Yan Fu

Yan Fu was born on January 8, 1854; BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry gives his birthplace as Fuzhou, Fujian province, and articles in The Beijing News and Wenzhai Bao give the same date. The Encyclopedia of World Biography gives the year 1853, and the University of Zurich database “China und der Westen” records him as born in 1853 at Yangqixiang in Houguan county, Fujian. The Beijing News article gives his courtesy name as Jidao and calls him a native of Houguan county, Fujian; Zhang Renfeng’s article refers to him as Yan Fu (Youling). China Daily says that he called himself Yen Fuh.⁠[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

China Daily describes him as the son of a doctor whose childhood home was in Yangqi village, Fuzhou, and says he studied under Confucian scholars influenced by the Neo-Confucianism of the Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties; the Encyclopedia of World Biography says he came of a scholar-gentry family, and the author page of Renditions, published by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, says his early education was in the Confucian classics. Miao Wei’s article in Xinmin Weekly says that his ancestral home, known as Dafudi, and the Yan clan hall stand in Yangqi village.⁠[7][4][8][9]

His father died while he was a boy. Zhang Wei’s article in Wenzhai Bao says that his father died of cholera when he was 13, leaving the family in difficulty; Wang Zhongjiang cites lines of Yan Fu’s own verse saying that he was fourteen when his father died and that his mother then supported the household; the Encyclopedia of World Biography dates his father’s death to 1866 and says it cut short the traditional education meant to lead him to the civil service examinations and an official career.⁠[3][10][4]

Zhang Wei writes that in the same year Shen Baozhen, the minister in charge of the Navy Yard, founded the Fuzhou Navy Yard School at Mawei in Fuzhou, offering successful candidates free board and medical care, four taels of silver a month and paid service in the navy after five years of study, and that Yan Fu entered with first place in the written examination. Wang Zhongjiang, quoting Yan Fu’s own account, writes that in 1866 Shen Baozhen opened the yard and recruited students with an essay on lifelong filial devotion to one’s parents, and that Yan Fu, then in mourning for his father, submitted an essay of several hundred characters which Shen placed first.⁠[3][10]

Sources date his entry differently: Wang Zhongjiang gives 1866, and the University of Zurich database records him studying English, arithmetic, geometry, algebra, trigonometry, physics, mechanics, chemistry and other subjects from 1866; Miao Wei writes that he entered the Fuzhou Navy Yard School in January 1867, and the Renditions author page says he passed its entrance examinations in 1867. China Daily says he enrolled at 14 and studied algebra, geometry, calculus, electromagnetism, optics, thermodynamics and chemistry in English from imported textbooks; the Renditions page says he spent five years at the school studying English, modern sciences and navigation.⁠[10][5][9][8][7]

Zhang Wei writes that his classmates Deng Shichang, Lin Taizeng, Liu Buchan and Fang Boqian later formed the core of much of the Beiyang Fleet. China Daily says that his fellow townsman and classmate Sa Zhenbing (1859–1952), later a well-known naval commander, recalled that he read widely, re-read some books, learned parts of them by heart and summarized his reflections.⁠[3][7]

The University of Zurich database records that he graduated from the Fuzhou Navy Yard School (which it calls the Fuzhou Arsenal School, or Naval Management School) in 1871 and served at sea from 1871 to 1876, sailing the East and South China Seas. The Encyclopedia of World Biography says that at the Navy Yard school he learned English and studied Western science, that he also travelled widely, visiting Singapore and Japan, and that in 1877 he went to England.⁠[5][4]

In 1877, aged 23, Yan Fu was one of 12 naval students sent by the Qing government to study in Britain; China Daily Europe says that after a voyage of about a month they landed at Portsmouth on May 11, 1877. Zhang Wei writes that they were sent at public expense to the Royal Naval College to study navigation; the University of Zurich database records that from 1877 to 1879 he studied navigation first at Portsmouth and then at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich.⁠[11][3][5]

