Cai Yuanpei liberated the Chinese education system from feudal shackles and introduced an aesthetic appreciation-based model that would radically transform the nation's thinking. An exhibition to mark his 150th birth anniversary year is now on in HK where the man is buried, Rebecca Lo reports.

Leipzig, Germany. Nov 4, 1911. Standing out from his young German classmates as he receives his diploma from Leipzig University is 43-year-old Cai Yuanpei. In that moment, Cai Yuanpei joined a succession of Leipzig alumni who had left their mark on the world, from the writer Goethe and composer Wagner to Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel. Cai would later go on to change China's education system by introducing an East-meets-West educational philosophy.

Shaoxing native Cai Yuanpei returned to China late in 1911 and became the newly formed Republic of China's Minister of Education in 1912. In 1917, he was named president of Peking University - where Mao Zedong worked as a librarian assistant and which Chinese Premier Li Keqiang attended - a post he held until 1923.

His decision to learn German in the colony of Qingdao laid the seed for a new mode of teaching. Cai made the idea of aestheticism a part of the academic discourse, a move which would radically transform the young nation's ways of thinking.

"Grandpa realized that aesthetic education can play a big role in Chinese society," explains Cai Leiluo, Cai Yuanpei's granddaughter and a professor at Peking University's School of Education. She heads the Cai Yuanpei Society in Beijing. "I believe that his teaching of a Chinese version of aestheticism was the most important among his many contributions to educational reform," says Cai.

For centuries, dynastic China imposed an academic system where everything taught was in service of the emperor and his empire. Scholars, an elite class in this culture, sat through years of examinations while adhering to increasingly strict codes of behavior that supported a complicated political hierarchy.

Though Cai Yuanpei was a bright scholar who quickly rose through the ranks, he was skeptical about the system and its rather feudal ways. He made a case for the study of art, science, culture, and philosophy. He taught students to break from the state's shackles, be free thinkers and to learn for the sake of acquiring knowledge.

Hong Kong ties

Cai Leiluo was in Hong Kong recently to open the exhibition "Cai Yuanpei and Peking University". Cai herself has both curated and designed the exhibition, launched at Peking University last year. The university hosted the show again this year to mark the May 4 Movement when her grandfather famously resigned his presidency. After Hong Kong, the show will move to Shaoxing next year, occupying a site adjacent to Cai Yuanpei's ancestral home, now a museum.

Cai Leiluo handpicked artifacts from the original exhibition to fit the smaller exhibition hall in Hong Kong's Jao Tsung-i Academy. Cai Leiluo understands that Hong Kong was special to his grandfather, and mounted the exhibition here as there is keen interest in Cai's life and works among the academia in a city where he is buried.

"Grandpa first came to Hong Kong in 1893 to visit friends," she notes. "He wanted to experience what a Western town was like." His last visit was in 1937. He died here in 1940, and is buried in Aberdeen Chinese Permanent Cemetery.

Although Cai Leiluo was not yet born when her grandfather died, she learned about his work through reading his prolific writings. Cai Yuanpei was fluent in Chinese, French and German, and wrote prefaces for publications by leading scholars of his day as well as his own works. A few choice pieces can be studied at the exhibition.

She learned more about her grandfather through first-person accounts by family and friends. "I had three grandmas," she reveals, referring to Cai Yuanpei's three marriages. His first, to Wang Zhao, ended with her death in 1900.

"She had bound feet and was from his hometown," Cai Leiluo says. "In contrast, my second grandma was a modern Chinese woman. She could read, she was good at drawing, and her feet were unbound. But in 1921, when grandpa was in the United States and Europe on behalf of Peking University, she fell gravely ill. She died before he could return to be with her. His students at Peking University were very sad and held a special funeral for her."

Cai Leiluo's biological grandmother was Zhou Jun, an art student at Peking University and more than three decades younger than Cai Yuanpei. They married in 1923 and were inseparable afterward. "My grandparents loved each other very much," Cai Leiluo affirms. "I feel that in the art they left behind. One of the paintings she created is in my Beijing home, and they both signed their names after writing poems they composed on the work."

Cai Yuanpei was a staunch believer in universal education at a time when Chinese scholars were mostly male. Women were admitted to Peking University as soon as he became president. An archival photo of the first batch of female students in circa 1920 can be seen at the exhibition, alongside portraits of Cai Yuanpei from his Peking University's presidency to immediately prior to his death in Hong Kong.

Relevant even now

"Along with Sun Yat-sen, Cai Yuanpei is one of the most important figures in modern China with significant ties to Hong Kong," states Chow Kai-wing, professor emeritus at Hong Kong Baptist University's Department of History and director of New Asia Institute's Asia-Pacific Research Centre.

"I always believed that he left Hong Kong his educational ideals, his concern for the nation, and his enlightenment for a new China," Chow says, speaking at the opening of the exhibition held on Dec 6. "This exhibition recognizes Cai Yuanpei's contribution to Peking University and academic research. In the past four decades, China's achievements have been remarkable. Looking toward the future, educational development in China is more important than ever. I once said that the 21st century belongs to Cai Yuanpei. I still think so."

"Some of grandpa's works are difficult to understand," acknowledges Cai Leiluo. "But it is well worth the effort to try harder and find more of his writings. Over the years, I have published some to raise awareness of his educational reform ideologies. I intend to get more of his works published in English.

"Alongside his work, I want people to understand that he was a gracious, generous man, perhaps in spite of his status and intellect. He was beloved unanimously by his Peking University students. How he treated others was just as important as the legacy he left behind."

(HK Edition 12/21/2018 page10)