China and the West

Ku, Hung-ming [Gu Hongming]. Vox clamantis : Betrachtungen über den Krieg und anderes. Vorwort von Heinrich Nelson. (Leipzig : Verlag der Neue Geist, 1920). (Öffentliches Leben ; 20/24).
Gu Hongming schreibt : "Wenn es zu einer Zeit im Journalismus verkommene Schelme gab, dann gab es in ihm damals, wie Carlyle richtig sagt, auch entwurzelten wirklichen Spiritualismus, ja sogar unsterbliche Götter. Von diesen unsterblichen Göttern im Journalismus zu früherer Zeit brauchen wir hier nur drei Namen zu nennen, John Milton, Jonathan Swift und den unbekannten Schriftsteller, der sich Junius nannte."

Heinrich Nelson schreibt im Vorwort : "Wir stehen hier einem ganz ungowöhnlichen Phänomen gegenüber, das bei weitem noch nicht genug beachtet worden ist : einem Manne, der die westliche Kultur in umfassendster Weise in sich aufgenommen und verarbeitet hat, der Goethe wie nur ein Deutscher, Carlyle, Emerson und andere angelsächsische Schriftsteller wie nur ein Angelsachse kennt, der in der Bibel zu Hause ist wie der beste Christ, dessen selbständiger, klarer Geist aber die Kraft besessen hat, sich nicht nur selbst in seiner Eigenart zu erhalten, sondern auch zu erkennen, daß es für die Völker des Ostens zu ihrer Selbsterhaltung notwendig ist, fest auf dem Boden der eigenen uralten bewährten Kultur stehen zu bleiben und sich nicht die auf ganz andere Verhaltnisse zugeschnittene westliche Kultur aufdrängen zu lassen, deren moderne materialistische Zivilisation auf sie nur als ein zersetzendes und tötendes Gift wirken müßte."

Chen, Gu. Bulanduisi [ID D26354].
Chen schreibt : "Most English, German and French critics come to know Ibsen after he published his major plays. Their criticism is based on the speculation they can make about Ibsen. But Georg Brandes had the same mother tongue as Ibsen and as a contemporary of him, Brandes was able to follow the actual course of Ibsen's development and would not be blinded by his fame."

Wu, Mi. Hong lou meng xin tan. In : Min xin ; no 17-18 (1920). [A new view on A dream of red mansions].
Han Jiaming : Wu's article ends with paying tribute to Henry Fielding, especially noting the varieta of his characterization in Tom Jones. This is the first time that a Chinese scholar refers to Fielding in a critical essay.

[Wilde, Oscar]. [Ye ying yu mei gui]. Hu Yuzhi yi. [ID D27629].
Hu Yuzhi argues that 'we have to study his poems and fairy tales if we want to know Wilde as an aesthete'. This is mainly because 'only in his poems and fairy tales, his vivid imagination of beauty, his rare gift in art, and his wonderful attractiveness are given full play'.

[Matthews, Brandon]. Wen xue yu xi ju. Zhang Yugui yi. [ID D17630].
Oscar Wilde was regarded in this article as a brilliant comedy playwright.

Tian Han had seen a Tokyo performance of Lady Windermere's fan by Oscar Wilde. On a meeting with Guo Moruo, he revealed his desire to introduce the work of Wilde to the Chinese public. In 1920 Tian Han thought of Wilde as primarily an aesthete.

Mao Dun as editor of Xiao shuo yue bao chose Oscar Wilde as the prime example of a writer whose works were of no use in the present situation. He denounced both Western and Chinese aesthetic and decadent schools, among whom such practices as smoking opium, debating homosexuality, wearing strange clothes, regarding murder as a game and dyeing one's hair green were considered highly romantic. Wilde dyed his carnation green but not his hair. If Mao Dun disliked this side of Wilde's personal behavior and writing, he still acknowledged Wilde's more serious works.

Aufführung 16. und 17. Okt. 1920 von Mrs. Warren's profession = Hualun fu ren zhi zhi ye von George Bernard Shaw im Xin Wu Tai Theatre (New Shanghai Theatre) unter der Regie von Wang Chongxian ; Wang als Vivie, mit den Schauspielern Xia Yueren, Xia Yuesan und Zhou Fengwen in Mandarin Chinese.
Advertisements in Shen bao : 14., 16., 17. Okt. 1920. Other advertisements in Xin wen bao, Shi shi xin bao, Xin shen bao, Min guo re bao.
"The first Western play on the Chinese stage :
is Mrs. Warren's profession ;
is the most famous play in the new century ;
is the play that must be watched by women worldwide."
Unique in the newspaper advertisements for Shaw's play is, that two advertisements for Mrs. Warrens profession were placed on the same page, nearly side by side.

Shaw first came to the attention of progressive Chinese intellectuals at a time when the general desire for social and cultural reforms was strong. Drama was recognized as an effective medium for disseminating new ideas and for mobilizing people in their efforts to reform backward traditions. Dramatists like Henrik Ibsen and Shaw were greatly admired for their unconventional views and iconoclastic spirit.
Mrs. Warren's profession was to prove an extraordinary event in the world of Chinese drama. Virtually all the participants were important figures in the dramatic profession, and all were enthusiastic advocates of the New Drama. Wang Chongxian was known as a staunch drama reformer who had started experimenting with the civilized New Drama.
The opening night for the production was set for a Saturday. When the curtain fell, three-quarters of the audience was gone. The second night was no better. Analyzing the causes of this failure, Wang Chongxian noted that the main factors were the audience, the players, and the media. First, the audience had been ill-prepared for such a play and had difficulty understanding it because the audience had no generic context within which to situate the play. Some members of the audience were unable to understand Shaw's play at all ; others could understand a little, but not enough to sustain their interest ; and the rest could follow the plot but had trouble finding any real meaning in the play. Second, the players, being new to an authentic Western play and not having been trained in a realistic tradition of acting, did a poor job. Third, the media were unsupportive. Most of the papers honored the occasion by ignoring the play altogether, and only a few carried review consisting the superficial flattering comments. "This was our first experiment, but we picked too difficult a play with which to challenge the audience ; and they afterwards complained about their inability to understand it. We have ourselves to blame."
In traditional Chinese drama, the audience at least had a visual spectacle to watch and music and singing to.
Song Chunfang complained "there are only six people in the play who engage in mundane conversation for four and a half hours. At the beginning of the play, Vivie and Praed talk trivially for nearly 30 minutes. In the third scene, Mrs. Warren and Vivie talk for an hour."
Wang Chongxian summarized the lessons he learned from the production of Mrs. Warren's profession : "Our future principle should be : we cannot always cater to the expectations of the general populace, nor can we cater to the needs of the highly-educated few. Instead, we must select simple, new ideas and weave them into an interesting and entertaining plot ; in this way we will produce a play which the audience find so engaging that they will want to see it from the beginning to the end."
After his failed production, Wang Chongxian concluded in Yu chuang zao xin ju zhu jun shang que, that borrowing famous Western plays is one of the methods to be used in China's transitional state, it should not represent the true spirit for the creation of plays. To find a place in world literature, Chinese plays needed different scriptwriting talents as well as several genres of drama that would be equal to or of higher value than Western plays.