Britannica says he was sent to England to study naval techniques but became interested in British government, jurisprudence, economics and sociology. Liang Zhan, writing in China Reading Weekly, says that in Britain he met Guo Songtao several times and praised the depth of Western learning, the physical strength of Westerners and the openness and leniency of the courts and prisons. China Daily Europe cites Liu Kai, a professor at the University of Greenwich and chairman of the YanFu Foundation, as saying that he attended a trial in a local court in Britain, where he saw plaintiff and defendant each defended by lawyers; the experience affected him deeply, and for several days afterwards he seemed lost in thought. China Daily says that at Greenwich he studied the natural sciences he later needed to translate Western books, and that he kept reading English books and newspapers for the rest of his life.⁠[1][12][11][7]

The website of the Old Royal Naval College says that much of China’s navy in the twentieth century was built by graduates of the Royal Naval College, first by figures such as Yan Fu at the end of the imperial dynasty.⁠[13]

Zhang Wei writes that in July 1879 he graduated from the Royal Naval College with first-class results and on his return taught at the Fuzhou Navy Yard School. Britannica dates his return to 1879; Wang Zhongjiang says he taught briefly at the school, and the University of Zurich database records him as a teacher there from 1879 to 1881. The Renditions author page says he attended the Greenwich college for two years.⁠[3][1][10][5][8]

Wang Zhongjiang writes that in 1880 Li HongzhangLi HongzhangLi Hongzhang (1823–1901) was a Chinese statesman, military commander and diplomat of the late Qing dynasty, the founder and commander of the Huai Army and one of the principal promoters of the Self-Strengthening Movement. From 1870 he served for many years as governor-general of Zhili and superintendent of trade for the northern ports, sponsored modern enterprises such as the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, the Kaiping mines, railways, telegraphs and the Beiyang Fleet, and signed treaties including the Treaty of Shimonoseki and the Boxer Protocol for the Qing government; judgments of him, in his lifetime and since, have been sharply divided.Open the full entry engaged him as chief instructor of the Beiyang Naval Academy, in practice with the duties of its head, and that in 1890 Li appointed him head (zongban) of the academy; he served there, in Tianjin, from 1880 to 1900. The University of Zurich database records him as a lecturer at the academy from 1881 to 1890 and its director from 1890 to 1899; the Encyclopedia of World Biography says he was superintendent of the Tientsin Naval Academy until 1906. Liang Zhan writes that although he taught at the academy for many years, his repeated failure in the civil examinations left him without a degree and kept Li Hongzhang from giving him important posts.⁠[10][5][4][12]

Wang Zhongjiang writes that, seeking an official career, he sat the civil service examinations four times in the nine years from 1885 to 1893, between the ages of 33 and 41, without success. China Daily likewise says he took the examinations four times and failed each time; it also says that after returning from Britain he studied classical Chinese culture and thought with Wu Rulun, a representative of the Tongcheng school.⁠[10][7]

Zhang Renfeng, writing in BiblioAsia, published by Singapore’s National Library Board, says that Yan Fu’s first wife, née Wang, died in 1892, after which he devoted himself to translating the Tianyan lun and other works of Western philosophy and social science.⁠[6]

Zhang Wei writes that in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 his former classmates, by then senior commanders in the fleet, were almost all lost: Deng Shichang and Liu Buchan died in action, Lin Taizeng killed himself and Fang Boqian was executed; after the war Yan Fu often woke at night in tears and wrote in letters that he was deeply agitated and that his hands shook too much to write. China Daily Europe says that the deaths of his former classmates in the war shocked him.⁠[3][11]

Zhang Wei writes that just after the lunar New Year of 1895 he published four essays in succession in the Tianjin Zhibao — On the Speed of World Change (Lun shibian zhi ji), On Strength (Yuan qiang), In Refutation of Han Yu (Pi Han) and On Our Salvation (Jiuwang juelun) — all calling for reform; Liang Zhan regards these essays as the beginning of his work as a thinker. The Beijing News notes that in On Strength, in 1895, he was among the first to call the Chinese a sick man. Britannica says that China’s defeat by Japan in 1895 led him to advocate liberal social and political reform.⁠[3][12][2][1]

