Hu Shih Biography Quotes 24 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Hu Shih (1891-1962) was born in Shanghai to a family with roots in Anhui province and received a classical education before embracing modern learning. As China reeled from the late Qing reforms and the 1911 Revolution, he won a Boxer Indemnity Scholarship and sailed to the United States in 1910. He first studied at Cornell University, beginning in agriculture and then gravitating toward literature and philosophy as his intellectual interests broadened.

At Columbia University he studied under the philosopher John Dewey, whose pragmatism decisively shaped Hu Shih's outlook. The encounter fostered a lifelong commitment to empiricism, experimental inquiry, and reform through incremental change rather than abrupt revolution. In 1917 he completed a doctoral dissertation on the history of logical method in ancient China, an early sign of his aim to connect Chinese intellectual traditions with modern critical scholarship.

Return to China and the New Culture Movement
Hu Shih returned to China amid the ferment surrounding Peking University, where the chancellor Cai Yuanpei encouraged academic freedom and cross-disciplinary modern learning. Working with Chen Duxiu, the editor of the journal New Youth, and interacting with figures such as Li Dazhao and Lu Xun, he became a principal architect of the New Culture Movement. His 1917 essay, widely known as Tentative Proposals for the Reform of Literature, urged writers to abandon ornate classical diction in favor of a living vernacular. The program quickly spread from journals to classrooms, shifting the language of education and public discourse and laying a linguistic foundation for the May Fourth generation.

Vernacular Reform and Textual Scholarship
Beyond advocacy, Hu Shih helped standardize and legitimize vernacular prose through essays, lectures, and pedagogical materials. He pressed for clarity, directness, and accessibility, arguing that modern citizenship required a modern language. In parallel he advanced rigorous textual research. His studies of Dream of the Red Chamber exemplified a new evidentiary method that separated layers of authorship and transmission. He popularized the maxim boldly hypothesize, carefully verify, encouraging younger scholars such as Fu Sinian and Gu Jiegang to combine critical doubt with disciplined collection of evidence.

Debates, Liberalism, and Public Influence
Hu Shih became one of the most influential liberal voices of his era. He urged more study of problems, less talk of isms, contending with revolutionary programs advocated by contemporaries including Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao. He joined public debates over science, democracy, and cultural identity that also engaged thinkers like Zhang Junmai, Ding Wenjiang, and Liang Shuming. While he respected China's classical heritage, he argued that the best way to preserve it was through methods of open inquiry, toleration, and institutional reform.

War, Diplomacy, and International Role
When full-scale war with Japan erupted, Hu Shih accepted diplomatic service. From 1938 to 1942 he was the Republic of China's ambassador in Washington, D.C., where he worked with colleagues such as T. V. Soong to secure American sympathy and material assistance. Drawing on his ties to American academia and his long association with John Dewey, he acted as a cultural interpreter, explaining China's predicament and aspirations to political leaders and the public. His speeches and journalism during these years framed China's resistance as part of a global defense of democratic values.

University Leadership and Civil War Years
After the war Hu Shih became president of Peking University (1946-1948). He tried to rebuild scholarly life, protect academic freedom, and maintain a neutral campus amid deepening political polarization. The postwar civil war made such neutrality difficult, and he eventually left the mainland. He spent subsequent years lecturing and researching abroad, continuing to argue that long-term progress depended on legal reform, educational expansion, and a civic culture tolerant of dissent.

Academia Sinica and Later Years
Hu Shih later settled in Taipei and, beginning in 1957, served as president of Academia Sinica. There he sought to preserve and expand the research traditions that had taken root in Republican-era institutions, supporting both the humanities and the sciences. Building on earlier collaborations with scholars such as Fu Sinian and Gu Jiegang, he encouraged projects in philology, history, and social science that used careful methods rather than ideological dogma. He also promoted international exchanges to keep Chinese scholarship engaged with global currents.

Writings and Thought
Hu Shih wrote prolifically in Chinese and English, addressing philosophy, literature, education, and public affairs. The Development of the Logical Method in Ancient China reflected his effort to reinterpret Chinese thought through modern analytic tools. His English-language lectures published as The Chinese Renaissance articulated a vision of renewal rooted in pragmatic reform, constitutionalism, and the vernacular revolution. Throughout his essays he returned to a few core commitments: skeptical inquiry, incremental change, protection of individual rights, and the belief that language reform, scientific habits of mind, and civic education could reshape society without violent rupture.

Personal Relations and Networks
Hu Shih's life was intertwined with many of the leading figures of modern China. Cai Yuanpei's stewardship at Peking University provided the institutional space for his early reform efforts. Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, and Lu Xun were both collaborators and sparring partners in the transformation of literature and politics. In the international arena he worked alongside T. V. Soong and other envoys during the war years. His intellectual formation under John Dewey remained a touchstone, and his association with scholars such as Fu Sinian and Gu Jiegang helped institutionalize an evidence-based approach to Chinese history and philology. He married Jiang Dongxiu, and although he rarely foregrounded private life in his public writings, he often acknowledged the personal costs and commitments that accompanied decades of public work.

Death and Legacy
Hu Shih died in Taipei on February 24, 1962. By then the vernacular prose he championed had become the default medium of education and print culture, and the methodological standards he promoted had reshaped multiple academic disciplines. His liberal humanism, informed by Deweyan pragmatism and grounded in Chinese experience, offered an alternative to both authoritarian nationalism and revolutionary absolutism. Through his essays, institutional leadership, and the generations of students and colleagues he influenced, Hu Shih helped define what it meant for modern Chinese scholarship and public life to be open, empirical, and oriented toward gradual but lasting reform.

Our collection contains 24 quotes who is written by Hu, under the main topics: Wisdom - Truth - Learning - Writing - Faith.

• 1917 Suggestions for Literary Reform (Essay)