthered their examination of tradition by rewriting both ancient and modern histories. To be sure, their venture at rediscovering the past could be traced to the influence of Romanticism, which had nurtured a sense of historical continuity, but it was their skeptical attitude toward traditional historiography that urged them to reach a new understanding of the past with new methods and new sources. In contrast to the naiveté of ancient historians in treating historical sources, nineteenth-century European historians sought to compose factual history not only by emphasizing the use of original documentary sources but also by beginning to search archaeological and material evidence in their historical practice. Historical Pyrrhonism and the awareness of the distinction between primary and secondary sources contributed, according to Arnaldo Momigliano, to the rise of modern historiography in the West.⁽¹¹⁾ This modern historiography was also known as "scientific history," exemplified by the works of the great German historians Barthold Niebuhr (1776-1831) and Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886). Both Niebuhr and Ranke used the antiquarian/philological method to ensure the validity of historical sources, but their skeptical and critical attitude toward antiquity and even the works of Renaissance humanists suggested that their attempt was not simply to restore the authenticity of the sources, but to use them to reconstruct history.⁽¹²⁾

Not only did historians confine their writing to the royal family, they also treated individuals as the center of history, while ignoring the existence of group, or community, or even the country. As a result, the age-old annals-biographic form dominated the dynastic practice of historical writing. Since the form was best for individual biographies, dynastic histories failed to show the history of the Chinese people as a whole. This problem was aggravated by the antiquarian approach of historians who worshipped antiquity while minimizing the significance of the present. Moreover, the vision of court historians was very limited. They only saw historical phenomena but not the spirit or ideas behind them. Chinese historiography thus became useless in explaining historical causality or evolution. It did not "improve one's wisdom, but wasted it."⁽¹⁴⁾

Because of these flaws, Liang declared, traditional historiography had been bogged down by two conservative failings--the privileging of description but not novelty and of continuation over creation--and these had interfered with popularizing historical knowledge in China. First of all, readers were intimidated by the enormous quantity of historical works. Second, though historical writing in imperial China experienced several changes in its form and methodology, few histories were distinctive enough to interest common readers. In fact, because of an almost non-existent demand, few copies of the multi-volume dynastic histories were printed after completion. Third, because of the repetitious content, those histories did not offer help in producing constructive thinking. This accounted for the impractical status of traditional historical scholarship in China.⁽¹⁵⁾

As the practice of "old historians" failed to represent the past and serve the present need of nationalism, Liang proposed to throw it away. "Should there not be a historiographical revolution," he proclaimed, "there would be no hope for our country. This is the most important thing in the world. I did not write the New History for fame, I had no other choice."⁽¹⁶⁾ Apparently, Liang realized that in order to construct a new world, or to succeed in the political reform he and Kang Youwei (1858-1927) had attempted, one first had to wrestle with the old world. By advocating the writing of new history, Liang promoted a sense of historical time which distinguished the past from the present, or tradition from modernity. In contrast to the traditional notion that past experiences provided guidance to the present, Liang here proposed to sever the past from the present.

Of course, making distinctions between past and present does not mean disowning the past but discovering it from a new perspective. This new perspective requires that one look at and write history differently. Instead of simply narrating historical facts, Liang stated, new history ought to describe progress in human evolution. Although he believed this evolution could have followed the three stages of "decay and chaos" (juluan), "rising peace" (shengping), and "universal peace" (taiping) suggested by Confucius, he despised Mencius's remark that "a long time has elapsed since this world of men received its being, and there have always been periods of order, and periods of confusion," for it implied a cyclical view of history.⁽¹⁷⁾ In contrast to the cyclical view of historical movement that fostered antiquity worship among historians and laid the foundation of traditional historiography, Liang advocated the idea of progress in human history. In order to reform tradition and rediscover the past, Liang had to end such worship by advocating a new purpose. "History," he wrote, "is to describe the phenomena of human evolution in order to search for the universal principle and universal examples."⁽¹⁸⁾ In other words, history is not for preserving the past, but for re/discovering the past.

What Liang proposed in his Xin shixue is therefore not aimed simply at a "historiographical revolution," but announces a new critical attitude toward the past. Pointing to a new direction of Chinese historiography, his attempt was nonetheless not unprecedented in history. Eric Hobsbawm has pointed out in his seminal introduction to The Invention of Tradition that similar attempts were commonplace in modern European history. "In fact, where possible, they [modern people] normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historic past," or the invention of tradition.⁽¹⁹⁾

To examine this historiographical reform therefore helps reveal a new aspect of the relationship between tradition and modernity in twentieth-century China. Joseph Levenson has argued that modern Chinese intellectuals had an emotional attachment to their past, while Lin Yu-sheng has analyzed these thinkers' intrinsic linkage to tradition, paradoxically embedded in their iconoclasm. But modern intellectuals' return to tradition resulted more from their desire to discover a "suitable" past to pave way for modernity than from cultural bonds or methodological adherence.⁽²⁰⁾

Compared with Liang Qichao, Hu Shi belongs to a younger generation. When Liang became widely known as a political reformer and published his Xin shixue, Hu had not yet reached his teens. Born into a scholar-official family in Anhui Province, Hu lost his father at the age of four. It was his mother who prepared him with a sound education in traditional learning.⁽²³⁾ One of the historical texts arranged for Hu was Sima Guang's Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive mirror of aid for government).⁽²⁴⁾ This was in 1901, the same year that Liang published his Zhongguoshi xulun (Introduction to Chinese history), the very first chapter of his never completed survey of Chinese history, and began pondering the writing of the Xin shixue.