Kay Li : Ideology was a dominant issue in the introduction to China of Mrs. Warren's profession. The obvious reason for the choice of Mrs. Warren's profession is that these later plays of Shaw dealt more with individuals than with society, and Shaw's esoteric creed of the Life Force and Creative Evolution seemed more remote to the Chinese audience.
The transmission of Shaw's first translated and published play to China was partial. The Chinese became more and more aware of the need to go beyond linguistic translation to a cultural translation in order to make Shaw's plays comprehensible to Chinese readers and audiences. Some aspects transcend cultural barriers more easily than others. Since content demands more cultural translation than form, genres such as the essay and discussion play were more readily received. These provided the tools for the young Chinese intellectuals to criticize society and propose changes to build a better society, whereas the cultural content of Mrs. Warren's profession remain4ed alien to Chinese sensibilities.
The failure of the 1920 production had a far-reaching influence on modern Chinese drama. Wang Chongxian argued, that the performances drew attention to the need for new adaptations in Chinese drama to accommodate China's new sociocultural ideals and the needs of a Chinese audience. Wang Chongxian explained that the first Chinese production of Mrs. Warren's profession was the first encounter between purely realist Western drama and Chinese society and the first meeting between New Culture Drama and Chinese society.

Bertrand Russell in China : 8. Okt. 1920-10. Juli 1921 : Allgemein
1982
Suzanne P. Ogden : Chinese students flooded abroad for advanced education, while Chinese educational institutions were remodeled to serve better the goals of modernization. Bertrand Russel's visit produced rapid disillusionment for many Chinese, widespread confusion among others, and a kind of half-hearted admiration on the part of a few, which seemed to spring as much from intertia, embarrassment, or the wish to be polite, as from intellectual or political commitment.
To many Chinese intellectuals, Russell appeared as a man who, because of his intellectual power and because of his commitment to social change, would have unusually valuable insights into the problems besetting the Chinese people at that time. That the Chinese seriously considered Russell's ideas for institutional and societal change in China indicates the inherent problem of assuming that a leader in one field will be equally well qualified to speak on totally unrelated topics. A foreign philosopher, a scientist turned ideologist, met a group of Chinese in search of a theory of social and political change.
Russell arrived at a crucial time in China's intellectual and political evolution. The major split within the leadership of the new culture movement, between the Marxists and the 'liberals', occurred in 1921. While the Lecture Society encompassed a broad range of the 'liberal' Chinese political spectrum, the more radical, would-be Communists and socialists largely remained outside of it. But there were no rigid classifications at that time, only individuals who flowed from one group to another, for the differences were only of degree. On the definition of fundamental issues, there was near accord between the 'liberals' and the socialists-communists. That is, the major segments of Russell's 'political' audience (those interested in his ideas on social reconstruction) were each an assortment of 'progressives' in their attitudes toward change and development, even if later some 'socialists' were to be denounced as 'neo-conservatives'. They wanted to break with the past and 'progress' in a new direction. And both groups were preeminently nationalists, so that in spite of ideological differences, they agreed that China's major problems were economic backwardness, political disunity, and bad government. Still, the ideological perspective became important when each group inquired into the best methods for confronting these problems.
Chinese intellectuals became more receptive to leftist views, including not only Marxism but also guild socialism, syndicalism, and anarchism. Since Russell was known to have spoken on all three ideas, was believed to have been an ardent guild socialist before his arrival in China, his trip generated enthusiasm not only among the 'liberals' who associated him with progressive individualist and libertarian values, but also among the various leftist groups.
The Chinese also admired many of Russell's personal qualities : his near-heroic pacifism, his independence of thought and action, his advocacy of the ideal of world unity and his defiance of authority. The last trait was thoroughly compatible with the general Chinese new culture ideal of defiance.
Russell came to China with a view to discovering what China's problems were ; but he also came with many preconceptions of what the best solutions would be. Throughout his life, Russell held two general convictions. The first was that political and economic problems could be solved by choosing and effecting the right economic system and the right political values. The second was that the right solutions would involve fundamental change which would be revolutionary unless action was taken to ensure an evolutionary path. A brief exposure to China's conditions convinced him that although his social ideas were correct in theory, they were inapplicable to China. Once in China, he talked, observed, argued and learned, so that his judgments changed as his information and understanding increased.
Having visited Bolshevik Russia immediately prior to his trip to China, Russell was eager to expound on the evils of Bolshevism, but to separate this issue from socialism as a value construct. Russell and the Chinese began with different hopes and drew different conclusions from viewing the consequences of the Bolshevik Revolution. The question of revolution's 'humanity' was not a luxury in which the Chinese felt they could indulge. For Russell it became the key issue. What the Chinese socialists saw in the Russian Revolution was the existential possibility of complete and rapid change. Russell saw no need to wonder that revolution could occur. So he approached it instead from the perspective of morality : the Bolshevik method of industrialization exploited the worker. This increased Russell's skepticism about socialism as a method of industrializing.
While Russell endorsed socialism as 'necessary to the world', his concern for morality caused him to condemn Bolshevik methods of establishing it.
Russell recommended a form of state socialism for China, a system about which he was alternately cynical, hopeful, dubious, critical, and enthusiastic. Instead of a Western-style democracy or a Soviet-style socialism, Russell suggested that China had first to experience a government 'analogous to', but not the same as, the dictatorship of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. This analogous form of dictatorship, carried out by '10,000 resolute men' would presumably educate the people to recognize the incompatibility between capitalism and democracy, would carry out 'non-capitalistic' industrialization, and would re-invest profits for the benefit of the people.
Russell's vision of the best form of government for China presupposed political reform, but reform was the prerequisite for economic reform : the Chinese had to establish a unified, strong, and honest state capable of governing China before they nationalized, permitting the right people to control the socialist economy. Russell's views on the role of socialism in industrialization provoked much controversy among China's intelligentsia, which was already debating these questions in 1920-21.
Russell asserted that education had to precede socialism in China : power without wisdom was dangerous, as Bolshevik Russia demonstrated. Industrialization would provide the resources for mass education, and education would reveal the incompatibility between capitalism and democracy. If the capitalists kept control, they could preempt discussion of individual freedom, so that the people's awareness of the incompatibility between democracy and capitalism would have no active implications. The only solution then, said Russell, would be revolution. He counseled against foreign control of Chinese education which in the past had made Chinese students 'slavish toward Western education'. China should not depend, for leadership, on 'returned students' who would adopt many foreign perspectives. Finally, Chinese education should preserve the 'courtesy, the candor and the pacific temper' which are characteristic of the Chinese nation, together with a knowledge of Western science and its application to the practical problems of China. Russell's advice to continue the good aspects of Chinese education and culture, but to adopt Western science was difficult to implement, since Western science brought with it values not wholly compatible with traditional Chinese values. The events of the May fourth period indicated that, with China under militarist control, education remained nearly inseparable from politics.
References to Russell's observations, long after his departure from China, are remarkable for two reasons. First, they indicate that while the major periodicals did not continue to publish articles on Russell's social and political ideas, people did continue to think about Russell and to read his books and articles. Second, it is what Russell said about the Chinese people that is remembered by the Chinese, not his solutions or proposals for action to reconstruct China. It was Russell as a traveler and an observer, someone who could, in the Chinese view, convey an accurate 8impression of China to the outside world, that left a lasting impression on the Chinese.
1987
Kuo Heng-yü : Bertrand Russell hält in China Vorlesungen über seine Philosophie, sowie Reden zu Theorie und Praxis des Bolschewismus und Chinas Weg zur Freiheit. Da er weltweit als Philosoph und Pazifist im Kampf gegen den Weltkrieg bekannt war, wurde er anfangs von fortschrittlichen Intellektuellen sehr begrüsst. Er gibt China den Rat, durch die 'Entwicklung des Erziehungswesens' das Bildungsniveau des Volkes zu heben und erst dann den Sozialismus zu praktizieren : "Hätte man diesen Stand nicht erreicht, und wollte dennoch den Sozialismus einführen, würde die Durchführung des Sozialismus und Kommunismus unvermeidlich scheitern". Zhang Dongsun nahm diese Worte zum Anlass und meinte, die dringendste Aufgabe Chinas läge darin, die Industrie aufzubauen und den Kapitalismus zu entwickeln, statt den Sozialismus zu propagieren und eine sozialistische Bewegung zu organisieren. Er schreibt : "Was den Bolschewismus betrifft, so fürchten wir nicht, dass er nicht verwirklicht wird, sondern dass er zu früh verwirklicht wird, so wie auch Russell es feststellte".
1994
Raoul Findeisen : The interest in Russell and his work had begun in China some time before the May fourth demonstrations and had risen to such an extent that Russell, upon his arrival in Shanghai Oct. 12 1920, was even celebrated as 'Confucius II'. There were many reasons for such an enthusiastic response, not least of course mutual sympathies. These sympathies had a solid basis : As many of the May fourth intellectuals, Russell had been much attracted by the foundation of the Soviet state in which he first saw, as the Chinese did, the 'utopia' of social equality and democracy realized. On the other hand, Russell's 'will of a system of philosophy' that would re-establish philosophy as a science of sciences fitted in perfectly well with the aim of Chinese students to acquire Western scientific methods. Highlight of this systematic effort are the Principia mathematica (1910-1913) and proposing formal logics as starting point for such a role of philosophy. The shock of World War I had also some similarities on boeth sides, with and Chinese and with Russell, and it was commonly known in China that Russell's pacifist activities had brought him to jail. Furthermore Russell's ethical commitment had certain common traits with the sill effective traditional Chinese image of the 'literatus' and civil servant. Finally Russell's rhetorical and didactic abilities perhaps made him more suitable than any other Western philosopher to quench the Chinese thirst for 'yang xue'. Especially the young generation of May fourth activists, who were interested in formal and logical problems of philosophy. They believed that a more systematic approach, to Western ideas as well as to their own tradition, would make their fight against traditional beliefs more effective and turn philosophy to practice.
2007
Ding Zijiang : Russell's contributions to philosophy were not accepted by Chinese inellectuals because his methods were too technical, too trivial, and totally different from traditional Chinese patterns of thinking.
Russell's educational philosophy was not very influential in China. His 'school' is similar to the traditional Chinese private school. It even mimics the Confucian educational 'mode', which also includes a country estate for its setting, a modest tutorial staff, some servants, and a small group of students whose parents supported the project, where a demonstration of the application of Confucian theory could be carried on. There are three basic distinctions between Russell's school and a Confucian schools : (1) while the former emphasized freethinking, the latter did not ; (2) while the former had no discipline and penalty, the latter did ; and (3) while the former approved liberal sexual education, the latter did not. For Chinese new educators, the most important task was to save and reconstruct China through science, technology, industrialization, and democracy. They wanted to extend and develop a 'popular education' rather than an aristocratic education. For most of them, the urgent task was to enable their motherland to eliminate poverty, weakness, and backwardness. Therefore, for both Nationalists and Communists, nationalism and patriotism are more important than individualism and liberalism.
For many Chinese intellectuals, Russell was a very enthusiastic and revolutionary social transformer. In his lecture at Beijing University, he treated himself as a Communist and stated that there would be real happiness and enjoyment after the realization of Communism. He said that he believed in many social claims made by Marxism. Later, different schools of Chinese intellectuals wanted to ask Russell to join their own 'fronts' or interpreted his theories to suit their own needs and images. The moderate reformers hoped that he would be a moderate reformer ; the anarchists hoped that he would be an anarchist ; the communists hoped that he would be a communist.

