Ch'en Yuan 陳垣 (1880-), historian, was president of Fu-jen University for many years after 1 929. He was known for his studies of the Yuan period and of the history of religion in China. In 1952 he became president of Peking Normal University, which absorbed the facilities of Fu-jen. Little is known of Ch'en Yuan's childhood except that he was born in Hsinhui (Sunwui), Kwangtung. Ch'en became a chü-jen in 1898, the year of the reform movement led by his fellow provincials K'ang Yu-wei and Liang Ch'i-ch'aq (qq.v.). In the early years of the republic, he was elected to the Parliament at Peking. From December 1921 to June 1922 he served as vice minister of education in the Peking government. Thereafter he eschewed politics and devoted himself to education. In January 1926, while on the faculty of Yenching University, Ch'en, whose religious affiliation has never been determined, was asked to head the Fu-jen She, a preparatory school founded the previous year in Peking by the Benedictine Order (United States). When Fu-jen became a university in June 1927, Ch'en was made its vice president. In 1928 he was appointed director of the newly established Peiping branch of the Harvard- Yenching Institute. Ch'en's formal connection with Yenching ended about 1929, when he became president of Fu-jen University. By then his academic reputation was such that he was invited to become a member of the research institute of history of the newly established National Academy of Peiping [see Li Shuhua). During Ch'en Yuan's administration, Fu-jen began a program of physical and academic expansion. In 1929 students of the university could matriculate in one of its three colleges humanities, natural sciences, and education. They also could receive instruction in premedical or fine arts courses. Its faculty included such men as Liu Fu, as dean of studies; Shen Chien-shih, as dean of the college of humanities; Chang Huai, as dean of the college of education; and Ying Ch'ien-li, the son of Ying Lien-chih, as secretary general.

In August 1933 the Vatican transferred the sponsorship of Fu-jen from the Benedictine Order to the Society of the Divine Word when it became clear that the Benedictines, because of the economic depression in the United States, could no longer sustain the financial burden of Fu-jen's expansion. In 1935 a seminary was established in Fu-jen for the advanced training of Chinese priests. In June 1937 permission was granted by the ministry of education for the creation of graduate divisions in the colleges of humanities and natural sciences.

The outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937 interrupted Fu-jen's steady growth. After Peiping was lost to the Japanese, universities with foreign connections were advised by the ministry of education of the National Government to maintain themselves under enemy occupation for the sake of Chinese youth, to act together in upholding the principles of administrative independence and academic freedom, and to refuse to display the flag of the puppet regime.

As the war continued, the faculty and student body of Fu-jen, led by the deans, Shen Chienshih and Chang Huai, and by the secretary general, Ying Ch'ien-li, organized an underground resistance group called the Yen-she in the spring of 1939. The aims of the group were to rally the universities of north China to avoid cooperation with the puppet regime and to assist high school and college graduates in escaping to Free China. The Yen-she later succeeded in contacting the National Government at Chungking, which gave it financial support; its name was changed to the North China Cultural and Educational Association, with Shen Chien-shih as president and Ying Ch'ien-li as director general. In 1940 Ying Ch'ien-li joined the Kuomintang; he was assigned responsibility for carrying out Kuomintang cultural directives in the Peiping area under the cover of Fu-jen's foreign connections. Ch'en Yuan gave indirect and personal support to the resistance group led by his subordinates, although, under the circumstances, he could not be identified with it.

By 1941 the university administration had realized that a crisis in American-Japanese relations was imminent. It was then decided that American members of the faculty should be withdrawn and replaced by German nationals. When the War in the Pacific began, Fu-jen escaped the fate of Yenching University and of the Peking Union Medical College, which were taken over by the puppet regime. In the summer of 1942 Ying Ch'ien-li was appointed secretary general of the Peiping branch of the Kuomintang. Fu-jen thereby became the Kuomintang headquarters in Peiping and the liaison center for Chungking agents. At the end of 1 942 increased enemy pressure forced Shen Chien-shih to flee to Nationalist-controlled west China. Ying Ch'ien-li and a number of professors were incarcerated by the puppet government, but were released in April 1943 for lack of evidence. Fu-jen continued to be a center of anti-Japanese activities. In March 1944 the Japanese authorities in north China attempted to suppress these anti- Japanese elements. More than 300 teachers and students were arrested in Peiping alone. Although most of them were set free in June, 26 people received prison terms from the Japanese military court. Of these underground leaders, 14 were professors and students at Fu-jen. Ying Ch'ien-li, Chang Huai. and two other Fu-jen members were given the maximum penalty of 15 years imprisonment. In 1945-46 Ch'en Yuan completed his T'ung-chien Hu-chu piao-wei [the true meaning of Hu's annotations revealed], a study of the patriotism of Hu San-hsing ( 1230— 1287), a Sung scholar living under Mongol rule who had revealed his opposition to it in seemingly innocuous commentaries on the Tzu-chih t'ung-chien. With moving eloquence, Ch'en dedicated his study to his arrested colleagues. Fortunately, the Japanese occupation of China was of much shorter duration than the Mongol conquest. After the Japanese defeat in 1945, the National Government publicly commended Fu-jen's role during the war. After peace had been restored, the university again embarked upon a program of expansion. A college of agriculture was founded in the fall of 1946, and plans were made for a medical school. However, civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communists flared up soon after the repatriation of the Japanese troops. By the autumn of 1948 the decision had been reached to evacuate the university to Taiwan, but the rapid Communist victories prevented the scheme from being carried out. Ch'en Yuan remained in Peiping when the Communists took over that city.

