这周一直忙于写作关于胡適先生的那篇小论文，所以没有及时写周一观看扬之水演出的观后感，今天文章终于脱稿，才有机会谈谈老王的《相约》。
扬之水15日场的演出反响并不好，很多观众没等到《相约》上台就离场而去，有人问：这是扬之水吗？这是扬之水，这就是扬之水的现状，至少是中山北路扬之水的现状。演员青黄不接的时候还要演上四部戏，困难重重。不过《相约》还是非常值得一看的，那些错过《相约》的观众实在很可惜。
《相约》改编自Nick Hornby的小说A long way down，是英美两国书市排行榜上的顶级畅销书。今年的大话节上，小罗领衔的“尚show”剧社（复旦大学视觉艺术学院）就已经上演过 《相约》，剧本的精彩程度当时就受到了好评。这为老王版的《相约》打好了基础。而且小罗老师参与把关，老王的戏自然不会差。
比起前三部戏，《相约》的演员整容实在强大。一张口就知道比前面的那些强。不知道小罗老师有没有感叹，如果大话节给他这样一拨演员说不定能折桂呢。不过不要紧，只要小罗的工作坊办下去，只要SN2的剧本能够创作出来，小罗个人捧杯，扬之水再次捧杯就都大有希望。
Dedicated to Dr. Hu (1891.12.17-1962.2.24)
紀念胡適之先生118歲冥誕
As the leader of the New Culture Movement, Hu Shih introduced to his adherents a lot of new methods of thinking, living and the like. Like many other intellectuals, he reckoned his time as a pre-modern period and China’s development was deeply hampered by her own old thoughts. So he wanted to make the country modernized, prosperous and strong through a pathway of western style which he had learned in the United States.
Before Hu Shih and Chen Duxiu’s New Culture Movement, their predecessors’ implement (qiwu) innovation had failed; system (zhidu) reform rose and failed again. The hope of Chinese society finally came to the stage of culture reform. Unlike all previous occasions, culture reform this time was not restricted to the elites only, the intellectuals tried to involve the masses by the usage of the common language – the New Vernacular.
While advocating the new vernacular, Hu and his friends were also eager to spreading the idea of individual liberation. In their mind, the independence of an individual was not a mere enlightenment issue but also the precondition of the independence of a country. Hu elucidated this thought in his famous piece Ibsenism[1]. He said, “Rescuing one more individual equals having one more social re-constructor and it is because that society is based on individuals.”[2] He had the logic that Individual liberation would gradually bring about social change, and would thereby annihilate all the social plights and challenges to China.
For Hu Shih and other intellectuals, Individual liberation was not the true main topic at that time while saving the nation actually was. China’s urgent situation could not stand the cultural leaders just promoting the common value of all mankind – human rights, liberty and other theories – in this nation but doing nothing practical to pull the suffering country out. And it is no wonder that saving the nation from extinction became the great issue in a lot of texts during the May Fourth period.
In such social context, Hu edited the special volume of the New Youth (Xinqingnian) to spread western conception of individualism by Ibsen’s writings. He and his friends translated Ibsen’s four problem-play scripts into the new vernacular, including the very outstanding and renowned piece – Doll’s House. Hu Shih, Zhou Zuoren and other intellectuals used this story to encourage women to be more independent.
In retrospect, women in China had no awareness of individualism at all. They were bound to be a dutiful wife and loving mother, and women’s life should be totally devoted to their family. No one had ever attempted to make a complete break with the old moral values. If women continued to ignorantly stay in family, the society would lose half of the re-constructors, which China could not afford. Hu and Zhou’s having the greatest esteem for Nora’s image, to a degree, was because that Nora’s modeling for women’s emancipation could stimulate Chinese women and their movement.
Through the scholars’ efforts, Doll’s House and Nora’s great paradigmatic image was trumpeted over and over. Nora soon became the hot issue in university and high school. A lot of youth and intellectuals, including Lu Xun, began to talk about the problems in and out of the play. The promotion effect was achieved. However, as mentioned, Hu Shih not only wanted to spread the new conception of women emancipation but also the individual liberation.
In Hu’s Ibsenism, the individual liberation was linked up with women emancipation. Nora was not just a woman image who left her home but a generalized one of independent personality. Hu thought Chinese people, both male and female, lacked basic notion of independence. Women were tied up in a world dominated by men, and men were restricted by his ancestral idea. Women should break free from their families and so should men.
In 1919, a year after Ibsenism was published, Hu Shih wrote a modern drama script -The Greatest Event in Life[3]. In this script, Hu portrayed a new woman Tian Yamei, who left a note and then run off with her lover Mr. Chen. By shouting out the slogan – you parents should let myself make decision for this is my marriage[4] – sonorously, Miss Tian shifted her role into a very courageous woman who chose to control her own marriage. But she was so brave that no girl student was willing to play the role, because under that circumstance running off was a very awful thing. And thus this play was not played at Hu’s time.
