FILE PHOTO: An Introduction to Chinese and Western Classical Studies authored by Rizhi

Lin Zhichun (1910-2007), popularly known by his pen name Rizhi, was a renowned historian and educator in the field of history. He is regarded as the founder of the discipline and research of the history of world classical civilizations in China.

From Fuzhou to Shanghai: Early education, academic foundations

Rizhi was born in Fuzhou, southeast China’s Fujian Province. Having lost his father at a young age, he grew up in a family sustained solely by his mother’s needlework. Due to the family’s financial hardship, and in accordance with local clan customs, he was adopted by his great-aunt—his paternal grandfather’s sister-in-law—and began studying elementary primers as well as Confucian classics such as the Book of Songs, The Analects, and the Zuo Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals in his great-uncle’s private school. With financial support from a friend of his late father, he was able to complete his teacher’s education.

In the summer of 1930, Rizhi became a teacher at an elementary school co-sponsored by the Fuzhou Chamber of Commerce. The following year, the school was reorganized as the “Private Fushang Elementary School,” and he was appointed its principal. In the spring of 1939, as unrest in Fuzhou intensified, he was forced to resign. During his tenure managing the school’s affairs, Rizhi also composed its school song, which opened with his personal take on a passionate life: “What is our spirit? Optimism, self-learning, and the will to transform our environment! It is the revolution of destruction and construction. It is a life so immersed in work that one forgets to eat, and so full of joy that one forgets all worries!” This spirit would become a vivid reflection of his long academic life.

After leaving the Private Fushang Elementary School, Rizhi set out for Shanghai to continue his studies in the Department of History at the Great China University, now East China Normal University. At this formative moment, he embraced as his personal motto the ancient saying, “He, who from day to day recognizes what he has not yet, and from month to month does not forget what he has attained to, may be said indeed to love to learn.” From this phrase, he adopted the pen name Rizhi—meaning day-to-day learning—as a form of self-encouragement.

During his university years, he studied under Wang Guoxiu, an expert on British history, and Wang Chengzu, a scholar of human geography. He made rapid academic progress and began publishing scholarly articles in the Great China University Campus Gazette. After graduating in 1941, Rizhi taught in Shanghai, Fuzhou, Yong’an (also in Fujian), and various other places. In 1946, he was appointed lecturer in the Department of Chinese Language at Shanghai National Provisional University, while also serving as lecturer in the Department of History at the Great China University. In October of the same year, he traveled north to become an associate professor at Zhongzheng University in Shenyang, Liaoning Province. The following May brought him back to the Great China University, while he also held a professorship at Shanghai College of Journalism and taught at Peicheng Girls’ Middle School.

During his years in Shanghai, Rizhi published research papers on ancient Chinese history, including “A Study of the Tran Dynasty in Annam” and “The Origins and Geographical Distribution of Confucian Scholars in the Western Han.” At the same time, he remained closely attuned to the transformations of his own era, writing contemporary commentaries such as “The Inevitable Path of Chinese Culture” and “Liberate the Peasants First.”

In “The Kuomintang and Chinese Dynasties,” an article published in the English-language newspaper The China Weekly Review, which was published as Millard’s Review of the Far East, he analyzed the rise and fall of successive Chinese dynasties to argue for the inevitability of the Kuomintang regime’s impending collapse. During this period, Rizhi not only wrote in English but also studied Russian in classes offered by the Russian community and learned Latin under the guidance of a British friend, a certain Miss Laber. These pursuits already revealed the breadth of his intellectual concerns—his deep sense of national responsibility, his command of both ancient and contemporary questions, and his effort to bring Eastern and Western traditions into conversation.

From south to north: Blazing trails in ancient world history

In the summer of 1950, Rizhi was invited to teach ancient Chinese history at Northeast Normal University. Later, in response to the needs of disciplinary development and in light of his foreign language proficiency, university and departmental leaders encouraged him to shift his focus to the teaching and research of ancient world history. Rizhi readily accepted. This change marked a turning point in his academic career and opened a new path for the establishment and development of ancient world history as a discipline in China.

Starting almost from nothing, he devoted himself to translating teaching syllabi and textbooks for ancient world history. The materials he translated—including Syllabus of Ancient Oriental History and Study Guide to Ancient World History—along with Ancient World History, of which he organized the compilation, provided a solid foundation for the discipline’s development. Through his translation of Karl Marx’s Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, he also explored core theoretical issues such as the Asiatic mode of production, the primitive communal system, and the periodization of slave society. Rather than limiting himself to the established conclusions of Soviet scholars, he developed original insights grounded in Marx’s own texts.

