Feng Youlan
Born	(1895-12-04)4 December 1895 Tanghe County, Henan, Great Qing Empire
Died	26 November 1990(1990-11-26) (aged 94) Beijing, People's Republic of China
Alma mater	Peking University Columbia University
Occupation	Philosopher

Feng Youlan or Fung Yu-Lan

(1895–1990) was a Chinese philosopher who was instrumental for reintroducing the study of Chinese philosophy in the modern era.

Early life, education, & career[link]

Feng Youlan was born on 4 December 1895 in Tanghe County, Nanyang, Henan, China, to a middle-class family. He studied philosophy in the China Public School in Shanghai, between 1912–1915, a preparatory school for college, then in Peking University between 1915 and 1918, where he was able to study Western philosophy and logic as well as Chinese philosophy.

Upon his graduation in 1918, he travelled to the United States in 1919, where he studied at Columbia University on a Boxer Rebellion Indemnity Scholarship. There he met, among many philosophers who were to influence his thought and career, John Dewey, the pragmatist, who became his teacher. Feng gained his PhD from Columbia in 1923. His PhD thesis was titled "A Comparative Study of Life Ideals".

He went on to teach at a number of Chinese universities such as Jinan University, Yanjing, and Tsinghua University in Beijing). From 1934 to 1938 (and again from 1946 to 1949) he was Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Tsinghua.^[1] It was while at Tsinghua that Feng published what was to be his best-known and most influential work, his History of Chinese Philosophy (1934, in two volumes). In it he presented and examined the history of Chinese philosophy from a viewpoint which was very much influenced by the Western philosophical fashions prevalent at the time, which resulted in what Peter J. King of Oxford describes as a distinctly positivist tinge to most of the philosophers he described. Nevertheless, the book became the standard work in its field, and had a huge effect in reigniting an interest in Chinese thought.

In 1939, Feng brought out his Xin Lixue (New Rational Philosophy, or Neo-Lixue). Lixue was a philosophical position of a small group of twelfth-century neo-Confucianists (including Cheng Hao, Cheng Yi, and Zhu Xi); Feng's book took certain metaphysical notions from their thought and from taoism (such as li and tao), analysed and developed them in ways that owed much to the Western philosophical tradition, and produced a rationalistic neo-Confucian metaphysics. He also developed, in the same way, an account of the nature of morality and of the structure of human moral development.

War and upheaval[link]

When the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out, the students and staff of Beijing's Tsinghua and Peking Universities, together with Tianjin's Nankai University, fled their campuses. They went first to Hengshan, where they set up the Changsha Temporary University, and then to Kunming, where they set up Southwest Associated University. When, in 1946 the three Universities returned to Beijing, Feng instead went to the U.S. again, this time to take up a post as visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania He spent the year 1948–1949 as a visiting professor at the University of Hawaii^{[citation needed]}. He served as President of Tsinghua University from December 1948 to May 1949 (it was known as National Tsinghua University until January 1949).^[2]

While he was at Pennsylvania, news from China made it clear that the communists were on their way to seizing power. Feng's friends tried to persuade him to stay, but he was determined to return; his political views were broadly socialist, and he thus felt optimistic about China's future under its new government.

Once back home, Feng began to study Marxist-Leninist thought, but he soon found that the political situation fell short of his hopes; by the mid-1950s his philosophical approach was being attacked by the authorities. He was forced to repudiate much of his earlier work, and to rewrite the rest – including his History – in order to fit in with the ideas of the Cultural revolution.

Despite all this, Feng refused to leave China, and after enduring much hardship he finally saw a relaxation of censorship, and was able to write with a certain degree of freedom. He died on 26 November 1990 in Beijing.

Bibliography[link]

Monographs & collections of essays[link]

• 1934: A History of Chinese Philosophy
  • 1983: translated by Derk Bodde (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press) ISBN 0-691-02021-3
  • 1948: A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (Collier-Macmillan) — reprinted 1997: Free Press ISBN 0-684-83634-3
• 1939: Xin Li-xue (New Rational Philosophy) (Changsha: Commercial Press)
  • 1997A New Treatise on the Methodology of Metaphysics (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press) ISBN 7-119-01947-3
• Selected Philosophical Writings of Fung Yu-lan (Beijing: Foreign Language Press) ISBN 7-119-01063-8
• Xin yuan ren (A New Treeatise on the Nature of Man (Chongqing: Commercial Press)
• 1946: Xin zhi yan (A New Understanding of Words) ((Shanghai: Commercial Press)
• 1947: The Spirit of Chinese Philosophy transl. E.R. Hughes (London: Kegan Paul)
  • 1970: (Greenwood Press) ISBN 0-8371-2816-1
• 1961: Xin yuan dao (A New Treatise on the Nature of Tao) (Xiang gang: Zhong-guo zhe-xue jan jiu hui)

As translator[link]

• 1991: A Taoist Classic: Chuang-Tzu (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press) ISBN 7-119-00104-3

Secondary[link]

• 2004: Peter J. King One Hundred Philosophers (Hove: Apple) ISBN 1-84092-462-4
• 2001: Francis Soo “Contemporary Chinese Philosophy”, in Brian Carr & Indira Mahalingam [edd] Companion Encyclopedia of Asian Philosophy (London: Routledge) ISBN 0-415-24038-7

References[link]

External links[link]

• 'Philosophy of Contemporary China' — on-line text provided by The Radical Academy
• Short bio at Tsinghua University site (Feng is the second entry on the page) (Chinese)

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (February 2009)

The Book and the Sword is a wuxia novel by Jin Yong. It was first serialised in Hong Kong between February 8, 1955 and September 5, 1956^[1] in The New Evening Post.

