Yu Yingshi died in Princeton at the age of 91: a determined Chinese historian-BBC News

“Professor Yu Yingshi has a deep connection with CUHK. He is an alumnus of New Asia College. He later returned to his alma mater to serve as Vice President and Dean of New Asia College. He is committed to promoting Chinese cultural studies on campus and benefiting teachers and students. I would like to represent all CUHK. The faculty, students and alumni extend their most sincere condolences to the family of Professor Yu Yingshi, and express their sincere tribute to Professor Yu Yingshi’s selfless dedication to academics and contributions to the university.”

Yu Yingshi’s ancestral home is Qianshan, Anhui, China. He was born in Tianjin, China in 1930. He was an emeritus professor of East Asian Studies and History at Princeton University in the United States. The independence of ideological expression emphasizes the freedom and independence of “intellectual people”. He has a clear critical stance on the CCP. He has publicly expressed his support for the Tiananmen Student Democracy Movement in Beijing in 1989, protested the repression, and clearly expressed his concern and support for the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong in 2014. He also stated clearly that as long as the CCP does not abandon the one-party dictatorship, he will not return to China.

After the news of Yu Yingshi’s death was announced on the Internet by his family and friends on Thursday, intellectuals from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan expressed their grief. Scholars, media professionals, and democracy activists who had interacted with him shared their condolences.

Yu Yingshi was awarded the first Tang Scholar Sinology Award in Taiwan in 2014. The Tang Prize Education Foundation issued a statement on Thursday, saying that founder Yin Yanliang expressed gratitude and miss for Yu Yingshi’s lifelong contributions to the field of sinology; CEO Chen Zhenchuan extended deep condolences to the family on behalf of all the foundation.

He Weifang, a professor at Peking University Law School, issued a letter of mourning: “Mr. Yu Yingshi’s knowledge blends east and west, connects the past and the present, is broad and rich, has pioneering power and inspiring significance, and is a leader in the humanities of the same generation. And the exquisite research on the history of thoughts, setting an example, shows the independent personality and free spirit that an intellectual should possess.”

“Those who die without dying live. This kind of personality and spirit is the most precious legacy left by Mr. Yu Yingshi to future generations.”

Zhou Baosong, an associate professor in the Department of Politics and Administration, CUHK, wrote a long article to miss Yu Yingshi’s concern for his younger generations and his concern for Hong Kong issues. Zhou Baosong said: “I only received a letter from Mr. Yu Yingshi last week. I was thinking about replying to him in the past two days. I am holding his letter and reading his words, which feels very untrue. I have great respect in my life. A person who was trusted and spiritually dependent is gone.”

Zhou Baosong revealed that on June 24, 2021, the Hong Kong “Apple Daily” published the last issue. He wrote a long letter to Yu Yingshi out of grief and anger, and sent it to Princeton together with the last “Apple”. He also thanked him for “publishing liberalism in Hong Kong since the 1950s, and dedicated his life to promoting the development of liberalism in China.”

After receiving Zhou’s letter, Yu Yingshi wrote a book by hand, faxed the reply, and personally sent a credit airmail reply on July 16.

I am not only grateful but also moved when I received the out-of-print of the newspaper on the last day and the master’s masterpiece.

The situation in Hong Kong is progressing towards the opposite of democracy and freedom. I was in the NY Times as early as(“New York Times”), TV and other media noticed. In a short period of time, it may not be easy to change, but I always believe that the right path of human civilization cannot be controlled by a few selfish people for a long time. Hong Kong has enjoyed freedom since its inception (1843) and is not in the hands of an authoritarian dynasty. In terms of the level of awareness of Hong Kong people, they are never willing to be slaves or obedient. However, human subjective struggle is extremely important, and we must never give up.

I totally agree with the paragraph in Mr.’s letter:“I hope we have enough courage and wisdom to continue to do something.”Encourage each other with these words.