Chao, Yuen Ren [Zhao, Yuanren]. With Bertrand Russell in China [ID D28127].
Since there is much more to Bertrand Russell in China than can be covered in this brief article, I have prefixed the title with "with" to make it clear that it was my part as Russell's interpreter that I am going to write about. Russell arrived in China less than a month after I returned to
China after studying in America for ten years. I had been called back to teach mathematics and physics at Tsing Hua College in Peking. But on August 19, 1920, the third day of my arrival in Shanghai, I was asked by the newly formed Lecture Society to be Russell's interpreter. This society was formed by the Progressive Party, led by men like Liang Ch'i Ch'ao, Chiang Po Li, Fu T'ung, et al. My friends the Hu brothers, Hu Tun-Fu and Hu Ming-Fu, and (unrelated) Suh Hu (later better known as Hu Shih) warned me not to be misled by people who invited Russell here just to enhance the political prestige of their political party. When Chin Pang-Cheng (better known as P.C. King), President of Tsing Hua College, was approached about borrowing me to interpret for Russell, he agreed, provided that I did not leave the Peking locality. As a matter of fact, the Lecture Society was organized right in Peking and before I had taught a full month at Tsing Hua, I was on my way to Shanghai to meet Bertrand Russell arriving on October 13. This was what I wrote in my diary for that date:
"Bertrand Russell looked very much what I had expected from photographs and descriptions, except that he looked stronger, taller, and more gracious-mannered than I had thought. He looked like a scholar. It was easy for me to get acquainted with him thru mutual acquaintances at Harvard."
Before going to Peking both Russell and Miss Dora Black gave lectures in Shanghai, Hangchow, Nanking, and Changsha. I usually interpreted for them in Standard Mandarin. But, having always been interested in the Chinese dialects, I tried the Hangchow dialect in Hangchow and the Hunan dialect in Changsha, the capital of the province. After one of the lectures at Changsha, a member of the audience came up and asked me, "Sir, which county of the province are you from?" He had not realized that I was a speaker of Mandarin imitating Hunanese imperfectly and assumed instead that I was a Hunanese speaking Mandarin imperfectly. On the same trip I had to interpret a speech by Governor T'an Yen-k'ai into English and somebody else interpreted Russell's. It happened that there was a total eclipse of the moon that night, to which Russell referred in his usual witty manner. But the interpreter left out that best part of his speech and repeated only the usual after-dinner polite words.
It was quite a job getting settled in Peking. Having found a house at No. 2 Sui-An Po Hutung in the eastern part of the city, we had to find an English-speaking servant-cook, as I was in no way obliged or qualified to do that sort of interpreting. Mr. Russell and Miss Black used the main northern part of the courtyard and I moved out from Tsing Hua College to join them in the eastern and western apartments. People very easily got used to the idea that Mr. Russell and Miss Black lived in the same apartment, although it was a revolutionary idea of recent
origin that a boy and a girl should meet each other at all before they got married. As a matter of fact, I myself was very much concerned with the problem of breaking an engagement with a girl I had never met and was much occupied after my return from America to settle the matter, especially as I began to know and was attracted to a Miss Buwei Yang, who was running a hospital in Peking. This made it all the more attractive to move from the Tsing Hua suburb into the city.
On November 5, 1920, I interpreted an interview with Russell by Liang Ch'i-Ch'ao. This was my first meeting with Liang, whose writings had had a great influence on the young men of our generation. November 7 was the date of Russell's first regular lecture. It was on problems
of philosophy, held on the Third Campus of the National Peking University. There was an audience of some 1500 people. I find in my diary I noted that "there is more pleasure to speak as interpreter than as the original speaker, because the former gets the response from the audience."
Other topics Russell lectured on included analysis of mind, idealism, causality, theory of relativity, gravitation, and symbolic logic. As a matter of fact, one reason for getting me to interpret for Russell was my dissertation had been on problems related to logic. The locality of the lectures alternated between the National University of Peking and the Teachers' College, which had a very large auditorium. Once I spent too much time with my girl friend Dr. Yang and arrived almost ten minutes late, while Russell stood helplessly on the podium.
Seeing that I had come in with a girl, he whispered to me, "Bad man, bad man !"
I also interpreted Dora Black's lectures. Although the topics were mostly socio-politically oriented, which was outside my line, I found them faily easy to translate. Once, before a large audience at the Women's Normal School, Miss Black mentioned something about unmarried men and unmarried women. There being different words in Chinese for "marry" for men and for women, I happened to use the wrong verbs and it came out something like "men who have no husbands and women who have no wives", at which the audience roared with laughter, of course. When the speaker wondered why they were so hilarious, I had to whisper to her, "I'll
have to explain it to you later, it'll take too long now."
Besides the regular lectures there were organized small seminars and study groups for Russell's philosophy and a Russell Monthly was published under the editorship of Ch'u Shih-Ying. 1 I myself had of course to attend and join these activities. Add to this my activities in getting disengaged from the girl I didn't know, so that I could get married to the girl I did learn to know and love, plus translating Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and making National Language Records, it was a wonder that I had nothing more than frequent colds from overwork and overexposure during those chilly northern months. Now Russell fared much less well then I did. With all his radicalism in thought, he was a perfect English gentleman in manners down to the last detail in dress, a habit which almost cost him his life. On March 14, I went with him to Paoting, about 100 miles south of Peking, where he lectured at the Yu Te ("cultivate virtue") Middle school on the subject of education. It was still wintry and windy and he lectured as usual without an overcoat while I shivered beside him even with my overcoat on. Three days after his return to Peking, he ran a high fever and was attended by Dr. Dipper of the German Hospital in the Legation Quarters. After being brought into the Hospital, he became worse. March 26 was a black day for me. First, there was news from Dr. Yang, saying that her colleague Dr. Yu had died of the plague on a trip to Manchuria to survey the epidemic there. Then I got word that my maternal grandmother had had a stroke in Soochow, of which she died a few days later. That evening I was called to the hospital. I reported in my diary for that evening:
"Prof. Dewey made out form for Mr. Rus. to sign. He was weak but seemed quite clear what he was doing. He could mutter "power of attorney?" [to Dora Black, that is], then tried to sign. The doctor was afraid "er kann nicht." But he did scribble out B. Russell. He could recognize me and called me in, whispered "Mister Ch'." He called Dewey by name and said "I hope all my friends will stick by me." I stayed for a while talking with Mr. Brandauer of the oxygen adminstrator."
The next day Dr. Esser said that Mr. Russell was "more worse". But by March 29 Miss Black reported that Russell was better. From then on he improved steadily until he was discharged from the hospital and returned to the house. Meanwhile a garbled Japanese report said that' Russell had died. When the report reached Russell himself, he said, "Tell them the news of my death was very much exaggerated." During the weeks of Russell's convalescence, I was busy finishing my translation of Alice in wonderland, meeting with members of the Committee on Unification of the National Committee, and, what was of greater personal concern, going to Shanghai to conclude the business of breaking my engagement with the girl I had never met and then to marry the girl I did know and love. On June I, 1921, with my friend Hu Shih and Buwei Yang's friend Miss Chu Cheng to sign as witnesses, we were
married just by moving to a house on Hsiao Yapao Hutung. When we asked Russell whether our no-ceremony wedding ceremony was too conservative, he replied, "That was radical enough." July 6 was the last day Russell and Black gave lectures, followed the next day by a farewell party given by Liang Ch'i-Ch'ao, at which Ting Wen-Chiang (better known as V.K. Ting) made a very good send-off speech.
On July 11 we saw John Dewey off in the morning and saw Mr. Russel I and Miss Black off in the afternoon. So this is the end of my story of the year with Bertrand Russell in China. After that my wife and I had the opportunity of seeing him once every few years. In 1924 we saw him at Land's End in Penzance (where Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates came from and had access to what he called the Inaccessible Beach. In 1939 we saw him briefly at the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, California. He said that by the time China wins, the sacrifice in having to become more and more totalitarian would not be worth the victory. He ordered, with great disapproval, such strange drink as 7-up for our children. In 1941 Professor Ernest Hocking of Harvard invited me to his departmental lunch, at which Mr. Russell reported on placement surveys, an unusual topic for him to discuss. In 1954 we visited with him in his London home in Richmond and had the pleasure of meeting Edith Russell for the first time. Finally, in 1968, we took a taxi from London to Plas Penrhyn, Penrhyndeudraeth, Merioneth, on the west coast of Wales and had tea with the Russells. On this occasion I thanked him for the gift of a pun. For one of his few popular lectures in Peking had been on "Causes of the Present Chaos in China." When after his return to England I informed him of the birth of our first child, Rulan, he said in reply, "Congratulations I see that you are among the causes of the present Chaos in China." But in his Autobiography he attributed that pun to me. The last view of him was when he and Lady Russell stood at the door, Chinese fashion, and waved to us as we were leaving, until we were out of sight. After his decease we received two letters from two Lady Russells, Dora and Edith, on the same day.