Although known as a modern scholar, Hu'searly education in Chinese classics was not lost on him. In fact, it helped to qualify him for the attempt to reconcile Chinese cultural heritage with Western scientism (zhengli guogu). Incidentally, it was Liang Qichao who first inspired Hu in this ambition. In 1905, when he was only fifteen, Hu was fascinated with Liang's new approach to the evolution of scholarship in ancient China, described in a series of articles in Xinmin (New citizen). He became disappointed when Liang discontinued the series and thought for the first time to complete the project himself. His ambition led him to read more of the classics, which prepared him to write the Zhongguo zhexueshi dagang (An outline history of Chinese philosophy).⁽²⁵⁾ From his college diary written at Cornell between 1910 and 1915, one discerns that in his busy college life, Hu's interest in Chinese learning never waned, nor did his ambition. He became enthusiastic for new scientific method and attempted to use it to examine Chinese traditional learning. In the meantime, he read many Chinese classics and wrote traditional poems frequently.⁽²⁶⁾ Interestingly enough, it was his fondness for Chinese poetry that prompted Hu to seek improvement and thus launched the well-known "literary revolution." Endorsed by Chen Duxiu (1879-1942) in the famous journal Xin Qingnian (New youth), Hu's "revolution" gained momentum and turned him into a luminary in the New Culture Movement.⁽²⁷⁾

Hu's literary success gained him popular fame, but it was his attempt to reorganize the past that left an important intellectual heritage in modern Chinese history.⁽²⁸⁾ For Hu Shi, to examine the past required Western scientific method, or John Dewey's teaching of pragmatism. Hu translated it as shiyan zhuyi (experimentalism) and preached that Deweyan doctrine embodied the essence of the scientific method. Experimentalism consisted of five steps or phases: thinking with suspicion, which reveals the problem awaiting resolution; trying to figure out where the problem lies; searching for possible means to solve the problem; determining which method is most effective; and, finally, verification.⁽²⁹⁾ These five steps, Hu believed, were a synopsis of Deweyan philosophy, which was both an art and technique. "In its essence," Hu later remarked,

[i]t consists of a boldness in suggesting hypotheses coupled with a solicitous regard for control and verification. . . . This laboratory technique of thinking deserves the name of Creative Intelligence because it is truly creative in the exercise of imagination and ingenuity in seeking evidence, and devising experiment, and in the satisfactory results that flow from the successful fruition of thinking.⁽³⁰⁾

To apply science to examine China's past, Hu continued Liang's effort at distinguishing past from present and tradition from modernity. But he also sought new linkages between the two. In stating the goal of the New Culture Movement, Hu Shi said: "It was a movement of reason versus tradition, freedom versus authority, and glorification of life and human values versus their suppression. And lastly," he rushed to point out, "strange enough, this new movement was led by men who knew their cultural heritage and tried to study it with the new methodology of modern historical criticism and research."⁽³¹⁾ Clearly, the goal of the New Culture Movement was not only to reveal the antithesis between tradition and modernity, but to seek the unity of the two by uplifting the former to the level of the latter.

As Liang Qichao sought a new form of historical methodology in the Zhongguo lishi yanjiufa (The method in the study of Chinese history), Hu Shi set out to search for compatible elements in Chinese tradition. In fact, Hu's search for an "invented tradition" had begun at Columbia when he was writing his dissertation. "That philosophy," he began his dissertation, "is conditioned by its method, and that the development of philosophy is dependent upon the development of the logical method, are facts which find abundant illustrations in the history of philosophy both of the West and of the East."⁽³²⁾ In his study of Qing evidentiary (kaozheng) scholarship, he again concluded that the Qing scholars had established a scientific scholarship in the humanities. "In all these fields of work," Hu wrote, "Chinese scholars found themselves quite at home, and the scientific spirit which had failed in application to the study of things in nature began to produce remarkable results in the study of words and texts."⁽³³⁾

For Hu Shi, Chinese tradition was thus not entirely antagonistic to modern science, nor was it holistic. Rather, he believed that there were several traditions in China. While some were obviously disposable, some were indeed valuable. To identify the valuable and ignore the disposable required "a historical approach." "Through this historical approach," he said,

we may find that, after all, there are more similarities than differences in the philosophies and religions of East and West; and that whatever striking differences have existed are no more than differences in the degree of emphasis brought about by a peculiar combination of historical factors.

To prove his point, he discussed "independent thinking and doubt" in the Confucian tradition and described how this spirit of doubt became, in the works of the Neo-Confucians in the Song Dynasty (960-1279), a scientific method, which was again perfected by the scholars in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Although the focus of the method was on validating ancient texts, actually, Hu exclaimed, it left

to posterity a scientific tradition of dispassionate and disciplined inquiry, of rigorous evidential thinking and investigation, of boldness in doubt and hypotheses coupled with meticulous care in seeking verification--a great heritage of scientific spirit and method which makes us, sons and daughters of present-day China, feel not entirely at sea, but rather at home, in the new age of modern science.⁽³⁴⁾

According to Hu, modernity could therefore be sought within tradition.