The University of Zurich database records that in 1896 he founded a Russian-language school in Tianjin and taught at the Tongyi School in Beijing, and it dates his translation of Thomas Henry Huxley as the Tianyan lun to 1896. Mao Haijian’s lecture, as written up by The Paper, says that before the Tianyan lun was published he sent the manuscript to Liang QichaoLiang QichaoLiang Qichao (1873–1929) was a thinker, politician, journalist and scholar of the late Qing and early Republic, a disciple of Kang Youwei and a participant in the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898. After the reform failed he spent 14 years in exile in Japan, where he ran the journals Qingyi Bao and Xinmin Congbao; returning in 1912, he helped to found the Progressive Party, served the Beijing government as minister of justice and minister of finance, and in 1915–1916 opposed Yuan Shikai’s attempt to make himself emperor. After leaving politics at the end of 1917 he devoted himself to writing and teaching, was a tutor at the Tsinghua Academy of Chinese Learning and director of the Beijing Library, and left the collected works known as the Yinbingshi heji.Open the full entry, who showed it to Kang YouweiKang YouweiKang Youwei (1858–1927) was a Chinese scholar, political reformer and calligrapher of the late Qing and early Republican periods and a principal promoter of the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898. After the reform was reversed he spent more than a decade in exile, founded the Baohuanghui (Chinese Empire Reform Association) and argued for constitutional monarchy; in later life he campaigned to make Confucianism the state religion. His works include The Forged Classics, Confucius as a Reformer and the Datong shu (The Great Commonwealth).Open the full entry in Guangzhou that winter; Liang later wrote back to Yan Fu that Kang did not fully accept its argument about selecting the fit and preserving the good.⁠[5][14]

The University of Zurich database records that in 1897 he co-founded the newspapers Guowen Bao and Guowen Huibian in Tianjin; the Peking University History Museum says that during the reform movement he founded the Guowen Bao, among other papers, to argue for reform to save the nation. Zhang Wei writes that in 1897, aged 43, he began serializing his translation the Tianyan lun in the Tianjin Guowen Bao, which he ran with others. Zhang Chi, writing in Biographical Literature, says that the 23rd issue of the Shiwu Bao in 1897 reprinted In Refutation of Han Yu, first published in the Tianjin Zhibao, an essay attacking Han Yu’s idea of the ruler’s power, denouncing the so-called rulers since the Qin dynasty as thieves who had stolen the state, and calling for popular rights.⁠[5][15][3][16]

Mao Haijian says that Yan Fu translated part of Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics, added the ideas of Herbert Spencer and his own understanding, and produced the Tianyan lun, formally published in the 24th year of the Guangxu reign (1898). China Daily says that the Tianyan lun, published in 1898, rendered the first two chapters of Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays and went through more than 30 editions within a decade.⁠[14][7]

Wang Zhongjiang writes that in January and February 1898 he published an unsigned Draft Memorial to the Emperor in nine instalments in the Guowen Bao, and that on September 14 of that year he was received in audience by the Guangxu Emperor. The Beijing News says that he took no direct part in the reform measures, and that after the reform movement failed he wrote a long poem, Weeping for Lin Wancui, mourning Lin Xu, one of the Six Gentlemen of the Wuxu year.⁠[10][2]

Zhang Renfeng writes that in early summer 1900 Yan Fu married his second wife, the well-educated Zhu Mingli, in Shanghai; Kang Youwei wrote a poem on the occasion, prefaced with the remark that he had heard that Yan Youling had won a remarkable bride through his translation of the Tianyan lun.⁠[6]

The University of Zurich database records that in 1901 he was in charge of the Kaiping Mines in Tianjin.⁠[5]