Russell, Bertrand. Autobiography [ID D28131]. [Text über Japan wurde ausgelassen. Briefe, die mit China zu tun haben sind chronologisch eingetragen].
We travelled to China from Marseilles in a French boat called 'Portos'. Just before we left London, we learned that, owing to a case of plague on board, the sailing would be delayed for three weeks. We did not feel, however, that we could go through all the business of saying goodbye a second time, so we went to Paris and spent three weeks there. During this time I finished my book on Russia, and decided, after much hesitation, that I would publish it. To say anything against Bolshevism was, of course, to play into the hands of reaction, and most of my friends took the view that one ought not to say what one thought about Russia unless what one thought was favourable. I had, however, been impervious to similar arguments from patriots during the War, and it seemed to me that in the long run no good purpose would be served by holding one's tongue. The matter was, of course, much complicated for me by the question of my personal relations with Dora. One hot summer night, after she had gone to sleep, I got up and sat on the balcony of our room and contemplated the stars. I tried to see the question without the heat of party passion and imagined myself holding a conversation with Cassiopeia. It seemed to me that I should be more in harmony with the stars if I published what I thought about Bolshevism than if I did not. So I went on with the work and finished the book on the night before we started for Marseilles.
The bulk of our time in Paris, however, was spent in a more frivolous manner, buying frocks suitable for the Red Sea, and the rest of the trousseau required for unofficial marriage. After a few days in Paris, all the appearance of estrangement which had existed between us ceased, and we became gay and light-hearted. There were, however, moments on the boat when things were difficult. I was sensitive because of the contempt that Dora had poured on my head for not liking Russia. I suggested to her that we had made a mistake in coming away together, and that the best way out would be to jump into the sea. This mood, however, which was largely induced by the heat, soon passed.
The voyage lasted five or six weeks, to that one got to know one's fellow-passengers pretty well. The French people mostly belonged to the official classes. They were much superior to the English, who were rubber planters and business men. There were rows between the English and the French, in which we had to act as mediators. On one condition the English asked me to give an address about Soviet Russia. In view of the sort of people that they were, I said only favourable things about the Soviet Government, so there was nearly a riot, and when we reached Shanghai our English fellow-passengers sent a telegram to the Consulate General in Peking, urging that we should not be allowed to land. We consoled ourselves with the thought of what had befallen the ring-leader among our enemies at Saigon. There was at Saigon an elephant whose keeper sold bananas which the visitors gave to the elephant. We each gave him a banana, and he made us a very elegant bow, but our enemy refused, whereupon the elephant squirted dirty water all over his immaculate clothes, which also the keeper had taught him to do. Perhaps our amusement at this incident did not increase his love of us.
When we arrived at Shanghai there was at first no one to meet us. I had had from the first a dark suspicion that the invitation might be a practical joke, and in order to test its genuineness I had got the Chinese to pay my passage money before I started. I thought that few people would spend £125 on a joke, but when nobody appeared at Shanghai our fears revived, and we began to think we might have to creep home with our tails between our legs. It turned out, however, that our friends had only made a little mistake as to the time of the boat's arrival. They soon appeared on board and took us to a Chinese hotel, where we passed three of the most bewildering days that I have ever experienced. There was at first some difficulty in explaining about Dora. They got the impression that she was my wife, and when we said that this was not the case, they were afraid that I should be annoyed about their previous misconception. I told them that I wished her treated as my wife, and they published a statement to that effect in the Chinese papers. From the firs moment to the last of our stay in China, every Chinese with whom we came in contact treated her with the most complete and perfect courtesy, and with exactly the same deference as would have been paid to her if she had been in fact my wife. There did this in spite of the fact that we insisted upon her always being called 'Miss Black'.
Our time in Shanghai was spent in seeing endless people, Europeans, Americans, Japanese, and Koreans, as well as Chinese. In general the various people who came to see us were not on speaking terms with each other ; for instance, there could be no social relations between the Japanese and the Korean Christians who had been exiled for bomb-throwing. (In Korea at that a time a Christian was practically synonymous with a bomb-thrower.) So we had to put our guests at separate tables in the public room, and move round from table to table throughout the day. We had also to attend an enormous banquet, at which various Chinese made after-dinner speeches in the best English style, with exactly the type of joke which is demanded of such an occasion. It was our first experience of the Chinese, and we were somewhat surprised by their wit and fluency. I had not realized until then that a civilized Chinese is the most civilized person in the world. Sun Yat-sen invited me to dinner, but to my lasting regret the evening he suggested was after my departure, and I had to refuse. Shortly after this he went to Canton to inaugurate the nationalist movement which afterwards conquered the whole country, and as I was unable to go to Canton, I never met him.
Our Chinese friends took us for two days to Hangchow to see the Western Lane. The first day we went round it by boat, and the second day in chairs. It was marvelously beautiful, with the beauty of ancient civilization, surpassing even that of Italy. From there we went to Hanking, and from Nankin by boat to Hankow. The days on the Yangtse were as delightful as the days on the Volga had been horrible. From Hankow we went to Changsha, where an educational conference was in progress. They wished us to stay there for a week, and give addresses every day, but we were both exhausted and anxious for a chance to rest, which made us eager to reach Peking. So we refused to stay more than twenty-four hours, in spite of the fact that the Governor of Hunan in person held out every imaginable inducement, including a special train in all the way to Wuchang.
However, in order to do my best to conciliate the people of Changsha, I gave four lectures, two after-dinner speeches, and an after-lunch speech, during the twenty-four hours. Changsha was a place without modern hotels, and the missionaries very kindly offered to put us up, but they made it clear that Dora was to stay with one set of missionaries, and I with another. We therefore thought it best to decline their invitation, and stayed at a Chinese hotel. The experience was not altogether pleasant. Armies of bugs walked across the bed all through the night.
The Tuchun (the military Governor of the Province) gave a magnificent banquet, at which we first met the Deweys, who behaved with great kindness, and later, when I became ill, John Dewey treated us both with singular helpfulness. I was told that when he came to see me in the hospital, he was much touched by my saying, 'We must make a plan for peace' at a time when everything else that I said was delirium. We assembled in one vast hall and then moved into another for the feast, which was sumptuous beyond belief. In the middle of it the Tuchun apologized for the extreme simplicity of the fare, saying that he thought we should like to see how they lived in everyday life rather than to be treated with any pomp. To my intense chagrin, I was unable to think of a retort in kind, but I hope the interpreter made up for my lack of wit. We left Changsha in the middle of a lunar eclipse, and saw bonfire being lit and heard gongs beaten to frighten off the Heavenly Dog, according to the traditional ritual of China on such occasions. From Changsha, we travelled straight through to Peking, where we enjoyed our first wash for ten days.
Our first months in Peking were a time of absolute and complete happiness. All the difficulties and disagreements that we had were completely forgotten. Our Chinese friends were delightful. The work was interesting, and Peking itself inconceivably beautiful.
We had a house boy, a male cook and a rickshaw boy. The house boy spoke some English and it was through him that we made ourselves intelligible to the others. This process succeeded better than it would have done in England. We engaged the cook sometime before we came to live in our house and told him that the first meal we should want would be dinner some days hence. Sure enough, when the time came, dinner was ready. The house boy knew everything. One day we were in need of change and we had hidden what we believed to be a dollar in an old table. We described its whereabouts to the house boy and asked him to fetch it. He replied imperturbably, 'No, Madam. He bad'. We also had the occasional services of a sewing woman. We engaged her in the winter and dispensed with her services in the summer. We were amused to observe that while, in winter, she had been very fat, as the weather grew warm, she became gradually very thin, having replaced the thick garments of winter gradually by the elegant garments of summer. We had to furnish our house which we did from the very excellent second-hand furniture shops which abounded in Peking. Our Chinese friends could not understand our preferring old Chinese things to modern furniture from Birmingham. We had an official interpreter assigned to look after us. His English was very good and he was especially proud of his ability to make puns in English. His name was Mr Chao and, when I showed him an article that I had written called 'Causes of the Present Chaos', he remarked, 'Well, I suppose, the causes of the present Chaos are the previous Chaos'. I became a close friend of his in the course of our journeys. He was engaged to a Chinese girl and I was able to remove some difficulties that had impeded his marriage. I still hear from him occasionally and once or twice he and his wife come to see me in England.
I was very busy lecturing, and I also had a seminar of the more advanced students. All of them were Bolsheviks except one, who was the nephew of the Emperor. They used to slip off to Moscow one by one. They were charming youths, ingenuous and intelligent at the same time, eager to know the works and to escape from the trammels of Chinese tradition. Most of them had been betrothed in infancy to old-fashioned girls, and were troubled by the ethical question whether they would be justified in breaking the betrothal to marry some girl of modern education. The gulf between the old China and the new as vast, and family bonds were extraordinarily irksome for the modern-minded young man. Dora used to go to the Girls' Normal School, where those who were to be teachers were being trained. They would put to her every kind of question about marriage, free love, contraception, etc., and she answered all their questions with complete frankness. Nothing of the sort would have been possible in any similar European institution. In spite of their freedom of thought, traditional habits of behavior had a great hold upon them. We occasionally gave parties to the young men of my seminar and the girls at the Normal School. The girls at first would take refuge in a room to which they supposed no men would penetrate, and they had to be fetched out and encouraged to associate with males. It must be said that when once the ice was broken, no further encouragement was needed.
The National University of Peking for which I lectured was a very remarkable institution. The Chancellor and the Vice-Chancellor were men passionately devoted to the modernising of China. The Vice-Chancellor was one of the most whole-hearted idealists that I have ever known. The funds which should have gone to pay salaries were always being appropriated by Tuchums, so that the teaching was mainly a labour of love. The students deserved what their professors had to give them. They were ardently desirous of knowledge, and there was no limit to the sacrifices that they were prepared to make for their country. The atmosphere was electric with the hope of a great awakening. After centuries of slumber, China was becoming aware of the modern world, and at that time the sordidnesses and compromises that go with governmental responsibility had not yet descended upon the reformers. The English sneered at the reformers, and said that China would always be China. They assured me that it was silly to listen to the frothy talk of half-baked young men ; yet within a few years those half-baked young men had conquered China and deprived the English of many of their most cherished privileges.
Since the advent of the Communists to power in China, the policy of the British towards that country has been somewhat more enlightened than that of the United States, but until that time the exact opposite was the case. In 1926, on three separate occasions, British troops fired on unarmed crowds of Chinese students, killing and wounding many. I wrote a fierce denunciation of these outrages, which was published first in England and then throughout China. An American missionary in China, with whom I corresponded, came to Engliand shortly after this time, and told me that indignation in China had been such as to endanger the lives of all Englishmen living in that country. He even said – though I found this scarcely credible – that the English in China owed their preservation to me, since I had caused infuriated Chinese to include that not all Englishmen are vile. However that may be, I incurred the hostility, not only of the English in China, but of the British Government.
