Yan Fu

Yan Fu was born on January 8, 1854, in Fuzhou, Fujian province. 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. His courtesy name was Jidao (Zhang Renfeng’s article refers to him as Yan Fu (Youling)), and he was a native of Houguan county, Fujian; in English he called himself Yen Fuh.⁠[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

He was the son of a doctor, spent his childhood in Yangqi village, Fuzhou, and studied under Confucian scholars influenced by the Neo-Confucianism of the Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties, his early education being in the Confucian classics; the Encyclopedia of World Biography says he came of a scholar-gentry family. His ancestral home, known as Dafudi, and the Yan clan hall stand in Yangqi village.⁠[7][4][8][9]

Accounts of his birthplace and original name differ: Li Xuezhao writes that he was originally named Yan Chuanchu and was born on January 8, 1854, into a family of Confucian physicians at Cangxiazhou in Nantai, Fujian (now part of Fuzhou), his ancestral home being Houguan county, for which he was also called Yan Houguan; Lin Juanfang writes that his original name was Zongguang, with the courtesy name Youling, and that he later took the name Fu, with the courtesy name Jidao.⁠[10][11]

The Yan clan’s founding ancestor, Yan Huaiying, came to Fujian with Wang Shenzhi and his brothers in the Tianyou reign of the Tang dynasty and settled at Shangqi, in what is now Cangshan district, Fuzhou, building a two-courtyard house known as Dafudi; the present building of this former residence of Yan Fu was rebuilt in the late Ming or early Qing and covers 745 square metres.⁠[11]

Yan Fu entered a private school at the age of five and from 1863 studied under Huang Zongyi, a noted classical scholar from his home district.⁠[10]

His father died while he was a boy. Zhang Wei writes 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][12][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][12]

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.⁠[12][5][9][8][7]

His classmates Deng Shichang, Lin Taizeng, Liu Buchan and Fang Boqian later formed the core of much of the Beiyang Fleet. 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]

Li Xuezhao writes that his father, Yan Zhenxian, had high hopes of his son’s success in the examinations and gave weight to his traditional Confucian education; Yan Zhenxian died of an epidemic disease in 1866, leaving the family in financial straits and unable to pay a teacher for the boy’s schooling.⁠[10]

Li Xuezhao writes that he entered the school in first place and took the name Yan Zongguang, with the courtesy name Youling.⁠[10]

He graduated from the Fuzhou Navy Yard School (which the University of Zurich database 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. At the Navy Yard school he learned English and studied Western science; he also travelled widely, visiting Singapore and Japan, and in 1877 he went to England.⁠[5][4]

He graduated in 1871 with the highest grade and was then sent to sea for training aboard a warship, visiting ports in East and Southeast Asia including Nagasaki and Yokohama in Japan and Singapore, as well as Taiwan.⁠[10]

In 1877, aged 23, Yan Fu was one of 12 naval students sent by the Qing government to study in Britain; after a voyage of about a month they landed at Portsmouth on May 11, 1877. They were sent at public expense to the Royal Naval College to study navigation; from 1877 to 1879 he studied navigation first at Portsmouth and then at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich.⁠[13][3][5]

He was sent to England to study naval techniques but became interested in British government, jurisprudence, economics and sociology. Liang Zhan writes 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. Liu Kai, a professor at the University of Greenwich and chairman of the YanFu Foundation, says 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. At Greenwich he studied the natural sciences he later needed to translate Western books, and he kept reading English books and newspapers for the rest of his life.⁠[1][14][13][7]

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.⁠[15]

Li Xuezhao describes him as one of the second group of government-sponsored students sent abroad; Lin Juanfang describes him as one of the first students the Qing government sent to Europe.⁠[10][11]

Guo Songtao wrote in his diary that he greatly loved Youling’s talent but found his temperament too rash. In 1878, aged 24, Yan Fu was photographed in Paris.⁠[10]

