辜鸿铭何许人也?他生在南洋,学在西洋,婚在东洋,仕在北洋。精通英、法、德、拉丁、希腊、马来亚等9种语言,获13个博士学位,倒读英文报纸嘲笑英国人,说美国人没有文化,第一个将中国的《论语》、《中庸》用英文和德文翻译到西方。20世纪初,西方人曾流传一句话:到中国可以不看三大殿,不可不看辜鸿铭。 Do you ever know a Chinese who speaks 9 different languages and holds 13 Doctorate degrees from various western universities? And further more, as a Chinese, who reads English newspaper upside down to mock those Britishes? He is the famous Chinese scholar, Gu H His important contributions are many traditional Chinese cultural works into English and G There was a saying in the west in the early 20th century that you may miss visiting the three grade palaces, instead, you must visit Gu if you come to C Ku was born in 1857 in Penang, M According to a report by Xiamen Daily, his ancestral hometown was in Xiangan, Xindian, P His father was a manager working in a rubber plantation owned by Mr Brown, a British subject who adopted Gu Hongming as his At the age of 13, Gu Hongming followed Mr Brown to Britain to receive his formal He achieved outstanding results and the University of Edinburgh awarded him a master’s degree in Thereafter, he went to Germany to study civil Engineering and obtained a diploma from the University of L Subsequently, he enrolled himself in the University of Paris to study F He returned to Penang in 1880 and came to Singapore to work as an assistant secretary for the Straits G In Singapore, he met Ma Jianzhong, a scholar learned in the Chinese He was awakened by him and finally realized the importance of the Chinese language and Three years later, he resigned from his post and returned to Penang where he started learning the Chinese language through private In 1882, he went to Hong Kong to further his studies, making much progress after several years of painstaking Though still could not gain full understanding of the profound ancient classics, he had already laid a solid foundation in mastering the Chinese In 1885, he went to China and was invited to the shogunate of Zhang Zhidong, to be in charge of western He was highly praised and entrusted with heavy In 1905, the “Huangpu Jun Governance” in Shanghai appointed him as S He served in the governance for three When Xuantong Emperor was restored, he was appointed as a “She Lang” and thereafter as a “Zoucheng” in the Ministry of Foreign A In January 1910, the Qing government conferred him the title of “Jinci” and in the same year, he relinquished all duties in the Foreign Affairs Ministry and assumed the post of Director of the Shanghai Nanyang C After the Xinhai Revolution, he pledged his loyalty to the Qing D He gave up all his official duties and went to B In 1915, he was appointed as a professor lecturing English Literature at the Beijing U Being a conservative, he advocated Confucianism and T During the “May 4th” Movement, he wrote many articles in English condemning the New Cultural M In 1924, he accepted the invitation by Dadong Cultural Association to lecture on “Oriental Culture” in Japan for three During which, he went to teach in Taiwan In the autumn of 1927, he returned to China from Japan and died in Beijing on 30 April 1928 at the age of Gu Hongming was a talented linguist fluent in English, German, French, Latin, Greek, Italian, and many other In particular, he commanded exquisite skills to write and speak English, German and French His literary works were mostly written in English and his proficiency in English language reached such a height that even the British admired him Lin Yutang had commented that in the past 200 years, none had surpassed the level of English language proficiency as that achieved by Gu H The remarks really made all Tonganese feel Today we have another Tonganese whose linguistic talent compares favourably with Gu H He is our clansman, Mr Lee Seng Giap, a veteran simultan