Rizhi also organized the translation of a large body of ancient source materials, later expanded and compiled into the two-volume Selected Source Materials on Ancient World History, which included his own translation of the Athenian Constitution. He consistently maintained that source materials form the basis of historical research and the gateway to understanding ancient political, social, and economic systems, and for this reason, he not only organized these sources but also emphasized their application in research. He also paid close attention to inscriptions and the latest archaeological findings that are equally important to transmitted texts: He used an inscription discovered at Troy to supplement the accounts of Herodotus and Plutarch concerning the Battle of Salamis, and combined the latest decipherments of Linear B with transmitted texts to produce an in-depth analysis of the social and economic conditions of the Homeric era. Through these sustained efforts—from translation to the use of ancient historical sources—Rizhi laid a solid foundation for subsequent teaching and research.

From Western classics to Chinese classics: Pioneering integration of classical studies

In the early 1980s, Rizhi, together with Professors Zhou Gucheng and Wu Yujin, co-authored an article in which they clearly stated: “Ancient Egypt, ancient Mesopotamia, and the ancient Aegean region were areas where civilization and states emerged relatively early in history. Studying the ancient scripts of Egypt, Sumerian-Akkadian, Mycenaean, and classical Greek—mastering the relevant source materials through the foundation of these ancient scripts, and thereby researching and understanding these ancient civilizations—will undoubtedly provide inspiration and assistance for the study of our own ancient history and culture as well as that of others.” They also emphasized the urgency and importance of training scholars in ancient languages.

Beginning in the late 1980s, Rizhi turned his attention to comparative studies of Chinese and Western civilizations. His related publications include articles such as “Chinese and Western Classical Democracy and Polity” and “On Chinese and Western Classical Studies,” as well as the monograph A Millennial History of Chinese and Western Classical Civilizations and the self-selected collection An Introduction to Chinese and Western Classical Studies. By analyzing the distinct historical development of Chinese and Western classical civilizations, these works emphasized the unique contribution and significance of Chinese classical history to understanding the developmental paths of world classical civilizations, thereby constructing a historical-epistemological framework for Chinese and Western classical studies. Alongside his efforts to organize and study original texts on the basis of ancient scripts, Rizhi also devoted attention to translating traditional Chinese culture into foreign languages.

In 1988, Rizhi, together with eight other distinguished professors—Zhou Gucheng, Wu Yujin, Zhang Zhenglang, Hu Houxuan, Zhou Yiliang, Ren Jiyu, Zhang Zhongpei, and Liu Jiahe—initiated the publication of the World Classical Civilizations Series and served as its editor-in-chief. The stated mission of the series was to promote exchange of classical culture between China and the world, introducing Western classical culture to China and disseminating Chinese classical culture abroad. Its content encompassed ancient Near Eastern sources, including ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian sources; Western classical sources, including ancient Greek and Latin sources; and Chinese classical sources, all in bilingual parallel-text format. Due to a shortage of funding and other factors, publication of the World Classical Civilizations Series encountered difficulties in the mid-1990s.

In 2003, in order to strengthen research on Western classical civilizations and at the recommendation of his old friend Wang Mingyi, he published a series of Western classical source texts. Like Rizhi’s World Classical Civilizations Series, this series adopted a bilingual parallel-text format, though its scope was limited to Western classical sources. The chosen name of the series, the Rizhi Classical Library, served two purposes: first, to follow international precedent, as exemplified by the Loeb Classical Library in the United States and the Budé Collection in France; and second, to honor Rizhi’s scholarly contributions.

Beginning in 2005 with the publication of the Roman historian Cornelius Nepos’s On the Great Generals of Foreign Nations, the series has since published 29 volumes, including 21 Greek-Chinese bilingual editions and eight Latin-Chinese bilingual editions.

Systematic compilation of Western classical sources abroad has continued for more than a century, with ongoing revision and supplementation. Looking ahead, our hope is to carry forward the tradition of Chinese and Western classical studies that Rizhi pioneered, provide the Chinese academic community with relatively faithful translations, and join more colleagues at home and abroad in advancing this shared endeavor.

Zhang Qiang is a professor from the School of History and Culture at Northeast Normal University.