White men in China were ignorant of many things that were common knowledge among the Chinese. On one occasion my bank (which was American) gave me notes issued by a French bank, and I found that Chinese tradesmen refused to accept them. My bank expressed astonishment, and gave me other notes instead. Three months later, the French bank went bankrupt, to the surprise of all other white banks in China.
The Englishman in the East, as far as I was able to judge of him, is a man completely out of touch with his environment. He plays polo and goes to his club. He derives his ideas of native culture from the works of eighteenth-century missionaries, and he regards intelligence in the East with the same contempt which he feels for intelligence in his own country. Unfortunately for our political sagacity, he overlooks the fact that in the East intelligence is respected, so that enlightened Radicals have an influence upon affairs which is denied to their English counterparts. MacDonald went to Windsor in knee-breeches, but the Chinese reformers showed no such respect to their Emperor, although our monarchy is a mushroom growth of yesterday compared to that of China.
My views as to what should be done in China I put into my book The problem of China and so shall not repeat them here.
In spite of the fact that China was in a ferment, it appeared to us, as compared with Europe, to be a country filled with philosophic calm. Once a week the mail would arrive from England, and the letters and newspapers that came from there seemed to breathe upon us a hot blast of insanity like the fiery heat that comes from a furnace door suddenly opened. As we had to work on Sundays, we made a practice of taking a holiday on Mondays, and we usually spent the whole day in the Temple of Heaven, the most beautiful building that it has ever been my good fortune to see. We would sit in the winter sunshine saying little, gradually absorbing peace, and would come away prepared to face the madness and passion of our own distracted continent with poise and calm. At other times, we used to walk on the walls of Peking. I remember with particular vividness a walk one evening starting at sunset and continuing through the rise of the full moon.
The Chinese have (or had) a sense of humour which I found very congenial. Perhaps communism has killed it, but when I was there they constantly reminded me of the people in their ancient books. One hot day two fat middle-aged business men invited me to motor into the country to see a certain very famous half-ruined pagoda. When we reached it, I climbed the spiral staircase, expecting them to follow, but on arriving at the top I saw them still on the ground. I asked why they had not come up, and with portentous gravity they replied : 'We thought of coming up, and debated whether we should do so. Many weighty arguments were advanced on both sides, but at last there was one which decided us. The pagoda might crumble at any moment, and we felt that, if it did, it would be well there should be those who could bear witness as to how the philosopher died.' What they meant was that it was hot and they were fat.
Many Chinese have that refinement of humour which consists in enjoying a joke more when the other person cannot see it. As I was leaving Peking a Chinese friend gave me a long classical passage microscopically engraved by hand on a very small surface ; he also gave me the same passage written out in exquisite calligraphy. When I asked what it said, he replied : 'Ask Professor Giles when you get home'. I took his advice, and found that it was 'The consultation of the Wizard', in which the wizard merely advises his clients to do whatever they like. He was poking fun at me because I always refused to give advice to the Chinese as to their immediate political difficulties.
The climate of Peking in winter is very cold. The wind blows almost always from the north, bringing an icy breath from the Mongolian mountains. I got bronchitis, but paid no attention to it. It seemed to get better, and one day, at the invitation of some Chinese friends, we went to a place about two hours by motorcar from Peking, where there were hot springs. The hotel provided a very good tea, and someone suggested that it was unwise to eat too much tea as it would spoil one's dinner. I objected to such prudence on the ground that the Day of Judgement might intervene. I was right, as it was three months before I ate another square meal. After tea, I suddenly began to shiver, and after I had been shivering for an hour or so, we decided that we had better get back to Peking at once. On the way home, our car had a puncture, and by the time the puncture was mended, the engine was cold. By this time, I was nearly delirious, but the Chinese servants and Dora pushed the car to the top of a hill, and on the descent the engine gradually began to work. Owing to the delay, the gates of Peking were shut when we reached them, and it took an hour of telephoning to gem them open. By the time we finally got home, I was very ill indeed. Before I had time to realize what was happening, I was delirious. I was moved into a German hospital, where Dora nursed me by day, and the only English professional nurse in Peking nursed my by night. For a fortnight the doctors thought every evening that I should be dead before morning. I remember nothing of this time except a few dreams. When I came out of delirium, I did not know where I was, and did not recognise the nurse. Dora told me that I had been very ill and nearly died, to which I replied : 'How interesting', but I was so weak that I forgot it in five minutes, and she had to tell me again. I could not even remember my own name. But although for about a month after my delirium had ceased they kept telling me I might die at any moment. I never believed a word of it. The nurse whom they had found was rather distinguished in her profession, and had been the Sister in charge of a hospital in Serbia during the War. The whole hospital had been captured by the Germans, and the nurses removed to Bulgaria. She was never tired of telling me how intimate she had become with the Queen of Bulgaria. She was a deeply religious woman, and told me when I began to get better that she had seriously considered whether it was not her duty to let me die. Fortunately, professional training was too strong for her moral sense.
All through the time of my convalescence, in spite of weakness and great physical discomfort, I was exceedingly happy. Dora was very devoted, and her devotion made me forget everything unpleasant. At an early stage of my convalescence Dora discovered that she was pregnant, and this was a source of immense happiness to us both. Ever since the moment when I walked on Richmond Green with Alys, the desire for children had been growing stronger and stronger within me, until at last it had become a consuming passion. When I discovered that I was not only to survive myself, but to have a child, I became completely indifferent to the circumstances of convalescence, although, during convalescence, I had a whole series of minor diseases. The main trouble had been double pneumonia, but in addition to that I had heart disease, kidney disease, dysentery, and phlebitis. None of these, however prevented me from feeling perfectly happy, and in spite of all gloomy prognostications, no ill effects whatever remained after my recovery.
Lying in my bed feeling that I was not going to die was surprisingly delightful. I had always imagined until then that I was fundamentally pessimistic and did not greatly value being alive. I discovered that in this I had been completely mistaken, and that life was infinitely sweet to me. Rain in Peking is rare, but during my convalescence there came heavy rains bringing the delicious smell of damp earth through the windows, and I used to think how dreadful it would have been to have never smelt that smell again. I had the same feeling about the light of the sun, and the sound of the wind. Just outside my windows were some very beautiful acacia trees, which came into blossom at the first moment when I was well enough to enjoy them. I have known ever since that at bottom I am glad to be alive. Most people, no doubt, always know this, but I did not.
I was told that the Chinese said that they would bury me by the Western Lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret that this did not happen, as I might have become a god, which would have been very chic for an atheist.
There was in Peking at that time a Soviet diplomatic mission, whose members showed great kindness. They had the only good champagne in Peking, and supplied it liberally for my use, champagne being apparently the only proper beverage for pneumonia patients. They used to take first Dora, and later Dora and me, for motor drives in the neighbourhood of Peking. This was a pleasure, but a somewhat exciting one, as they were as bold in driving as they were in revolutions.
I probably owe my life to the Rockefeller Institute in Peking which provided a serum that killed the pneumococci. I owe them the more gratitude on this point, as both before and after I was strongly opposed to them politically, and they regarded me with as much horror as was felt by my nurse.
The Japanese journalists were continually worrying Dora to give them interviews when she wanted to be nursing me. At last she became a little curt with them, so they caused the Japanese newspapers to say that I was dead. This news was forwarded by mail from Japan to America and from America to England. It appeared in the English newspapers on the same day as the news of my divorce. Fortunately, the Court did not believe it, or the divorce might have been postponed. It provided me with the pleasure of reading my obituary notices, which I had always desired without expecting my wishes to be fulfilled. One missionary paper, I remember, had an obituary notice of one sentence : 'Missionaries may be pardoned for heaving a sigh of relief at the news of Mr Bertrand Russell's death'. I fear they must have heaved a sigh of a different sort when they found that I was not dead after all. The report caused some pain to friends in England. We in Peking knew nothing about it until a telegram came from my brother enquiring whether I was still alive. He had been remarking meanwhile that to die in Peking was not the sort of thing I would do.
The most tedious stage of my convalescence was when I had phlebitis, and had to lie motionless on by back for six weeks. We are very anxious to return home for the confinement, and as time went on it began to seem doubtful whether we should be able to do so. In these circumstances it was difficult not to feel impatience, the more so as the doctors said there was nothing to do but wait. However, the trouble cleared up just in time, and on July 10th we were able to leave Peking, though I was still very weak and could only hobble about with the help of a stick.
Shortly after my return from China, the British Government decided to deal with the question of the Boxer indemnity. When the Boxers had been defeated, the subsequent treaty of peace provided that the Chinese government should pay an annual sum to all those European Powers which had been injured by it. The Americans very wisely decided to forgo any payment on this account. Friends of China in England urged England in vain to do likewise. At last it was decided that, instead of a punitive payment, the Chinese should make some payment which should be profitable to both China and Britain. What form this payment should take was left to be determined by a Committee on which there should be two Chinese members. While MacDonald was Prime Minister he invited Lowes Dickinson and me to be members of the Committee, and consented to our recommendation of V.K. Ting and Hu Shih as the Chinese members. When, shortly afterwards, MacDonald's Government fell, the succeeding Conservative Government informed Lowes Dickinson and myself that our services would not be wanted on the Committee, and they would not accept either V.K. Ting or Hu Shih as Chinese members of it, on the ground that we knew nothing about China. The Chinese government replied that it desired the two Chinese whom I had recommended and would not have anyone else. This put an end to the very feeble efforts at securing Chinese friendship. The only thing that had been secured during the Labour period of friendship was that Shantung should become a golf course for the British Navy and should no longer be open for Chinese trading.
Before I became Ill I had undertaken to do a lecture tour in Japan after leaving China. I had to cut this down to one lecture, and visits to various people. We spent twelve hectic days in Japan, days which were far from pleasant, though very interesting. Unlike the Chinese, the Japanese proved to be destitute of good manners, and incapable of avoiding intrusiveness. Owing to my being still very feeble, we were anxious to avoid all unnecessary fatigues, but the journalists proved a very difficult matter. At the first port at which our boat touched, some thirty journalists were lying in wait, although we had done our best to travel secretly, and they only discovered our movements through the police. As the Japanese papers had refused to contradict the news of my death, Dora gave each of them a type-written slip saying that as I was dead I could not be interviewed. They drew in their breath through their teeth and said : 'Ah ! veree funnee ! '… [Es folgen Bericht Japan und Briefe].

