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Gu Hongming, China (1857 - 1928) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| suitbar33 Diglot Newbie China Joined 4719 days ago 9 posts - 11 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC1 | Message 1 of 4 17 April 2012 at 2:07am | IP Logged |
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20世纪初，西方人曾流传一句话：到中国可以 ��看三大殿，不可不看辜鸿铭。
Badly translated: There was one saying circulating within the Western world in the beginning of 2oth century: It is not severely regretable to miss out on the sightseeing of Great palaces in Beijing if you visit China, but one would absolutely wail for missing out on the acquaintance of Gu hongming. I happended to eavesdrop about the discussion of this gentleman on the China microblogging website 'weibo' and it seems there are only a few resources that I can find in English to somehow validate whether such account of his reputation is truthful for the Westerners, despite several comments dropped on that discussion would attest how awed those visitors of this gentleman when they had a chance of engaging in multilingual conversations with him... Here's a wiki of him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gu_Hongming This webpage (http://gb.cri.cn/3601/2005/06/30/342@603374.htm) indicated he had some correspondence with Tolstoy and was revered by his contemporary intellectuals such as Lin yutang (Maybe you heard of <<A moment in Peking>>). Oh, I forgot to mention he is a polyglot who was claimed by many being able to speak nine languages, nonetheless I wonder no Germane accounts of such polymath in English or otherwise other languages.... Therefore, I would like to ask sincerely about the availability of any anecdotes/ hearsay evidences/ genuine records with this gentleman in any tongues (Nothing meaningful in my English google search)...I mean, he is the first Chinese polyglot that I know of! (Feel kind of bad to say so cuz it's like saying Jeremy Lin is the glory of Chinese people, given the former was born in Malaysia...) Thanks for taking time to read this! Edited by Fasulye on 17 April 2012 at 9:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5846 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes  1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 4 17 April 2012 at 9:28am | IP Logged |
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The English Wikipdia says about Gu Hongming:
"He was fluent in English, Chinese, German, and French, and understood Italian, Ancient Greek, Latin, Japanese and Malay." The Wikipdeia link in the above post does not work. Here is the link to the Wikipedia article: Wikipedia article about Gu Hongming Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4665 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 3 of 4 17 April 2012 at 10:34am | IP Logged |
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Here's the announcement from last year for a lecture about Gu:
http://events.cornell.edu/event/seap_brown_bag_lecture_serie s_travel_along_the_mobius_strip_gu_hongming_and_the_conflati ng_worlds_of_qing_china_and_victorian_britain here's the description: This talk examines the so-called “Confucian sage” Gu Hongming/Thompson Ku (1857-1928). Born and raised in British Malaya, Gu grew up as an English-educated Romanticist, but ended as a staunch monarchist and eminent anti-Western Confucian propagandist. My talk analyzes Gu’s self-claimed “conversion” from “an imitation Western man” to “a Chinaman again” in his late twenties through a multi-dimensional framework. First, I position Gu in the group of what I call “diasporic Chinese professionals” from colonial Southeast Asia, and explore how career opportunities and changing policies in late Qing China affected these elites’ return to the so-called Chinese homeland. In addition, I explore the psychological impacts of colonialism on Gu as a racially mixed British subject during his formatives years in Europe. I examine Gu in the context of Victorian ideologies about race and sexuality, and suggest that his reclaiming Chinese authenticity and regaining masculinity are innately connected. Overall, I argue that Gu’s “conversion” can be seen as a practical choice as well as a type of personal-turned-political resistance against colonial ideologies. My talk reveals the complex socio-economic, ideological, and psychological worlds in which Gu’s identities were formed, transformed, and invented, connecting late Qing China and Victorian England in both textual and structural ways. Apparently he was a huaqiao from Southeast Asia, where of course the Chinese are very numerous. So he most likely knew one or more of the southern Chinese languages, eg Hakka, Cantonese or Chaozhouhua. This probably would have conditioned his attitude toward Mandarin as the Chinese lingua franca as well. You might check out the research of the lecturer, Chunmei Du. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| suitbar33 Diglot Newbie China Joined 4719 days ago 9 posts - 11 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC1 | Message 4 of 4 17 April 2012 at 10:43pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for those nice posts~Do I have the audacity of 'demanding' a bit more relevant
descriptions on him in other languages? Surely records of such polyglot can't just be archived solely in two languages.... Thanks in advance! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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