Anecdotes (Volume 7)

Eleven years ago, Huang Yun and Hu Wenhui, two contributors to this journal, crossed pens in Wanxiang over their disagreement about the real-life prototypes of characters in Su Qing's novel Ten More Years of Marriage. Now Song Xiyu, a veteran yet young author of Gushi, undertakes to sum up the case. The piece may look like a mere dredging up of a "hidden corner," of little consequence, yet its command, interpretation, and use of historical sources merit close attention. The other side of the "hidden corner" is "bringing hidden virtue to light." Wang Ling's "doctoral dissertation on the Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art had in fact already entered the chapters of the history of Chinese science and technology"; "if justice were done, Wang Ling should be the 'second author'"—yet Wang Ling told Wang Rongzu without hesitation that "Science and Civilisation in China is entirely Joseph Needham's book." In his later years Wang Ling returned to his roots, and where he settled was near places I often wander; I wonder whether we ever passed in those ordinary lanes. The free and elegant spirit of a great historian of science fills one with longing, and with melancholy too. The master of anecdote Qu Tuanyuan has been gone nearly half a century; Mr. Yu Rujie, who studied under him in those years, once again gathers scattered scraps into a portrait of "Old Tuanyuan"—precious and eminently readable. Qu Zefang, Qu Tuanyuan's grandson, writes of his uncle Qu Tongzu; in a comprehensive overview, details known only to family are strewn throughout the text, and its warmth is almost within reach. Readers may recall the first review of Gushi, written by Liu Zheng when the series had just appeared: lofty in conception and penetrating in observation, it said almost everything that was on our minds. Tang Changru, Zhang Zhenyong, Xu Jichuan, and Meng Yanjia, in pieces by Wang Yanwu, Liu Yongxiang, Zhao Heng, and Yang Zhi, are valued for their scholarship, their deeds, or their persons—"as if there were light."