II. Gentle Money

　　Letter from Yang Xingfo to Fu Sinian: "Dear Brother Meng Zhen. I have just returned from Beijing and have been able to read the letter. In the past few weeks, I have been busy with the organic law, the budget, and the general office of the Institute, and I have been dizzy，as you can tell, the ￥50,000 for October was received separately. The funds for the Graduate School (30% in August and September and 70% in October) have not yet been received, so the funds for our Institute have not yet been called for. In November, a new budget of ￥100,000 has been made available for advance borrowing, and if it is formally approved again, then the job will be done. We are now pushing for the ￥5,000 from the University and waiting for the new budget in November, so that we can make sure that you do not feel the difficulty. However, there is very little money on deposit now, and all the institutions have strict boundaries on funding and are unwilling to move their loans. We must be frugal for the time being, and there will come a time when we will be able to make the best of our difficulties. I hope that the number of part-time fellows (especially those who are jointly employed by schools) will be reduced, so as not to compete with others for achievements. I am afraid that the future of Beiping will require the establishment of branches, and it will not be difficult to achieve (sic, I am afraid there is a mistake in the writing), and there will be no more records." On November 20, Yang Xingfo wrote to Fu Sinian again: "Brother Mengzhen got three books in a row, all have been presented to Mr. Cai. College in October, Mr. Cai allowed to Mr. Menglin to press hard. I am afraid that I may not be able to receive it early because it is not yet due in November, but I have already obtained permission from the Executive Yuan to borrow 100,000 yuan per month from November onwards before the budget is passed. Therefore, I may not be able to beg for a loan from the Graduate School this month. I have already wired￥1,000 in advance. I am going to Beijing tonight with Mr. Cai, and hope to get the 5,000 for October, so that I can remit it. As for Mr. Xin Shu Biao's payment, I have obtained Mr. Cai's consent to remit 1,000 yuan from the Guangxi survey fee first, and the remaining 1,000 yuan will be remitted when the Institute's funds are slightly more generous. The Institute of Historical Languages will be a great success if you do your best to carry it out. But in the meantime, I hope that you will pay close attention to it, so that the work will not be affected by financial difficulties in the middle of the process." A letter dated 21 January 1929 from Yang Xingfo to Fu Sinian again referred to Mr. Xin: "Brother knows Mr. Xin and hopes that he will advise him well." On the first page of the letter, a note was added: "The Institute of Language and History had better try to move to Beijing or Shanghai and Ping as soon as possible, so as not to be mixed up with the Institute of Language and History of the Chinese University. It is of utmost importance. I look forward to hearing from you."

　　The budget of the Institute of History and Philology from July 1928 to June 1929 totalled 9,255 yuan for the year, with rent accounting for 5%, purchase costs for 50% and salary and allowances for 34.1%. those who started receiving salaries around October 1928 were Fu Sian, Chen Yinke, Liu Hannong, Chang Hui, Li Jiarui, Liu Tianhua, Li Hannong, Zhu Fangpu and Huang Cui Bo, Dong Zubin started receiving salaries in the second half of 1928, Shi Guolu started receiving salaries in June 1928 and Yu Yongliang started receiving salaries in August 1928. He began to receive his salary in June 1928, and Yu Yongliang began to receive his salary in August 1928, and the Sichuan capital for Yu Yongliang to go to Paris was 800 yuan. Fu Si Nian was paid 400 yuan a month, and the lowest paid employee was paid 20 yuan a month. (Quoted in Su Tong-bing, Hand-planted Heather Has Become Shade - Fu S-nian and the Institute of Historical Studies, Academia Sinica, Taipei: Taiwan Student Bookstore Publishing Co Ltd, 2012)

　　On 9 January 1929, the 31st issue of the National Tsing Hua University Journal published the news of Mr. Xin Shu Biao's gift of 100 birds to the University and an extract of Mr. Xin's letter: "Since the last term of this year, I have organized a large team to go to the Yao Mountains in Guangxi to engage in biological collection; in two months, I have obtained nearly 500 specimens of several thousand , which are now being collated and studied. The report will be sent to me when I have completed it. The Yao Mountains are considered by the government of Guangxi to be a foreign area; among them there are five races of Yao, all of whom live in the mountains where they hunt, and have never been in contact with the world, and have many customs that preserve their differences. It is therefore not only a paradise for biologists, but also for anthropologists.I would like to send you a few photographs I took in the Lohia tribe, and I hope you will accept them. I have also asked my assistant professor, Mr. Ren Guorong, who has studied the birds of the two regions in great detail and is a good hunter. I have a famous book on ornithology here, which costs nearly a hundred Yuan, for him to study.) I would like to present you with a gift of a hundred birds of more than forty species of birds from the Yao Mountains; I hope you will let me know when you have received them. I have six skilled bird hunters, all of whom have been trained for a long time.  Here with Brother Meng Zhen and Jie Gang， I have been asked by them, to tell you about this. I have drafted this in the middle of a busy day, and I do not want to say it all. This is a tribute to the public security (my brother Shubiao's first 19 days)

　　Without the Institute of Philology and History(语史所), there is no Institute of History and Philology（史语所）, No interdisciplinary involvement in obtaining fieldwork updates without Sun Yat-sen University, Mr. Yang seems to have crossed the river, not understanding the actual situation, Fu Sian is the only one who can communicate with the higher leadership, the official sitting in the office to ponder how the southern barbarians that gang of boys are deceiving the leaders. Gu Jie Gang painstakingly planned to write signed in front of Fu, after preparing useless; Xin Shu Banner pioneering move but secretly but no praise.

