Once in Chinatown, I noticed a Chinese bookshop above a shop. So I walked up the steps and into this rather dingy shop that is stacked from the floor to the ceiling mostly with Chinese comic books.
Those comic books - mainly wu xia, romantic stuff or translations from Japanese manga - were all bundled up and available for rent by the bundle. Stern notices abound warning people against casual reading; that would cost you $2 because for those who cannot afford to rent you can pay to read what you like at the shop!
How quaint! I imagine in shops like these poor but studious students and labourers can while away hours in the stories and (in winters, in central heating.)
Just as I was wondering how long the shop has been around, I spied a smallish framed piece of casual-looking calligraphy; it was an original autograph from Hu Shih, the 20th Century Chinese scholar and humanist.
As with many "youth intellectual" of his era, Hu Shih spent many years aboard in his formative years. Apparently he studied and researched in Columbia University, the ivy-league in New York city, and later, he returned as Chinese Ambassador to the US during the war years.
One of his great legacies was his role at Peking University where he was a prominent professor, publisher and eventually the Vice-Chancellor. In New York, he left another legacy as the co-founder in 1926, of the "China Institute of America" on East 65th Street. http://www.chinainstitute.org/
I was not sure whether he had been to the bookshop or had spent any time there, but he had addressed his calligraphy specifically to the "Dong Fang (Eastern) bookshop in New York". In a note by the calligraphy, it appeared that he gave wrote the calligraphy while recuperating from illness in Nanking.
Well, what did he write? He wrote:
勇敢的假设, 小心的求证
Translation: Be courageous in the assumptions;
Be cautious in demanding evidence.
What a wonderful glimpse of Chinese intellectual sentiment in early 20th century! How wonderful to find it in a bookshop full of comics.
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勇敢的假设, 小心的求证
My Hu Shih is the towering chinese of the last century who brought us 白话文,the vernacular Chinese and also the leader of May Fourth Movement (anti-imperialism) and a strong anti-Communist public figure.
The chaotic China especially during the few decades around the turn of 20th century see a flourishing of intellectuals, activists who either studied or exiled overseas. There is a chinese saying that capture this - 乱世出英雄.
Places like New York, Honolulu, San Francisco, Tokyo, HK have had a large footprint of these historic figures.
i am trying to speculate the origin of the quote - which is most likely drawn from the field of science, one of the two pillar of the New Culture Movement in early 19th century.. The other one is democracy.
When I read whaty Hu Shih wrote, it spoke to me that all forms of intellectual progress must be founded on the courage to question the status quo.
But mindful how often that becomes mindless idealism, that second phrase is as important as the first. To be rigorous in seeking "truth-from-facts" which is the hallmark of pragmatism.
Taking together "Dare to change" + "Discipline and pragmatic", somehow that is reminding me of the approach being taken with new administration in Washington.
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