For Hu the search began with an application of source criticism to extant texts. He contended, for example, that before seeking the causes of the vicissitudes of ancient philosophy and evaluating various philosophical schools, the most urgent task for contemporary students was to give an accurate account of each philosopher, using dependable sources. In order to reach this goal, proper means, scientific methods, and careful examinations were necessary. This, Hu explained, was because previous records were often contradictory and incorrect. He then discussed what historical sources were and how to work on them. According to Hu, sources were divided into two categories: primary and derivative. The former consisted of philosophers' own works, the latter of works about them.⁽³⁵⁾

Hu further argued that possessing the sources did not complete the preparation for scientific research. A more important task was to examine them; that is, to go from observation to experimentation. Hu enumerated five necessary preparations for historians to conduct source criticism: content, language, style, ideas, and comparison with contemporary works. In other words, if the style and language of a work were anachronistic or if its records were contradictory and its ideas inconsistent, then the work was probably a forgery.⁽³⁶⁾

Hu Shi's critical attempt to winnow out traditions stirred up a great controversy at Beijing University (Beida) where he taught the course on Chinese philosophy. Gu Jiegang (1893-1980), one of Hu's students and later a prominent historian, recalled that

[m]ost of my fellow-students, including myself, were rather dubious of his [Hu Shi's] abilities in Chinese scholarship, with the result that our first estimates of him ran somewhat as follows: `He is just a returned student from America, without real qualification for taking the chair of Chinese philosophy in the Peking National University.'

They were much surprised, as Gu related, at the fact that Hu omitted all references to the dynasties before the Zhou and began his class directly from the ninth century B.C. For Hu Shi, the reason was simple; he had not found a way to verify the validity of sources before the Zhou. For his students, this omission was a great shock because they had been accustomed to accepting the lore of the Three Emperors and the Five Kings in Chinese antiquity. However, Hu later convinced his students with his new approach. Gu Jiegang seems to be the first one with whom Hu had success. After a few classes, Gu told his classmates that "[a]lthough his [Hu Shi's] lectures do not show the wide reading of our other teachers, his powers of judgment are such as to place him in a position of independence."⁽³⁷⁾

Hu Shi was certainly not alone in challenging the past. His Beida colleague He Bingsong (1890-1946), a Princeton graduate, supported him by embarking on a research project on Zhang Xuecheng (1738-1801), one of the Qing historians Hu discovered at the time.⁽³⁸⁾ Although He then believed that the focus of the New Culture Movement should be placed on introducing Western scientific history--he had translated James H. Robinson's The New History in 1922 and became an ardent convert to the American New History School--he attempted, like Hu, to find "modern elements" in Zhang's historiography.⁽³⁹⁾ He found that Zhang believed that the most important task of the historian was to seek meaning in history, which required him to acquire insight in writing history. He also pointed out that, according to Zhang, the search for meaning in history should be based on actual facts. Zhang did not want people to indulge in historical speculation, nor did he welcome efforts at discussing moral principles without first offering concrete historical facts.

Moreover, Zhang not only insisted that historians ought to possess as many sources as possible in their study, he also intended to broaden the scope of historical sources. To Zhang, such a scope was indeed boundless; any written materials, from family trees and local gazetteers to material sources such as epigraphs and bronze inscriptions, were all important sources for historians.⁽⁴⁰⁾ Obviously, He's discussion of Zhang's attitude toward historical sources here was intended to show its equivalence to Robinson's call for enlarging the scope of historical writing.

In addition, He drew attention to Zhang's critical attitude toward historical sources and his suggestion of adding footnotes in historical narrative. He considered these two points especially similar to the modern historiography advanced by Western historians. In his conclusion, He wrote that many of Zhang's points were practical and immediately applicable, and could be compared with those of an empirical philosopher in the West. However, He lamented that due to his unstable financial situation, Zhang failed to implement his remarkable ideas in writing a real history.⁽⁴¹⁾

Yet what was most remarkable in Zhang, He hastened to add, was his belief in the idea of progress in history. Zhang argued that all institutions and cultures were in fact created to meet the needs of a particular time period; people of later generations should have no obligation to worship or maintain them just because they were introduced by their ancestors. As a result, Zhang contended that historians should focus their study on modern times rather than on ancient events and people. According to He, this argument of Zhang's not only manifested his idea of progress in human history, it also echoed the call of the New History school for putting more emphasis on modern history. As a result, it had a similar effect in challenging antiquarianism in China as the New History did in the West.⁽⁴²⁾

By comparing them with the achievement of the American New Historians, He demonstrated the compatible factors in Zhang's ideas of history. Although the picture He painted of Zhang was never complete (for example, he did not discuss Zhang's emphasis on promoting morality in historiography), he indeed accomplished his goal in inventing tradition. By presenting the modern image of Zhang Xuecheng, as well as the scientific nature of Qing scholarship, both Hu Shi and He Bingsong succeeded in showing the compatibility of modernity and tradition in China, which was to become an important achievement in the New Culture Movement.