Liang, Shuming. Wei shi shu yi. Vol. 1. (Beijing : Beijing da xue chu ban she, 1920). 唯識述義
Liang Shuming attacked Bertrand Russell vigorously, together with Henri Bergson. Though they used different methods, their mathematical and intuitive epistemologies respectively were nothing but 'delusion' that made true knowledge impossible.

Raoul Findeisen : Bertrand Russell talked publicly on board the French liner 'Porthos' on what he had seen in Soviet Russia which incited some fellow-travellers to ask the British Embassy in China whether it would be possible to prevent him getting off board in Shanghai, since he had 'expressed pro-Bolshevik and anti-British sentiments' and would 'prove subversive and dangerous to British interests at Chinese educational institutions. The Chinese authorities were not of the same opinion and Russell held a triumphant première in Shanghai, together with Dora Black. They were 'treated like Emperor and Empress' and Russell would be represented even on a cigarette advertisement. They both had declared that they were not married to each other. Chinese newspapers announced Mrs. Black as 'the favourite concubine of the world famous English philosopher'.
Russell sometimes gave four introductory speeches on his ideas every day and the Western guests first travelled to Hangzhou, Nanjing, by boat to Hankou to reach Changsha. In Changsha, Russell met John Dewey and Mao Zedong. He gave four lectures in Changsha. When arriving in Beijing, Zhao Yuanren was assigned as official interpreter and lived in the household with Dora Black and Russell at Sui'anbo hutong no 2 (Chaoyang district).
Chinese publications, declared as Russell's works, were usually based on notes taken during his lectures and sometimes even published in the next day's newspapers. So they do not necessarily correspond to books of the same title.

