He is a professor in the Department of History of Peking University, specializing in the history of the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties and the history of ancient Chinese nationalities.
2023 Scholar of the Year Luo Xin
Reasons for the award.
He studies distant and difficult knowledge, and he is also concerned with the present and the surroundings. He packed his bags and walked hundreds of kilometers to write "From Dadu to Shangdu";also explored historical materials and wrote "The Long Rest of My Life". He was a scholar, but he was never trapped in his study;He studied history, but he was never cut off from the present. In his view, history is the training of people's rational thinking, and it is an important responsibility of historians to care for the weak and speak for the marginalized. He has always tried to take care of history and the present with his sense of responsibility.Luo Xin is a rabbit, born in 1963, so 2023 happens to be his natal year, and he is 60 years old. Apart from this small speciality, the past year has not been different for him, but rather frustrating: "There is a lot of anticipation for 2023, and many people like to describe it as a fresh start. But it wasn't so easy for me to start over, on the one hand, I wanted to rediscover the rhythm of the past, and on the other hand, I found that the past was really gone, and there was a changed world in front of me, and nothing was different. He counted the years he had "wasted", but as a professor at Peking University, he taught undergraduate and graduate students in the history department as usual, occasionally participated in some dialogues, accepted some interviews, and then performed a few minor surgeries that did not hinder much, and that's it.
Thankfully, there's a trip to keep the year from being completely empty. In the first half of the year, Luo Xin completed a walk of more than 500 kilometers with Paul Salopeco, a well-known travel writer who won the Pulitzer Prize twice. This is part of Paul's global hiking program that began in 2013, and Luo Xin has been following this long and ambitious journey since the beginning, and has been in touch with Paul since he entered China in 2021. In the summer of 2022, he has accompanied Paul in Sichuan for three weeks, all the way through Guang'an, Dujiangyan, Pengzhou, Shifang, Mianzhu, and Mianyang. So as soon as he had time, he found Paul on the road again, accompanied him from Yan'an in Shaanxi to Luliang in Shanxi, and then from Lingqiu in Shanxi to Yixian in Hebei, and finally to Lugou Bridge in Fengtai, Beijing.
It's just that even so, Luo Xin still feels quite ashamed. The most fundamental reason is that he has been preparing to write a new book since the middle of the year, but he has not been able to start writing it until the end of the year. "I often say that I don't seem to have achieved anything this year. I don't know why, but I didn't put in a lot of time, but it seemed a little bit like I couldn't find a rhythm. He told China News Weekly.
Unexpected changes
The name of the book that Luo Xin wants to write has already been thought of, it is called "The Lion of Kangxi". Since the Eastern Han Dynasty, there have been clear records of lions in Chinese historical books, as a non-native exotic beast, lions not only enjoyed an extremely rare status in ancient China, but also an important witness to the tributary system. This is what attracted Luo Xin's interest in research, he wanted to travel through the dust of history to spy on the diplomacy and ** of traditional dynasties. And the reason why Kangxi's lion was chosen as the main line is because the lion in the past only had a one-sided narrative, which was completely described as a kind of **glory, and it was not until this time in the Qing Dynasty that another perspective was left in the records of foreign countries.
At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the imperial court successively issued a maritime ban and a relocation order, strictly prohibiting merchant ships from going to sea without permission, and relocated coastal residents inward. This move seriously affected Portugal, which had been carrying out ** in Macao since the middle of the Ming Dynasty, so in the ninth year of Kangxi (1670), the Saldanian delegation came to Beijing to present treasures such as golden swords, coral, ivory, rhino horns, and dioramas, hoping that the Qing court could give Portugal special preferential treatment in the ban. The result did not go as expected, but Kangxi's question "Is there a lion in Portugal" still made the mission smell a glimmer of hope.