Academician Wang Fansen, a special researcher of the Institute of History and Language of the Academia Sinica, who had studied under Yu Yingshi, told Taiwan’s official Central News Agency that Yu Yingshi was not only a historian, showing the character and model of intellectuals, but also considered the students’ situation very well. He also said that he was influenced by his works. Great Enlightenment, “It seems that a wonderful and vast world can be seen from his writings.”

Wang Fansen also told the “United Daily News”: “Yu Yingshi’s persistence in freedom and democracy has remained unchanged throughout his life. He insists on anti-communism, cares about Taiwan’s freedom and democracy, and has a clear grasp of current affairs.”

Professor Chen Fangming from the Institute of Taiwan Literature of the National Chengchi University told the Central News Agency: “He (Yu Yingshi) supports the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan and the anti-transmission movement in Hong Kong. He always speaks of justice at critical moments and his position has never wavered.”

“Yu Yingshi let me know that history is not static, but allows people to see the flow of time and changes in society. Although Yu Yingshi’s writing is static, you can feel it in his narrative process. He can be said to be a very successful historian for his vitality, always keeping an open, diverse, and enlightened mentality in his studies.”

Liao Zhifeng, the publisher of “The Memoirs of Yu Yingshi” and the editor-in-chief of Taiwan’s Yunchen Culture, was also surprised by the news of Yu Yingshi’s death. Liao Zhifeng told the Central News Agency that Yu Yingshi had only agreed to an invitation to write an inscription for the publishing house’s social celebration not long ago.

He said that it took 12 years to publish this memoir. When he personally visited Yu Ying in the United States for this, he deeply felt that the other party was not only rich in education and noble personality, but also permeated with the warmth of being considerate everywhere. The back cover of this book describes “The Memoirs of Yu Yingshi” as “a long-awaited and long-awaited work by Chinese people around the world“.

Huang Jinxing, deputy dean of Taiwan’s Academia Sinica, recalled to Taiwan’s public television: “He often scolded me because I was premature and immature. Then I was so old and often scolded by the teacher, but now I think about it afterwards. It’s an honor.”

“The response from the mainland media and the people (to Yu Yingshi) is very positive. He is a Chinese people who likes and loves Chinese culture, and is extremely disgusted with the communist regime. He regards freedom, democracy, and human rights as an irreplaceable principle.”

Su Xiaokang, who was exiled during the June 4th incident of the Tiananmen Student Movement, and the chief contributor of the TV series “He Shang”, re-published a passage from his old article: “A young man from southern Anhui came out of Nashan Township, and in the midst of the tragic change of dynasty, It accidentally escaped the great collapse of China, first in Hong Kong and then in the United States, trained in the Western education system, and became the first humane in China today.”

Cheng Yizhong, the former editor-in-chief of Southern Metropolis Daily in Guangzhou, issued an article recalling that when he visited Yu Ying in December 2018, Yu Yingshi said that “history and news are the same discipline, history is news, and news is history”.

Talking about the mainland regime after the revision of China’s Constitution that year, Yu Yingshi defined it as “the party has capitalism”, saying that the future that he sees seems to be unchanged, but it is by no means “unshakable.”

Wang Dan, the leader of the Tiananmen Square student movement who currently lives in the United States, said: “Mr.’s departure is the biggest loss in the academic world in recent years, and it is also a major loss in the Chinese society.”

“My husband has been caring for me for many years; thinking that I had a long conversation with my husband in his living room last time, and it is even more sad. There are a thousand words, I don’t know where to start.”

Editor-in-Chief of BBC Chinese News　Wu Wei

Professor Yu Yingshi is the most accomplished thinker in contemporary China, and he is recognized by scholars who study Chinese history and culture around the world in a central position in the field of sinology and Chinese studies. He connected China and the West, studied the past and analyzed the present, and because of his independent personality and political uncompromising and clear attitude, his writings and speeches were almost blocked in mainland China in his later years, but this did not prevent scholars and the public in mainland China from mourning him. .

