“A Peking University Person”

3,373 characters2007.07.16

Peking University’s school emblem was designed by Mr. Lu Xun. It consists of two side-profile human figures and one front-facing standing human figure, forming the characters “北大” (PKU). There are different explanations of its specific meaning. According to legend, in Lu Xun’s own view, the human figure at the bottom represents the teachers and staff, while the two human figures above refer to the students, roughly implying that the teachers and staff serve the students. Of course, this meaning cannot possibly be accepted by today’s university senior administrators, who are turning universities into duck farms—treating teachers as hired labor and students as ducks—but even according to Peking University’s current official explanation, this emblem at least stands for “people-centered,” doesn’t it!

This reminds me of the famous saying by Mei Yiqi, president of Tsinghua University: “The greatness of a university lies not in the greatness of its buildings, but in the greatness of its masters.” It means precisely that a university is made up of people, not buildings. But today’s Tsinghua, and Peking University as well, along with countless Chinese universities, are all pursuing buildings while forgetting their masters. Occasionally, one consoles oneself by saying, “The age of masters has already passed” — but in fact, as I said earlier, it is not that there are no masters anymore, but that people have lost their attention to and reverence for masters.

What is reassuring is that, from my own personal experience, all kinds of masters, big and small, are still active on the Peking University campus. Although the administrative cadres have already quite plainly become the “owners” of Peking University’s “buildings,” the true owners of Peking University will always be the teachers and students. No matter how arrogant people like Zhang Weiying may be, all they can control is nothing more than money and power; but they cannot strangle the soul of Peking University — although Peking University is undergoing a crisis more severe than war and the Cultural Revolution, she will still remain as always.

Peking University’s tradition is neither conservatism nor reformism, but “inclusive coexistence.” She of course can open her arms to the age of globalization, but she can also preserve the most pedantic and obsolete things. The core of Peking University is “people,” and what is called human-centeredness is also the pursuit of “freedom.”

At Peking University, all sorts of people can be found. I do not feel sorry that so many people at Peking University are so utilitarian, worldly, even cunning and sinister, because I can also find those idealists, and I can also find kind, frank, and passionate people of Peking University. If any one type of person were missing, Peking University would be incomplete. It is precisely because people of all shapes and colors can coexist at Peking University, and can fully stretch their individuality, that Peking University has become such a perfect place.

Many people say that the most important thing in a university is “learning how to be a person”; others say that learning how to be a person ought to be completed in primary and secondary education, and that by the time one reaches university, one’s character and moral qualities are basically already formed. I have said both of these things before — indeed, education in a person’s basic moral cultivation should be a matter for primary and secondary school; university is not a place for moral cultivation — it is not meant to cultivate an ethical person, a cultural person, or a social person, but to cultivate a free person, that is, someone who reflects upon what it means to be human and takes responsibility for it.

July 16, 2007