Set in the Qing Dynasty during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, the novel details the quest of the Red Flower Society, a secret organisation that aims to overthrow the government, and their entanglements with an Islamic tribe in northwestern China. The "book" in the title refers to a Quran that was stolen from the tribe while the "sword" refers to a sword given to the protagonist Chen Jialuo by his first romantic interest Huoqingtong. Historical characters such as the Qianlong Emperor, Zhaohui (兆惠), Heshen, Zheng Xie and Fukang'an are also mentioned in the novel. One of the female protagonists, Princess Fragrance, is loosely based on the Qianlong Emperor's Fragrant Concubine.

This novel was Jin Yong's debut, and it quickly established him as one of the new masters of the wuxia genre.^{[citation needed]} Alternate English titles of the novel are Book and Sword: Gratitude and Revenge and The Romance of the Book and Sword.

Plot[link]

The Red Flower Society is a secret society that aims to overthrow the Manchu-led Qing Dynasty and restore Han Chinese rule in China. The society is led by a total of fifteen leaders with Chen Jialuo as chief. The fourth leader Wen Tailai is ambushed by a group of soldiers and arrested on the Qianlong Emperor's order because he knows a secret about Qianlong's birth and the emperor wants to silence him.

The story's development is mostly based on the society's repeated attempts to rescue Wen Tailai. The heroes encounter some Islamic tribesmen, who are pursuing a convoy of hired escorts, who have robbed them of their holy artefact, a Quran. Chen Jialuo aids them in defeating the mercenaries and recovers the holy book. He earns the respect and admiration of Huoqingtong, the daughter of the tribe's leader. Throughout the story, some of the heroes eventually find their rights after braving danger together. The couples Xu Tianhong and Zhou Qi, Yu Yutong and Li Yuanzhi, are married after two lengthy subplots.

Chen Jialuo and the heroes follow the trail of the convoy escorting Wen Tailai and arrive in Hangzhou. There, Chen Jialuo coincidentally meets the Qianlong Emperor, who is disguised as a rich man, and they strike up a friendship. However later when they discover each others' true identities, they become wary and suspicious. Qianlong's best warriors are defeated by the society's leaders in a martial arts contest and the emperor feels humiliated. He wants to summon his army to eradicate the society, but refrains from doing so as he is aware of their strong influence and connections in Hangzhou.

When Chen Jialuo finally rescues Wen Tailai, he is shocked to learn that the Qianlong Emperor is not a Manchu, but in fact, a Han Chinese. Even more shockingly, Wen reveals that Qianlong is actually Chen's older brother, who was replaced at birth with the Yongzheng Emperor's daughter. Chen Jialuo and the heroes take Qianlong hostage and try to persuade him to acknowledge his ethnicity. They suggest that he use his authority to drive the Manchus out of the Central Plains and assure him that he will still remain as emperor after that. Qianlong reluctantly agrees and takes an oath of alliance with the heroes.

At the same time, the Qing army invades northwestern China, where the Islamic tribe lives, and Chen Jialuo travels there to help his friends. He meets Huoqingtong again and her younger sister, Kasili (Princess Fragrance). Chen falls in love with Kasili and finds himself entangled in a love triangle, because Huoqingtong also has romantic feelings for him. The Islamic tribe is eventually annihilated by the Qing army and Kasili is captured and brought back to the capital Beijing.

The Qianlong Emperor is attracted to Kasili's beauty and tries to force her to become his concubine but she refuses. Chen Jialuo infiltrates the palace to meet Qianlong and remind him about their pact, whilst affirming that he will persuade Kasili to marry the emperor. Kasili later discovers that Qianlong has broken his promise and is secretly plotting to destroy the Red Flower Society, so she commits suicide to warn Chen. The society's members are angry with the emperor for renouncing his oath and they storm the palace. Qianlong is defeated and forced to come to a truce with the heroes. Chen Jialuo and his friends then return to the western regions after paying respects at Kasili's tomb.

Characters[link]

Adaptions[link]

Films[link]

Television[link]

Radio[link]

In 1999 Hong Kong's RTHK produced a 32 episodes radio drama based on the novel, voiced by Tse Kwan-ho, Gigi Leung, Chow Kwok-fung and Jacqueline Pang.

References[link]

External links[link]

• (Chinese) The Book and the Sword on Baidu Baike
• The novel at sokamonline.com
• English translation of the novel at Wuxiapedia
• Partial English translation of the novel at earnshaw.com