In the 11th year of the Kangxi reign (1672), the Portuguese viceroy of India ordered the commander of the castle in Mozambique, East Africa, to capture two lions there, and ship them to Macao, but one died on the way, and the surviving one finally arrived in the 15th year of the Kangxi reign (1676). In the seventeenth year of the reign of Kangxi (1678), a new delegation led by Bento Baileila entered Beijing again and presented the lion to Kangxi. Kangxi, who saw the lion, was very happy, and watched it with the prince, ministers, missionaries and harem many times, and ordered and led to a temporary craze of the literati in Beijing competing to sing the lion. The mission's wish was satisfied, and the following year the Qing court issued a decree allowing the Portuguese to further open the sea of Macao to the 23rd year of the Kangxi reign (1684).
So you will see that the economic and trade exchanges in the past are completely different from what we know now, and for the ancient Chinese dynasties, it was not economic interests that mattered, but political interests. Like a key, Kangxi's lion opened Luo Xin's secret path to the tributary problem, and he found that behind this system, there was a set of distorted political mentality and logic: "(Everything) is satisfied with the vanity of the system, and this system must also rely on vanity." ”
In fact, the concern about the tributary issue lingered in Luo Xin's field of vision as early as seven or eight years ago, and it was only out of scholarly prudence that he suddenly found the right entrance until 2020. This is almost the same as his 2022 book, The Long Rest of Life, whose origins can be traced back to more than 30 years ago, and after having a clear idea, he hesitated for nearly a decade before actually starting to write.
At the same time, these stories are waiting for the right moment before they are written. Four years ago, when Luo Xin decided to start writing "The Long Rest of My Life", he was witnessing many specific sufferings, hesitations and confusions in reality, so the queen of the Northern Wei Palace, Zhong'er, became the entrance to a distant era, and the chaos and sorrow of that era became a reflection in front of him. In the afterword, Luo Xin even expressed his meaning directly, saying that the standard and pursuit of this book are "caring for the weak and speaking for the marginalized". Now, "Kangxi's Lion" responds to some of the anger and hesitation hidden in his heart in the cold observance.
Although Luo Xin has been staying in the ivory tower since graduating from his doctorate in 1995, he has never been confined to his study. As early as 1999, he founded the well-known section "Guantian Teahouse" on the popular Tianya Forum at that time, opening up the territory with the most active exchange of ideas in the early days of the Internet. It's just that few people knew who "Luo Xin" was at the beginning, and what was more well-known in the rivers and lakes was his screen name "Lao Leng". Luo Xin did not want to devote himself completely to the public sphere, and the rebuke of Fang Xuanquan in the online world as a pastime, he still wanted to improve professionally, and in the study of the name system of the northern ethnic groups in the Middle Ages, he was indeed ushering in an unparalleled period of high productivity in his academic career. It wasn't until 2008 that an unexpected moment made him change his mind and completely switch tracks.
That year was a great stimulus for me. Originally, I was quite proud of doing research on ethnic history, but in a discussion among my classmates, I realized that my work had been done in vain. From that time on, I made up my mind not to write anything that had nothing to do with the times, and no longer to write anything academic for academics' sake. Soon after that, Luo Xin published a collection of historical essays "The Murder Stone Conjecture" and field notes "Historical Plateau Nomadism". In 2014, he published The Emperor of the Northern Wei Dynasty on Black Felt, and deliberately tried to make the academic work easy to read. At a discussion after the publication, he met many people from outside his profession who attended, which strengthened his confidence in this effort: "It is meaningful, even if the book is not read by the public, but at least it breaks through the small circle." ”
In 2016, Luo Xin completed a hike in 15 days, along the Yuan Dynasty Emperor's summer tour, starting from Beijing, passing through Longhutai, crossing Juyong Pass, Xinghei Valley, and crossing Shaling, and arriving at the Blue Banner of Xilin Gol in Inner Mongolia after 450 kilometers. After his return, he wrote a book "From Dadu to Shangdu: Rediscovering China on the Ancient Road" based on his encounters on the road, historical nostalgia for the places he passed through, and various explorations and reflections. As soon as the work was published, it was widely acclaimed, and Luo Xin, who broke free from the shackles of the academy, finally entered the public eye.
