The Rise of the Writers of the Republic of China

It will take two days for Zhang Xueliang to return to Beiping, and then he will take Zhou Hexuan to visit Zhang Zuolin.

So Zhou Hexuan had to wait. In addition to making friends with a group of poets such as Xu Zhimo, he also met other celebrities from Tsinghua University by the way. For example, Jin Yuelin who just founded the Department of Philosophy at Tsinghua University, and Feng Youlan, a superstar in the field of modern Chinese philosophy.

In the rest of the time, Zhou Hexuan was working on "Goddess".

As soon as the story comes out, the heroine is imprisoned and talks to the ghost in the prison in a trance. The ghost says that she was murdered and silenced, and also tells about her tragic experience. Immediately afterwards, the timeline jumped sharply, and suddenly flashed back to the year of the 1911 Revolution. A certain evil gentry gathers bandits to respond to the revolution, transforms himself into a revolutionary party, and enters the city to declare an uprising. The heroine's father was originally an official in the city, but he was killed in the chaos, and he was displaced at a young age.

Then there was a severe drought in the local area, and the warlords of the new society led the people to worship and pray for rain. The 10-year-old heroine was regarded as a sacrifice to the Dragon King. Amid the reverent cheers and prayers of the people, she sank into the river along with vegetables, fruits, cattle and sheep.

Half asleep and half awake, she saw the river god. The river god said that the foreign warship was too powerful, which broke his rain spell, and took the heroine to swim in the river. When she woke up, she found that she was rescued by fishermen on the river and became the fisherman's adopted daughter.

The timeline jumps again, and the fisherman's silly son marries the heroine. On the second day of marriage, there was a scuffle between warlords, the fishing boat was sunk by a cannonball, both her adoptive father and husband drowned in the water, and her mother-in-law sold her to traffickers.

Within a few days, Zhou Hexuan wrote 40,000 characters and showed it to Liang Qichao. Liang Qichao commented on the novel: "It's ridiculous and creepy."

Because although the heroine's encounter in the book is tragic, every scene is very joyful, and even the description of the warlord's battle is humorous and interesting. Whether it is warlords, bandits, corrupt officials, ordinary people, fishermen, or human traffickers, they all live in their own worlds, and they take it for granted that they entrap the heroine.

This morning, Zhou Hexuan was writing a novel again.

Liang Qichao rushed in and dragged him away: "Stop writing, your novel is scary, follow me to the lecture."

Lectures were very popular during the Republic of China, and universities were also keen to invite celebrities to give lectures, and the remuneration was high. Zhou Hexuan lives in Tsinghua Garden now, so Tsinghua University will naturally not let him go, and has invited him to give lectures long ago.

Zhou Hexuan followed Liang Qichao to the Department of History. Seeing the crowded classroom, he asked in surprise, "There are so many students in the History Department of Tsinghua University?"

"Students from other departments also came to the lecture." Liang Qichao explained with a smile.

Chen Maode, the founder and director of the Department of History of Tsinghua University, warmly shook hands with Zhou Hexuan and said: "Mr. Zhou, I have known you for a long time, and I have long wanted to see the elegance."

"Director Chen, you are being polite." Zhou Hexuan said with a smile.

Chen Maode said: "The history department of Tsinghua University was not well prepared in many aspects when it was first established. I would like to ask Mr. Zhou to give me some advice and impart some theoretical methods for historical research."

Zhou Hexuan said: "If you don't dare to be a professor, you must do your best."

Tsinghua University officially established various departments a month ago, including the Department of History, and even subjects such as archeology are included in historical research. That is to say, many of the people who came to listen to Zhou Hexuan's lecture today were students from the first history department of Tsinghua University.

Zhou Hexuan walked up to the podium, glanced down, and found that Chen Yinke, Wang Guowei, Liang Suming, Li Ji and other professors from the Academy of Chinese Studies were also sitting and listening to his lectures, and suddenly felt a lot of pressure.

In fact, since the establishment of the Department of History at Tsinghua University, the students of the Academy of Chinese Studies have been merged into the Department of History in disguise, and many professors have also become teachers of the Department of History.

"Hello, everyone," Zhou Hexuan bowed to the audience, and then said, "My humble servant Zhou Hexuan has little talent and learning. He has never been to a serious school, and he doesn't even have a middle school diploma. I am deeply terrified to be invited by Director Chen and Professor Liang to give lectures at Tsinghua University. Don't say anything. All the teachers here, that is, any of the classmates, have higher diplomas than me. So if you agree with what I said today, you will applaud, and if you don’t agree, just pass it as a fart.”

"Hahaha!"

There was a chuckle from the audience, and everyone had smiles on their faces.