In July 1879 he graduated from the Royal Naval College with first-class results (the Renditions author page says he attended the Greenwich college for two years) and returned to China the same year to teach at the Fuzhou Navy Yard School; Wang Zhongjiang says he taught there only briefly, while the University of Zurich database records him as a teacher there from 1879 to 1881.⁠[3][1][12][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.⁠[12][5][4][14]

Li Xuezhao writes that he worked at the Beiyang Naval Academy for the twenty years from 1880 to 1900 without ever being given real trust by Li Hongzhang; that in 1881 he first read The Study of Sociology by the British scholar Herbert Spencer; and that in 1889, after his promotion to head of the academy, he took the name Yan Fu, with the courtesy name Jidao. Chen Baochen observed that he headed the academy but had no part in important affairs, merely carrying out his duties.⁠[10]

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. After returning from Britain he studied classical Chinese culture and thought with Wu Rulun, a representative of the Tongcheng school.⁠[12][7]

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]

In the First 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. Their deaths shocked him; after the war he often woke at night in tears and wrote in letters that he was deeply agitated and that his hands shook too much to write.⁠[3][13]

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. In On Strength, in 1895, he was among the first to call the Chinese a sick man. China’s defeat by Japan in 1895 led him to advocate liberal social and political reform.⁠[3][14][2][1]

In 1896 he founded a Russian-language school in Tianjin and taught at the Tongyi School in Beijing; the University of Zurich database dates his translation of Thomas Henry Huxley as the Tianyan lun to 1896. 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][16]

Having read the manuscript, Kang Youwei praised Yan Fu as a man whose like he had never seen and the foremost master of Western learning in China.⁠[17]

In 1897 he co-founded the newspapers Guowen Bao and Guowen Huibian in Tianjin, and during the reform movement he founded the Guowen Bao, among other papers, to argue for reform to save the nation. In 1897, aged 43, he began serializing his translation the Tianyan lun in the Tianjin Guowen Bao, which he ran with others. 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][18][3][19]

Zhang ZhidongZhang ZhidongZhang Zhidong (1837–1909) was an official, scholar and educator of the late Qing dynasty and one of the leading figures of the Self-Strengthening movement. He served as governor of Shanxi and as governor-general of Guangdong and Guangxi and of Hubei and Hunan, founded iron and steel, arms and textile enterprises and modern schools in Hubei, wrote the Quanxue pian (Exhortation to Learning) in 1898, and in his last years was a grand councillor and grand secretary in Beijing.Open the full entry at once ordered his aide Tu Renshou to publish a rebuttal in the Shiwu Bao and pressed the paper’s manager, Wang Kangnian, to correct its line.⁠[19]

In November 1897 Yan Fu founded the Guowen Bao in Tianjin with Wang Xiuzhi and Xia Zengyou to promote reform; of the 42 editorials and commentaries the paper published from its founding to its closure, 27 have been identified as his.⁠[10]

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). It rendered the first two chapters of Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays and went through more than 30 editions within a decade.⁠[16][7]

In January and February 1898 he published an unsigned Draft Memorial to the Emperor in nine instalments in the Guowen Bao, and on September 14 of that year he was received in audience by the Guangxu Emperor. He took no direct part in the reform measures, and after the Hundred Days’ Reform failed he wrote a long poem, Weeping for Lin Wancui, mourning Lin Xu, one of the Six Gentlemen of the Wuxu year.⁠[12][2]

The Tianyan lun, formally published in 1898, carried a preface by Wu Rulun; in its translator’s notes Yan Fu set out faithfulness, comprehensibility and elegance (xin, da, ya) as the standards and principles of translation, and wrote that terms such as wujing (struggle among creatures), tianze (natural selection), chuneng and xiaoshi all began with him.⁠[10][17]