Wang Zhongjiang writes that in 1902 he was engaged by the translation bureau of the Imperial University in Beijing; the University of Zurich database records him as director of its Bureau for the Compilation and Translation of Books from 1902 to 1904, and The Beijing News says he served as head of the bureau.⁠[10][5][2]

Wang Zhongjiang writes that in 1905 Sun Yat-sen, who had come to London from New York, heard that Yan Fu was also in London and made a point of calling on him; Sun said that human life was too short to wait for the river to run clear before acting, while Yan Fu held to gradual reform; Sun summed up the difference by saying that Yan Fu was an educator and he himself a revolutionary.⁠[10]

Wang Zhongjiang dates his post at Fudan Public School in Shanghai to 1905–1906; The Beijing News says he served as its president, and China Daily says he once led the institutions that are today Peking University and Fudan University.⁠[10][2][7]

Wang Zhongjiang dates his post at the Anhui Higher School to 1906–1907; the University of Zurich database records that in 1906 he became head of the Anhui Higher Normal School and was put in charge of examining students returned from abroad; The Beijing News says he was president of the Anqing Higher Normal School. Miao Wei cites Zheng Xiaoxu’s diary for June 20, 1906, which records Yan Youling (Yan Fu) calling to ask him to write out the couplet “Should a true king arise, he will come to learn from it; even if a sage arises, he will not change my words”; Miao writes that Yan Fu kept this couplet hanging in his study from then on.⁠[10][5][2][9]

Wang Zhongjiang dates his post at the Ministry of Education’s Bureau for the Standardization of Terminology to 1908; the University of Zurich database records him as its head from 1908 to 1911, compiling dictionaries and terminologies.⁠[10][5]

The University of Zurich database records that in 1909 he became an adviser to the Committee for Drawing up Regulations for Constitutional Government and took advisory roles on state finances and for the Fujian provincial government.⁠[5]

Wang Zhongjiang writes that on January 17, 1910, the Qing court granted him the status of jinshi in letters. The University of Zurich database records that in 1910 he became a member of the Legislative Council (Zizhengyuan).⁠[10][5]

Miao Wei writes that Yan Fu’s diary for September 28, 1911, records a visit to the office of the Imperial Guard to settle the national music; the Qing court had chosen several tunes from imperial hymns used under the Kangxi and Qianlong emperors and asked him to write the words, and about ten days after the anthem was settled the 1911 Revolution broke out.⁠[9]

Liang Zhan writes that on November 7, 1911, he wrote to G. E. Morrison, the Beijing correspondent of The Times, criticizing the revolutionaries who were overthrowing the Qing monarchy for adopting a republic too hastily and proposing that the monarchy be kept and bound by a constitution; Morrison published the letter anonymously in The Times.⁠[12]

Miao Wei writes that he travelled south from Beijing by train together with the provincial delegates named by Yuan ShikaiYuan ShikaiYuan Shikai (1859–1916) was a Chinese army leader and reformist minister of the late Qing dynasty and the first president of the Republic of China, from 1912 to 1916. The modern army he trained at Xiaozhan, Tianjin, grew into the Beiyang Army; in 1915–1916 he proclaimed a monarchy with himself as emperor, cancelled it in March 1916 and died on June 6 of that year.Open the full entry, reaching Hankou on December 11 of the xinhai year (1911), as the article dates it, where he noted that popular feeling mostly favoured the revolutionary army; on the 12th he crossed the river to Wuchang and went with Tang Shaoyi and others to the Qingshan woollen mill, where they met Li YuanhongLi YuanhongLi Yuanhong (1864–1928) was a naval engineer officer and a commander of the Hubei New Army in the late Qing who became military governor of the Hubei Military Government after the Wuchang Uprising of 1911, served as vice president in the early Republic and was twice President of the Republic of China, in 1916–1917 and 1922–1923; in his last years he lived in Tianjin and invested in industry, and he died there in 1928 and was buried at Wuchang in 1935.Open the full entry, military governor of Hubei and a graduate of the engine-room course of the Beiyang Naval Academy in 1888, and Yan Fu was moved to tears. Britannica says that after the 1911 revolution he opposed republicanism.⁠[9][1]