After exchanging pleasantries, Zhou Hexuan finally got to the point. He said: "Since the Great War ten years ago, a new trend of thought in historical research has begun to emerge in the western historiographical circles. It is very different from Renaissance historiography. Let us call it modern historiography."

Zhou Hexuan wrote the four characters "Modern Historiography" on the blackboard, and the teachers and students in the audience immediately paid attention to it quietly. Because this kind of historical research has not formed a complete and standardized theory in the West, it is still being gradually explored.

Zhou Hexuan pointed to Liang Qichao in the audience: "Mr. Liang Rengong said in his "Chinese History Research Method" that the life of human beings is extremely short, the life of human society is extremely long, and society often develops in a spiral upward direction. He believes that history and Society is continuously changing and developing, emphasizing the totality, continuity and causality of history. I agree with this point of view. However, I think it is not enough!"

Qi Qi, the teachers and students in the audience, looked at Liang Qichao. Liang Qichao shook his head and smiled bitterly. Zhou Hexuan was invited by him to give a lecture, but he was erected as a target as soon as he came on stage.

"I think historical research must include the following aspects." Zhou Hexuan wrote "History", "Politics", "Economy", "National", "Diplomacy", "Culture" and "Personal" respectively on the blackboard.

He continued: "History here refers to historical events in the traditional sense. Politics, economy, and culture are three very important factors in historical research. They directly or indirectly promote historical events. History is not isolated, so diplomacy People and nations also need to be studied. As for individuals, it is the influence of historical figures, such as the great talents of Qin Shihuang and Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. Many of the behaviors and activities of historical figures are accidental, but their influence is very far-reaching.”

The teachers and students in the audience looked thoughtful. Many of them have actually done research in this area, but they are not as general and comprehensive as what Zhou Hexuan said.

Zhou Hexuan added: "As for the analysis of individual historical events, I think we should start from these four aspects."

He wrote down "cause", "process", "result" and "influence" on the blackboard, and said: "Let's take the Sino-Japanese War of Sino-Japanese War as an example. What was its cause? This requires analyzing the historical situation at that time. The environment, as well as the political, economic, cultural, ethnic, diplomatic, and personal factors of China and Japan, and even Western countries. Why did the war happen, and why did it happen? Let’s talk about Japan first..."

Zhou Hexuan first analyzed Japan’s Meiji Restoration and the development dilemma Japan faced at that time, and concluded that if Japan wants to continue to develop, it must implement the policy of “conquering Korea and invading China”. However, due to domestic and foreign troubles, China gradually became a semi-colony. North Korea was the last fig leaf for China.

After talking about the cause of the war, Zhou Hexuan talked about the course of the war, the comparison of the diplomacy of the two countries, the systems of the two countries, the economies of the two countries, and the military strength of the two countries, etc., including the Empress Dowager Cixi Temple: "It is inevitable that China will lose the war. Yes. Before the war, China and Japan experienced a 20-year arms race. China's naval strategy was mainly defensive, while Japan was an offensive navy. In the 1889 US Navy report, it was believed that the Chinese navy ranked first in Asia , ranked ninth in the world, and even ranked ahead of the United States and Japan. Li Hongzhang was complacent about this, and believed that the Bohai Sea Portal was unshakable. Japan deeply felt that the navy was insufficient, so it increased naval military spending to the greatest extent, and spent huge sums of money to build three ships with large caliber and fast speed. In the next few years, the Chinese navy stagnated, while Japan continued to speed up its naval development. As a result, one went up and down the other. Before the war broke out, Japan had surpassed China in terms of the number of warships, and many of the performances of warships were also reduced. Surpassing China, the overall strength has actually surpassed the Chinese Navy, ranking first in Asia.”

"This is the military aspect, let's talk about diplomacy. China has no diplomacy at all, and can only be the target of the powers to carve up. As for Japan, the United States, Britain, Germany and France all support Japan's war, and China is isolated diplomatically. .”

"Why do these big powers support Japan's invasion of China? This starts with their own political and economic development..."

When Zhou Hexuan finished explaining the cause and process of the Sino-Japanese War of Sino-Japanese War, the teachers and students in the audience were already stunned. This battle is too familiar to the Chinese, and there are countless relevant studies, but none of them is as thorough as Zhou Hexuan.

"Crack clap clap!"

Zhou Hexuan was about to continue talking about the results and impact of the Sino-Japanese War of Sino-Japanese War, and the audience burst into warm applause. He waited for the applause to end before continuing: "Everyone knows the outcome of the war, and I won't repeat it. Now let's talk about its impact. Although China lost the war, the people of the country were completely awakened ideologically and culturally. Many reformers gradually turned revolutionary..."