Gu Hongming

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Gu Hongming
University of Leipzig, University of Paris
Occupation(s)Scholar, Professor

Gu Hongming, c. 1917

Gu Hongming in his time known as Ku Hung-ming (

Wade-Giles: Ku Hung-ming; Pinyin: Gū Hóngmíng; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Ko͘ Hông-bêng; courtesy name: Hongming; ordinary name: 湯生 in Chinese or Tomson in English) (18 July 1857 – 30 April 1928) was a British Malaya
born Chinese man of letters. He also used the pen name "Amoy Ku".

Life

Gu Hongming was born in

University of Leipzig, and studied law in Paris.[where?
]

Gu Hongming (1857–1928) in his old age.

He returned to Penang in 1880, and soon joined the

colonial Singapore civil service, where he worked until 1883. He went to China in 1885, and served as an advisor to the ranking official Zhang Zhidong
for twenty years.

Leo Tolstoy, whom he had befriended, and Gu were both opposed to the Hundred Days' Reform, which was led by prominent reformist intellectuals of the time, including Kang Youwei.[4]

From 1905 to 1908, he was the director of the Huangpu River Authority (上海浚治黃浦江河道局) in Shanghai. He served in the Imperial Foreign Ministry from 1908 to 1910, then as the president of the Nanyang Public School, the forerunner of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He resigned the latter post in 1911 as a sign of his loyalty to the fallen imperial Qing government. In 1915, he became a professor at Peking University. Beginning in 1924 he lived in Japan and Japanese-administered Taiwan for three years as a guest lecturer in Oriental cultures. Then he returned to live in Beijing until his death on 30 April 1928 at the age of 72.

An advocate of monarchy and Confucian values, preserving his

Somerset Maugham and Rabindranath Tagore
were all drawn to visit him when they were in China. No scholarly edition of his complete works is available.

He was fluent in English, Chinese, Hokkien, German, Russian and French, and understood Italian, Ancient Greek, Latin, Japanese and Malay. He acquired Chinese only after his studies in Europe, and was said to have bad Chinese hand-writing. However, his command of the language was far above average. He penned several Chinese books, including a vivid memoir recollecting his days as an assistant for Zhang Zhidong.

His character appeared in the drama "Towards the Republic".[6]

Works

His English works include:

He translated some of the

Confucian
classics into English:

He rendered William Cowper's narrative poem The Diverting History of John Gilpin into classical Chinese verse (known as 癡漢騎馬歌).

References

  1. ^ Liu, Suyong (22 July 2013). "'The eccentric' Gu Hongming". Chinese Social Sciences Today (478).
  2. ISBN 978-1317179283
    .
  3. ^ Müller, Gotelind (January 2006). "Gu Hongming (1857-1928) und Chinas Verteidigung gegen das Abendland" [Gu Hongming (1857-1928) and China’s defence against the occident] (PDF). Orientierungen. Zeitschrift zur Kultur Asiens: 6.
  4. ^ Lee 2005, p. 10.
  5. ^ "The Late Mr. Ku Hung-Ming," in Wen Yuan-ning, and others, "Imperfect Understanding: Intimate Portraits of Modern Chinese Celebrities," edited by Christopher Rea (Amherst, MA: Cambria Press, 2018), p. 72.
  6. ISBN 978-3825807870
    .
  7. ^ Gu, Hongming (1901). Papers from a Viceroy's Yamen: A Chinese Plea for the Cause of Good Government and True Civilization in China. Shanghai Mercury.
  8. ISBN 978-1627740111
    .

Further reading

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Gu Hongming.
Wikisource has original works by or about:
Gu Hongming
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