Chen Jitong s two works, Chen Jitong s character evaluation

In the history of cultural relations between China and the West, Chen Jitong can be said to be an exemplary pioneer. On the one hand, he was an outstanding messenger of the Western transmission in middle schools, and was the first Chinese to publish Western works and gain sensational influence. Many of his French writings have brought Chinese culture and literature directly to Western readers, many of which were introduced to the West for the first time.

He is the first Chinese to have historically played an important role in the middle school westward transmission, which had previously been mostly played by Westerners. On the other hand, he was also an ambassador of Western learning and eastward learning. By founding newspapers and translating Western books, he introduced modern Western concepts of literature, politics, and law into China, promoting the renewal of literary concepts in the late Qing Dynasty and the spread of modern Western political thought.

Combining these two achievements, Chen Jitong can be called a two-way cultural envoy, and he alone undertakes the mission of disseminating cultural information to both China and the West. In thousands of years of cultural exchanges between China and the West, it is the first time that the Chinese have assumed such a role and undertaken such a mission, and in this sense, it is the efforts of this late Qing diplomat that have established a model for two-way cultural exchanges for later generations such as Gu Hongming and Lin Yutang. It's a pity that in a series of diplomatic activities, he really obeyed Li Hongzhang's "secret order" and took the Qing ** as his intention, and regarded himself as a strong military, but he asked him to do his own thing and act arbitrarily.

Under such circumstances, a military conflict between China and France is inevitable.

Chen Jitong is also an excellent poet and poetry translator, and is the author of poetry collections such as "Three Vehicles and Rubbing Guest Poetry Collection", "Lu Gou Yin" and "Qianyou Collection". In terms of cultural life, he first opened up the trend in the history of intermarriage between China and the West. At that time, China's international status was deteriorating, and the vast majority of Chinese were also unimpressed with the marriage between China and the West.

His French wife and his English lover are the only ones in a duel between two Western intellectual women for him.

In terms of education, in 1898, he supported the establishment of the first women's school in modern China, the Shanghai China Women's School. Contributed to modern education.

Politically, after the Gengzi Incident, he was one of the earliest proponents of the "North-South Mutual Guarantee". Moreover, his patriotic behavior is not limited to the pen bar. After the news of the signing of the contract between Maguan and Pei Zhongcha and the cession of Taiwan came out, Taiwan's public resentment boiled.

Japan has indicated that it will carry out armed reception. At this time, Chen Jitong, who was invited to Taiwan by Tang Jingsong, the acting governor of Taiwan, came to Taiwan. The Public International Law provides:

The land must be ceded to ask whether the inhabitants can obey or not", and "the people must obey before it can be regarded as a change of ownership". Chen Jitong proposed that the relevant provisions of public international law should be invoked early on, and the Taiwan people would declare "independence" on the grounds that they "refused to accept the cession of land," and then resist Japan's "armed acceptance" in the name of "independence." As a result, Taiwan's resistance to Japan became Taiwan's affair, which had nothing to do with the Qing court, and Taiwan seemed to be "independent" from China, but it could guarantee that Taiwan would always belong to China.

After the defeat, he was full of grief and indignation to write "The Four Laws of Hanging Taiwan", which was recited for a while.

A genius who was extremely rare in China in the 19th century, and the achievements of a vigorous cultural envoy, were forgotten, and people of insight in the fields of history and translation were called upon to study him.

In 1866, 15-year-old Chen Jitong was admitted to the former school of Qiushitang Art Bureau attached to the Fuzhou Shipbuilding Bureau. Most of the teachers in the school are French, teach in French, and the textbooks used are also French, so Chen Jitong has laid a solid foundation in French. In 1875, Chen Jitong graduated and was hired by the Harbour Administration because he was "the best in Western learning".

In the same year, he went to England and France with the Frenchman to visit and study, and returned to China at the end of 1876 as a teacher.

The following year, as a translator, he was sent to Europe as a translator to study "public law" at the French political school. Later, he served as Counsellor in Germany and France, Minister to France and Counsellor of Belgium, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands, and lived in Paris for 16 years.

As a result of his long-term work and residence in Europe, Chen Jitong is fluent in French, English, German and Latin, especially in the late Qing Dynasty, which is unique in China, and he also has a deep understanding of Western culture, and at the same time has a profound cultivation of Chinese culture. In order to let Westerners better understand and understand the Chinese, Chinese culture and their values, he wrote and translated 7 kinds of French documents, which were very influential in the West at that time. He also translated some French literature and legal texts.

He also presided over the co-editing of the "Fuze Design Manual" and co-edited the book "Technical Practice of Inducing Sensitization and Group Signaling".