Table of Contents

Ⅰ 
Family and Early Life 
The People of Hui-chou 
My Family-the Hu Clan ofShang-chuang, Chi-hsi 
My Father 
Ⅱ 
Student Days in the Uruted States （1910-1917） 
Meeting People ofDifferent Faiths-My Early Student Life at Cornell University 
My Interest in American Politics 
From Agriculture to Philosophy 
I Became a Trained Public Speaker 
My Trainingin Parliamentary Procedure 
Cosmopolitanism, Pacifism and Internationalism-the Political Faith of a Young Student 
Columbia University （1915-1917） 
John Dewey and Pragmatism 
The Pragmatic Theory of Thinking 
Development of Methodology 
Thinking of a Language Reformin China 
Some Accidents that Led to a Revolution 
A Lonely Literary Experimental Work and a Revolutionary Manifesto 
Ⅲ 
Working for a Chinese Renaissance 
The Outbreak ofa Literary Revolution and Its Achievement 
Some Characteristics of the Literary Revolution 
The Chinese Renaissance and Its Four-fold Meaning 
A Political Interruption: "The May 4th Movement" 
"Science" and "Democracy" Defined 
"Concrete Problems v. Abstract Isms": 
My First Clash with the Marxists 
A Systematic Study of China's Cultural Heritage 
"A History of Chinese Philosophy" and Its Subsequent Researches,Particularly on Ch'an Buddhism 
Historical Research in the Popular Novels （1922-1933） 
Some Concluding Remarks on the Progress and Setbacks of the Chinese Renaissance Movement 
Glossary

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In those years ofrebuilding after the Taiping Rebellion, my father remarried and had three sons and three daughters; but his second wife, weakened by so many childbirths （two ofwhich were twins）, died in 1878. My father then decided not to remarry, in order to give himself less ofa familly burden and a greater measure of freedom of movement. So he remained unmarried for more than eleven years. 
In the meantime, my father had developed a strong interest in the study of Chinese geography, especially in the geography of the Chinese frontiers, an interest which had originated during those years when he was a student at the Lung-men Academy in Shanghai. He continued this study largely because of the eventful changes of his time-the important and rapidly changing international situation in the Far East. My father recorded that he was greatly shocked by the fact that the officialdom and even the intelligentsia were quite ignorant ofthe geography ofthe world, the geography ofthe Chinese frontiers, and in particular the geography of the three northeastern provinces now called Manchuriao. So he was determined to make it his own life work to study the geographical frontiers of the country. 
After devoting a few more years to the ordering of the troublesome domestic affairs ofhis large family, my father deaded to fiee the limited atmosphere ofthe clan and the local community, and to go to Peking seeking his own future in a wider world. In 1881, at the age of forty, he borrowed ioo silver dollars from a merchant cousin and sailed from Shanghai to Tientsin whence to Peking. From Peking, armed only with two letters of introduction, he travelled forty-two days into Manchuria and amved at Ning-ku-t'a, the headquarters of the Imperial Commissioner, Wu Ta-ch'eng, who was a great scholar by his own right, an archeologist and a statesman. My father told Commissioner Wu that he had not come to seek office or employment. He wanted only his permission and a passport to travel throughout Manchuria and to study the geography of the frontiers. Wu Ta-ch'eng was greatly impressed by my father, whom he took with him on his travels and official missions, especially on those occasions when he met the Russian commissar for the resettlement of the international boundary in 1882. In the same year Wu Ta-ch'eng officially appointed him a member of his Secretariat. Shortly thereafter, Commissioner Wu, without the knowledge of my father, sent to the throne a special memorial recommending my father, Hu Ch'uan, to the government as a man with unique qualifications for important service to the State. That recommendation was a great surprise to my father, who became greatly attached to Wu Ta-ch'eng, and was to assist him in many of his important missions in the years to come.