Table Of ContentK’ANG YU-WEI
A Biography and a Symposium
Courtesy Mrs. Mai Chung-hua.
K’ang Yu-wei
The Association for Asian Studies: Monographs and Papers, No. XXIII
Paul Wheatley, Editor
K’ANG YU-WEI
A Biography and a Symposium
Edited, with Translation by
JUNG-PANG LO
Published for the Association for Asian Studies by
THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA PRESS • TUCSON
About the Author . . .
Jung-pang Lo, associate professor of history at the Univer
sity of California at Davis, has published frequently in the
fields of the maritime, naval, and military history of China.
Previously he served on the faculties of the University of
Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, and the Univer
sity of Washington. Born in Peiping, China, he attended
schools in London, Singapore, Ottawa, and Peiping. After
graduating from Yenching University he received both his
M. A. and his doctorate at the University of California.
Publication of this volume has been
made possible by a generous grant to
The Association for Asian Studies
by the Ford Foundation.
Copyright © 1967
The Arizona Board of Regents
Printed in the U.S.A.
Library of Congress Catalog
Card No. 66-20911
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Acknowledgments
This symposium on K’ang Yu-wei, for me the fulfillment of a long
cherished aspiration, is the happy result of the cooperative efforts of
many men and women. To Messrs. Wing-tsit Chan, Wolfgang Franke,
Richard C. Howard, Kung-chuan Hsiao, Laurence G. Thompson,
and Hellmut Wilhelm, I wish to express my sincere appreciation
for their response and their contribution of essays which constitute
the pièce de résistance of this publication. In the preparation of the
biographical section, I have benefited from the research done by my
mother, Mrs. Lo Chong, nee K’ang T’ung-pi, and am fortunate to
receive from her the manuscript of the Chronological Autobiography
(Tzu-pien nien-p’u) of K’ang Yu-wei, which I translated for this
symposium; three editions of the supplement to the Chronological
Autobiography; and her compilation of the Unpublished Works from
the Thatched Hut among Ten Thousand Trees ( Wan-mu ts’ao-t’ang i-
kao) as well as miscellaneous papers that have been used in the writing
of the Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography, the English version
of the continuation of his autobiography.
This symposium was planned originally to appear in 1958, the
hundredth anniversary of the birth of K’ang Yu-wei and the sixtieth
anniversary of his Reform Movement of 1898. For various reasons,
however, the plans were delayed. Perhaps it would never have appeared
in print if Professor Franz Michael, chairman of the Modern Chinese
History Project of the Far Eastern and Russian Institute of the
University of Washington, had not taken an interest and given it his
support. To him I am profoundly grateful for his direction, his
encouragement, and his prodding in bringing the symposium to comple
tion. I am deeply indebted to Professor George E. Taylor, director of
the Far Eastern and Russian Institute, for his kindness in making it
possible for me to spend more than a year and a half on this project and
to bring it to completion. I wish to thank Professor Hellmut Wilhelm
for his perusal of the manuscript and for his helpful suggestions; and I
owe a particular debt of gratitude to Professor Kung-chuan Hsiao for his
invaluable advice and criticism, for pointing out to me my errors and
A cknowledgments
omissions and explaining to me the many obscure terms and recondite
passages in K’ang’s writings, and for assisting me in the translation. To
Miss Gladys Greenwood, who edited this symposium and who super
vised the transformation of my roughhewn draft into the finished
product, and to Mrs. Winifred Coleman, who checked through the
entire manuscript with assiduous care and who corrected the numerous
discrepancies and solecisms, my deep appreciation. I am obliged to
the members of the Modern Chinese History Project for their comments
during the times this symposium has come up for discussion.
I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the Association for Asian
Studies, Inc., for including this volume in its Monograph and Papers
and for generously supporting its publication, and I wish to thank all
those who have read the manuscript, in whole or in part. I am especially
grateful to Professor Paul Wheatley of the University of California,
editor of the Series, for his guidance and his efforts in meeting the mani
fold problems of publishing this book.