When characterizing Miss Tian as a woman of the new age, Hu Shih also created a traditional couple – Mr. and Mrs.Tian. Mrs.Tian believed in the fortune teller so she objected her daughter’s marriage because of the unfavorable divinatory symbols. Hu criticized superstition so much all his life. Both Mrs. Tian and the fortune teller, in Hu’s writing, were so ridiculous. And Hu arranged Mr. Tian to end Mrs. Tian’s fandango, but Mr. Tian took out another new objection when Miss. Tian felt she could reach the hope. Mr. Tian said the Tians and the Chens were descendants of the same ancestors long long ago so any family member of the Tians could not get married with Chen and vice versa. It was true that Mr. Tian was an uncompromising anti-superstitious fighter; however, he was deeply trapped in the ancestral idea and lineage. Tough the main purpose of The Greatest Event in Life is to encourage women to marry the partner of their own choice, Hu Shih also gave readers an opinion that men were restrained by family like women through this piece.
On Ibsenism, what Hu advocated, women emancipation and individual liberation were unified. Although Hu was not so radical as his friend Chen Duxiu, he made every effort to help the country out of its trouble. The radicals were craving for the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War. For these people, the war was the only resolution of all China’s problems and thus was the only way to save the nation; but for Hu and other liberals, a radical way perhaps would destroy the nation and China’s future was embedded in strong and mature citizens so they must take action to set up new citizen characters.
If the cells of the society, females, were not completely updated, Hu’s goal of shaping a health and independent personalities of the citizens must not be successful; if male citizen still got bogged down in the mental-suffering family, the goal could not achieve either. Every individual was of equal importance in Hu’s long term plan. In nut shell, Ibsenism did not refer to woman emancipation only. There were Chinese individual liberation and China’s liberation behind Ibsenism. Actually, Ibsenism was turned into an arm to break the entire crux of social problems, including men’s, women’s and the nation’s.
In the text of Ibsenism, Hu Shih made two standards to define Chinese Individual Liberation: the first one is to have the freedom of choice; the second one is to be responsible for one’s own action[5]. This was much different from his previous concepts during his studying in the United States.
From his early articles to his speeches and diaries in the United States, Hu Shih firmly held that Chinese family was much better than American family and Chinese women’s status was higher than American women’s in respective nation.
At that time, a common viewpoint said Chinese women, as the inferiors of the society, had been afflicted a century long. But Hu Shih did not totally agree. He held that traditional Chinese marriage was much better than Western open marriage. In his diary, Women in China Have a Higher Status than Women in the West[6], he attacked open marriage, expressing the idea that a woman would curry favor with the man during the social contacts because of open marriage. A woman who did not learn the skill to please men would, for sure, not have a satisfactory partner. To encourage and keep this social behavior was sinful.
When mentioning the family system of Chinese style in a speech, On China’s Marriage Tradition[7], Hu Shih explained to Americans that traditional Chinese couple had strong love as westerners had. There was self-made love between husband and wife in the west; and there was love between Chinese couple too and the love was duty-made. Furthermore, Hu pointed out that Chinese duty-made love could last for much longer time than the love of western style because it was dominated by duty. Feeling could be lost at any moment but duty could not.
Hu Shih stressed duty in marriage so much at his early twenties. Duty meant a lot to Hu Shih. Despite strongly disapproving most traditional customs in China, Hu accepted the theory of family duty in his mind. His own marriage was a duty-made one. He married his fiancée Jiang Dongxiu, the girl Hu’s mother chose, when he came back to China.
But when the New Culture Movement broke out, Hu Shih turned to support open marriage and attacked traditional Chinese marriage. Why did he change his mind intensely in just a few years? There were two points.
First, during Hu’s stay in the U.S., He made friends with many American women. These women, especially Miss. Williams[8], influenced Hu very much on his viewpoint on women. Miss. Williams was an outstanding new woman. She had profound thoughts which Hu appreciated. Miss. Williams and Hu talked with each other on national politics, world situations, culture and art and the like, which inspired Hu a lot. She was a counterexample to Hu Shih’s attitude to western marriage. Miss. Williams did not curry favor with Hu Shih but Hu liked her. And her independent personality also gave Hu a great impression. All he learned form Miss. Williams changed Hu’s viewpoint on the New Women.