Lonely adventures
In recent years, Luo Xin often thinks of his deceased teacher Tian Yuqing. "What would he do if something happened to him;How would he react if he knew I was facing a problem?On the one hand, "he used to be a hot-blooded warrior, or everyone has this side deep in their hearts, he was suppressed at a certain moment, and awakened at a certain moment", but on the other hand, "his evaluation of me is actually better than my actual level, and his expectation is definitely that I can do better than him professionally."
Of course, these are just Luo Xin's own conjectures. However, there have been similar situations in reality, just after the publication of "From Dadu to Shangdu", some good friends kindly persuaded him: "It's a pity that all the time is spent on this." ”
Luo Xin agreed with the first half of what his friend said. It did take him a whole year, and although he didn't write it every day, his attention was completely occupied, and he couldn't do anything but have to deal with chores. This experience has been verified again and again since then: "The Long Rest of My Life" was actually written for two months, the battle line was stretched for three years, and "Kangxi's Lion" has been empty for a year, and it is uncertain how long it will drag on.
But he doesn't feel sorry for it, because "there's no turning back on this thing." Luo Xin said that although academic writing in the past was relatively easy, and those articles that were only shown to peers were similar in method, "equivalent to holding formulas everywhere", he was tired of writing for more than ten years. Moreover, he could not find new materials, and without materials, there would be no new research topics and directions, and forcing him to do it would only be self-repetition.
More importantly, in the same year that he decided to transform, he suffered a serious illness, and for the first time realized that he was moving away from a stage where the energy, imagination and creativity of a scholar were at its highest. In the face of the signs of decay that his body is constantly reveling, he is discouraged, and at the same time afraid, not afraid of the inevitability of aging, but afraid that "before he died, he did not say what he wanted to say, and he did not write what he wanted to write".
Fundamentally, turning to the public is a great ambition for Luo Xin, who hopes that he can participate more directly in society and respond to the topics of the times. "A qualified scholar is to do his professional work well, and if he has the spare energy, he should step out of his own small world. It is also the responsibility of academics to get more people to get inspiration or support from your research. Whenever he thinks of this, Luo Xin will be relieved from his nostalgia for the teacher: "Even if Mr. Tian is alive, he has to accept me as he is in the end."
However, stepping out of the small world of peers does not simply mean going to a clear, open place. Responding to the times risks falling into the trap of misreading and presence. In this regard, Luo Xin is sober: "Responding to the times is not the same as catering to the times. The times are complex, and all responses should still be under academic principles. Therefore, whether he speaks or writes, he always adheres to a self-standard: to ensure that every sentence has a source and support.
But even so, expressions to the public are inevitably at risk of being misplaced, misinterpreted, and even repulsed. "The labor of a scholar is creative labor. Creative labor must be an adventure, and it may not necessarily lead to results, and it is not even known in which direction it will develop. Moreover, creative labor must be rebellious, deviant from existing structures or systems, so it will more or less cause others not to understand, accept, and disagree, and the stronger the creativity, the greater the negative reaction will be. This adventure also requires a lot of overcoming all kinds of hostility, and it must also be lonely. ”
In this sense, Luo Xin felt that he was a bit like Don Quixote who kept charging towards windmills and castles, no matter whether he was facing the truth or the illusion, as long as he thought it was right and worthwhile. What's more, he never thought that he had ever said anything weighty, nothing more than a reluctance to lie - "this is by no means modesty, this must be seen, and if I do not see this, I am deceiving myself." ”
Unextinguished flames
In fact, when he was young, Luo Xin's ambition was not to study. The Chinese he studied as an undergraduate, the most important thing he wanted to do was to write **, but unexpectedly, his ideal youth came to an abrupt end, and finally entered the track of history by mistake. After that, he often said that he had given up his dream of literature, but in fact, "literature is still in his heart like a flame that has not been extinguished".
