ABSTRACT
Known for his ultraconservatism and eccentricity, Gu Hongming (1857-1928) remains one of the most controversial figures in modern Chinese intellectual history. A former member of the colonial elite from Penang who was educated in Europe, Gu, in his late twenties, became a Qing loyalist and Confucian spokesman who also defended concubinage, footbinding, and the queue. Seen as a reactionary by his Chinese contemporaries, Gu nevertheless gained fame as an Eastern prophet following the carnage of World War I, often paired with Rabindranath Tagore and Leo Tolstoy by Western and Japanese intellectuals.
Rather than resort to the typical conception of Gu as an inscrutable eccentric, Chunmei Du argues that Gu was a trickster-sage figure who fought modern Western civilization in a time dominated by industrial power, utilitarian values, and imperialist expansion. A shape-shifter, Gu was by turns a lampooning jester, defying modern political and economic systems and, at other times, an avenging cultural hero who denounced colonial ideologies with formidable intellect, symbolic performances, and calculated pranks. A cultural amphibian, Gu transformed from an "imitation Western man" to "a Chinaman again," and reinterpreted, performed, and embodied "authentic Chineseness" in a time when China itself was adopting the new identity of a modern nation-state.
ADVANCE PRAISE
"Gu Hongming is one of the most controversial and complicated figures in modern Chinese history. Chunmei Du has the broad knowledge, multiple language skills, and keen understanding required to situate Gu and the cultural phenomenon he represented in the international intellectual environment of his time."
— Xiaoping Cong, University of Houston
"Gu Hongming's Eccentric Chinese Odyssey is the place to start for anyone interested in intellectual idiosyncrasy or cultural polemics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Gu Hongming, who was born in Penang, educated in Scotland, and made a career out of China, fit no mold except that of his own making, much to the chagrin of his contemporaries and biographers. With concision and clarity, Chunmei Du traces this legendary figure's unique trajectories and legacies, not least as a shape-shifting performer attuned to the enduring allure of cultural authenticity."
— Christopher Rea, Author of The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China
REVIEWS
"Gu Hongming matters, as this engaging and sophisticated book shows, because in an age when he has been 'revived as an icon of Chinese nationalism and cultural conservatism', and when 'clash of civilization' essentialisms are grasped at ever more fervently, there is great value in this sort of study of how East and West became 'coconstructed concepts that are fundamentally interactive and mutually transformative', how they are 'imagined together'."
— Craig Clunas, Bulletin of The School of Oriental And African Studies [PDF]
"Du's goal is to help us understand the influences that produced such a paradoxical character. In the end, as Du acknowledges, Gu Hongming stubbornly defies analysis. Still, her account of his life is fascinating, particularly for what it reveals about global currents of thought in the early twentieth century . . . The book's real strength is in its exploration of a transnational history of ideas that emphasizes the global nature of circuits of intellectual exchange in the early twentieth-century."
— Kristin Stapleton, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture [Link] or [PDF]
Joseph Ciaudo, Journal of World History [PDF]
Jinli He, China Review International [PDF]
Melody Yunzi Li, Prism [PDF]
"在杜教授看来，辜鸿铭面临的问题，比如如何让世界了解中国、东西方文化是什么样的关系等与我们现在也息息相关。他根本上是文化普世主义者，认为东西文化在本质上是相通的。在他的笔下，孔子孟子和卡莱尔与爱默生讲述着类似的理念，都推崇一种知廉耻与负责任的君子之道、一类富有想象力的理性、一种拥有道德与灵性的生活。"