　　From the beginning to the end, the Institute needed money, Gu Jie Gang wanted 300 yuan fees at their disposal, Fu Snian and Cai Yuanpei's letters speak of money, May 5, 1928 Fu Snian, Gu Jie Gang, Yang Zhensheng three preparators to Cai Yuanpei, Yang Xingfo report received three thousand yuan in early April, proposed a budget of 120,000 yuan per year, if the month of 10,000 still feel this difficult, the month of 5,000yuan is hard to make things happen. On April 2, 1928, Fushen proposed to invite Hu Shih to lecture in Guangzhou, and Fushen wrote a letter in which he took the initiative to talk about money, proposing to send 400 yuan to and from Sichuan, with the highest monthly salary of 400 yuan (or 500 yuan) for a teacher here. The letter at the end of November was about the money for October, which was already "frozen in water".

　　From the time he entered the Institute to the time he turned to Fu Sinian at the time of the fall of Hong Kong, Chen Yinkeng practically begged for money by letter, gentle money! In September 1928, Fu Sinian sent a letter to Chen Yinqian to discuss the collation of Qing cabinet materials, and began to talk about the Institute of subsidies to return part of the teaching workload of Tsinghua salary, from the date of the start of work in Beiping to make up. 14 August 1942, Fu Sinian replied to Chen Yinqian on the issue of reimbursement of travel expenses, the issue of salary increases, whether not to Li Zhuang to stay in Guilin to receive the salary of full-time researchers, are the issue of economics.

　　On 4 August 1930, Fu Sinian called Xiao Lunhui, an accountant who had stayed in Guangzhou to rent a place on the XueGu street next to Baiyuan, and the telegram was still about the money with Shi Guolu: "Pay Shi to investigate a number of things, and pay separately in addition to the items in the letter? Nian". Fu Sian also sent a telegram to Shi Guolu, which was initially forwarded by Zhuang Zexuan, according to a telegram dated 30 July 1930 with Shi Guolu's address at 16 Pak-tsi Road, Dongshan . Director General Yang was also anxious, complaining that Xin Shu Biao was using the money in Guangxi, and the institutional reform had just begun, with the head of the university being Mr. Chiang and changing to the Ministry of Education, and the institutional reform was all about not knowing where the money would be tomorrow.

　　In his postscript to Ren Guorong's 'Two Months of Observations in Yao Mountains', Gu Guogang mentions that Xin Shuping, Ren Guorong and other students and teachers from the Department of Biology conducted a biological specimen collection in the Yao Mountains of Guangxi from May to July 1928, while holding a linguistic and anthropological survey at night. The survey yielded more than 20,000 specimens of flora and fauna.

　　The money led to suspicion questions, Director General Yang secretly complained that Xin Shu Banner spent money recklessly, and it was difficult to distinguish between the future achievements of Sun Yat-sen University and the Institute of History and Philology. Mr. Xin, an old colleague of Chairman Mao's Hunan No. 1 Normal University, was a man of great ambition, abandoning his job as director of the political department of the Whampoa Military Academy to join the university as a professor, and first supporting the establishment of the "Northwest Agricultural and Forestry College" in 1932, which became the Northwest Agricultural College in April 1939. In 1945, when he reestablished Lanzhou University as its president, students of liberal arts science studied anthropology and ethnology earlier than students of liberal artsliberal arts, and "toiled hard and was unique", pioneering anthropology and ethnology for the Institute of History and Philology. On the same day, the Tsinghua University newspaper reported on Mr. Xin's gift of a bird and his investigation of Yaoshan, and in the same edition it published an interview with Director General Yang Xingfo on 30 December in Shanghai about the nature and content of the Academia Sinica. The letter dated 26 December 1928 from Cai Yuanpei to Feng Yuxian was intended to set up a Changde office in Henan to "excavate strata for archaeological purposes". The objective expression should be that the  Institute in Guangzhou had two branches in Henan, in Pengchang and Beiping. The higher-ups in charge of finance were not clear about the difference between fieldwork, archaeological sites and offices, and the subsidies for fieldwork were not expected to pass muster. Fortunately, according to Mr. Yang, the Institute of History and Philology did not have the worst record, as Mr. Yang believed that the Institute of History and Philology had completed 56% of its plan by that time, the Departments of Meteorology and Geology had completed 89% of the plan, and the three Institutes of Physical and Chemical Engineering had completed 23% of the plan.

The picture shows Baiyuan as seen from the street, taken on 28 February 2022.

　　（to be continued）

　　(All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from Nan Yue Ancient Post Road Network.)