He was going to regain this dream in a few years. "When I retire, I plan to walk back from Beijing to where I was born. There is a movie called "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", about a man who is born an old man, slowly gets smaller, and finally dies. I also want to leave the city where I have worked all my life and return to my hometown in this way. It's a ritual and a memory. He knows that from the standard of a writer, he has experienced too few things, too few people to understand, and poor materials, and it seems that the only thing that can be written into literature is the real life, and the youth is the most unforgettable.
In the past few decades, Luo Xin has always thought of the old forest farm in Suizhou, Hubei, and the ten-kilometer mountain road that he and his sister had to walk to school and home every week or two. A particularly memorable scene was a 13-year-old Saturday, Dragon Boat Festival, his mother carried a basket on the road to meet them, he and his sister sat on the side of the road and ate the rice dumplings and duck eggs in the basket, the mother fell off the wall when she came to work the next day, sent to the hospital for examination, found that she had cancer, and only lived for one year and three months after the operation.
It's not just these private emotional memories. In the reminiscence of the past, he also discovered some winding features left by history quietly: "Our forest farm is a state-owned unit, and the workers of the forest farm are regular employees of the state. A large number of educated youths in China began to go to the mountains and countryside in 1968, but in our forest farm, the year I was born, that is, in 1963, the first batch of Wuhan educated youths were ushered in. They are recruited by the forestry farm, they are all high school graduates, and many of them cannot be admitted to college because of their bad composition. When I was seven or eight years old, they were old workers on the forest farm. Most of the people in the forest farm have little education, but because of these educated youth, the forest farm has become a cultural highland in the area. They can paint, write all kinds of board newspapers, and do all kinds of literary and artistic propaganda performances. ”
Luo Xin said that although it may not have a direct impact, his cultural enlightenment largely comes from these educated youth: "At that time, as a child, I didn't feel such a special state, but looking back, the flow of a special situation suddenly formed a new cultural atmosphere around you." And when he walked out of the forest farm to go to high school, the educated youths also left one after another, and the once glorious forest farm quickly turned back into a cultural depression. After a lifetime of rolling in historical materials, Luo Xin is used to seeing the absurdity of the world and the flow of fate, but when he thinks of these treacherous things that have really crossed his eyes, he still can't help but sigh.
However, before writing about these old stories of the forest farm, Luo Xin still has a long-awaited topic to complete - he wants to write about the Great Wall. For the history of the northern peoples he specializes, the Great Wall is an important figure, outlining the respective territories of the farming and nomadic peoples like a dividing line. However, some scholars have long proposed that the existence of the Great Wall is not only to prevent people from the north from entering, but also to prevent their own people from going out, and he has also found in his past research that the Great Wall is not the same as friend or foe, but often it is ambiguous, and many people run around on both sides, turning it into a gray area.
Therefore, Luo Xin does not intend to study the Great Wall as a purely historical landscape, but rather as an image and discuss it in an ideological sense.
Walking, most likely, is still the final way to open this topic. In 2019, accompanied by an Iranian archaeologist, he spent a week walking through the local Great Wall of GorganIn the following years, he traveled to the Great Wall at the junction of Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia. In the future, he will walk the more than 1,000 kilometers of the Great Wall between northern Shaanxi and the Ordos Plateau, and if conditions permit, go to the Hadrian's Wall in Rome on the island of Great Britain. He wanted to put together these Great Walls of different countries, different periods, and different formats to make writing and reading interesting.
It's just that he doesn't have a clue how to connect them to each other. Perhaps, like the previous works, this topic is also waiting for the entrance that belongs to it, and the unavoidable opportunity.
Issued in 20241.1. The 1123rd issue of China News Weekly.
Magazine title: Luo Xin: No longer write things that have nothing to do with the times.
Reporter: Xu Pengyuan.