“Waiting for the Unicorn”
(19 MARCH 1858–31 MARCH 1927)1
K’ang Yu-wei (Kuang-hsia; CH’ANG-SU, KENG-SHENG; also known by his earlier name of Tsu-yi), a scholar of the classics, teacher, an original thinker, leader of the 1898 reform movement, calligrapher, and poet, was a native of Nan-hai, Kwangtung province. Born into a scholar’s family, he took up the study of the Confucian classics at an early age, read widely in Buddhism and Taoism, and later became a staunch admirer of Western civilization. In his youth, he repeatedly tried and failed the civil service examinations. In 1895 he passed the chin-shih examination which earned him, however, an appointment only as a second-class secretary with the Board of Works. Nonetheless, he left a heavy imprint on the intellectual life of the late Ch’ing with his contributions in almost every field from art to politics.
In the realm of Confucian scholarship, K’ang vehemently opposed the teachings of the Sung Neo-Confucianists and championed the study of the Kung-yang Commentary, and the “New Text” teachings of the Han dynasty. He contended that the texts of the “Old Text” school were forgeries, and he presented Confucius as a defender of social change. K’ang opened a school in Canton as early as 1891 and revolutionized its curriculum to include, for example, public speaking and physical education, along with the more traditional subjects of belle lettres and moral philosophy. A prolific writer, K’ang began to advocate not only his new interpretations of the classics but also ideas for social change, including his opposition to the custom of foot-binding for women.
In 1894, K’ang went to Peking to take part in the metropolitan examination. Disillusioned by the series of diplomatic defeats inflicted on the Ch’ing government by Japan and the Western powers at the time, K’ang, as a commoner (pu-yi), organized in the spring of 1895 a successful attempt to submit a memorial directly to the throne in the name of over a thousand petitioners, including 603 examination candidates. They opposed the peace treaty with Japan and advocated institutional reforms and the removal of the capital to the safety of the interior. This led to an audience in February, 1898, with the Kuang-hsü emperor, who eventually was won over by K’ang. On June 10 the emperor handed down a series of measures to institute reform. Following the effective opposition of the Empress Dowager Tz’u-hsi, however, this movement, known as the “Hundred Days Reform,” ended in defeat on September 20 with the arrest and imprisonment of the Emperor Kuang-hsü. The “Six Gentlemen” executed for their participation in this movement included a younger brother of the poet, K’ang Kuang-jen (1867–1898), and T’an Ssu-t’ung (q.v.). K’ang Yu-wei himself narrowly escaped from capture, along with his disciple Liang Ch’i-ch’ao (q.v.), with the help of foreign diplomats.
Soon after the debacle of the 1898 reform, K’ang began a long period of exile abroad, which ended only in the winter of 1913. In the fifteen years he lived abroad, he circled the globe four times and lived in Japan, Canada, the United States, India, Mexico, Singapore, and several European countries. During this time, he kept up his political activities by raising money and establishing schools and newspapers, sometimes in competition with other revolutionaries led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925). After his return to China, K’ang made his home in Shanghai, where he engaged in private teaching. He remained a monarchist at heart, allying himself briefly with Yüan Shih-k’ai (1859–1916) in the latter’s attempt to establish a constitutional monarchy, and a visionary, believing that the world will progress through the three stages of chaos (luan), small peace (hsiao-k’ang) and universal peace (ta-t’ung), and that the Great Commonwealth preached by Confucius is ultimately attainable.
K’ang’s poetry, found in thirteen separate collections, chronologically arranged, is frequently marked by vitality and original thought. Although K’ang was not a part of the “poetic revolution” started by Huang Tsung-hsien (q.v.), his poems may be said to belong to the school of Huang and Kung Tzu-chen (q.v.), both of whom were inclined to the belief that poetry should contain the untrammeled expression of the spirit. In the preface to his collected works, written in 1909, K’ang called attention to the two aspects of poetry he considered most important: ch’ing (emotion) and hsing (sensibility) on the one hand and ching (experience) and shih (events) on the other. “My poems,” he wrote, “are meant to describe my life’s circumstances, to express my hidden sentiments, given vent at random to sadness or joy, and sighing and singing without restraint”—again a typically Confucianist prescription, both in letter and spirit.
(Irving Lo)
____________________
1. BDRC, 2:228–233.
In Lieu of a Preface to The Great Commonwealth Book1
All manifestations of life2 are simply pain;
My coming into the world, just an accident of birth.
Prisoners in jail bemoan this corrupt generation;
Pity those who suffer from hunger and cold.
Many ancient sages prescribed sound remedies,
But vast heaven is callous beyond belief:
Ten thousand ages with no progress,
This great earth is doomed to sink into oblivion.
(KNHHSSC, 1:2)
(Tr. Irving Lo)
All day long, I ache for spring, for spring’s already gone.
The flowers left behind: who’s around to savor their smell?
A yellow oriole, in the tangled leaves, warbles insistently;
A purple butterfly, searching for spring, flies off by itself.
Old time feeling: the flourishing capital is now a fantasy;
Seeing a friend off: all the more unsettled by the onrushing river.
O Prince of Friends, refrain from summoning the hermit with a song:
Back to the fresh flora in the mountain garden: this wish I will not deny.