Dora Russell Black talked on women's education and professional life, on socialism, marriage and free love, mainly at Beijing nü zi shi fan da xue [Women's Teacher College]. During her activities she came also in close touch with women's activists and wrote some articles for the journal 'Fu nü za zhi'. Students from the College asked for her advice, namely how to promote elementary education for girls under corrupt, male bureaucrats, and how to proceed in propagating women's rights within institutions of higher learning where they had to struggle with a repressive administration.

Dewey, John ; Dewey, Alice Chipman. Letters from China and Japan [ID D18042].
Preface
John Dewey, Professor of Philosophy in Columbia University, and his wife, Alice C. Dewey, who wrote the letters reproduced in this book, left the United States early in 1919 for a trip to Japan. The trip was eagerly embarked on, as they had desired for many years to see at least something of the Eastern Hemisphere. The journey was to be solely for pleasure, but just before their departure from San Francisco, Professor Dewey was invited, by cable, to lecture at the Imperial University at Tokyo, and later at a number of other points in the Japanese Empire. They traveled and visited in Japan for some three to four months and in May, after a most happy experience, made doubly so by the unexpected courtesies extended them, they decided to go on to China, at least for a few weeks, before returning to the United States.
The fascination of the struggle going on in China for a unified and independent democracy caused them to alter their plan to return to the United States in the summer of 1919. Professor Dewey applied to Columbia University for a year’s leave of absence, which was granted, and with Mrs. Dewey, is still in China. Both are lecturing and conferring, endeavoring to take some of the story of a Western Democracy to an Ancient Empire, and in turn are enjoying an experience, which, as the letters indicate, they value as a great enrichment of their own lives. The letters were written to their children in America, without thought of their ever appearing in print.
Evelyn Dewey.

