Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c15.s2.t6: Hu Shi
Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c15.s2.t6
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Hu Shi
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Popularly known as the Father of Chinese Literary Revolution, Hu Shi was a leading philosopher, writer, educationist, and diplomat of modern China. He was a key leader of the New Culture Movement (1916-1919) contributing to the establishment of vernacular Chinese (*Baihua*) as an accepted writing style, and to the beginning of an impassioned intellectual debate on modernity and liberalism.
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He was born on December 17, 1891 in Shanghai. His father was a minor official of the Qing dynasty who died when he was only four years old. He was raised by his mother at his ancestral home in Jixi in Anhui province. A devout Buddhist, she exposed him to prevalent ideas of popular Buddhism as well as arranged for his formal training in Confucian Four Books and Five Classics to become a scholar-bureaucrat at the village school. At the age of 13, Hu Shi was sent to Shanghai to study in modern schools. After completing his high school, he could not study further due to financial constraints. He spent two years, from 1908 to 1910, working as Chinese and English tutor to support his family. In 1910, he successfully cleared the examination for the Boxer Indemnity Fund Scholarship to study in the USA. Starting his undergraduate studies in agriculture at Cornell University in 1910, he later shifted to Columbia to pursue higher studies in
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Hu Shi
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literature and philosophy. He completed his PhD there under the supervision of Professor John Dewey in 1917. His doctoral dissertation was on the topic - ‘The Development of the Logical Method in Ancient China’.
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Under the influence of pragmatism and Dewey’s ideas, Hu Shi had become a strong proponent of radical ideological change and modernity. He found traditional ways of thinking and the classical Chinese-based writing as strong impediments to China’s march towards modernisation. This brought him at the forefront of contemporary intellectual debates raging in probably the most influential journal of the time, *New Youth*, founded by another radical Chinese thinker, Chen Duxiu. His article ‘Tentative Proposals for the Improvement of Chinese Literature’, which was published in this journal in January 1917, became a rallying point for the New Culture Movement.
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Hu returned to China in 1917 and was appointed as professor at Peking University. Already famous for his radical views, he passionately pursued his modernist agenda and played a leadership role in the May Fourth Movement of 1919. For his promotion and establishment of vernacular Chinese as the written script, he was widely recognised as the Father of Literary Revolution. A liberal democrat, he emphasised on the reorganisation of Chinese society and polity on the twin plank of what he called - “Mr Science” and “Mr Democracy.” His strong faith in individualism in the form of freedom of will, and the regenerative spirit of Chinese culture on one hand and abhorrence for the abstract discussion of ‘isms’ on the other, separated him from the Communists. His critical article on ‘The Indianisation of Chinese culture’ was written in the same spirit and in the search of anti-modernist strains that inhibited modernisation of China.
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In 1938, after the outbreak of Sino-Japanese War, Hu Shi left Beijing to accept the position of Ambassador of China to the USA. Even after leaving this position in 1942, he remained in USA teaching and lecturing in various universities. In 1946, he returned to China as the Chancellor of Peking University, but left for USA again in 1948 due to outbreak of civil war in China. In 1957, the Guomindang Government in Taiwan invited him to Taipei to accept the position of Director of Academica Sinica. He died here on February 24, 1962. Initially criticised for his conservatism, his scholarship and contribution received due recognition in the People’s Republic of China after 1986. Internationally, he received more than 35 honorary degrees and awards from various universities and institutions, including one from Banaras Hindu University, India on recommendation of its philosopher Vice-Chancellor and later President of India, Dr Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan.
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(*Kamal Sheel*)