In 1952 the Peking Government thoroughly reorganized the educational system of the country. Private educational institutions were no longer permitted to function. Ch'en Yuan, perhaps because of his academic reputation and his ability to adjust to new circumstances, was installed as president of Peking Normal University, which took over Fu-jen's facilities. Ch'en's cooperation with the new government was rewarded in 1954 by his election as a delegate from Kwangtung province to the National People's Congress. In 1955 he was appointed to the policy-making committee of the department of philosophy and social sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 1959 he was reelected to the National People's Congress. About this time he joined the Communist party. In the 1950's an article over Ch'en's signature appeared attacking Hu Shih. Many observers, however, doubted that it was written by Ch'en.

Ch'en Yuan was a recognized authority on the history of the Yuan period. As early as 1920 his Yuan Yeh-li-k'o-wen k'ao [study of the arkagün] , together with the K'ai-feng i-tz u-lo-yeh-chiao k'ao [Islamism in Kaifeng], identified the term arkagün as applicable first to Nestorians and later to all types of Christians. His Yuan Hsi-yüjen hua-hua k'ao [sinification of the Western Regions under the Yuan dynasty] was highly commended by the Japanese scholar Kuwabara Jitsuzo as an outstanding product of modern scholarship combined with traditional training. In 1941 there appeared the Yuan-tien-chang chiao-pu [textual studies on the Yuan-tien-chang'] and the Yuan-tien-chang chiao-pu shih-li [illustrations of textual critique in the Yuan-tien-chang], as well as the Yuan-mi-shih i-yin yung tzu k'ao [Chinese transcriptions of Mongolian in the Secret History of the Mongols] . The two works on the Yuan-tien-chang were the result of many years of comparative study of two editions, one bearing the date 1321 and discovered in 1925, the other being the 1908 edition of Shen Chia-pen (q.v.). From this study, Ch'en Yuan drew certain conclusions as to how and why errors had been made in the text.

Ch'en was also a specialist in the history of religion. In 1941 he produced the Nan-Sung cKu Ho-pei hsin Tao-chiao k?ao [Neo-Taoism in the northern provinces at the beginning of Southern Sung], a continuation of his Ming-chi Tien- Ch'ien fo-chiao k'ao [Buddhism in Yunnan and Kweichow during the Ming dynasty], which discussed the reasons why Buddhism flourished in southwest China, how Buddhist monks served as pioneers in developing that region, and why many officials loyal to the Ming monarch embraced Buddhism. His Ch'ing-ch'u seng chuan k'ao [ecclesiastical disputes in early Ch'ing], first printed in the Fu-jen hsueh-chih [Fu-jen University journal] in 1939 and reprinted in book form in 1944, described Buddhist activities in other areas of China during the early years of the Ch'ing period. These works were acclaimed as the first serious and successful attempts ever made by a Chinese scholar in the field of religious history. In 1933 Ch'en Yuan published his Shih-hui chü-li [illustrations of word taboos from the dynastic histories]. This book explains the reasons for tabooing imperial names and other words in Chinese writings, and illustrates the different ways in which such taboos were observed throughout Chinese history. The work also provides rules, with annotated examples, for testing the genuineness and dates of Chinese books. These rules make it possible to determine whether or not a book could have been written, or published, during a given period by seeing if it conforms to the taboo procedures prevailing at the time. In 1937 Ch'en published the Chiu Wu-tai-shih chi-pen fa-fu [new light on the Old History of the Five Dynasties], with the Hsueh shih chi-pen pi-hui li [examples of avoidance of taboo names in the old editions of the histories], which is a comparison of the original texts of the Chiu Wu-tai-shih as quoted in the Ts'e-fuyuan-kuei and other Sung works with the current texts of the same work as copied from the Yung-lo ta-tien by the Ch'ing court historians. Through careful textual analysis Ch'en Yuan found that many alterations had been made deliberately during the Ch'ing period.

Ch'en also produced the Erh-shih-shih shuo-jun piao [tables of lunations and intercalary months for the 20 standard histories], with the Hsi-li Hui-li [European and Mohammedan calendars], a concordance first published in 1925 and then somewhat expanded into the Chung-Hsi-Hui shih jih-li [comparative daily calendar for Chinese, European, and Mohammedan history], which appeared in 1926. His Shih-shih i-nien-lu [determination of biographical data for Buddhist monks], published in 1937, lists the names and dates of 2,800 Buddhist monks from the period of the Three Kingdoms to the late years of the Ming dynasty. In 1931 Ch'en published an analytical list of the Tunhuang manuscripts in the national Peking Library entitled Tun-huang chieh-yu [record of remaining Tunhuang manuscripts] . Ch'en Yuan made a careful study of the life of Wu Li (1632-1718; ECCP, II, 875-77), who had previously been known in China only as a prominent painter. Ch'en investigated his career as a Catholic priest and, in the course of his research, brought to light new information on Wu's contacts with the early Jesuit missionaries in China. This work, entitled Wu Yü-shan hsiensheng nien-p'u [chronological biography of Wu Li], was first published in the Fu-jen hsueh-chih in June 1937. It was published in book form the same year and appeared in an English version, prepared by Eugene Feifil, in Monumenta Serica in 1938. Ch'en also published articles in the Fu-jen hsueh-chih in 1938-39 on controversial problems in the early history of the Ch'ing period, using Buddhist sources. The Chung-kuo fo-chiao shih-chi kai-lun [introduction to Buddhist sources of history] is a revised edition of his lecture notes on some important Buddhist works, which had been misinterpreted by Chinese bibliographical scholars. Most of Ch'en Yuan's works were published by National Peking University, the Academia Sinica, Fu-jen University, or the Li-yun shu-wu. Between 1941 and 1944, the majority of them were reprinted under the title Li-yun shu-wu ts'ung-k'o [collection of the Li-yun book company]. Ch'en Yun ££ g Orig. Liao Ch'eng-yun fjj ^