[Wenzhou Chaoben] Ruian Dialect Hall, the earliest foreign language college in Zhejiang.
Zhejiang 24 hours-qianjiang evening news reporter Zhang Mijia Kelvin Chen
Wenzhou, located between wuyue and Bamin, has a small regional space since ancient times. Today’s Wenzhou has a land area of 12,065 square kilometers and a sea area of about 11,000 square kilometers.
Its "bureau" is not big, and it is located in a remote place with blocked traffic; There is neither an industrial base nor any advantageous natural resources. All that can be said is unfavorable conditions, but Wenzhou people have become a wonderful flower of China’s reform and opening up.
From the classic street advertisement "Jiangnan Leather Factory" to the "Wenzhou real estate speculators" all over the country, to the small commodities all over the world, and then to the famous "Wenzhou model" in economics …
Almost all people in the world have an impression: "Wenzhou people are too good at doing business!"
But do we really understand Wenzhou?
Hong Zhenning, a Wenzhou cultural scholar, said: "The understanding of Wenzhou people’s business philosophy is actually’ because they can read, they will do business’." Therefore, the Zhejiang businessmen who came out of Wenzhou have their own unique foundation-the influence of Yongjia School, which allows them to focus on practical work, but also jump away from the thing itself and have a broad vision.
The "Journey of the East China Sea Humanities" jointly launched by Zhejiang Social Science Association and qianjiang evening news entered Wenzhou to deeply read the cultural texture of the city. When we touch the cultural pulse inherited from history, we can see that Wenzhou people at present are affecting the cultural shaping on this land and sea at this time and in the future.
Thanks to Hong Zhenning, a cultural scholar, Zhe Gui, a writer, Gao Ya, Liu Haidan and Ou Miaomiao of Wenzhou Business Daily, Pan Zhongqiang, chairman of Wenzhou Social Science Federation, and Zhang Jing, vice chairman, for their strong support to this group’s report. )
Ruian dialect hall former site
Historically, Wenzhou people were famous for being able to read.
Zhen Dexiu, a descendant of Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucianism, said: "Wendos is the most in the southeast." The profound historical and cultural accumulation has nourished generations of Wenzhou people-during the Song Dynasty, there were as many as 240 famous scholars in Wenzhou and more than 600 books; During the more than 100 years in the Southern Song Dynasty, there were 1147 liberal arts scholars, including 6 champions. Since the founding of New China, there have been 27 academicians in Wenzhou.
The modernization of Wenzhou began more than 100 years ago because of its emphasis on culture. At that time, this modernization was initiated by a large number of rural sages holding new cultural, educational, municipal and industrial undertakings.
It is precisely the cultural background and geographical polishing of the people living on it that makes Wenzhou’s humanistic tide, once it surges, be the momentum of rushing forward. In 2012, the the State Council executive meeting decided to set up Wenzhou as the experimental zone for comprehensive financial reform. Now, five years later, Wenzhou has handed over a good report card.
In the past few decades, Wenzhou people have gone out and returned, linked the relationship between the world and Zhejiang, and created an open style.
Yongjia School, which influenced the philosophy of Wenzhou businessmen.
Wenzhou people have money and business acumen! There is some implication in this statement.
Businessmen often brand the same stereotype in people’s minds as in Madame Bovary: mercenary, without culture.
Flaubert, who wrote Madame Bovary, certainly thinks so. Otherwise, Zhegui, a Wenzhou writer, would not say, "Flaubert has described Lele in profile eight times, but not once in a positive or even neutral way."
Zhegui’s novels are all based on Wenzhou people. However, he believes that Wenzhou businessmen are culturally confident.
Yongjia xueguan
At the entrance of Yongjia Academy in Yongjia County, Wenzhou, the reporter "met" three gentlemen. Xue Jixuan, Chen Fuliang and Ye Shi in the Southern Song Dynasty-they are the representatives of Yongjia School in the Song Dynasty.
Yongjia School was first put forward by Xue Jixuan and inherited by his student Chen Fuliang. Later, Ye Shi, a politician, epitomized a relatively complete ideological system and became the cultural origin of Wenzhou people.
Zhe Gui said that, unlike Neo-Confucianism and Mind School, Yongjia School’s philosophical thought is "Tao never leaves the device". "This is a materialistic philosophy that the Tao of objective things must be understood through concrete objects; But at the same time, it is free and innovative without being bound by real objects. "
Wenzhou’s thought of commodity economy can be traced back to Yongjia School. Today, Wenzhou businessmen advocate "prospering the country through industry". It is easy to sit and talk, but it is difficult to roll up your sleeves and do it yourself!
"In order to make up for Wenzhou’s congenital deficiency, Wenzhou people have obvious characteristics in doing business, are particularly diligent and like to hold groups." Hong Zhenning said, so Wenzhou people usually have such group images, and there are not many particularly prominent individuals.
