From The People’s Daily Online:
The State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH) bought the rare manuscripts of Hu Shi’s letters at the price of 5,544,000 yuan in China Guardian’s 2009 Spring Auction Saturday. It is the first time the State decided to use the preemptive right to buy a cultural relic.
Dozens of letters between New Culture Movement leader Hu Shi and Chen Duxiu, Liang Qichao and Xu Zhimo during 1920-30s, totaling 13 letters and 27 pages, are the precious collections of these rare historical documents.
Chen Duxiu’s letter to Hu Shi.The letters concern the establishment of independent newspaper “New Youth” in 1920, the breakdown of “New Youth” editorial colleagues in 1920, demonstrations and strikes of students in Shanghai in 1920, the participation of Hu Shi in the ‘Aftermath Solution Meeting’ of Duan Qirui’s government, and the publication of Chen Duxiu’s drafts written in prison.
There is no word on where the letters will be stored or what kind of access researchers will have to the documents. Hu Shi is a fascinating figure in modern Chinese history.
Hu was a key figure in the May Fourth Movement but grew disenchanted with revolution as a force for social change and rejected Marxism. While Hu ended up on Taiwan, where he founded the Academia Sinica, his intellectual shadow still looms large on the mainland. Hu’s ideas of historiography, cultural studies, and philosophy in many ways seem more in keeping with the spirit of China today than the radical political agenda of his New Culture era correspondents such as Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu.
Hopefully, the preservation and study of these documents will add to our knowledge of this fascinating figure and his times.
Letters of Hu Shi purchased by Chinese government bureau: From The People’s Daily Online:
The State Admini.. http://tinyurl.com/n2kqcf
Academia Sinica was established in Nanjing in 1928. Hu flew back to Taiwan from the U.S. in the 1950s to head it till his death in 1962.
You’re absolutely right, though his latter-day association with the Academia Sinica on Taiwan helped to give the organization its international reputation, my bad on the founding date.
hu’s tomb is right across the street from my office @ AS. don’t know if it’s more of a memorial, or whether he’s actually interred there.