Hu Shi Torn Between New Ideas and Old Ethics: Reading Hu Shi, Part Two

After Mr. Hu Shi died, Chiang Kai-shek sent him this elegiac couplet:

In memory of the late Mr. Shizhi

A model of old morality within the new culture

A paragon of new thought within the old ethics

Respectfully mourned by Zhongzheng

This couplet is the most incisive summary of Hu Shi's life. In his writing, Hu Shi's words soared, generous and free; yet in the great affairs of his own life he scrupulously observed every ethic of feudal society, not daring to step beyond the mark.

Hu Shi criticized Confucian foolish filial piety and dismissed such so-called acts of devotion as "lying on ice to catch carp." Among Confucius' disciples, he alone liked the rebellious Zizhang. Yet in the great matter of his own marriage, Hu Shi obeyed "the command of his parents and the words of the matchmaker," simply because he did not wish to go against his mother. Deeply in love in America with the daughter of his own teacher, Hu Shi gave up his love, returned to China, and married Jiang Dongxiu, a bound-foot woman his mother had chosen for him years earlier.

The learned Hu Shi, in his lectures and writing, drew on a vast range of sources with sweeping momentum and extraordinary bearing; he raised the banner of the New Culture Movement in China and became its leader, fervently calling on Chinese people to emancipate their minds and embrace freedom. Yet he himself refused to become a practitioner of liberalism, rigidly adhering to feudal ethics. This fulfilled the quip Qian Zhongshu once made with his wife Yang Jiang: theories are made by people who do not practice them.

In matters of love, Hu Shi wronged three women in his life. Of the three, the fate of Cao Chengying—with whom Hu Shi had an extramarital affair—was the most tragic. Eleven years younger than Hu Shi, she was his soulmate and admired him deeply. Hu Shi too loved Cao Chengying passionately and could never forget this affair for the rest of his life. But when Hu Shi wanted to embrace love and asked his wife Jiang Dongxiu for a divorce, she fiercely objected, brandishing a kitchen knife and threatening to kill their two sons and then herself. The frail scholar Hu Shi was stunned. In fact, Cao Chengying and Hu Shi had just spent an idyllic period together in Hangzhou, and she was carrying their love child. Hu Shi could only have Cao choose an abortion, and then sent her to study in America.

Jiang Dongxiu, nursing her grievance that Cao Chengying had stolen her husband, later—after Cao had moved on and fallen in love with another talented young man—went to the man and loudly spread every story of Cao's misconduct, causing him to break off the engagement unilaterally. Thereafter Cao Chengying's life was forlorn; the lovesick Cao, on her death, even left instructions to be buried by the roadside in Hu Shi's hometown.

Hu Shi's contribution to China's New Culture Movement was indispensable, but he bore a heavy emotional burden toward several women who had loved him devotedly, Cao Chengying among them. This was probably caused by Hu Shi placing too much weight on his image as a spiritual mentor.

Zhang Xueliang, of the same era, was far more bold than Hu Shi. After Zhao Yidi (Miss Zhao Si) fell in love with him, Zhang Xueliang, after several struggles, simply brought her to his side: maintaining his marriage with his wife Yu Fengzhi on one hand, while loving Zhao Yidi with a life-and-death devotion on the other, until at last he moved Yu Fengzhi, who tacitly accepted their relationship and even got along extremely well with Miss Zhao.

The contemporary writer Zhang Xianliang has an incisive line: thought makes a person weak; instinct makes a person strong.

Hu Shi and Zhang Xueliang, in handling love, one relied on thought and the other on instinct; it is hard to say which was right. But the women who loved them lived out fates as different as fire and ice.

Extramarital love is best not to happen at all; if it does, it should be cut off while still in bud. But if it is a life-and-death love that cannot be cut, then one should simply be a bit thick-skinned: rather feel guilty toward the world than toward the person one loves. For the world will not truly care about our feelings, but the person loved to the marrow is a different matter.

Cao Chengying, who loved Hu Shi deeply, could never in her life escape the shadow of her infatuation. Even if Hu Shi was not with her, in substance he still had at least two women in his life—Jiang Dongxiu and Cao Chengying. Zhang Xueliang, though bearing the cross of morality, gave Zhao Yidi a happy life, and Yu Fengzhi was not ill-used either. Let the world mock and scold as it will!

Hu Shi's weakness in love made him a laughingstock in cultural circles; this was the greatest blunder of Mr. Shizhi's life. Had he boldly refused the arranged marriage his mother set up, both his mother and Jiang Dongxiu, though pained for a time, would probably have understood. And after his later life-and-death love with Cao Chengying, had Mr. Shizhi been bolder and followed Zhang Xueliang's example, he probably would not have condemned Cao Chengying to a lifetime of forlornness. If he cared so much for his own integrity and image, why had he fallen passionately in love with Cao, got her pregnant, and left her unable to extricate herself?

Marriage and love have always been humanity's thorniest problems. Mr. Fei Xiaotong, who studied sociology and anthropology—when his landlady evicted the Fei couple because his wife, about to give birth in a rented room, offended local custom—understood deeply, as a sociologist, that custom is part of the social functional structure, and respectfully took his wife to a hotel. Yet when Qian Zhongshu died, Fei Xiaotong, who had long admired Yang Jiang, still boldly pursued her, though in the end he was refused. It shows that even this master of structural-functionalism, on the question of love, was not truly willing to abide by the secular rules.

No one is perfect, nor is gold entirely pure. Perhaps, when love, hate, passion, and enmity cannot be cut, to love with full abandon is better than torturing oneself—and torturing the one one loves—for the sake of public opinion. This may be the root cause of the regret Hu Shi's friends, and the many later writers who judged him, felt toward him.

And the various things Mr. Shizhi criticized in his own writings bear, more or less, some shadow of self-criticism. When a writer writes from feeling, that feeling may first and foremost be aimed at himself.