Yu Yingshi’s academic research covers a period of Chinese history spanning more than 3,000 years from ancient times to modern times. His academic career in the United States began with a special study of the history of thought and culture in the pre-Qin and Han dynasties and the Middle Ages. Since his Ph.D. period, Yu Yingshi has already emerged in academia. His doctoral dissertation explored the major transformation from the ancient ideal of longevity to immortality, and became a classic description of the key transformation of religious thought.

In the 1970s, Professor Yu Yingshi published a book reviewing the development of Neo-Confucianism in the Song and Ming Dynasties and the intellectual history of the Qing Dynasty, and made breakthroughs in the research on Zhu Xi, the most influential Confucian figure second only to Confucius himself. Comprehensive control of thought.

Professor Yu Yingshi’s academic achievements are roughly concentrated in three areas: the history of ancient Chinese thought in the pre-Qin and Han dynasties, the history of knowledge and culture in the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, and the research on modern intellectuals and Eastern and Western cultural issues.

In 2006, when the Director of the Library of Congress James H. Billington awarded Yu Yingshi the “Kruger Humanities and Social Sciences Lifetime Achievement Award”, he said: “The academic research of Dr. Yu Yingshi is very profound and extensive. His influence on the study of Chinese history, thought, and culture spans many disciplines, historical stages and research topics; he has deeply studied some major issues and inner principles of human nature.”

Professor Yu Yingshi is not only the most accomplished thinker in contemporary China, but also a disseminator of Chinese civilization overseas. He analyzed and traced the evolution of China’s value concepts and ideological trends in the past century from the perspective of the history of thought. In terms of position, he is undoubtedly opposed to abandoning Chinese traditional culture completely and completely, but he never argued about values, but used the method of combing the ideology and historical facts to prove the existence of “the origin of modern radicalism”. He believes: “Tradition and modernization are not necessarily incompatible in every aspect. Modernization sometimes requires the help of the healthy power of tradition.” (1993)

Professor Yu Yingshi is an ideological historian who insists on bringing the reconstruction of Chinese culture to the table for research all his life. Regarding Chinese cultural traditions, his belief is not just about saying that “tradition is still valuable”, but taking some high-quality cultural traditions as tools to “restoring the vitality of human civilization” (1999). However, he himself spent his entire life combing Chinese cultural traditions, and in the 1990s introduced the essence of traditional culture to contemporary Chinese through publications such as Hong Kong’s “Ming Pao Monthly”.

In his later years, Professor Yu Yingshi still made a breakthrough in the history of modern Chinese thought. He became the first scholar to use Chinese to join the discussion about the “Axis Age” started by philosophers and religious researchers in the first half of the 20th century. His work, “On the Time Between Heaven and Man” published in 2014, systematically established the relationship between Chinese pre-Qin philosophical thinking as the “axial breakthrough of Chinese civilization” and the “axial age”. This is the ideological inspiration given to contemporary Chinese by Yu Yingshi, and it is also the spiritual heritage that he has contributed to the world‘s intellectual circles.

Yu Yingshi, a scholar of the same age, has never given up and escaped attention and comment on social reality and cultural issues because of her independent personality and truth-seeking character. In the early 1950s, young student Yu Yingshi went to Hong Kong’s New Asia College to study. At that time, he was taught by Qian Mu, and at that time he was enthusiastically concerned about the development trend of Chinese society and politics. For many years until his death, Yu Yingshi continued to pay attention to Chinese political issues overseas. Requests for media interviews, colleagues and students for advice and exchanges on China’s real-world issues are almost always responsive.

Ge Zhaoguang, a historian of Fudan University, wrote an article to analyze that Yu Yingshi’s family background and personal experience in Hong Kong and the United States made him a huge difference from historians living in mainland China. Yu Yingshi himself systematically recounted his first experience in mainland China as a teenager from 1937-1949 on multiple occasions, which determined his understanding of communism and the CCP, and also destined him to oppose communism all his life and choose to go to a free place all his life. .