Zhao Jian points out that in the translator’s notes Yan Fu claimed these coinages but not the phrase survival of the fittest, which Liang Qichao attributed to him by writing that Yan Houguan had rendered it as wujing tianze, shizhe shengcun. In 1904, at the Chengzhong School, which Hu Shih had just entered, a teacher surnamed Yang set the essay topic “struggle among creatures and heavenly evolution, the survival of the fittest: explain its meaning”; Hu Shih later asked his elder brother for a courtesy name, and the brother chose Shizhi, from the survival of the fittest; on winning a government scholarship to study in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry in 1910 he formally took the name Hu Shih, with the courtesy name Shizhi.⁠[17]

In September 1898 the Guowen Bao ceased publication with the failure of the reform movement.⁠[10]

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]

In 1901 he was in charge of the Kaiping Mines in Tianjin.⁠[5]

In 1902 he was engaged by the translation bureau of the Imperial University in Beijing, and from 1902 to 1904 he was director (zongban) of its Bureau for the Compilation and Translation of Books.⁠[12][5][2]

Lin Juanfang writes that in 1902 he became chief compiler of the Imperial University’s translation bureau. In the same year, in his Letter to the Editor of the Waijiao Bao, he criticized the contemporary view that Chinese learning should be the substance and Western learning the application, with government as the root and technique as the branch, and argued that science was the source of all Western learning.⁠[11]

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.⁠[12]

From 1905 to 1906 he served as president of Fudan Public School in Shanghai; he led the institutions that are today Peking University and Fudan University.⁠[12][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. Zheng Xiaoxu’s diary for June 20, 1906, 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”; Yan Fu kept this couplet hanging in his study from then on.⁠[12][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.⁠[12][5]

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]

On January 17, 1910, the Qing court granted him the status of jinshi in letters, and in the same year he became a member of the Legislative Council (Zizhengyuan).⁠[12][5]

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]

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.⁠[14]

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), 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. After the 1911 revolution he opposed republicanism.⁠[9][1]

On December 2, 1911, Yan Fu met Yuan Shikai and put forward six proposals.⁠[20]

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. He was the first president of Peking University.⁠[21][18]

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.⁠[21]

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.⁠[21]

In mid-September 1912 Yuan Shikai engaged him as an adviser to the presidential office.⁠[20]

From March 6 to May 4, 1913, Yan Fu serialized “On Parties” (Shuo dang) in six instalments in the Beijing Pingbao, restating the argument of his essay on why citizens should not expect too much of the government: factions exist for fame and gain, and when everyone clings to his party against the public good, talk of the nation’s benefit and the people’s welfare is empty.⁠[20]

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.⁠[22]

Li Xuezhao writes that in 1913 Yan Fu initiated the Confucian Association and promoted the honouring of Confucius and the reading of the classics.⁠[10]

On February 15, 1914, at the request of Liang Qichao, Yan Fu published A Fair Assessment of the Social Contract (Minyue pingyi), a critique of Rousseau, in the Yongyan, the journal Liang edited. Wang Tiangen and Wang Lixing hold that, written by a political adviser of Yuan Shikai, the essay had a clear political target. On May 10, 1914, the first issue of the Jiayin, prepared in Tokyo, carried Zhang Shizhao’s reply, On Reading Yan Jidao’s Assessment of the Social Contract.⁠[20]

After the First World War broke out in 1914, Yan Fu was commissioned by the government to study the course of the war and translated and submitted the Juren rilan for the reference of policymakers.⁠[11]

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][14][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. 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 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]

Li Xuezhao writes that, having lent his name in 1915 to the Chouanhui, which supported Yuan Shikai’s restoration of the monarchy, Yan Fu in 1917 publicly declared his support for Zhang Xun’s restoration of the Qing.⁠[10]

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. In 1920 he also 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.⁠[2]

The will has six clauses; the last tells his heirs that whenever their own interests stand against those of the community they should count themselves light and the community weighty.⁠[11]

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][12][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 Encyclopedia of World Biography says that he died completely pessimistic about the effects of historical evolution on China.⁠[4]

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.⁠[18][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.⁠[14][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][18]