Wang Xiaoqiu, writing in the Guangming Daily, says that on February 25, 1912, the provisional president ordered Yan Fu to act as superintendent of the Imperial University; on April 7 he obtained a loan of 70,000 taels from the Russo-Chinese Bank, which allowed the university to open for classes on May 15. On May 3 the Ministry of Education asked the provisional president, Yuan Shikai, to rename the Imperial University as Peking University, with its superintendent restyled president, and to appoint Yan Fu, the superintendent and dean of letters, as acting president; Yuan approved and issued the appointment the same day. The Peking University History Museum calls him the first president of Peking University, appointed in 1912.⁠[17][15]

Wang Xiaoqiu writes that Yan Fu, the Minister of Education Cai Yuanpei and a representative of the foreign teachers spoke at the opening ceremony on May 15. When financial difficulties led the Ministries of Finance and Education to order that all salaries above 60 yuan be paid at 60 yuan for the time being, Yan Fu voluntarily cut his own salary to 60 yuan but argued for keeping the other staff of the university on their existing pay; he submitted to the Ministry of Education a memorandum arguing that Peking University must not be closed, followed by a memorandum on reforming its faculties (a copy of the first and the second itself are held in the Peking University Archives), and the ministry withdrew its plan to wind the university up.⁠[17]

Wang Xiaoqiu writes that Yan Fu formally resigned as president on October 7, 1912, after only about half a year; after his resignation Yuan Shikai appointed Zhang Shizhao president, and students protested, asking Yan Fu to stay and opposing Zhang.⁠[17]

Zou Xiaozhan, writing in Chinese Culture Research, says that on August 15, 1913, as the National Assembly began drafting a constitution, Chen Huanzhang, Yan Fu, Liang Qichao, Wang Shitong and others petitioned it in the name of the Confucian Association to make Confucianism the state religion.⁠[18]

Zhang Wei writes that the Chouanhui (Society to Plan for Stability) was founded on August 14, 1915, to promote Yuan Shikai’s bid to become emperor, and that the last of the six names on its list of founders was Yan Fu’s. Liang Zhan writes that in August 1915 he let his name be listed, at Yang Du’s invitation, in the society formed at Yuan Shikai’s behest, but took no part in any of its activities; The Beijing News, by contrast, says that he supported Yuan’s dissolution of the parliament and attended the society.⁠[3][12][2]

Zhang Wei cites the later account of Yan Fu’s granddaughter Yan Tingyun that he was misled by Yang Du and coerced by Yuan Shikai into lending his name to the list of founders; Zhang regards that account as having some basis, since Yan Fu did indeed lend only his name and did nothing for the society, but notes that once listed among its six founders he never asked to withdraw. Britannica says he supported Yuan Shikai’s attempt to restore the monarchy; the Encyclopedia of World Biography says he lent his reputation and advice to Yuan’s regime.⁠[3][1][4]

Miao Wei writes that in 1920 Yan Fu retired to his home province: the ship he had boarded in Shanghai two days earlier entered the Min River and anchored off the Luoxing Pagoda at Mawei at 11 a.m. on October 29, and on October 30 he moved into a house in Langguan Lane arranged for him by Li Houji, the military governor of Fujian; his lung disease flared up often, and he had come home to escape the winter. China Daily says that in 1920 he wrote a poem celebrating the birth of a grandson, whose last line asks the child, once the country has found peace and prosperity, not to forget to come to his grave and tell him.⁠[9][7]

