Wang Guowei

Wang Guowei
File:Wang Guowei Monument.jpg The Monument of Wang Guowei in Tsinghua University
Born	(1877-12-02)2 December 1877 Haining, Zhejiang, Qing China
Died	Kunming Lake, Summer Palace, Beijing, China
Cause of death	Suicide by drowning

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Wang.

Wang Guowei
Traditional Chinese	王國維
Simplified Chinese	王国维
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Wáng Guówéi Wade–Giles Wang2 Kuo2-wei2 IPA [u̯ǎŋ ku̯ǒu̯ěi̯] Gwoyeu Romatzyh Wang Gwowei Wu Romanization Waõn Kueʔ-vi

Wang Guowei (Chinese: 王國維; 2 December 1877 – 2 June 1927), courtesy name Jing'an (靜安) or Boyu (伯隅), was a Chinese scholar, writer and poet. A versatile and original scholar, he made important contributions to the studies of ancient history, epigraphy, philology, vernacular literature and literary theory.

Biography

A native of Haining, Zhejiang, he went to Shanghai to work as a proofreader for a newspaper, after failing to pass the Imperial Examination in his hometown, at the age of 22. There he studied in the Dongwen Xueshe (東文學社), a Japanese language teaching school, and became a protégé of Luo Zhenyu. Sponsored by Luo, he left for Japan in 1901, studying natural sciences in Tokyo. Back in China one year later, he began to teach in different colleges, and devoted himself to the study of German idealism. He fled to Japan with Luo when the Xinhai Revolution took place in 1911. He returned to China in 1916, but remained loyal to the overthrown Manchu emperor. In 1924, he was appointed professor by the Tsinghua University, where he was known as one of the "Four Great Tutors," along with the prominent Chinese scholars Liang Qichao, Chen Yinke, and Y. R. Chao.

In 1927, Wang drowned himself in Kunming Lake in the Summer Palace before the revolutionary army entered Beijing.

Chen Yinque's epitaph read: "The suicide of Wang was because he worried about losing the independent spirit and free thought he long cherished in his academic pursuit."

Legacy

Wang focused on the studies of Chinese vernacular literature during the early year of his career. When he became convinced that Schopenhauer's metaphysics were not believable, he turned for solace to critical and philological studies of the novel Dream of the Red Chamber, as well as writing a concise history of the theaters of the Song and Yuan dynasties. Although its conclusions are controversial, his article "On A Dream of the Red Chamber" has been called "a monumental development in the history of modern Chinese criticism." Later he changed his academic direction, focusing on philology and ancient history. His works on ancient history and philology are collected in Guantang Jilin (觀堂集林).

External links

• (Chinese) Biography and bibliography
• (Chinese) Biography
• Works by Wang Guowei at Project Gutenberg