Jottings from the Granite Studio

This is a post from 2009 with a special relevance this evening in the wake of LXB winning the Nobel Prize.  The original post seems to be blocked probably because it referred to a certain charter in the title and url.  Hopefully, this re-post stays up longer.  I originally wrote to remember the birthday of the New Culture era educational reformer Cai Yuanpei, one of the leading figures of an era when many people in China sought a new way forward for the country, open to many different ideas and values rather than sit idly blinkered by petty nationalism and parochialism.  Enjoy.

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Today is the birthday of Cai Yuanpei (1868-1940).  [Originally posted on January 11, 2009] A classically-trained scholar who later decided to broaden his education and study in Germany, he was Minister of Education (briefly) under Yuan Shikai and (more famously) the chancellor of Peking University during the New Culture Era.  Chancellor Cai took over a campus squalid with the scions of the idle rich and transformed it into a hotbed of intellectual dynamism for a new age.  Cai took risks, hiring firebrands such as Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, and luring young scholars such as Hu Shi back from abroad.  The dining