Regarding why Chinese intellectuals finally chose communism, a question that has long been discussed in the Chinese political and historical circles, Yu Yingshi wrote in his memoirs: Easily accept the sense of communism (or socialism)… When Chinese intellectuals first chose communism as a remedy for’saving the nation from the nation’, it was mainly out of an illusion that they did not thoroughly study whether this theory is in line with China’s disease. Over. Since some of the factors in this set of theories seem to be similar to the traditional concepts and values ​​they are familiar with at first glance (such as’Jun’,’Gong’, etc.), they do not hesitate to regard it as’truth’ and are willing to Give your life for it. Different illusions continue to appear after the May Fourth Movement… In short, this choice can be said to be a big mistake made by gathering the iron of Kyushu.”

After Yu Yingshi returned to mainland China in 1978 as the head of the American Han Dynasty Research Mission to China, he never returned to his homeland when he died. Yu Yingshi often travels to Taiwan to participate in various academic activities and publishes a large number of Taiwanese academic works. Most academic works are also published in mainland China, but some content and current affairs comments that are inconsistent with the mainstream Chinese ideology have been deleted. In recent years, news of being blocked has even spread.

“In the age without Hu Shizhi, at least we can read Yu Yingshi.” It was once a popular saying in mainland Chinese intellectuals in the 1990s. The earliest publication of Yu Yingshi’s book in mainland China was “Shi and Chinese Culture” in 1987. This book was once popular and influenced a large number of Chinese scholars. At that time, Chinese society and ideological circles were mostly critical of ancient Chinese culture and the traditions of scholar-officials. Yu Yingshi, like Mr. Qian Mu, had “warmth” and “respect” for traditions, and sympathized with ancient Chinese “literati”.

Ge Zhaoguang, a historian at Fudan University, believes that, in essence, Yu Yingshi’s works “inspired the cultural zeal for intellectuals in the 1980s to resist political rights.” “From the other side, it reminds the intellectuals how to pay attention to their own history, and how people discover traditional spirit, use’Orthodoxy’ to fight against’political tradition’, and with the traditional morality of’do nothing but noble things’, Retain a layer of dignity for the intellectuals”.

Yu Yingshi compared the traditional Chinese’shi’ with the’intellectuals’ in modern Europe, and pointed out that the ancient Chinese’shi’ was very similar to the Western intellectuals. They were both the “conscience of society” and the “maintainers of the basic values ​​of mankind.” . His writings and independence surplus stimulated the academic circles of mainland China in the 1980s as important as the ideological impact his “anti-intellectualism” exerted in Taiwan during the martial law period.

After his retirement from Princeton University in 2001, he had frequent academic exchanges with Chinese overseas Chinese scholars, but he almost gave up writing in English and devoted himself to Chinese. This is also his way of insisting on communicating with Chinese scholars and the public. Unable to return to China, free intellectuals and academics from mainland China went to the United States, often looking for opportunities to visit their Princeton home.

Luo Siyu, a media person who had interviewed Yu Yingshi, recalled to the BBC Chinese that in April 2018, Yu Yingshi personally wrote an article for the mainland media, discussing the crisis of Chinese history, and emphasized that “history must be written in a straight pen, and cannot be hidden or hidden. Distorting facts is one of the oldest traditions in China.

Yu Yingshi wrote: “After 1949, history textbooks have become more and more propaganda. By the so-called’Cultural Revolution’ in 1966, history has completely become an ideological tool, and it has become the norm to use lies to obliterate the truth. Today, as one of the ideological courses in universities, “Modern Chinese History” is a complete pseudo-history. The CCP has officially announced that it will not allow any negative comments on the 30 years of Mao’s rule, and for the 30 to 40 years since Mao’s death. Let’s not make any “misconceptions.” In this state, what kind of “historical knowledge” can young students come into contact with today?”