(KNHHSSC, 1:48)
(Tr. Eugene C. Eoyang)
Upon Leaving the Capital: A Farewell to My Several Friends3
He who mounts the Heavenly Dragon4 has the following of myriad souls;
A sacred cliff stands alone as if transported there on magic wings.
A final clasp of your hand: I carry away all your noble sentiments;
My eyes gallop over the universe: only a dense fog closing in.
Before our eyes, warring nations engage in chasing the deer;5
Among the empire’s talents, who is the Reclining Dragon?6
Fondling my sword, I can only shout, “let us go home”:7
A thousand hills, in wind and rain, reverberate from this blue blade.
(KNHHSSC, 1:55)
(Tr. Irving Lo)
Discussing Poetry with Shu-yüan,8 and
Sent to Jen-kung, Ju-po, and Man-hsüan9
My meaning, my experiences have nothing to do with Li Po or Tu Fu;
Then what use can I find for the poetry of Yüan and Ming?
Let my words soar upward, to stir up the wind and clouds,
Or appear so strange as to startle spirits and ghosts.
Sweep away all the new “Remarks on Poetry” books,
Then, indistinctly, the music of the spheres may still be heard.
This thing called poetry is both profound and subtle:
For a thousand ages it has aroused people with its miraculous sounds.
(No. 3 from a series of 3; KNHHSC, 11:89)
(Tr. Irving Lo)
Visiting Mount Vernon and Paying
Homage at George Washington’s
Burial Vault
Swiftly flows the emerald Potomac River;
In front of Mount Vernon, lush grass and fragrant trees.
Fondling his sword and clothing, I admire this sage-hero;
From these lovely hills and streams, earth sprouts a young culture.
His modest cottage recalls for me the steps before the grave of Yao;10
The clouds from the Cave of Yü11 hover over the grave where he rests.
Declining to be a monarch, he made known his abundant virtue;
Democracy for myriad ages will celebrate these Three Sacred Mounds.12
(KNHHSSC, 8:26)
(Tr. Chang-fang Chen)
NOTES
1. The Ta-t’ung shu, a book outlining K’ang’s vision of a universal utopia built in part on the idea of a revival of Confucian teaching. See Laurence G. Thompson’s nearly complete translation and explication of this book, Ta T’ung Shu: The One-world Philosophy of K’ang Yu-wei (1958).
2. Literally ch’ien-chieh (a thousand realms or stages), a Buddhist term.
3. Written in 1889, after the failure of K’ang’s first attempt to submit his memorial advocating reform to the throne.
4. Alluding to two passages in the Ch’u Tz’u: “Harness winged dragons to be my coursers” (Li Sao, line 170, in David Hawkes’s translation) with t’ien-lung used by K’ang instead of fei-lung and “hundred spirits” (pai-shen) from Wang Yi’s commentary to the “Yüan-yu” poem, modified by K’ang to wan-ling (ten thousand living souls).
5. See Yu T’ung, note 1.
6. Wo-lung, i.e., Chu-ke Liang, the sage minister of Liu Pei in the Three Kingdoms period.
7. An ironic reference to T’ao Ch’ien’s rhyme prose composition “Kuei-ch’ü-lai tz’u” (Let Us Go Home).
8. The courtesy name of Ch’iu Wei-hsüan, a wealthy Chinese merchant in Singapore who befriended the poet during his exile years.
9. Jen-kung is the courtesy name of Liang Ch’i-ch’ao (q.v.) who was K’ang’s favorite disciple and later his associate in the Reform Movement; Jupo is the courtesy name of Mai Meng-hua (1875–1915), one of K’ang’s loyal followers; Man-hsüan, the brother of the above, is the courtesy name of Mai Chung-hua (fl. 1880–1900), who married K’ang’s eldest daughter T’ung-wei (b. 1878) and was the compiler of a collection of essays on reform by eighty authors, including K’ang, published in 1898, under the title Huang-ch’ao ching-shih wen hsin pien.
10. Emperor Yao, from the legendary period of ancient Chinese history, abdicated the throne in favor of his successor Shun. Shun later also abdicated and passed on the throne, not to his son, but to Yü, another ancient culture hero of China whose many accomplishments included the pacification of the floods. Yao, Shun, and Yü are three sage-kings in Chinese mythology, and their times were regarded by Confucius as the Golden Age of Chinese civilization.
11. The burial place of Emperor Yü.
12. San-fen commonly refers to the three most ancient texts, or treasure-houses, of Chinese culture which were supposed to contain the writings of Fu Hsi, Shen-nung, and Huang-ti (Yellow Emperor), all three being ancient Chinese culture heroes who invented respectively the writing system, agriculture, and statecraft. This title, however, is not included in the Yi-wen (literature) section of the Han-shu. Although, by the end of the eleventh century, a man by the name of Chang Shang-ying did produce a book with such a title, most Chinese bibliographers have rejected the book as a forgery because of its fantastical content. Hence, it is not very likely that K’ang (who generally showed no respect for forgeries of classics) would use this term in this sense. Fen also means “grave mound,” and it is quite logical to suppose that, since the poet links George Washington to Emperors Yao and Yü in this poem, he is using san-fen not to refer to the so-called Three Sacred Texts of Confucianism (which exists only in title) but to refer to the three graves. Note also that an implied “trinity” of heaven, earth, and man does exist in this poem and that the cardinal number three is important to K’ang elsewhere in his philosophical writings.
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