Second, the goal of the New Culture Movement requested Hu Shih to take a brand-new attitude of ethics. Before he practiced this new way, he must had broken down the old one – the family-centered conception. He wrote American Women[9] to introduce American women’s life style, education and excellent ones to the audience in Peking Girls Normal College and then to the readers of the new youth. In the notes for that speech, Hu Shih mentioned some independent and unmarried women. These a little bit extreme examples showed Hu did not consider family as necessary for women. And thereby he could establish his new attitude – equal right between male and female.
In this period, Hu Shih put down a great amount of critics on women’s status. Biography of Li-Chao[10] is an article to condemn Chinese family for not letting women to inherit property. He stressed that a female family member, as a human-being, should be treated as a human-being.
And On the status of raped women[11] gave readers a strong impression in that Hu advocated a different value in China. Chinese looked down upon the raped women for centuries. Sometimes, some apologists of moral asked raped girls to commit suicide and it was alleged that deprivation of a miserable person’s life could defend the dignity of the world. Hu Shih said no to those apologists resolutely. He regarded the raped women as chaste because they did not want to and they were indomitable to bear all the results.
Hu’s On Chastity[12] is his masterpiece of critics on women emancipation. He defined chastity as loyal, not physically but mentally, to one’s husband or wife. According to equity, both male and female should keep loyal to and love his or her only partner. Polygamy was sentenced to death by Hu and men were not being given the right any longer to have the wife be loyal to him if he had concubines. That new definition entirely conformed to international practice, throwing over the base of Chinese family ethics.
After giving out the negation of the old orders, Hu Shih imported a set of new standards, which gave women their deprived rights. This benefited women a lot. But we should still put this process in the history. Like his Ibsenism, Hu’s other articles on women emancipation all had a clear sense of national salvation. His progressive plan to saving the nation required him to help the basic cell of the country and the suffering women became his primary target. If we praise him for his contribution to women emancipation, we must also admire his service to the nation, which was in his mind for the whole life.
SOURCES
Hu, Shih, 1962. 胡適作品集. 台北: 远流出版公司.
Hu, Shih, 2005. 胡適日記全集. 台北: 联经出版公司.
Chow, Tse-tsung, 1967. The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Grieder, Jerome B., 1970. Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance: Liberalism in the Chinese Revolution, 1917-1937. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
余英时, 2004. 《重寻胡適历程》. 桂林: 广西师范大学出版社.
耿云志, 1986. 《胡適年谱》. 香港: 中华书局.
张春田, 2008. 《个性解放与女性解放的”接合”–重论胡适的”易卜生主义”及其性别政治》，《枣庄学院学报》2008年第三期.
[1] 《易卜生主义》，载《新青年》第4卷第6号，1918年6月15日。
[2] “社会是由个人构成的，多救出一个人就是多准备一个再造新社会的分子。”
[3] 《终身大事》，原用英语写成，英文题作”The Greatest Event in Life”。随后译为中文，载《新青年》第6卷第3号。
[4] “这是孩儿的终身大事，孩儿该自己决断。”
[5] “个人有自由选择之权，还要个人对于自己所行所为都负责任。”
[6] 《吾国女子所处地位高于西方女子》，1914年1月4日。
[7] 《演说吾国婚制》，1914年1月27日
[8] 胡適结识的Miss. Williams有两位，一位是白特生夫人的侄女维廉斯小姐，一位则是与胡適情谊长达半个世纪的韦莲司小姐。此处所指为Prof. Williams之女韦莲司小姐。
[9] 《美国的妇人–在北京女子师范大学的演讲》，1918年9月。
[10] 《李超传》，载《新潮》第二卷第二号，1919年12月1日。
[11] 《论女子为强暴所污》，致萧宜森信，1920年6月22日。
[12] 《论贞操问题》，载《新青年》第5卷第1号，1918年7月。
听闻德国的电子产品大减价，适马(SIGMA) SD14已经跌到了白菜价，带18-200mm镜头的套机才2500RMB左右，真是让我蠢蠢欲动。上个礼拜去北京的时候，拍了不少风景，北大、颐和园、天安门拍了不少，倒是没给自己留一张相——喜欢拍照不喜欢被拍。有一张上传到flickr的颐和园照片收到了一个老外的好评，心中很是满足，但也更想要买单反来一显身手了。虽然现在用的BenQ T700平日拍摄留念是足够了，但毕竟成像效果太业余，放大之后没法看；又虽然我自认为用这台相机可以“用卡片机拍出不同于卡片机的效果”，但终究还是被卡片机所局限。所以，单反相机必须被提上日程。不过最近金融危机了，钱还是藏在自己的口袋里比较踏实。至于何时收入单反，我决定：签第一份实习合同的时候就是我买单反之日了。不知道到那个时候Nikon D80或者D90跌到什么价了，期待白菜价的D80！