I take this opportunity to express my obligation to Mrs. Mai Chung-
hua, nee K’ang T’ung-wei, of Hong Kong, Dr. Irene Cheng of Hong
Kong, Mr. Shipp Lo of Honolulu, and the late Mr. K’ang Shou-man of
Taipei for their generosity in contributing photographs of K’ang Yu-wei
himself and of his calligraphy and mementos; to Mrs. Mai Chung-hua,
Mr. Seto More of Vancouver, British Columbia, Mr. Jack Lee of Victoria,
Miss P’an Ch’ing-tuan of Hong Kong, Mrs. Yoke Wai Wong of New York
City, and Dr. Merle W. Wells of the Idaho Historical Society for their
kind assistance in the identification of personal and geographical names.
In the translation of K’ang’s Chronological Autobiography and in the
compilation of the sequel and the notes, using source materials that are,
at times, abstruse and difficult in content and style and covering a wide
range of topics, errors are unavoidable. For these, I, as editor and
translator, bear sole responsibility.
Seattle, Washington
JUNG-PANG LO
Foreword
K’ang Yu-wei, the great Chinese reformer and political philosopher of
the turn of the century, has been famous as the one great figure of
imperial China who made the attempt to transform China within the
framework of the Confucian tradition into a society capable of living in
the modem world. K’ang Yu-wei saw the Chinese transformation as
but a part of that general development of all societies and states toward
a great unity, which in his view would eventually come to pass. What
singles him out among all the Chinese political and intellectual leaders of
his time is not only that he stood for reform and transformation, and
opposed revolution, believing that a break with the past would be
disastrous, but also that with this transformation he wanted to give the
people of China their full role in working out their political fate.
Contradictory in his statements though he may have been occasionally,
sometimes uninformed of the state of knowledge in other civilizations of
his time, and at times perhaps naïve in his views, K’ang appears to us
today in retrospect as one of the great men of traditional China—
perhaps the last of them—and his full importance has yet to be
uncovered from the hostile record built around him by the impatience of
the young generation and later by the dogmatism of the Marxist-
Leninists.
The year 1958 was the anniversary of K’ang Yu-wei’s hundredth
birthday and the sixtieth anniversary of his short role of political
leadership in the Hundred Days of Reform in 1898. This was the
occasion for his grandson, Dr. Lo Jung-pang, then research assistant
professor at the University of Washington, to undertake the compilation
of a symposium on K’ang Yu-wei and thus help to bring out the record
of his eminent grandfather.
Dr. Lo’s work contains a collection of essays contributed by
colleagues in the field. The great variety of topics indicates the width of
K’ang Yu-wei’s interest and knowledge. The work also provides an ex
tensive bibliography on K’ang Yu-wei, which should be most valuable
to a student of the man and his period. The greatest value of this work
is perhaps that it contains what is the first complete biography of K’ang
Foreword
Yu-wei. The first part of this biography is Dr. Lo’s translation of
K’ang’s own Chronological Autobiography, in which K’ang Yu-wei
narrates year by year the events of his early life, his education, his
dreams, his contacts with some of the prominent men of the time, and
his entrance into public life leading up to the climax of his reform work,
and the anti-reform coup d’état against him and his program. This
episode, a crucial turning point in modem Chinese history, never before
as fully related in its details, is described in all its color, excitement, and
tragedy by the leader of the reform movement himself. But in 1898
K’ang Yu-wei’s own diary ends. From here on the story of his life until
his death in 1927 has been reconstructed by Dr. Lo from data
contributed by his mother, Mrs. Lo Chong, nee K’ang T’ung-pi, who
has also provided the manuscript copy of K’ang’s autobiography. Mrs.
Lo, K’ang’s second daughter, who accompanied him in his travels in the
United States and Europe, has contributed her personal recollections of
events and also a collection which she edited of K’ang’s unpublished
writings. This material, also available on microfilm at the Far Eastern
and Russian Institute of the University of Washington, has been the
major and precious source for K’ang’s biography.
The work of composing the biography, however, and of checking each
event against published official documents and press accounts, has been
that of K’ang’s grandson, Dr. Lo. The scope of this scholar’s
knowledge, his inclination toward detailed research, his ability to grasp
the importance of events, and his own intimate knowledge of the
personality of his grandfather, have made Dr. Lo a unique interpreter
of the man and his time.
Seattle, Washington FRANZ MICHAEL