The Beijing News says that his health declined steadily after he turned fifty and that by October 1921 a cough and asthma, together with the opium he took to relieve the suffering, had become the two worst torments of his life; it also says that his diaries, in Chinese and English, record that in his late years he smoked opium and took heroin. On October 3, 1921, he wrote his will in advance; its first injunction was that his heirs should understand that China would not perish, and that the old ways could be adjusted but must never be abandoned. China Daily likewise says that in his will of October 1921 he wrote that China would not perish and that its existing traditions would be reformed but should not be dropped completely.⁠[2][7]

Yan Fu died on October 27, 1921. The Beijing News says he died at his house in Langguan Lane, Fuzhou, aged 67, and that of his five sons and four daughters only his second daughter, Yan Qiu, was at his side; Zhang Wei says he died in Langguan Lane in Fuzhou at the age of 69; Britannica gives Fuzhou as the place of death. Wang Zhongjiang, by contrast, says he died in his home village of Yangqi in Fujian, and the University of Zurich database also gives Yangqixiang in Houguan as the place of death.⁠[2][3][1][10][5]

Miao Wei writes that he was buried in a tomb about a kilometre’s walk along a stream from the ancestral home in Yangqi village, built during his lifetime, its stele inscribed in his own hand as the tomb of Mr. Yan Jidao of Houguan of the Qing, the word Qing showing, in Miao’s view, that he regarded himself as a subject of the Qing; the four-character motto weishi zhi an is carved in large characters on the cross-stone in front; the site, originally only 200 square metres, was enlarged and restored from 1988.⁠[9]

The translations listed in the University of Zurich database, with their years, include a work catalogued under Michie (1891), Huxley as the Tianyan lun (1896), Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations as the Yuan fu (1902), John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (1903), Spencer’s The Study of Sociology (1903), Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws (1904), a work catalogued under Jenks (1907), chapters 1–4 of the Gospel of Mark (1908), Jevons’s primer of logic (1909), Mill’s logic as the Mule mingxue (1912–1921), an English grammar (1913) and a work catalogued under Westharp (1914). The Encyclopedia of World Biography says he translated eight major works between 1895 and 1908 and gives the years as 1896 for Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics, 1899 for Mill’s On Liberty, 1900 for Smith’s Wealth of Nations, 1903 for Spencer’s Study of Sociology and 1905 for Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws. The Beijing News mentions among his translations the Tianyan lun (Evolution and Ethics), the Qunxue siyan (The Study of Sociology), the Fayi and the Mule mingxue; China Daily says he rendered Mill’s On Liberty as the Qunji quanjie lun.⁠[5][4][2][7]

The Peking University History Museum says he proposed faithfulness, comprehensibility and elegance (xin, da, ya) as the standards of translation, and that his translations, such as the Tianyan lun and the Yuan fu, systematically introduced Western scientific and democratic thought; the University of Zurich database, under the 1896 Tianyan lun, records his statement that three things are hard to achieve in translation — faithfulness, comprehensibility and elegance — and dates his introduction of the three principles to 1898.⁠[15][5]

Liang Zhan writes that Yan Fu rendered evolution as tianyan rather than jinhua, the term later in general use, and judges that in translating the Tianyan lun he left out Huxley’s whole line of argument and brought out, between the lines and in his commentary, the differences between Spencer and Huxley. China Daily cites Wang Gangfeng, a professor at the School of Marxism of Fujian Normal University, as saying that he avoided word-for-word translation and, when paraphrasing, made the text serve his purpose of raising awareness of the country’s crisis; the paper itself says that in his translator’s notes to the Tianyan lun he quoted Herbert Spencer’s thinking on social Darwinism to complement Huxley’s views, arguing that weak countries should strengthen themselves and fight rather than wait for their demise, and that his translation, with its elegant prose and rhythm, belonged to the writing style of the pre-Qin period. The Beijing News says he rendered new Western terms through old Chinese concepts.⁠[12][7][2]