Yu Yingshi was born in Tianjin on January 22, 1930. According to his memories, he studied in elementary schools, middle schools and old-fashioned private schools receiving modern education at an early age, especially between 1937 and 1946, when he returned to his ancestral home in Qianshan, Anhui to escape the war. He was educated in a rural private school before the age of 12, and then went to a junior high school in Tongcheng, an important Chinese cultural town, and lived with his uncle for one year.

Yu Yingshi cares about her childhood experience. In his memoirs, he said that his “systematic memory began here” and that his “father’s generation left the country, but his roots are in his hometown”. He also said that his father, Yu Xiezhong, compiled a set of “General History of the West”. It became the enlightenment for him to learn history.

The “New Fourth Army” he had seen and heard in the countryside of Anhui disgusted him, and the communist propaganda he first encountered in Shenyang and his subsequent self-exploration of communist ideas did not make him fully accept communism.

Yu Yingshi said: “I thought from the beginning that’freedom’ is the central ultimate indispensable for modern society and individuals. At that time, many people discussed the’Four Freedoms’ of US President Roosevelt, and I totally agreed with it.”

Yu Yingshi subsequently enrolled in the private Northeast Zhongzheng University in Shenyang, Liaoning, and Peking-Yenching University. But in 1949, when the Communist Party of China established its power, Yu Yingshi gradually lost his mind.

On New Year’s Day in 1950, Yu Yingshi entered Hong Kong to visit his parents. Since then, he has stayed and enrolled in the New Asia College founded by the historian Qian Mu and studied with him. In 1952, he became the first graduate of New Asia College. New Asia College later became the founding unit of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and it has been maintained to this day. Yu Yingshi’s graduation certificate is still stored in the Qian Mu Library of New Asia College.

In 1955, Yu Yingshi was sponsored to Harvard University in the United States as a visiting scholar of the Harvard Yenching Institute. His study at Harvard began his career. Later, he studied under Professor Yang Liansheng, a sinologist, and obtained his Ph.D. degree from Harvard in 1962. Seven years later, he was appointed by Harvard as a professor of Chinese history.

In 1973, Professor Yu Yingshi returned to Hong Kong and served as the Vice President of the Chinese University and Dean of New Asia College. At that time, CUHK passed a resolution of the British Hong Kong Legislative Council to change the school structure from “academic federation” to centralized power. Yu Yingshi was appointed to take charge of the restructuring working group. The restructuring triggered the resignation of nine CUHK board members including his teacher Qian Mu. Yu Yingshi returned to CUHK in just two years before returning to teach at Harvard.

After that, Yu Yingshi successively lectured at the University of Michigan, Yale University and other institutions, and eventually returned to Princeton University until his retirement.

He has written numerous books throughout his life, including “Shi and Chinese Culture”, “Religious Ethics and Merchant Spirit in Modern China”, “Zhu Xi’s Historical World“, “Revisiting Hu Shi’s Journey: Looking at Hu Shi’s Life from His Diary”, “Fang Yizhi’s Evening Study” “And “On Dai Zhen and Zhang Xuecheng” and so on. Among them, the book “Trade and Expansion in Han China” (Trade and Expansion in Han China) has the most far-reaching influence, and CUHK describes it as a work “famous in academia”.

Taiwan’s Academia Sinica described Yu Yingshi as “experts in interpreting traditional Chinese thought with modern academic methods. He is the most influential Chinese intellectuals in the contemporary era. His research on Chinese history, especially the history of thought and cultural history, has played a pioneering role. The academic circles respect him as the dean of Chinese historiography in the 21st century.”

In 2014, shortly after the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement broke out, it was reported that Yu Yingshi was banned from mainland China, and all of his works and speeches could hardly be published in China.

