80 years ago today Liang Qichao, one of the greatest and most influential literary figures of the early 2oth century, passed away in Beijing. He died relatively young, only 55, but his career spanned an era in which the political, cultural, and intellectual currents swirled and surged, both carrying and buffeting Liang even as he doggedly sought to understand and chronicle the challenges and potential of the age.
Conventional histoiography on Liang divides his life and work into three parts: the young radical reformer, the moderate journalist, and the disillusioned scholar. Levenson* long ago argued it was Liang’s attempts to reconcile in his mind different binaries, China/West, tradition/modernity, the nation/culture, which informed Liang’s evolving ideas and worldview. Such neat divisions are useful for the historian as a canvas on which to paint his biographical portrait though the reader remains aware that the life and ideas of the individual will always exceed in complexity the biographer’s text.
In my own class, Liang Qichao appears when discussing the events of the 100 Days Reforms (though later in life, Liang would admit that the amount of influence that he and other participants, notably Kang Youwei, had over the affairs of state was less