The Rise of the Writers of the Republic of China

Zhou Hexuan didn't really enjoy the chat with Gu Hongming. He didn't say a lot of things, and made some points as vague as possible, because speaking out would irritate the old man.

Seeing Gu Hongming's old and decrepit appearance, Zhou Hexuan was afraid that the other party would get excited, so he clutched his chest and fell to the ground to die.

Gu Hongming was so angry that Zhou Hexuan didn't want to recite this infamy.

What is said about "seeking the country with profit and governing the country with virtue" is too general, and it is not exhaustive.

Principal Chang is also seeking profit for the country. His new warlords and bureaucrats, large and small, are pursuing profit, and the Jiangsu and Zhejiang consortia that support him behind him are also pursuing profit. The final outcome is that everyone is for me, no matter whether others live or die, the country has been obtained, but it is a mess.

Our party’s fight against the local tyrants to divide the land is also seeking the country with profit, but morality is ahead of profit. Everyone has a noble pursuit in their hearts, and only “profit” can be attributed to one place.

What Zhou Hexuan really wants to say is to rule the country by law, supplemented by moral bottom line and profit-driven. But in order to refute Gu Hongming's "rule of virtue", he couldn't talk about the rule of law, because the old man would definitely be confused after hearing it, and would even criticize Zhou Hexuan's legalism.

As we all know, Gu Hongming is a believer in Confucianism, and Confucianism and Legalism are deadly enemies.

It was the discussion about the merits and demerits of nations that reminded Zhou Hexuan of a book. The book was called "Guns, Germs, and Steel", which won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in the United States and the Popular Science Book Award in the United Kingdom, and became a work on the New York Times bestseller list.

Zhou Hexuan wrote the preface of this book in the reception dormitory of Peking University. Because of the age, many contents in it need to be revised, and Zhou Hexuan does not fully agree with certain views. He needs to explain according to his own ideas-for example, the part about China.

"Foreword

——Mr. Gu's question

For peoples in different parts of the world, in the 13,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age, some parts of the world developed industrial and agricultural societies that used metal tools, writing, and others remained Preservation of hunter-gatherer societies using stone tools...

Recently, I talked with Mr. Gu Hongming about the advantages and disadvantages of nations. His point of view is that all nations in the world have their own characteristics, and China is the most outstanding nation in human history. I agree with his point of view, but when it comes to some ethnic groups in Africa, the Americas, and the South Pacific, there are deviations.

Why are whites able to manufacture modern industrial products, while blacks in Africa can only be enslaved, and the aborigines in the South Pacific are still primitive societies?

Peoples from Eurasia, and peoples still living in Eurasia, control the wealth and power of the world. Other peoples, including most Asians, have not yet escaped European colonial rule and are far behind in wealth and power. There are also some ethnic groups, such as the aborigines in Australia, the Americas and the southernmost tip of Africa, who are no longer the masters of their own land, and were killed and conquered by European colonists in large numbers, and some were even driven to extinction.

Therefore, the problem of differences in the modern world can be formulated as follows: Why is the distribution of wealth and power the way it is? Why didn't Indians, Africans and Aboriginal Australians kill, conquer or exterminate Europeans?

For this question, we can look back at history. From 1500 A.D...."

Zhou Hexuan does have the time to write various articles. He finds others to record and write martial arts novels. "Dog Officer" only needs to submit a manuscript of tens of thousands of words a month, and Shen Congwen and Li Shoumin can also be responsible for the newspaper's work.

The original text of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" was too long-winded, and Zhou Hexuan made a lot of simplifications. However, on the issue of China, he is going to expand the length to discuss, and he is confident that his writing will be more profound and thorough than the original author.

Regarding the description of racism in it, Zhou Hexuan does not need to be as taboo as the original author, and uses a lot of text to explain that he is not a racist. In today's international society, the weak are preyed upon by the strong, and racism is prevalent, so there is nothing shameful about it.

The content of this book can be summed up in one sentence: "The history of different peoples has followed different paths. The reason is the difference in the national environment, not the biological difference of the people themselves."

Zhou Hexuan also decided to add a private chapter at the end of the book, explaining China's future development path from the perspective of China's history, culture, and geography, which is equivalent to "The Rise of Great Powers: The Future of China".

When this book was published in the 1920s, it should be extremely shocking, because many viewpoints are forward-looking and pioneering, and various archaeological data are also very detailed. For example, various vertical and horizontal comparisons in the book——

Domestication of plants: Fertile Crescent (8500 BC), China (no later than 7500 BC), Britain (3500 BC), Andes (no later than 3000 BC), Amazon region (3000 BC), Mesoamerica (no later than 3000 BC), Eastern America (2500 BC)

Then there is the domestication of animals, and the time of pottery, villages, tribes, metal tools, countries, writing, and iron.

Among other things, throwing out these data is enough to cause a sensation in the world's archaeological circles.