Li Xuezhao writes that around 1893 he began translating A. Michie’s Missionaries in China; that his translation of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, as the Yuan fu, was published in eight volumes by the Nanyang Public School Translation Bureau in Shanghai in 1901–1902; that the Qunji quanjie lun was published by the Commercial Press in Shanghai in 1903, the same year as the complete Qunxue siyan from the Wenming Translation Bureau in Shanghai; and that the Fayi appeared in seven volumes from the Commercial Press between 1904 and 1909.⁠[10]

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][14]

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.⁠[19][16]

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.⁠[16]

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. Yan Hu married Lin Mulan of the Lin family of Banqiao in Taiwan, and Yan Fu’s descendants consequently multiplied in Taiwan.⁠[2][23]

Yan Fu’s granddaughter Cecilia Koo (Yan Zhuoyun, also 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. She was a leading figure among women in Taiwan, and Koo Chen-fu, former chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation, helped to forge the cross-Strait understanding reached in 1992.⁠[24][23]

Another granddaughter, Yan Tingyun, wrote under the pen name Hua Yan and, as the author of The Lamp of Wisdom and other works, became a writer known on both sides of the Taiwan Strait; her husband, Yeh Ming-hsun, was president of the Central News Agency and chairman of Shih Hsin University. 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.⁠[23]

Cecilia Koo, a direct granddaughter of Yan Fu, moved to Taiwan with her family in 1946. She chaired Taiwan’s National Women’s League and served as honorary curator of the Yan Fu Calligraphy Museum in Fuzhou; she wrote the name plaque of Yan Fu’s ancestral home in Yangqi village, Gaishan town, Cangshan district, Fuzhou, and the characters of his name on the base of the statue of Yan Fu completed in 2024 at the old Mawei shipyard; the plaque “Glory of Our Clan” over the hall of his former residence in Langguan Lane was presented by Koo Chen-fu and her, and the residence has been listed among Fuzhou’s first model sites for Taiwan compatriots seeking their roots. In a message for the 170th anniversary of Yan Fu’s birth she wrote that, although her grandfather’s early death meant she never knew him, she had learned from her father’s teaching that he was versed in both Chinese and Western learning and gifted in letters and propriety.⁠[25]

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 Shih called him the first to introduce modern thought. China Daily says that Liang Qichao, Cai Yuanpei, Hu Shih 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][18]

On April 24, 2015, Li Keqiang, visiting Yan Fu’s former residence in Fuzhou, said that every Chinese person should remember Yan Fu, and a micro-film on Yan Fu opened the series Daring to Lead the World, devoted to 25 modern historical and cultural figures of Fujian. 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.⁠[23][13]

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; on March 24, 2021, in the centenary year of Yan Fu’s death, Xi Jinping visited his former residence in the Three Lanes and Seven Alleys district of Fuzhou. A commemoration of the 170th anniversary of Yan Fu’s birth was held in Fuzhou on January 5, 2024, attended by Wang Gangfeng, a professor at Fujian Normal University; Cecilia Koo, by then over a hundred years old, could not attend and sent a written message; 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][26][25]

Between 1993 and 2001 Fuzhou held five academic symposia on Yan Fu; in 2004, the 150th anniversary of his birth, Xi Jinping, then Party secretary of Zhejiang province, sent a letter of congratulation to the sixth symposium. In 2001 Xi Jinping edited the volume Science and Patriotism: New Explorations of Yan Fu’s Thought, writing in its preface that Yan Fu’s thought on science and patriotism was still not out of date.⁠[27][11]

Yan Fu’s former residence in Yangqi (Dafudi) has four exhibition halls, on rigorous scholarship, the call for reform, the pursuit of truth and patriotism, showing the curriculum of the Fuzhou Navy Yard School, facsimiles of the Zhibao, the history of the Tianyan lun’s circulation and Yan Fu’s will. The Yan Fu Calligraphy Museum on Nanhou Street in the Three Lanes and Seven Alleys district of Fuzhou holds more than 300 of his original letters, manuscripts and calligraphy works.⁠[11][25]