Letter from John Dewey to Dewey children
Tientsin Jan 1 1920
We have got as far as this, both in time and space. We didnt go to the tomb of Confucius after all, as the connections were bad. Slow trains we knew, and when the guides found out they were also only thrid class, they rather withdrew the idea, and mamma hadnt wanted to go anytime, thinking the absent pilgrims and not the tomb the sight to see; while as for me I would willingly have been a present pilgrim if the only one. But we are now deluding ourselves with the prospect of going next spring when we not only see the pilgrims but also climb the sacred mountain. Aise from the exitement of not going and not lecturing, we had a luncheon and exhibition of old Chinese physical exercises with and by General Ma Liang. He is a story by hiself even more so than the Mohammadan meal and the show he gave us, too long to be tucked in, so Ill let it go now, save that the exercises are the original of the Japanese Jiu jitsu, which like everything else Japanese seems to have come from China. However Im bound to ay they have improved on the original a good deal, tho what we saw was well done, including the sickening conclusion, when eight or ten bricks were laid on a mans head and smahed with another brick, and a big paving stone at least four inches think, nearer six, was smashed with a big sledge hammer on the chest of one of the athletes, in fact two in succession one on the east chest and one on the west. He was stripped to the waist with a temperature of about 15 F, and the stone was fairly covered with the thick frost you see on the under side of the stones when they are frozen into the ground. The sight of the rough cold thing on a mans vare skin was almost enough for me, to say nothing of having it broken into four pieces on me. We were also taken to a show, thetre four or five plays acted by school boys of between twelve and sixteen, wh poor boys who are taught regular lessons half a day and plyacting the ot[h]er half, supported by the public, and shows are free. It was more interesting than the professional acting we saw at first, we havent been to a professional in Peking. The first was a moral play with a spoken moral at the end, namely not to take a concubine. Good advice of course, but probably not so much needed by these poor boys as by the millionaire officials. The queerness of the method of teaching the moral to little boys didnt seem to strike anybody. The play began with in a brothel, with the old man coming in to look over the girls, to pick out the one he wanted to buy—four or five were paraded before him. Of course she has a lover who is an habitue of the brothel and who is smuggled into the buyers house as her brother, and for whose sake the lady concubine attempts to poison him [in ink] her husband, [in ink] and a general suicide etc at the end—that is, next to the end, just before the Moral. The others were scenes adapted from the old historic folklore, and one were more interesting, especially as one twelve year old boy has real talent. He could make a lot of money on the vaudeville stage in U S; its funny how similar methods are, barring the ftone they sing in.
Jan 2, still '20.
Yesterday we had a day off. Except that in the morning we had a visit from a delegation of students repreentatives of the Students Unions. They and not the officials invited us here. There were four boys and three girls, the latter all from the Anglo-Chinese School, methodist. They all spoke some english, the girls very good, an[d] they were very chatty, more conversational and less selfconscious Lucy says than any of the Peking girls she has seen. It was quite extraordinary—this joint delegation. Suh Hu says that the afternoon before he visite[d] the Union headquarters ad found in each room a committee composed of boys and girls working togther, quite free from any consciousness, a sight which he says is the most encouraging he has yet seen in China. Only here and in Shanghia are such things possible. Why we also heard so much about Turkish women and so little about Chinese orietnalism, unless it was the sightseer's eye for the picturesque veil.
Yesterday morning's paper said that the Minister of Interior Chancellor Tsai had resigned, owing to the failure of mediation negotiations. Suh Hu [Hu Shi] came in late last night, had spent part of the day with others hunting for Tsai who had disappeared from Peking, presumably to Tientsin; that all the principals of the schools from elementary up had resigned and that educational chaos reigned supreme; also that one reason General Wu, the government mediator offered for the teachers going back to work was the impending attempt to restore the monarchy. Hu was quite excited last night, as yesterday was the day set according to rumors, but this morning paper hadnt a word about it. Just what is going to happen to my lectures now I dont know, but I hope some way will be foun[d] to resume them without waiting an endless time which will mean I will never finish and earn my salary in Peking.
This afternoon mamma and I both speak at the same meeting, which is also the first time for that arrangment. It is the difference between the younger generation and the old. At a recent meeting, Xn, in Shanghai, the Chinese proposed and amalgamation of the Y M C A and Y W C A—it would be interesting to see the fluttering in the male dovecotes. But it is one of many signs that the younger generation of Chinese is ready to go further than the alleged liberal westerner, who has his obssessions as to what the Chinese will and will not stand for—to say nothing of their own inner feelings as to what they will stand for themselves. In the past from combined timidty and politeness the Chinese have hesitated to tell their Xn confreres just what they thought and wanted, but the nationalist feeling is grwoing so rapidly that that wont last much longer. Its only fair to say that some of the missionary element would gladly abdicate when they saw the Chinese disposed to take || responsibility, while the Y M C A is already organized with the Chinese in at least nominal control, and with all the facilities for actual control.
Peking Home, Jan 4
When we get back here and find all the rented things gone and our own here and to be chased after, we realize that few millionaires have naything on us in the way of furnsihed houses, what with our palce at 2880, our country mansion at Huntington, our spring residence on Russian Hill and our winter resort here. Whether mama will be able to find another to furnish before we leave China I dont know…
Dad

Gründung der Xiangtan Society for the Promotion of Education durch Mao Zedong [et al.].
Mao explained his newspaper 'Xiang Jiang ping lun' : "This paper is concerned purely with academic theories and with social criticism. We do not meddle at all in practical politics.”
In the 'Declaration' of the society Mao wrote : “Education is an instrument for promoting the progress of society ; an educator is a person who utilizes this instrument… Dr. [John] Dewey of America has come to the East. His new theory of education is well worth studying".

[Dewey, John]. Duwei wu da jiang yan. Hu Shi yi. [ID D25871]. [Five major lecture series of John Dewey in Beijing].
Hu Shi : "Dr. Dewey intends to revise and expand his original lecture notes for publication in book form. When his manuscript is complete, I hope to translate it into Chinese, so that both English and Chinese versions can be published at the same time."
Robert W. Clopton : Unfortunately this intention was not carried out. Dewey's lectures were published in Chinese, many of them in the Bulletin of the Ministry of Education. Dewey referred in his lecture on ethics to Sun Yat-sen's theory : 'To practice means to seek knowledge. A theory must be tested before it becomes accurate. I fully agreed with the great Chinese statesman Dr. Sun Yat-sen, when he said the old saying, 'to know is easy ; to act is difficult' has contributed a great deal to the backwardness of China, because under the influence of the saying people have become lazy and hesitant to do anything. It is true that we cannot always anticipate with accuracy the consequences of what we do. But this is no warrant for us to sit idle. The more we try doing something, the more experience we have and therefore the more knowledge we can get. The attempt to get knowledge apart from doing and applying it in a practical situation never will succeed.
Jessica Wang : Hu Shi's translations seem highly problematic – mostly in style and tone and occasionally in content. Hu's eloquent, pompous, and proselytizing style marked a dramatic difference from Dewey's usually unassuming and unimposing style. I do not mean to suggest that Hu Shi intended to distort Dewey's lectures, nor do I mean to imply that the records of Dewey's lectures in China were largely fabricated and unreliable. Nonetheless, we may reasonably believe that Hu may have occasionally altered the meanings of what Dewey said to highlight a particular point or to promote a certain agenda. Even though these occasional anomalies may seem minor, they eventually affected the way Chinese intellectuals responded to Dewey.

Hu, Shi. Wen xue gai liang chu yi. In : Xin qing nian ; vol. 2, no 5 (1917).
While doing his Ph.D. work under Dewey, Hu Shi argued in this article, that 'wenyan' was no longer compatible with the Chinese modern experience and that 'baihua' – the vernacular – should be used to revitalize Chinese language and literature.
Dewey's presence in China's intellectual scene provided that dimension of understanding. That is, the use of 'baihua' was both a means and an end. To argue that 'baihua' is a tool for expressing ideas was correct, but partial, for language is not only a tool : language means communication and by communication we life and an associative life is formed. Dewey gave hig regards to the New Culture Movement occasioned by language reform. He accepted Hu Shi's thesis that the 'Baihua' Movement embraced Chinese enlightenment.
Dewey began to see the fundamental problem in China in the matter of poor and ineffective communication, which in turn would explain many of China's social problems. 'Communication' therefore offered a unique perspective for Dewey to analyze situations in China, and this approach differentiated Dewey fundamentally from many of his Chinese followers and Western thinkers. To discredit the Confucian family system as a defective system of language and communication became the starting point in Dewey's construction of a new Chinese mind. The 'Baihua' Movement was introduced because 'baihua' could facilitate the expression of new ideas.

Performance of The emperor Jones by Eugene O'Neill, Nov. 1, 1920 by the Provincetown players in the Playwright's Theater in New York.
Hong Shen watched one performance.