The members of the renaissance group firmly believed that in order to fulfill their task, they had to acquaint themselves with modern science. Following the footsteps of their teachers, Fu Sinian and Luo Jialun both went to either Europe and/or America during the 1920s to seek scientific knowledge. The length of their Western sojourns and the degree of their academic success varied, but Western education left visible marks on their careers. Upon their return, they felt much better prepared to undertake an examination of the past. Fu Sinian, for example, who left for Britain in 1920 and returned to China in 1927, established the Institute of History and Philology first at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou and later in Beijing, which was one of the earliest institutes of the Academia Sinica. The goal of the Institute, according to Fu Sinian, was not only to base historical study on philological examination of the source material, as exemplified in the German historiographical tradition to which Fu was exposed while studying in Germany, but also to revive the philological tradition in China. Fu proclaimed that

[h]istory and philology prospered in Europe only recently. Historical study was different from historical writing; the latter was more or less an ancient and medieval business. Ancient historians looked for moral examples and literary fame in writing history. But modern historiography was essentially different; it is nothing but the study of historical sources. The historians utilize methods of the natural sciences to collect and criticize all accessible source materials for their study.⁽⁴⁴⁾

Fu wished to combine history with philology because the latter provided the method for source criticism, which was the key to "progressive learning." Fu declared that a progressive and modern scholarship relied on three elements: study based directly on sources, not on previous works or theories; expanding the source materials for study; and a continued search for new methods. For him, that meant "no historical sources, no historiography," a slogan that later became Fu's trademark in the historians' community.⁽⁴⁵⁾ Fu's insistence on using new/primary sources not only carried on the historiographical reform that Liang Qichao had initiated, but attempted to change completely the old historiographical presentation of China's tradition and approach a new one.

Given their importance, Fu set out to look for valuable sources. In the early 1930s, for example, he managed to purchase the Inner Chancery archives of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The archives were priceless, containing ministers' memorials and emperors' comments and edicts, most of which had never been seen before. After the founding of the Republic these archives were, however, in a hazardous situation; many were lost, stolen, and destroyed. Individual scholars were unable to preserve them because of the enormous quantity, while the government was indifferent to their value. By relating the project to China's national reputation, Fu successfully persuaded the newly founded Academia Sinica to let the Institute take over these documents.⁽⁴⁶⁾ In 1930, the Institute published the first ten volumes of these archives entitled Ming Qing shiliao (Ming and Qing archives). Fu wrote a forward to it and explained that despite the incompleteness of the whole project, he had to publish these sources to meet the scholars' urgent need for primary sources.⁽⁴⁷⁾

Like Fu, Luo Jialun pursued the same goal after his return, albeit in a different field. Leaving for the United States in the same year as Fu departed for Europe, Luo later met Fu in Germany. Unlike Fu, who attempted to gulp down the bulk of Western learning while in Europe, Luo remained very much a student activist.⁽⁴⁸⁾ Returning to China in 1926, Luo took a teaching position at Southeastern (dongnan) University in Nanjing. Shortly after, he was whirled into the Northern Expedition and joined the Guomindang. Although Luo's historical career was never efflorescent because of his political involvement, he was a pioneer in the field of modern Chinese history. Fascinated with the American New History School, of which he had gained some knowledge through He Bingsong in China, Luo studied with John Dewey, Frederick J. Woodbridge (1867-1940), and the New Historians group at Columbia. Given his political activism, Luo did not earn an academic degree from the institution. But his exposure to the influence of American pragmatism and to the presentist emphasis of the New Historians seems to have been sufficient to shape his idea of the study of modern China. Luo first discussed it with Jiang Tingfu (1895-1965), who was then working with Carlton J. H. Hayes on his dissertation (Jiang later indeed became a forerunner in the field of modern Chinese diplomatic history). Then Luo wrote a specific research proposal for the study and sent it to his New Tide friend Gu Jiegang at Xiamen University.⁽⁴⁹⁾

Luo proposed that the primary preparation for the study would be the collection of source materials. There were, Luo thought, six kinds of sources that were necessary: primary sources, especially original documents, some of which he had purchased in Europe; primary sources which he was unable to purchase but which could be copied or photographed, including the Qing archives on the Taiping rebellion in English and French libraries; rare books in Western languages which were available then, but were not in print anymore, such as missionary works, journalists' correspondences about China, works about the Opium War, etc.; and new books in Western languages about modern China. Luo gave the example of Alfred Waldersee's (1832-1904) memoir of his experience in China, Denkwuerdigkeiten de Grafen von Waldersee (Waldersee's memoir), which Luo saw in Germany. Luo thought the memoir and those of its kind indispensable, because Waldersee had served as the general commander of the allied force consisting of the armies of Germany, England, France, Russia, Italy, America, Japan, and Austria in the war against the Boxer Rebellion and the Qing Dynasty in 1900. Two final types of sources were rare Chinese books on the subject which were not in print any more and every new Chinese book on the subject as it appeared on the market.⁽⁵⁰⁾

Luo's enthusiasm for these sources was to sustain his new interpretation of China's recent past. To him, modern Chinese history had become particularly important because of the tremendous changes caused by Western influence. The breadth and depth of the foreign impact on modern China made it significantly different from the history of imperial China, when China's contacts with foreign cultures were rare. Luo argued that China had witnessed four major historical periods since 1834: the age of confrontation, 1834-60; the age of submission, 1861-95; the age of entreaty, 1896-1919; and the age of revolution, 1920 to his time. During these four periods, it was China's relationship with foreign countries that highlighted the course of modern Chinese history. Having gone through various defeats and humiliations in the first three periods, after the May Fourth Movement of 1919, Luo claimed, China had finally begun to move in the right direction with respect to its relations with foreign countries. This made a revolutionary change.⁽⁵¹⁾