Hong Zhenning participated in the compilation of "fourteen coastal cities open documentary Wenzhou Volume", which tells the entrepreneurial stories of nearly 100 Wenzhou entrepreneurs. Any fragment of a story can give you a glimpse of the group of Wenzhou businessmen-
In 1991, Wang Junjin, a Wenzhou businessman, and Wang Junyao, his eldest brother, were doing business in Changsha, and a large group of Wenzhou villagers worked together. On the Spring Festival that year, everyone decided to go home for the New Year. Wenzhou fellow villagers in anxious to return chartered a bus to go home, and it was a long journey. Wang Junyao, who was exhausted, lamented: "The car is really slow." At that time, the fellow villagers teased him: "The plane is fast, you can take the plane back."
Wang Junyao, who has never been on an airplane, took this seriously and immediately began to implement it by knocking on the door of the overall situation of Hunan civil aviation. After more than half a year’s efforts, more than 100 stamps were stamped between Cangnan and Changsha. In July, 1991, an-24 passenger plane flew back to Wenzhou from Changsha with a full house of guests.
After that, the Wangs not only chartered more than 50 routes and more than 200 flights per week, but also established their own private airlines.
An outsider said, "Wenzhou people are the first to eat crabs, but they are eating crocodiles!" " Such "bold" Wenzhou people are not one or two, but a bunch, a group and countless. They are buried in their hearts with the philosophical genes passed down by the sages: focus on practical things and dare to be the first in the world.
[Rui ‘an Dialect Hall, the earliest foreign language college in Zhejiang]
Sun Yiyan, Sun Qiangming, Sun Yirang, Song Shu, Chen fu, Xiang brothers, etc. They are not only the cultural and educational families in Ruian and Wenzhou, but also great scholars, scholars, mathematicians and professors, and they also advocate and hold new industries, modern businesses and civilized municipal affairs first.
They urged Ryan’s schools, factories, companies, postal services, and docks to be built. Even in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, which were "pioneering" in modernization at that time, Ryan was "daring to be the first in the world" and ahead of most states, prefectures and counties.
On February 16th, 1897, the twenty-third year of Guangxu reign in Qing Dynasty, the Rui ‘an Dialect Library, founded by Xiang Xiangzao and Xiang Song, the sages of Rui ‘an, was the earliest foreign language college in Zhejiang Province.
On the map of Rui ‘an County during Jiaqing period of Qing Dynasty, the red dot is the location of Xiang’s family residence (data photo).
It is no accident that Rui ‘an, secluded in the southeast corner of the sea, was able to lead the province to set up a dialect library for learning foreign languages.
In the 1960s, when Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou held Tongwen Library and Guang Dialect Library (both foreign language schools, which were designed to train talents for diplomacy, translation and preparation for studying abroad), other cities did not initiate new studies.
After the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, faced with the slaughter of foreign powers and the strong collision of western scientific and technological civilization, people of insight called for opening up people’s wisdom, spreading western learning and strengthening their learning.
Under the influence of this trend of thought, Mr. Sun Yirang, a well-known economist and educator of reform in Ruian Township, and Mr. Xiang Xiangzao actively echoed, and took the lead in establishing a learning and planning museum for learning arithmetic and a new school dialect museum for foreign languages in Zhejiang Province (the Qing government, which is the boss, always takes "China" as the center, and foreign languages can only be called "dialects" like local languages).
Rui ‘an Dialect Library is divided into two classes: Western (English) and Eastern (Japanese). Twenty-five students are enrolled in the East and West classes, majoring in common English and Japanese, and learning common knowledge of world history and geography.
The History of Taixi written by Sun Yirang was adopted as a textbook, and donated maps of China and foreign countries were also displayed in the classroom. Cai Huaqing, a graduate of Shanghai St. John’s College (known as St. John’s University since 1906), was hired as a full-time foreign language teacher with high salary. The funds for running a school come from social donations and tuition income, and the tuition fee is 50 silver yuan per student.
In 1902, according to the imperial edict of the Qing court that "all academies should be converted into schools", the scholars in Rui ‘an merged the Learning and Planning Museum and the Dialect Museum and turned them into ordinary schools in Rui ‘an.
The Dialect Library has been running for five years. Although all they have learned is English, Japanese and general knowledge of history and geography, some students have achieved something. At that time, almost all the young people who went to study in the East and West in Ryan did.
Some students have been admitted to foreign language schools in China, and the historical data can be found as follows: Xiang Xiang, Jiang Xianping, Xiang Shuquan, Xiang Puru, etc.
Xiang Xiang’s former residence, Ruian cultural protection unit.
Jiang Xianping graduated from Shangxiantang, a missionary school in Shanghai, and worked as an English teacher in Wenzhou, Pingzhong and Ruizhong successively. He was one of the earliest foreign language teachers in Ruian and wrote English Grammar.
Xiang Xiang, the most famous, first went to Shanghai Nanyang College to study, and then went to Columbia University in the United States to study and get a master’s degree. Students who returned to China to attend the Qing court returned to palace examination and won the first prize, so they were called "foreign champions". After the founding of the Republic of China, he served as the Deputy Minister of Finance, the Director of Salt Affairs and the General Office of National Salt Affairs Audit, and his life was recorded in the Who’s Who of Early China.
(Some pictures are from the Internet)
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