Feng Guifen

Feng Guifen

Feng Guifen (1809-1874) was a thinker and essayist in the late Qing Dynasty. The name is Lin Yi, and the number is Jingting. He was born in Wu county (now Suzhou, Jiangsu Province) and studied with Lin Zexu. In the 20th year of Daoguang's reign, he was a Jinshi and editor. At the beginning of Xianfeng's reign, he was a member of the local Communist Youth League. At the beginning of Tongzhi's reign, he joined Li Hongzhang's shogunate. He seldom works parallel prose, but he works in ancient prose after middle age, especially in the study of practical application. Set up a Cantonese dialect Library in Shanghai to train Western talents. He has lectured in Jinling, Shanghai and Suzhou academies. Feng Guifen, a pioneer of reformism, first expressed the guiding ideology of Westernization Movement. He is the author of "the protest of xiaoyinglu", "the textual research of shuowenjiezhu" and "the collection of poems and essays of xianzhitang".

Life of the characters

Feng Guifen (1809-1874) is a native of dengweishan, whose name is Linyi and Jingting. Wu County, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. In 1840, Li Chenglin, a member of gengzi branch, was the second person to be a Jinshi. Precise calendar calculation, hook stock learning. After evading the army to Shanghai, the general secretary of Jiangnan Machinery Manufacturing Bureau added Guangyan Museum. Shu Zong Europe, Yu, gongxingcao, shuxiu Jianyi, unique border town. The school house protest. Sixty six years old.

Feng Guifen was born in Xinqiao lane near Panmen in the southwest corner of Suzhou. It was in Wu County at that time. When he was born, Osmanthus fragrans bloomed, so he got the name Guifen. Feng Guifen is a famous family for generations. Feng Hui, the eighth ancestor of Feng Guifen, first lived in Changshu, then moved to Changzhou. Feng huipo was good at business management. He first started a trade and then opened a pawnshop. His family gradually became rich. According to the genealogy, he was "benevolent and charitable, which was called by the village.". In his father's generation, there was a fire in the house and he never recovered. He is well-known for his ability and learning. He has been intelligent and special since he was young. He can read at a glance. 20 years old weak crown, make up for the county student. Feng Guifen worked hard in poverty. When he was young, he was the magistrate's office of the city and also the governor of qiangu. The county magistrate was to be removed from office because he failed to pay for food. He tried his best not to argue for the county magistrate and left. Feng Guifen admired Gu Yanwu's moral knowledge, and his names "Linyi" and "Jingting" were all related to it. Feng Guifen is thoughtful when he is in trouble. Although he is silent, he will be impassioned when he is faced with major issues and decisions. Feng Guifen is strict with himself, does not easily associate with others, has not yet become an official, and has been well-known throughout the country.

In the seventh year of Daoguang (1827), he was a scholar in the middle school. He won the recognition of Xin Congyi, a scholar in Jiangsu Province, and was recorded as an official student. Daoguang 12 years (1832) to participate in the examination, test Ju. In 1833, when Lin Zexu was the governor of Jiangsu Province, he picked up Feng Guifen, who he had never met before, and called him "the only talent he had seen in a hundred years". He enrolled him in the Fu Department and accepted him as a student. He handed over his collection of Northwest Water conservancy to Feng for editing and proofreading, and asked him to draft the preface of Taishang induction chapter. However, he failed three times in the examination in Beijing. In 1840, he took part in the imperial examinations of the gengzi branch and the imperial examinations. He was awarded one or two Jinshi and the title of editor of the Imperial Academy. In the 23rd year of Daoguang, he served as the examiner of shuntianxiang. In May of 1844, Feng Guifen was the chief examiner of Guangxi provincial examination. He was the head of Jinling Xiyin Academy. In the 24th year of Daoguang, he passed the Guangxi provincial examination and got many famous scholars. In 1848, Feng Guifen returned to the capital.

In the third year of Xianfeng (1853), the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom established its capital in Nanjing, and he was assigned to Suzhou near Nanjing to help organize the army to confront the Taiping army. In the tenth year of Xianfeng (1860), the Taiping army captured Suzhou. Defeated, he went to Shanghai and continued to participate in Li Hongzhang's Hunan army to suppress the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom movement. Later, he helped Li Hongzhang create his own Huai army based on his British and American weapons experience. During his time as an aide, he completed 40 pieces of his representative work of political commentary, the protest in xiaojialu, and proposed that "the ethics of China should be taken as the origin, supplemented by the skills of prosperity and strength of various countries.". His ideas had a great influence on the Westernization Movement and were regarded as the forerunner by the bourgeois reformers. Yu Yue once praised him as "versatile in learning, but his intention is to serve as a useful learning in the world" (preface to the collection of Xianzhi Hall).

After the Qing army captured the Soviet Union and Changzhou, he asked Li Hongzhang to reduce the land tax in southern Jiangsu in 1862. Finally, the imperial court agreed to reduce the tax by one third in Suzhou, Songjiang and Taicang, and one tenth in Changzhou and Zhenjiang. Zhang Taiyan once criticized it in the book of Chenshu. After moving to Mudu in his later years, he set up a bureau of compiling local records at home and compiled 153 volumes of Suzhou local records. He has successively lectured at Xiyin Academy in Nanjing, Jingye Academy in Shanghai, Ziyang Academy in Suzhou and Zhengyi Academy. He emphasized geography, mathematics, primary school, water conservancy and farmland, and especially studied the problems of river and waterway, military punishment, salt and iron at that time. On the other hand, they can accept the influence of capitalism and advocate "adopting Western learning" and "making foreign tools". Industrial calligraphy, calligraphy in Europe, Yu, gongxingcao, shuxiu Jianyi, unique border town. Feng Guifen later died in Mudu's apartment and was buried in jikeling, North Zhuwu, Tianchi mountain. Mudu now has a "Bangyan mansion". The gentry of Suzhou set up a temple for him. After his death, Suzhou Fu Zhi was published in 1883.