In the early 20th century, there was no Internet, and information exchange was very difficult. Many of the above data have been researched and discovered, but no one has integrated them. The situation in Europe and the United States is better. Asian archaeologists are all doing their own things, and the results will not attract much attention.

This is an "anthropological" work, and it combines the contents of several major branches of social anthropology, archaeology, and linguistic anthropology.

Anthropology was originally devoted to the study of human anatomy and physiology, but a few decades ago, research on social anthropology began to appear, and it has not yet formed a complete system. If the book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" is thrown into the European and American anthropological circles, it is estimated that those scholars will be completely crazy.

Zhou Hexuan worked all afternoon in the reception dormitory, and finally finished writing the preface and the main text of the first and second chapters.

Just after dinner, Zhang Taiyan and his disciples Qian Xuantong, Ma Yuzao, Liu Wendian and others came to visit——Qian Xuantong and Ma Yuzao had classes that day, so they didn't go to the station to greet them.

Zhang Taiyan asked with a smile: "I heard that old man Gu is here today, what did you talk to him about?"

"What else can there be?" Zhou Hexuan said speechlessly, "He wants to do something like Confucius. He is the Confucius of the Republic of China, advocating the use of love and morality to influence society. I can only follow his advice, to seek the country with profit and rule the country with virtue. .”

"Ha ha ha ha……"

Zhang Taiyan laughed so hard that he even burst into tears.

Qian Xuantong shook his head and sighed, and said, "Mr. Gu is a little pedantic. Even I, who is stuck in the pile of books, know that it is useless to talk about morality with warlords."

Zhou Hexuan said: "Of course he is also clear. I guess he sees the rapid westernization of China and the introduction of many bad habits from the West, so he sticks to the old ways to warn the world. It is a pity that he is suspected of being ruthless, and he actually opposes women's liberation. What's so good about those ugly women's little feet?"

"Celebrities, you have to be independent." Ma Yuzao said quite understandingly.

Liu Wendian joked: "If you want to talk about celebrities, our Mr. Qian has also become a celebrity recently."

"Don't pull it on me!" Qian Xuantong gave him a blank look.

"Ha ha ha ha!"

Everyone laughed again.

Zhou Hexuan was baffled by the laughter, and hurriedly asked what was going on.

After Liu Wendian explained, Zhou Hexuan finally understood.

It turned out that half a month ago was Qian Xuantong's 40th birthday. When he was young, he once said: "People should die when they reach forty, and they should be shot if they don't die."

Many people kept these words in their hearts, so Hu Shi, Liu Bannong and others came to congratulate him on his birthday. They wrote obituaries, elegiac couplets, elegiac poems and mourning articles for Qian Xuantong, and planned to publish an issue of "Mr. Qian Xuantong's Chengren Special Issue" in "Yusi" magazine.

When Qian Xuantong heard the news, he was so angry that he couldn't laugh or cry. He called Hu Shi and others to scold him, and his special issue of mourning was finally cancelled.

The special issue was cancelled, but the content of it was known by the southern newspapers, so they published various elegiac couplets and mourning articles, making southern readers think that Qian Xuantong was really dead.

Ever since, Qian Xuantong's friends in the south sent condolence telegrams to his family one after another. There are also many famous scholars who specially wrote articles to mourn Qian Xuantong, enumerating his academic contributions "during his lifetime".

Just yesterday, a friend from the south came to Peking University by boat and train to express condolences to Qian Xuantong's family. As a result, as soon as the friend came to the door, he saw Qian Xuantong sitting in the living room eating, and immediately exclaimed: "Brother Deqian, do you have any unfinished wishes? You don't want to be reincarnated."

Qian Xuantong said with a wry smile, "I'm about to be pissed off by you."

Everyone teased Qian Xuantong for a while, Liu Wendian glanced at the manuscript on the table, and asked, "What masterpiece is President Zhou writing again?"

Zhou Hexuan explained: "I was inspired by chatting with Mr. Gu, and I am going to write something about human sociology."

Zhang Taiyan was not polite, he opened the manuscript and read it by himself. After reading it, he said with a smile, "It's interesting. Are you going to analyze and discuss all the nations in the world?"

"That's exactly what I mean." Zhou Hexuan nodded.

"hiss!"

Zhang Taiyan gasped: "You are really amazing."

Everyone was amazed at Zhou Hexuan's erudition. Scholars with vision knew a little bit about world history and world nations. But writing a book is not the same. You have to study and analyze it in depth, otherwise you can only make fun of it and be despised by others.

"The Rise of Great Powers" is enough to make people amazing, and now Zhou Hexuan is going to write about the nations of the world, and the knowledge reserve required in it is too terrifying. In the Republic of China, where Internet access was not available, one had to travel around the world, visiting libraries and scholars around the world to start writing.

Even a lunatic like Zhang Taiyan respected Zhou Hexuan and said, "When you finish writing this book, you must post it to me."

Zhou Hexuan smiled and said, "Why don't you write a preface for me."

"That's just right, I can gain some fame in your book." Zhang Taiyan was overjoyed.