Gu Hongming's ancestral home is Tongan County, Fujian Province, and his ancestral home is Penang, British Malaysia, Nanyang. In his early years, he studied in Britain and Germany, claiming to be "all over the world all his life", that is, "born in Nanyang, studied in the West, married in the East and served in Beiyang". Gu Hongming has both eastern and western academic backgrounds, and is familiar with China's traditional studies, western science and many languages. He once translated three of the "Four Books"-The Analects of Confucius, The Doctrine of the Mean and The Great Learning into English and German and introduced them to the West. He was the first person to learn Chinese and Western languages in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China.