A train rumbles through the Chinese countryside as passenger Guy Alitto, a University of Chicago historian and well-known scholar in China, talks about his life on the way to visit the tomb of Confucius.
This scene opens the documentary film, The Last Confucian and Me, which has been widely viewed across China as part of a China Central TV series on foreigners who have made an impact on the country. Alitto returned to Beijing last month where he was recognized along with other featured foreigners for “contributions to Sino-International exchange.” The documentary also will be translated into Italian and aired on Italian TV.
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Alitto, who was interviewed at the University of Chicago’s Center in Beijing and other locations in the city, talks about his fascination with China and one of its forgotten heroes, Liang Shuming. A philosopher, rural reformer and political figure active throughout the first half of the 20th century, Liang had fallen out of favor after challenging Mao Zedong shortly after the Chinese People’s Republic was established. Alitto’s research helped to restore Liang’s rightful historical and national prominence.
The documentary is based on Alitto’s research and interviews with Liang. Alitto’s book, The Last Confucian: Liang Shu-ming and the Chinese Dilemma of Modernity, was first published in 1979, with several subsequent editions up to the present, in both Chinese and English. Liang had been viewed as a discard in “the dust-heap of history” until Alitto’s biography appeared. After the first edition was published, Alitto interviewed Liang in a series of recorded meetings, and published the transcripts in two volumes in 2006 and 2011.
“I didn’t even know he was still alive when I first published the book,” says Alitto, Associate Professor in History and East Asian Languages and Civilizations. Liang, who was living an anonymous existence in Beijing, learned of the book and contacted Alitto, who travelled to China for a number of personal visits. Their tape-recorded conversations are included in The Last Confucian and Me.
“It was fate that brought you together,” a young news reporter says to Alitto in the documentary. Fate was facilitated by fortunate circumstances for Alitto, who has an excellent command of Mandarin and became interested in China during a time of historic changes. The documentary traces his study of China as a graduate student in the 1960s, his quick proficiency in the language while studying in Taiwan, and his appointment as an interpreter for the first official Chinese delegations visiting the United States in 1972, after Nixon’s visit to China.
The documentary follows Alitto through vintage photographs of his work as an interpreter and scholar, and takes him back to a village where he did field work in the 1980s and 1990s. The film follows him as he visits the home of an elderly couple and shares tea and conversation with them about the old days of rural reconstruction reforms.
In interviews with Liang Shuming’s two sons, they describe the Spartan simplicity of their lives growing up in rural China. “I remember the plainness of the food,” one son remarks.
Alitto observes: “As things improve in China materially, there also may be an opening for improvements for society as well, not only in China but elsewhere.” When the first book of transcripts on Liang came out, it was given the English title “Has Mankind a Future?” The documentary closes with the answer: “We have a Future!”
—Prof. Chuan He