In challenging the veracity of antiquity, Gu not only relied on the scientific method preached by his teacher Hu Shi, which taught him to embark on a historicist treatment of the literary formation of antiquity, but also absorbed ideas from the works of earlier scholars' that showed a similar skepticism and criticism of the ancient history. Kang Youwei's "discovery," for example, of Han scholar Liu Xin's fabrication of the Old Text Confucian canon encouraged him to engage in detailed studies of the spurious texts. Like most of the May Fourth iconoclasts, Gu, as Laurence Schneider has noted, was determined to overthrow the Confucian Tao, or the traditional value system, by discrediting its historical foundation, the Golden Age.⁽⁵³⁾ But his ultimate purpose was to establish a new tradition. When Kang went on to suggest that the New Text Confucian canon was nothing but Confucius's political proposal, Gu departed from Kang in his anti-historical outlook. For Gu, though the history of high antiquity was questionable and could only be ascertained by archaeological discovery, it was still possible to pursue a new tradition through the history of later period.⁽⁵⁴⁾

Gu's hope that there would be new archaeological evidence to further his study on China's antiquity was soon to be fulfilled. By throwing doubts on China's historical antiquity, his theory not only caused heated debate in the country but also received both the attention of Western sinologists and his friends in Europe. Fu Sinian, his former roommate, wrote a long letter back supporting Gu's view in the discussion.⁽⁵⁵⁾ After returning to China and establishing the Institute of History and Philology, Fu set about to use both the written and material sources to solve the mystery of ancient China. To Fu, this was quite necessary. From his positivist perspective, the success of scientific historiography depended on new sources. He thus declared that "we are not book readers. We go all the way to Heaven above and Yellow Spring below, using our hands and feet, to look for things."⁽⁵⁶⁾ Moreover, Fu realized that in order to create the new tradition through history, he had to search beyond the historiographical legacy and employ the method of natural sciences.

Besides collecting the Ming and Qing archives, Fu therefore led the Institute to study excavated sources such as Buddhist sutras discovered in the Dunhuang caves and the bamboo slips of the Han Dynasty. Unlike his friend Gu, who admitted his limits in using archaeological sources, Fu expressed a great deal of interest in these unearthed materials.⁽⁵⁷⁾ In the midst of a 1928 debate on China's antiquity, he sent a team to Anyang, known as the capital of the Shang Dynasty (ca. 1600-1066 B.C.), to conduct an archaeological project. Many oracle bone inscriptions from the late Qing Dynasty surfaced at the site and caused much curiosity. Yet Fu's aim was not just to verify the origin of these oracle bones; he hoped that new findings from the excavation could help settle the debate at last. While his hope ran high, he did not see the outcome until 1934. It was, however, a great success. Paul Pelliot, the famous French sinologist, wrote zealously praising the achievement as "the most spectacular discovery made in the field of Asiatic Studies in recent years."⁽⁵⁸⁾ In his report, Li Ji (1896-1979), the archaeologist who led the project, stated that the investigation proved not only that the oracle bone inscriptions were authentic Shang remains, but also that Shang society was much more sophisticated and well developed than had been thought.⁽⁵⁹⁾ This discovery persuaded Hu Shi to change his opinion and encouraged Fu Sinian to continue his methodological search, though earlier both had enthusiastically shared Gu's doubts on the accuracy of ancient Chinese history.⁽⁶⁰⁾ More importantly, it helped modern Chinese intellectuals to piece together a new cultural tradition by employing a new epistemology.

This new tradition, needless to say, was not the same as the old one. Through a series of archaeological projects, Fu and his colleagues at the Institute recreated the history of Chinese antiquity on a scientific basis. For instance, they put forth the theory of the plural origins of Chinese civilization. They also probed the size of the territory of ancient China.⁽⁶¹⁾ In the context of these historians' scientific endeavor to construct a new historical China, the terms "tradition" and "modernity" thus both acquired new and concrete meanings which helped to connect the past to the present.

1. ^* The author wishes to thank Paul Cohen, Ralph Croizier, Arif Dirlik, Georg Iggers, Norman Kutcher, D. N. Y. Kwok, Joseph M. Levine, Liu Xinyong, Vera Schwarcz, and Jeffrey Wasserstrom for their encouragement. Some of them kindly read earlier versions of this essay and offered valuable suggestions and advice.

2. Joseph R. Levenson, for example, argued that while these intellectuals sought modernity, they were emotionally attached to tradition. See Joseph R. Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate: A Trilogy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968); and Joseph R. Levenson, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and the Mind of Modern China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959). A more concise version of his argument is found in Joseph R. Levenson, "`History' and `Value': the Tension of Intellectual Choice in Modern China," in Studies in Chinese Thought, ed. Arthur Wright (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 146-94. Lin Yu-sheng, on the other hand, analyzes their methodological confinement to tradition. See Lin Yu-sheng, The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Antitraditionalism in the May Fourth Era (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979).

3. David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 86.

4. See Raymond Williams, ed., Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 146-47. In the German language, this continuous process is referred to by using the word Geschichte, while Historie becomes associated only with what was in the past.

5. Compared to shi, lishi is a relatively modern term that was first used by the Ming historian Yuan Huang in his Lishi gangjian bu [A supplement to the outline of history] and later used by the Japanese to translate the Western term "history" in the late nineteenth century.

6. See Han Yu-shan, Elements of Chinese Historiography (Hollywood: W. M. Hawley, 1955), 1-2.

7. For the works written in English on the Chinese historiographical tradition, see Charles Gardner, Chinese Traditional Historiography (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961); Han, Elements of Chinese Historiography; E. G. Pulleyblank, "The Historiographical Tradition," in The Legacy of China, ed. Raymond Dawson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), 143-64; W. G. Beasley and E. G. Pulleyblank, Historians of China and Japan (London: Oxford University Press, 1961); Donald D. Leslie, Colin Mackerras, and Wang Gungwu, eds. Essays on the Sources for Chinese History (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1975); and Xu Guansan (Hsu Kwan-san), "The Chinese Critical Tradition," Historical Journal 26.2 (1983): 431-46.