The Renditions author page says that in his late years he wrote commentaries on the Daode jing in Wang Bi’s edition and on the Zhuangzi, and that he wrote poetry in the shi and ci forms; Britannica says two collections of his poems were published after his death. China Daily says he reinterpreted the I Ching, the Tao Te Ching and the Zhuangzi from Western perspectives, wrote articles analysing the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, supplied information on the First World War to policymakers, and is believed to have been the first scholar to introduce classical German philosophy, specifically Hegel’s, systematically to Chinese youth. The Peking University History Museum says his writings are collected in the Yan Fu ji, among other editions.⁠[8][1][7][15]

Britannica says he sought to show that the wealth and power of the West came from its ideas and institutions rather than from technologies such as gunmaking, and that his understanding of Darwinism led him to believe that change should come gradually, through the thinking of China’s elite, rather than by revolution. Liang Zhan writes that he saw freedom as the lifeblood of the West’s advantage over China and traced the Western idea of freedom to religion rather than science; he held freedom as the substance and democracy as its application, and regarded the people’s intelligence, strength and morals as the foundation of national wealth and power.⁠[1][12]

Zhang Chi writes that Liang Qichao wrote to Yan Fu that no country could stand without a religion, and that later, persuaded by Yan Fu, Huang ZunxianHuang ZunxianHuang Zunxian (1848–1905) was a late-Qing poet, diplomat and reformer who served as counselor of the Chinese legation in Japan, consul-general in San Francisco, counselor of the legation in London and consul-general in Singapore. He wrote the Riben guozhi (Treatises on Japan) and the Riben zashishi (Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects from Japan), and his collected poems, which brought colloquial language and new subjects into Chinese verse, made him a leading figure of the revolution in poetry; in 1897–1898 he took part in the reforms in Hunan, and after the coup of 1898 he was dismissed and returned home.Open the full entry and other friends that the teaching could not and need not be protected, Liang gradually gave up the idea of protecting Confucianism as a religion. Mao Haijian says that Yan Fu held that Western democracy had grown from seeds present since early times, while a country under sole monarchical rule could not pass from monarchy to popular rule even in a hundred million years of evolution, and that Liang Qichao concluded from this that Yan Fu’s theory was mistaken.⁠[16][14]

The Beijing News says that as early as the period of the 1911 Revolution he published his Lectures on Politics, an assessment of the Social Contract and other pieces criticizing Rousseau’s liberal ideas and the disorder they had produced in the 1911 Revolution; the University of Zurich database dates his essay on Rousseau’s Social Contract to 1915. The Beijing News also says that in the early Republic he opposed parliamentary democracy, endorsed Yuan Shikai’s authoritarian politics and advocated honouring Confucius and protecting the Confucian teaching. The Encyclopedia of World Biography says he opposed the revolutionaries who overthrew the Qing dynasty and became disillusioned with the West after the First World War; Britannica says that in his late years he rejected his earlier stance on Western thought and turned to Confucianism and ancient Chinese culture. China Daily says he argued that China’s survival depended on its millennia-old civilization. Zhang Wei sums up three reasons for his support of Yuan Shikai: confidence in Yuan’s abilities, disappointment with the situation after the 1911 Revolution, and a preference for constitutional monarchy shaped by his years in Britain.⁠[2][5][4][1][7][3]

Mao Haijian says that after Yan Fu’s death Kang Youwei, in a lecture, cited a letter of Yan Fu’s saying that in his late years Yan Fu judged that three centuries of European civilization had valued only material things and gained nothing but killing, selfishness and shamelessness, and that looking back on the way of Confucius he found it boundless, adding that this was not one man’s private view but the common view of European and American scholars. Mao Haijian holds that, Yan Fu being dead, Kang deliberately avoided attacking his old friend and separated him from the idea of tianyan, which intellectuals of the time regarded as Yan Fu’s greatest contribution.⁠[14]

The Beijing News says that although he admired Western independence and freedom, he held that marriage existed to maintain the ancestral sacrifices, serve one’s parents and continue the line and so had to follow the parents’ wishes, a view whose effects his eldest son Yan Qu and third son Yan Hu bore all their lives. China News Service says that Yan Hu married Lin Mulan of the Lin family of Banqiao in Taiwan, and that Yan Fu’s descendants consequently multiplied in Taiwan.⁠[2][19]