Yu Yingshi has won numerous awards throughout his life. He was elected as an academician of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan in 1974, an honorary doctorate from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1978, an honorary doctorate of literature from the University of Hong Kong in 1992, and an academician of the American Philosophical Society in 2004. He was awarded the John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Library of Congress (John W. Kluge Prize) in Humanities and Social Sciences in 2006, and he was awarded the Tang Prize for Sinology in 2014.

As a scholar, he once described that he did not want to be admired. When he went to Taiwan to attend the Tang Award presentation ceremony in September 2014, he said to Commonwealth magazine: “I have absolutely no intention to be the leader. But I understand that young people will admire contemporary people. I think this is a matter of age, as long as you have knowledge. To a certain extent, you will know it slowly.”

“Just like my teacher Qian Mu, I have respected him until now, but there are many differences between me and him, and others can see it. The reason why I have different opinions is to give full play to him and move his ideas forward. push.”

In November 2006, in an interview with the “Times Weekly” in Guangzhou, China, Yu Yingshi once said: “What I can do in this era is to be myself. I have no heroism, and I will not be ashamed… I only have One thing about the foundation of Chinese literature and history. In short, trying to accomplish yourself while also knowing to respect others is the so-called “learning and blessing”, that is, the best way to be a dignified intellectual.”

Yu Ying has been severely criticizing the CCP’s rule for many years. On the 120th anniversary of the birth of the late Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong in 2013, Yu Yingshi accepted an exclusive interview with the BBC in Chinese. He said: “When the Communist Party came to Shanghai, I was in Shanghai. The general public did not follow it. It was just helpless, only to see its development. There was no particular fear of it, but the (KMT) could no longer keep order. So it’s the fate that must be accepted in desperation, and there is nothing like the Communist Party describes that many people are happy.”

In the interview, Yu Yingshi also described, “Without Japanese aggression, Mao Zedong would not have succeeded” and “people in the intellectual world were drawn away by him. This is the role played by left-leaning communist thought in China.” Not with communism as the call, but with democracy and freedom as the call. They think it is a problem of new democracy.”

“Mao Zedong’s only political legacy is that a strong man took the entire China in his hands and did whatever he wanted. No one of them can inherit this legacy today, so they just want to go. Because there are obviously problems within the Communist Party now. Different forces, different approaches. The central government’s control over localities is also limited. So under this circumstance, (the current general secretary of the Communist Party of China) Xi Jinping probably hopes to have Mao Zedong’s power. This is what he calls a legacy, but They can’t catch this legacy.”

After Yu Yingshi left China, he only visited the mainland with an American academic delegation in 1978. But in his 1985 prose “My Chinese Feelings,” he said: “Although Huahe returned 29 years later and found that’the city is like the old and the people are not’, my’Chinese feelings’ have not diminished a bit, but seem to increase day by day. In this way, I can’t forget about my homeland, and often use idlers from outside the world to talk to people about national affairs, and talk about nonsense that is not beneficial to myself and extremely unpleasant.”

In 1996, when Yu Yingshi attended a seminar on the 30th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution at the Princeton China Initiative, he said: “Nationalism is an important force behind the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. It is an enlarged and reprinted version of the Boxer Movement. Be wary of the big set of things of the Cultural Revolution, and it may even be brought back to life through nationalism.”

“The Cultural Revolution was manipulated by organizations. Participants thought they had free will, but in fact this’free will’ was just a’false consciousness.’ The same is true of the new’Cultural Revolution’ that is eager to try today. There are a group of people behind them who are organizing and planning. Individuals who participated thought they were acting for’patriotism’, and the truth of history will definitely be revealed in the future.”

The content of this speech was later collated into the article “Beware of the Cultural Revolution: Resurrection of Nationalism”, which was included in the June 1996 issue of Hong Kong’s Ming Pao Monthly.