8. For the English term, see Williams, Keywords, 318-19. For the Chinese meaning, see Cihai [Sea of words] (Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chubanshe, 1979), 215.

9. Liang began his work by asking: "In contrast to the subjects studied in Western countries today, history is the only one which has existed in China for a long time. History is the foundation of scholarship. It is also a mirror of people's nature and the origin of patriotism. The rise of nationalism in Europe and the growth of modern European countries are owing in part to the study of history. But how can one explain the fact that, despite this long tradition of historical study in China, the Chinese people are so disunited and China's social condition is so bad?" Liang Qichao, Xin shixue [New history], in Liang Qichao shixue lunzhu sanzhong [Liang Qichao's three historical works] (Hong Kong: Sanlian Shudian, 1980), 3. There have been quite a few English monographs on Liang Qichao; see Joseph R. Levenson, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and the Mind of Modern China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959); Hao Chang, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and Intellectual Transition in China, 1890-1907 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971); and Philip C. Huang, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and Modern Chinese Liberalism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972).

10. There have been numerous works on the shaping of modern historical consciousness in Europe. See, for example, Peter Burke, The Renaissance Sense of the Past (London: Edward Arnold, 1969); Eric Cochrane, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); Donald Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970); Joseph M. Levine, Humanism and History: Origins of Modern English Historiography (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987); and M. S. Anderson, Historians and Eighteenth-Century Europe, 1715-1789 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). In Peter Reill, The German Enlightenment and the Rise of Historicism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), challenges the conventional presumption that the Enlightenment thinkers had an ahistorical attitude toward the past. Reill argues that the philosophes' quest for reason and science actually promoted historical studies and led to the rise of historicism. On historicism, see Friedrich Jaeger and Joern Ruesen, Geschichte des Historismus (Munich: Verlag Beck, 1992); and Friedrich Meinecke, Historism: The Rise of a New Historical Outlook, trans. J. E. Anderson (London: Routledge, 1972).

11. Arnaldo Momigliano, "Ancient History and the Antiquarian," in Studies in Historiography (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 1-39.

12. Much has been said about both Niebuhr and Ranke. See G. P. Gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959); Georg G. Iggers, The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Present (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1968) and Georg G. Iggers, "The Image of Ranke in American and German Historical Thought," History and Theory 2 (1962): 17-40; Leonard Krieger, Ranke: The Meaning of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977). For nineteenth-century European historiography in general, see Gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century; Eduard Fueter, Geschichte der neuren Historiographie (1936; New York: Johnson Reprint, 1968); and Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972).

13. Liang, Xin shixue, 3-5.

14. Ibid., 4-6.

15. Ibid., 7-9.

16. Ibid., 9.

17. Ibid., 10-12. The quotation is based on James Legge, trans., Mencius (Hong Kong: [n.p.], 1912), 155.

18. Ibid., 13.

19. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1.

20. See Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate; Levenson, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and the Mind of Modern China; Levenson, "`History' and `Value'"; and Lin, The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness.

21. For the May Fourth/New Culture movement of 1920s China, see Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960); Benjamin Schwartz, ed., Reflections on the May Fourth Movement: A Symposium (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972); and Vera Schwarcz, The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

22. For Hu Shi's life and career, see Jerome B. Grieder, Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance: Liberalism in the Chinese Revolution, 1917-1937 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970); and Chou Min-chih, Hu Shih and Intellectual Choice in Modern China (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984). For John Dewey's influence in modern China, see Barry Keenan, The Dewey Experiment in China: Educational Reform and Political Power in the Early Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977).

23. See Geng Yunzhi, Hu Shi nianpu [Chronological biography of Hu Shi] (Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju, 1986), 5.

24. See Tang Degang, ed., Hu Shi de zizhuan [Hu Shi's autobiography], in Hu Shi zhexue sixiang ziliao xuan [Selected sources of Hu Shi's philosophical ideas], ed. Ge Maochun, et al. (2 vols.; Shanghai: East China Normal University Press, 1979), vol. 1, 18; and Wang Zhiwei, "Hu Shi xiansheng nianpu" [Mr. Hu Shi's chronology], in Hu Shi (Taipei: Huaxin Cultural Center, 1979), 269. On Hu's relationship with his mother and wife, see Grieder, Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance, 351-54.

25. Hu Shi, Sishi zishu [Autobiography at forty] (Shanghai: [n.p.], 1933), 49-54.

26. See Hu Shi xuanji--riji (Selected works of Hu Shi--diary) (Taipei: Wenxin Shudian, 1966), especially 1-109. During 1910 and 1915, Hu Shi was an agriculture student at Cornell. His diaries show that he read many English literary and philosophical works in the period, including the works of Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley.

27. Hu tells us in his preface to the anthology of poems--Changshi ji [Experiments]--that he had many supporters, including Fu Sinian, Lu Xun, Chen Hengzhe and others at Beida. For Hu Shi's position in the May Fourth movement, see Chow Tse-tsung, 28-31, 44-47; and Vera Schwarcz, 59, 80-81.