A report from the Straits Herald carried by Guangming Online says that Yan Fu’s granddaughter Yan Zhuoyun (Cecilia Yen Koo), eldest daughter of Yan Shuxia and the third of Yan Fu’s granddaughters, was born in 1920 in Langguan Lane, Fuzhou, and attended the Jinde Primary School there; in 1941 she moved to Shanghai with her mother, entered the Nanyang Model Middle School and then St. John’s University in Shanghai; she went to Taiwan in 1946 and in 1949 married Koo Chen-fu at Zhongshan Hall in Taipei, with Lien Chen-tung as witness, and they had three sons and three daughters; she died on February 4, 2025, aged 105. China News Service calls her a leading figure among women in Taiwan and says that Koo Chen-fu, former chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation, helped to forge the cross-Strait understanding reached in 1992.⁠[20][19]

China News Service says that another granddaughter, Yan Tingyun, is a writer known on both sides of the Taiwan Strait under the pen name Hua Yan, author of The Lamp of Wisdom and other works, and that her husband, Yeh Ming-hsun, was president of the Central News Agency and chairman of Shih Hsin University. The report also says that Yan Fu, a graduate of the Mawei Navy Yard School and one of the earliest members of China’s modern navy, surveyed Taiwan’s coastal defences in his lifetime and contributed historically to defining the island’s coastline on the map.⁠[19]

Zhang Wei writes that Kang Youwei called him the foremost master of Western learning, Liang Qichao called him a first-rank figure in both Chinese and Western learning, and Hu Shi called him the first to introduce modern thought. China Daily says that Liang Qichao, Cai Yuanpei, Hu Shi and Mao Zedong all praised his contribution; the American historian Benjamin Schwartz wrote the monograph In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West, with an introduction by the American political scientist Louis Hartz; the Taiwanese historian Max Ko-wu Huang divides his introduction of Western thought into four parts; Ouyang Zhesheng, a professor of history at Peking University, holds that each of his translations had a clear practical purpose; and Shen Guowei, a professor of linguistics at Kansai University in Japan, observed in a 2019 interview with the Shanghai Review of Books that the subjects and terms he translated did not yet exist in China. The Peking University History Museum calls him an Enlightenment thinker of far-reaching influence in modern China and a transmitter of Western learning.⁠[3][7][15]

China News Service says that on April 24, 2015, Li Keqiang, visiting Yan Fu’s former residence in Fuzhou, said that every Chinese person should remember Yan Fu, and that a micro-film on Yan Fu opened the series Daring to Lead the World, devoted to 25 modern historical and cultural figures of Fujian. China Daily Europe says that in September 2015, during the third round of the China-UK People-to-People Dialogue, the YanFu Foundation and the Greenwich Foundation staged the exhibition Yan Fu and Chinese Imperial Students at the Royal Naval College.⁠[19][11]

China Daily says that during his years in leadership posts in Fuzhou and Fujian province, Xi Jinping in December 1997 commended Yan Fu’s scholarship, reforms, pursuit of truth, patriotism and efforts to revitalize the nation, and in November 2001 praised his patriotic sentiments and enlightened thinking; in 2021, the centenary of Yan Fu’s death, Xi Jinping visited his former residence in the Three Lanes and Seven Alleys district of Fuzhou. The paper also says that a commemoration of the 170th anniversary of Yan Fu’s birth was held in Fuzhou on January 5, 2024, attended by Wang Gangfeng, and that Yan Zhuoyun, then 99, sent a letter to it; on January 6 a Min opera commemorating Yan Fu premiered at his former residence in the Three Lanes and Seven Alleys; and Tao Youlan, head of the translation department of Fudan University, launched a programme in which eight scholars from eight universities guide students through eight of Yan Fu’s translations.⁠[7]