65438-0964 Mr. Yan was hired by the Chinese University of Hong Kong as a tutor of New Asia College. According to his students' memories, the family travel expenses given by CUHK to senior lecturers at that time were the standard of flying, while Mr. Yan's family came to Hong Kong by boat, and the money saved was used to supplement their families. In fact, life in Yan Gengwang was already quite difficult before coming to Hong Kong. At that time, the salary of teaching in Hongkong University was several times higher than that in Taiwan Province Province. However, Yan Gengwang's visit to Hong Kong was more out of support for his mentor Qian Mu than a general "gold rush". During his stay in Hong Kong, in order to concentrate on studying and writing traffic maps, national history and human geography in the Tang Dynasty, Yan Gengwang, as always, insisted on the "three noes" during the period of the Institute of History and Language-not taking part-time classes, not participating in any activities (including academic conferences and speeches) and not writing popular articles to earn manuscript fees, on the grounds that spending too much time was not worth the candle.
1973 the Chinese university of hong kong has a vacancy for a chair professor (universities in hong kong adopt the English system, and each department has only one chair professor, while others are lecturers). At that time, Yan Gengwang, an academician of Academia Sinica, had high hopes. However, because the chief professor must be an administrator, in his view, administrative work is quite "fatal" to academic research, which is unusual. Before retiring at the age of 65, Yan Gengwang was only a senior lecturer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Yu Yingshi said in the article "A Simple Model of China Historians" that Mr. Yan's character of "indulgence, loneliness and self-restraint" in the face of fame and fortune is exactly the same as his bravery, diligence and persistence in academic research. This may be the "perseverance and stupidity" that Mr. Qian Mu thinks smart people lack most. Yu Yingshi once said that he would never forget anyone who had helped Yan Gengwang. The most typical example is his affection for Mr. Qian Mu and Mr. Fu Sinian, which is not only unforgettable, but even at the expense of personal health and even life!
According to Yan Gengwang's disciple Boyuan Liao, after Mr. Yan's death, his wife Duan Yilan said that Mr. Yan was very temperate in his daily life and could live to be over 90 years old. Guy is a scientist, and he hopes to live a long life to complete his large-scale research plan. Yan Gengwang got into the habit of going to bed early and getting up early since he was a child, and never burned the midnight oil to catch up with work. However, one year before his death, there was a fatal exception. 1995 At the beginning of this year, Fu Sinian Centennial Special Issue was collected by Taipei Institute of History and Linguistics. Thinking that his lifelong career knowledge benefited from his literacy, he ignored diseases such as high blood pressure and middle ear disorder, and "tried his best to catch up with his thesis in memory of Mr. Fu". I have been writing articles for more than two months in a row, often going to bed at midnight, and even working until two o'clock in the morning for several days to finish the manuscript. I changed my habits for decades when I was nearly 80 years old, so I was seriously ill after writing the article and my body was greatly damaged. Since then, I often walk unsteadily and get dizzy when I stand up. Two months later, the New Asia College of the Chinese University of Hong Kong held an academic seminar to commemorate the birth of Qian Mubailing. In order to show respect for the teacher, Yan Gengwang is still trying to cheer himself up. He goes to school by bus to attend the meeting every morning, but when he is preparing to speak, he is obviously out of his depth. He wants to tell the students to have a good rest after Mr. Qian's lecture, and then continue to do research when his spirit recovers. That summer, doctors diagnosed Yan Gengwang with mild Parkinson's symptoms and cerebral microvascular obstruction. Repeated medical examinations have no obvious effect, and the condition is good or bad. 65438+/kloc-0 went to Taiwan Province for treatment in June, 1996. During this period, his condition improved and he was discharged from the hospital. However, he had a sudden cerebral hemorrhage and died on 10/0/0/9, at the age of 8 1 year.
Yan's most proud disciple in his later years found that many unpublished articles of Mr. Yan had already been written (belonging to the sixth volume of Traffic Map Examination), but he did not use these finished products when posting the commemorative anthology, but rewrote the title (Population in Tang Dynasty) in order to provide his own academic research experience and sincerely repay Mr. Fu's kindness in meeting him that year. Li Qiwen couldn't help sighing: "Unfortunately, I paid the price of my life, and what I got was an irreparable loss. I used to think that the returned teachers were promoted by Mr. Fu, and returned to Mr. Fu fifty years later. It seems that there is no chance. "