28. For Hu's position in modern Chinese history, see Yu Ying-shih, Zhongguo jindai sixiangshi shangde Hu Shi [Hu Shi's position in modern Chinese intellectual history] (Taipei: Lianjing chuban shiye gongsi, 1984); and Chow Tse-tsung, ed., Hu Shi yu jindai Zhongguo [Hu Shi and modern China] (Taipei: Shibao wenhua chuban qiye youxian gongsi, 1991).

29. In Dewey's own words, "(i) a felt difficulty; (ii) its location and definition; (iii) suggestion of possible solution; (iv) development by reasoning of the bearings of the suggestion; (v) further observation and experiment leading to its acceptance or rejection; that is, the conclusion of belief or disbelief." See John Dewey, How We Think (Boston: D.C. Heath & Co., 1910), 72.

30. Albert Einstein, et al., Living Philosophies: A Series of Intimate Credos (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1931), 255.

31. Hu Shi, The Chinese Renaissance (1934; New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp. 1963), 44.

32. Hu Shi, "Introduction," in The Development of the Logical Method in Ancient China (New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp., 1963), 1.

33. Hu, Chinese Renaissance, 66-71.

34. "The Scientific Spirit and Method in Chinese Philosophy," in The Chinese Mind: Essentials of Chinese Philosophy and Culture, ed. Charles Moore (Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1967), 106. Emphasis is mine.

35. Hu's introduction to Zhongguo zhexueshi dagang (I), in Hu Shi zhexue sixiang ziliao xuan, ed. Ge et al., vol. 2, 28-30.

36. Ibid., vol. 2, 34-37.

37. Gu Jiegang, The Autobiography of a Chinese Historian, trans. Arthur W. Hummel (Leyden: E. J. Brill, 1931), 65-66. Hu's Beida and Columbia alumnus and later his colleague Feng Youlan also provided a similar description of Hu Shi's teaching at Beida and the impact of his book. See Feng Youlan "Sansongtang zixu" [Self-preface to the works of Three-Pine-Hall], in Sansongtang quanji [The complete works of the Three-Pine-Hall] (3 vols., Zhengzhou: Henan Renmin Chubanshe, 1985), vol. 1, 199-213.

38. In discovering Zhang, Hu Shi compiled a chronological biography, which he believed could be a case study illuminating his scientific method. Hu Shi, Zhang Shizhai nianpu [Chronology of Zhang Xuecheng] (Shanghai: [n.p.], 1922). He Bingsong's research on Zhang resulted in two treatises and an introduction to Hu's biography. See He Bingsong, "Zengbu Zhang Shizhai nianpu xu" [An introduction to the chronological biography of Zhang Xuecheng], in He Bingsong lunwenji [Works of He Bingsong], ed. Liu Yinsheng, et al. (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1990), 132-46; He Bingsong, "Zhang Xuecheng shixue guankui" [A study of Zhang Xuecheng's ideas of history], ibid., 89-119; and He Bingsong, "Du Zhang Xuecheng Wenshi tongyi zhaji" [Reflections on Zhang's General Meanings of Literature and History], ibid., 27-50. For Western scholarship on Zhang Xuecheng, see P. Demieville, "Chang Hsueh-ch'eng and His Historiography," in Historians of China and Japan, ed. Beasley and Pulleyblank, 167-85; and David S. Nivison, The Life and Thought of Chang Hsueh-ch'eng, 1738-1801 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966).

39. In his introduction to Hu's biography of Zhang, He said that although the comparison was necessary, it was more important to learn from Western culture for the Chinese at the time. See Liu et al., eds., He Bingsong lunwenji, 144-46. For the content and the influence of James H. Robinson's The New History, see John Higham, History: Professional Scholarship in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 104-16; and Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 86-108.

40. He, "Zhang Xuecheng shixue guankui," 91-93, 100-103.

41. Ibid., 107-12.

42. Ibid., 93-96.

43. Hu Shi himself used it to refer to the New Culture movement, see Hu, Chinese Renaissance; Grieder, Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance; and Schwarcz, Chinese Enlightenment.

44. Fu Sinian, "Lishi yuyan yanjiusuo gongzuo zhi zhiqu" [An introduction to the work of the Institute of History and Philology], in Fu Sinian quanji [The complete works of Fu Sinian] (7 vols., Taipei: Lianjing chuban shiye gongsi, 1980), vol. 4, 253. For the Chinese philological tradition, see Benjamin Elman, From Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984); and John Henderson, Scripture, Canon, and Commentary: A Comparison of Confucian and Western Exegesis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).

45. Ibid., 253-58. Xu Guansan believed that Fu represented a school, the school of historical sources, in modern Chinese historiography. See Xu Guansan, Xin shixue jiushinian [New history in the last ninety years] (2 vols., Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1986), vol. 1, 209-34.

46. In Fu's letter to Cai Yuanpei, the head of the Academia Sinica, for a grant, he reasoned that the success of the project would enhance China's scholarly reputation. Fu Sinian quanji, vol. 7, 94-96.

47. Fu Sinian, "Ming Qing shiliao fakan liyan" [Forward to Ming Qing Archives], ibid., vol. 4, 357-59.

48. In 1921, in order to assure that Qingdao would return to China, Luo and his friends formed the Supporting Society of Chinese Students in the U.S. for the Washington Conference, of which Luo served as the secretary. In 1925, when the May 30th movement broke out in Shanghai, Luo and his friends formed the Chinese Information Bureau in England to protest British policy in China and seek international support for their fellow students back home. Luo rushed to England from France to take up leadership of the bureau. He worked there wholeheartedly for two months until the agency was dissolved in August due to financial difficulties.

