Yan Fu - Life

Life

Yan Fu studied at the Fujian Arsenal Academy (福州船政學堂) in Fuzhou, Fujian Province. In 1877–79 he studied at the Navy Academy in Greenwich, England. Upon his return to China, he was unable to pass the Imperial Civil Service Examination, while teaching at the Fujian Arsenal Academy and then Beiyang Naval Officers' School (北洋水師學堂) at Tianjin.

It was not until after the Chinese defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95, fought for control of Korea) that Yan Fu became famous. He is celebrated for his translations, including Thomas Huxley's Evolution and Ethics, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty and Herbert Spencer's Study of Sociology. Yan critiqued the ideas of Darwin and others, offering his own interpretations.

The ideas of "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest" were introduced to Chinese readers through Huxley's work. The former idea was famously rendered by Yan Fu into Chinese as tiānzé (天擇).

He became a respected scholar for his translations, and became politically active. In 1895 he was involved in the Gongche Shangshu movement. In 1912 he became the first principal of National Peking University (now Peking University).

He became a royalist and conservative who supported Yuan Shikai (袁世凱) and Zhang Xun (張勛) to proclaim themselves emperor in his later life. He also participated the foundation of Chouanhui (籌安會), an organization which supported restoring monarchy. He laughed at "New Literature Revolutionaries" such as Hu Shi (胡適).