Hu Shih (), (December 17, 1891-February 24, 1962) was a Chinese philosopher and essayist. His courtesy name was Shìzhī (適之).

Born Hu Hóngxīng (洪騂) in Shanghai to Hu Chuan (胡傳, courtesy name Tiehua 鐵花) and Feng Shundi (馮順弟), Hu's ancestors were from Jixi (績溪), Anhui. In January 1904, his family established an arranged marriage for Hu with Jiang Dongxiu (江冬秀), an illiterate girl with bound feet who was one year older than he was. The marriage took place in December 1917. Hu received his fundamental education in Jixi and Shanghai.

Having become a "national scholar", on August 16, 1910 Hu was sent to study at Cornell University in the United States and later Columbia University. At Columbia he was greatly influenced by his professor, John Dewey, and Hu became Dewey's translator and a lifelong advocate of pragmatic evolutionary change. He received his Ph.D in philosophy in 1917 and returned to lecture in Peking University. During his tenure there he began to write for New Youth journal, quickly gaining much attention and influence. Hu soon became one of the leading and influential intellectuals during the May Fourth Movement and later the New Culture Movement. He quit New Youth in the 1920s and published several political newspapers and journals with his friends. His most important contribution was the promotion of vernacular literature (Baihua) to replace classic literature (see Classical Chinese): the significance of this for Chinese Culture was great -- as John Fairbank put it, "the tyranny of the classics had been broken".¹

Hu was ambassador from the Republic of China to the United States of America (1938-1941)(Cheng and Lestz 1999, 373), chancellor of Peking University (1946-1948), and later 1958 president of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan, where he remained until his death by heart attack in Nangang at the age of 71. He was chief executive of the Free China Journal, which was eventually shut down for criticizing Chiang Kai-shek.

Footnotes

¹ 4th edition, p. 232-233, 334.

Sample Work

Don't You Forget

(English translation of a poem by Hu, published in New Youth magazine, China 1915-1926, vol.5 no.3.)

Son,

Over twenty years I taught you to love this country,

But God tell me how!

Don't you forget:

It's our country's soldiers,

That made your Aunt suicide in shame,

And did the same to Ah Shing,

And to your wife,

And shot Gao Sheng to death!

Don't you forget:

Who cut off your finger,

Who beat your father to a mess like this!

Who burned this village?

Shit! The fire is coming!

Go, for your own sake! Don't die with me!

Wait!

Don't you forget:

Your dying father only wished this country occupied,

By the Cossacks,

Or the Prussians,

Anyone!

Any life ever worse than -- this !?

Original poem: 你莫忘记

我的儿

我二十年教你爱国，

这国如何爱得！

你莫忘记：

这是我们国家的大兵，

逼死了你三姨，

逼死了阿馨，

逼死了你妻子，

枪毙了高升！

你莫忘记：

是谁砍掉了你的手指，

是谁把你的老子打成了这个样子！

是谁烧了这一村，

哎哟！火就要烧到这里了，

你跑罢！莫要同我一起死！

回来！

你莫忘记：

你老子临死时只指望快快亡国：

亡给『哥萨克』，

亡给『普鲁士』

都可以

人总该不至——如此！

References

• "Hu Shih", in

• Series : hsing ts'ung k'an 50 50.

• in English.

• Series : Michigan studies on China.

• (see online Resource listed below)

• Series : Harvard East Asian series 46.

Resources

• "The Chinese Renaissance": a series of lectures Hu Shih delivered at the University of Chicago in the summer of 1933. (see print Reference listed above)
• "Dr Hu Shih Research": Dr Hu Shih Research