49. Jiang Tingfu later recalled appreciatively that it was Luo who first called his attention to the importance of modern Chinese history. See Luo Jialun, Shizhe rusi ji [Recollections] (Taipei: Zhuanji Wenxue Chubanshe, 1967), 201. On Luo's friendship with Jiang, see Luo Jialun, "Pingdiao Jiang Tingfu Xiansheng" [In memory of Jiang Tingfu], ibid. John K. Fairbank described Jiang Tingfu's scholarly and political career in John King Fairbank, Chinabound: A Fifty-Year Memoir (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), 86-91. Luo's proposal is called "Yanjiu zhongguo jindaishi de jihua" [A proposal for the study of modern Chinese history], included in his letter to Gu Jiegang, 8 September 1926. It appeared in Zhongshan daxue zhoukan [Weekly journal of Sun Yat-sen University] 2.14 (1928): 399-401.

50. Luo, "Yanjiu zhongguo jindaishi de jihua," 399-400.

51. Luo Jialun, "Duiyu zhongguo jindaishi yingyou de renshi" [A necessary acknowledgement of the importance of modern Chinese history], in Luo Jialun xiansheng wencun [Works of Luo Jialun] (10 vols., Taipei: Guoshiguan, 1976), vol. 2, 37-38.

52. The definitive study of Gu Jiegang's historical career is Laurence Schneider, Ku Chieh-kang and China's New History: Nationalism and the Quest for Alternative Traditions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971). There are also quite a few works in Chinese, such as: Wang Fansen, Gushibian yundong de xingqi [The rise of the National Studies movement] (Taipei: Yuncheng wenhua shiye gongsi, 1987); Liu Qiyu, Gu Jiegang xiansheng xueshu [Gu Jiegang's works] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1988); Chen Zhiming, Gu Jiegang de yigu shixue [Gu Jiegang and his critical historiography] (Taipei: Shangding wenhua chubanshe, 1993); and, most recently, Ursula Richter, Zweifel am Altertum: Gu Jiegang und die Diskussion ueber Chinas alte Geschichte als Konsequenz der "Neuen Kulturbewegung" ca. 1915-23 [Doubting antiquity: Gu Jiegang and the discussion on China's ancient history as the consequence of the New Culture movement] (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1992).

53. See Schneider, Ku Chieh-kang and China's New History, 192-205.

54. For Gu's attitude toward Kang, see Chen Zhiming, Gu Jiegang de yigu shixue, 57-64.

55. Arthur Hummel published an article entitled, "What Chinese Historians Are Doing in Their Own History," American Historical Review 34.4 (1929), reprinted in Gu Jiegang, ed., Gushibian [Critiques of ancient history] (Beijing: Pushe, 1930), vol. 2, 421-43. Hummel's review of the first volume of the Gushibian too is included in this volume, ibid., 364-69. Fu's letter appeared first in Zhongshan daxue zhoukan 2.13/14 (1928): 359-74, 391-98.

56. Letter from Fu Sinian, Zhongshan daxue zhoukan. Fu's remark here was coined in G. M. Trevelian's phrase that "Collect the facts of the French Revolution! You must go down to Hell and up to Heaven to fetch them." G. M. Trevelian, Clio A Muse (London, 1913), quoted in Xu, Xin shixue jiushinian, vol. 1, 221, fn. 47.

57. Li Ji, his colleague, recalled that once he and Fu had lunch together and chatted about the archive project, Fu said to Li that there was no important discovery from these archives. Li joked about Fu's preference for excavated sources. See "Fu Mengzhen xiansheng lingdao de lishi yuyan yanjiusuo" [Fu Sinian and the Institute of History and Philology], in Fu suozhang jinian tekan [A special commemorative volume for Director Fu Sinian] (Taipei: Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 1951), 16.

58. Paul Pelliot, "The Royal Tombs of An-yang," in Independence, Convergence, and Borrowing in Institutions, Thought, and Art (New York: [n.p.], 1964), 272. In December 1995, the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan hosted an international conference (which I attended), commemorating the centennial birthday of Fu Sinian and discussing Fu's contribution to modern Chinese historiography.

59. Li Ji, Anyang: A Chronicle of the Discovery, Excavation, and Reconstruction of the Ancient Capital of the Shang Dynasty (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977). See also Fu Sinian "Bensuo fajue anyang yinxu zhi jingguo" [A report of the excavation of Shang ruins in Anyang, the Institute of History and Philology]. Based on the investigation, Fu wrote an article discussing the new methods used in archeology: Fu Sinian, "Kaoguxue de xinfangfa" [New methods in archaeology], in Fu Sinian quanji, vol. 4, 267-99.

60. Hu Shi, for example, told Gu Jiegang that "now my thinking has changed. I do not doubt antiquity any longer. I believe the authenticity of ancient Chinese history." Quoted in Liu, Gu Jiegang xiansheng xueshu, 262. In 1933, the institute started another archaeological project in Chengziya, in Shandong Province. Fu announced that the new project was to probe the scope of the Shang dynasty and to test the hypothesis that Chinese civilization had been influenced by the sea. See Fu Sinian, "Chengziya xu" [Preface to Chengziya], in Fu Sinian quanji, vol. 3, 206-11.

61. On Fu's leadership of these projects and his theoretical contemplation on the evolution of ancient China, see Wang Fansen (Fan-shen), "Fu Ssu-nien: An Intellectual Biography" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1993), 143-96.