When the Tiananmen Student Movement broke out in 1989, Yu Yingshi actively spoke in support. In 2013, he commented to the North American “World Journal” of the “Lianhe Pao” newspaper: “I don’t think there is a problem of “rehabilitation” in the June Fourth Movement. As long as the Chinese Communist regime exists, they will never face the June Fourth issue. Otherwise, they will collapse, and June 4th should not be called’rehabilitation’.”

“After the June Fourth Movement, many people thought that the CCP would soon collapse, but his organization was too powerful, and there was also a question of temperament in it.”

In 2018, Yu Yingshi said in an exclusive interview with Duan Media: “Today, it is impossible to have the’cultural craze’ in the years before June 4th. Intellectuals are on the margins of society and can no longer play the role of ideological tutors. “

“Although I can’t see how and when China’s status quo will change, I still firmly believe that the current totalitarian rule is not iron-clad because there are inherent insurmountable fatal factors. Endless and endless collective protests happen every time. Will cause a little negative effect. The total prohibition of freedom of thought and speech has cut off the path of academic and education, and the overall culture will become more and more stagnant. The totalitarian system may be able to maintain a kind of ostensible’stability in the short term. ‘, but secretly it is constantly weakening.”

Yu Yingshi often made sharp comments on the current situation in Taiwan. When he went to Washington from New Jersey to receive the Kruger Prize from the Library of Congress in 2006, he told the Lianhe Evening News that Taiwan’s political situation is indeed chaotic, but the chaos is only temporary and man-made. The problem is greater than the legal problem.” As long as Taiwan adheres to democracy and freedom and continues to follow the path of democracy and freedom, there will be a temporary problem, and after elections, there will be a chance to set things right. At that time, Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party had passed half of his term as the second president of Taiwan.

June 30, 2008-more than a month after Ma Ying-jeou took office as the President of the Chinese Kuomintang-When Yu Yingshi made a speech in Taiwan, he praised Taiwan’s political party rotation to elect its own government. Not only did the authoritative party be overthrown, but also a new party. Can govern, and now the old regime can return to govern. Such a democratic achievement is not an easy thing, and it is also unimaginable in Chinese thinking in the past. Compared with mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong have not undergone fierce violence like the Cultural Revolution. Customs and culture can be sustained, and they are better equipped to promote democracy.

In 2013, the “Occupy Central” protest movement in Hong Kong was still brewing. Yu Yingshi wrote to Hong Kong’s Apple Daily, saying: “Civil disobedience not only has a great past and a glorious present, but also has an unlimited future. Participating in civil disobedience is modern. The glorious and sacred responsibility of human beings. To win universal election for the chief executive is related to the future of all Hong Kong citizens. Their core values ​​such as human rights, freedom, and dignity of life must be passed through the fair and universal suffrage before they can be fulfilled.”

“In the absence of any other effective means, civil disobedience and the occupation of Central are undoubtedly the most important means to win universal suffrage.”

In September 2014, when Yu Yingshi was preparing to go to Taiwan to receive the award, “Occupy Central” protested like an arrow. The Hong Kong “Apple Daily” once again quoted him as saying: “I don’t think’Occupy Central’ can be said to be non-occupied. Isn’t it worse?”

“You can’t say: I’ll forget it, I can’t help it, I’ll be a obedience, and listen to you. It’s even worse, then there will never be a day to turn around!”

Yu Yingshi once told the “World Journal” why he did not want to go back to China: “First, I don’t like the excitement. If I go back and hold seminars and speeches everywhere, I can’t stand it. I don’t talk about politics now. Second, basically. It’s a question of value, which has nothing to do with June 4th. But if I deny everything I have to go back, I don’t feel at ease. First of all, I look down on myself.”

“If the CCP gives up its one-party dictatorship, I will go right away.”

In the end, Yu Yingshi did not expect this day. But perhaps, as he was often quoted in his later years, in Yu Yingshi’s mind, “Where I am, China is.”