Feng Guifen is a thinker with pioneering significance and far-reaching influence in the era of transformation from Chinese tradition to modern times. He mainly used Chinese culture as resources, treated foreign culture with an open, healthy and self-confident attitude, advocated learning from the West in many ways, and dispelled the contradictions between the ancient and modern China and the West in the reform by virtue of goodness. He put forward the thought of comprehensive and systematic reform earlier, and rationally considered the relationship between ideal and reality. He not only has the world vision, but also understands the Chinese history and reality, criticizes the current malpractice and advocates the reform. He is also a doer with many achievements. After many years of appeal, the problem of heavy taxation in Jiangnan was finally eased, and Shanghai Tongwen library was founded.

Academic proposition

Literary ideas

Feng Guifen was good at writing parallel prose when he was a child. When he was not an official, he was already famous in Jiangnan. He is good at reading all his life and never neglects his studies. After middle age, he devoted himself to the ancient prose. He studied all kinds of Confucian classics, and he studied Confucianism in Han Dynasty and Song Dynasty. Apart from the classics and history, Feng Guifen has studied all the other books carefully, such as astronomy, geography, military punishment, salt and iron, rivers and waterways. He has a great ambition to set things right.

Feng Guifen's literary ideas demand to break through the barriers of Tongcheng school. It advocates "in terms of satisfaction". In Fu Zhuang's book of health, he claimed that he did not believe in the doctrine of law, and pointed out that although the text contains Tao, it is not necessary for Tao to be natural and straightforward, for example, all the rules and regulations, names, objects and images are sent by Tao, that is to say, nothing can not be written in the text. According to the Tongcheng school's literary tradition of Han, Liu, ou and Su, it is pointed out that "those who are good at economy must be good at writing about things, and Xuangong's memorial may not be inferior to Han and Liu; those who are good at textual research must be good at writing about ancient times, which is superior to Kao's preface, and may not be inferior to Europe and su.". It is necessary to expand the ideological content of prose and liberate the language form of prose. He thinks that Tongcheng's Yi Fa is an example of constraining prose creation, and opposes "rules and regulations, rules and trends". Therefore, in his "protest at xiaoyinglu", he pointed out that "all Chen Fu's efforts to save the world's urgency were wise words a hundred years ago." His article is "good at argumentation, but bad at narration". It reflects the progressive trend of breaking the shackles of Tongcheng before and after the Opium War.

Feng Guifen is good at argumentative writing, and is not a floating word. He has the highest achievement in political writing. He is always careful and considerate, and points out that Chen Qie is fluent in Qi. There are 40 pieces of "the protest in xiaoyinglu", the most outstanding of which was once compared by Yu Yue to "Changyan" by Zhong Changtong. For example, "Zhiyang Qiyi" says at the beginning: "there is a strange anger that has never been seen since the opening of heaven and earth. Anyone who has the heart to know the blood and gas, and who has the crown to point to it, is now bound by Xiaoyi as the largest country in the world." However, in the collection of xianzhitang compiled by his son, the most representative 18 chapters such as caixixueyi and zhiyangqiyi are omitted, and only 22 chapters are included.

Adhering to Gu Yanwu's thought

Influenced by Gu Yanwu's academic thought, Feng Guifen respected and admired Gu Yanwu very much. If you arrive in the capital, you must go to Gu Yanwu temple to offer sacrifices. Feng Guifen himself believed in two kinds of Ethics: first, thousands of horses could not change his moral integrity. When he was young and poor, he knew how to understand the people and pay attention to the anecdotes of the people. Second, he said in private that he would never be inferior to others. In people's eyes, he would always be a Bachelor of Arts. He would never agree with officials or treat others according to their official positions.

There are four main contributions in his history of thought

1、 He put forward systematic reform earlier. It involves economy, society, education, politics, military, diplomacy, etc;

2、 He put forward a more comprehensive proposition of "adopting Western learning". Starting from "making foreign vessels", this paper proposes "adopting Western learning" to expand the learning content from the strong ships and cannons in the West. It is proposed to add "learning from other countries" after "king after law" in traditional culture, not only from the perspective of history, but also from the dimension of world consciousness. In particular, the theory of "six inferior to foreigners" is a milestone in the history of modern Chinese learning from the West;

3、 Only good is to eliminate the contradiction between China and the west, ancient and modern in the process of modernization. "If the law is not good, I will denounce it in ancient times; if the law is good, I will punish my teacher.". He thought that in the law, the difference between ancient and modern, Chinese and western is not important, good and bad is the only standard.

4、 The relationship between ideal and reality should be considered rationally. Although he did not do much official work, he had been in the capital for more than ten years and in the Imperial Academy. He had a close relationship with the upper level bureaucrats. He had the opportunity to learn a lot about the specific operation of politics and had a deep understanding of his reform thoughts

Chinese PinYin : Feng Gui Fen