Fu Ssu-nien T. Meng-chen Fu Ssu-nien (26 March 1896-20 December 1950), was a leader in the May Fourth Movement who became a historian and an administrator of historical scholarship. He organized the Academia Sinica's institute of history and philology and served as its director for more than 20 years. He acted as director of the Academia Sinica during the Sino-Japanese war. In Taiwan, he served as chancellor of National Taiwan University.

Born into a scholarly family in Liaoch'eng, Shantung, which boasted descent from Fu I-chien (ECCP, I, 253), who was the first scholar to receive a degree of chuang-yuan or optimus in the Ch'ing dynasty and who later became a grand secretary, Fu Ssu-nien was orphaned at the age of eight. He was brought up by his paternal grandfather, a senior licentiate and sometime director of studies. Between 1905 and 1908 Fu attended primary school in Liaoch'eng, and he also was tutored in the Chinese classics by his grandfather. In 1909 he entered the Prefectural Middle School in Tientsin, from which he graduated in the winter of 1912. In the summer of 1913 Fu entered the preparatory department of Peking University. In 1916, having made a brilliant academic record, he was admitted to the department of Chinese literature. He graduated from Peking University late in 1919. In the autumn of 1917 Fu Ssu-nien, together with his roommate Ku Chieh-kang (q.v.) and Hsü Yen-chih, discussed the idea of starting a magazine to support the new thought and literary movements. With the aid of Ch'en Tu-hsiu and Li Ta-chao ('qq.v.), Fu and his friends obtained funds and a meeting place in the Peking University library. Hu Shih was their faculty adviser. On 13 October 1918 the first preparatory meeting was held. Lo Chia-lun (q.v.) suggested the title Hsin-ch'ao [new tide] and Hsti Yen-chih proposed the English subtitle "Renaissance" for the new magazine. The students, who formed the Hsin-ch'ao Society, also adopted a platform stressing critical analysis of ideas and events, scientific thinking, and revolutionary, or vernacular, language. The first issue of the magazine appeared on 1 January 1919. Before it ceased publication in March 1922, the Hsin-ch'ao had carried articles by such writers as Yü P'ing-po, Yeh Sheng-t'ao, Feng Yu-lan, Chu Tzuch'ing, and Mao Tzu-shui. In the first issue, Fu expressed agreement with Lo Chia-lun's contention that the "new tide" of the twentieth century was social revolution on the Russian model, and added that Russia would soon "annex" the world, not in territory but in thought. Fu's attitude was typical of the members of the Hsin-ch'ao Society, who tended at that time to be more radical than Ch'en Tu-hsiu, Hu Shih, or Li Ta-chao. The Hsin-ch'ao Society was not merely a literary club, but an active political group. Lo Chialun, the editor of the magazine, was one of the four student representatives who entered the American legation at Peking on 4 May 1919 to present a memorandum of grievances concerning the Paris Peace Conference decision on Shantung. Fu himself was the "marshal" of the historic demonstration. Fu Ssu-yen, Fu Ssunien's younger brother, received credit for having been the first of a band of five students to storm the mansion of Ts'ao Ju-lin (q.v.). Fu Ssu-nien published articles in the vernacular in defense of the new literature and produced poems in the new medium in imitation of Hu Shih. He was also one of the first to recognize the talents of Mao Tse-tung; he said that Mao's shortlived magazine Hsiang River Review was one of the six best publications in China. Fu's association with the Hsin-ch'ao Society ended in late 1919 when he sailed for England on a scholarship provided by the Shantung provincial government. Yü P'ing-po and Lo Chia-lun also went abroad to study, and other members of the Hsin-ch'ao Society began to drift away from Peking University. The heyday of the Hsin-ch'ao Society had been short, and the group had never numbered more than about 40 members, but most of them, like Fu, were leaders in the May Fourth Movement and subsequently played important roles in the intellectual and social development of China. Fu Ssu-nien spent almost seven years in Europe. He arrived in England in January 1920. Yü P'ing-po, who was with him, soon succumbed to homesickness and returned to China, but not before Fu had followed him to Paris and Marseilles in a vain effort to dissuade him. From 1920 to 1922 Fu studied history at the University of London and attended lectures in mathematics and experimental psychology. From September 1923 to October 1926 he studied philosophy and history at Berlin University. None of his studies led to a degree. However, Fu made the acquaintance of Yü Ta-wei (q.v.), and Yü introduced him to Yü Ta-ts'ai, whom he later married. Fu returned to China and joined the faculty of National Chungshan University in Canton in January 1927. He became head of the departments of Chinese and history, and for a time he served as acting dean of its college of arts. In the summer of 1927 Fu established a research institute for history and philology at Chungshan. During this period, Fu was active not only as an administrator but also as a scholar. His long correspondence (carried on from Europe) with Ku Chieh-kang about early Chinese history was published at this time in the weekly bulletin of the new history and philology institute.

Fu's growing reputation as a scholar and his success as an administrator led in August 1928 to his appointment as research fellow and director of the institute of history and philology in the newly established Academia Sinica, a position he was to hold for 22 years. At that time the institute had three sections: history, headed by Ch'en Yin-k'o (q.v.); philology, headed by Chao Yuen-ren (q.v.); and archeology, headed by Li Chi (q.v.). Fu Ssu-nien was fortunate in his subordinates and highly successful in coordinating their efforts as well as in procuring adequate government support for them. In October 1928 he supervised the publication of the first issue of Collected Studies in History and Philolog}' (Chi-k'an), the new institute's journal. In the first issue, Fu, in imitation of the Historische Zeitschrift (1859), defined the objective of the institute as progress in all fields of study to be achieved by research in primary sources, by enlargement of the fields of research through the discovery and investigation of new primary sources, and by the development of new research tools. In carrying out these resolves, Fu's achievements over the next two decades were impressive. Perhaps the institute's most important work during this period was the excavations at Anyang, which established the historicity of the Shang dynasty (c.1523-1028 B.C.). The institute also supervised the digging of the neolithic site at Ch'engtzu-yai in Shantung, the type site for the Black Pottery culture. The department of philology undertook a valuable series of dialect surveys, including tribal languages of the southwest, and the history department published a series of studies on sources of Ming and Ch'ing history. Fu moved the institute to Peiping in 1929 and began collecting a library which by 1937 totaled 150,000 volumes. In January 1936 Fu became de facto head of the Academia Sinica by succeeding V. K. Ting as secretary general at a time when the president, Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei, was incapacitated by illness. In 1937, to ensure the safety of the institute and its collections, notably the Central Museum, Fu supervised its evacuation to Nanking. In 1938 he organized the evacuation of the Academia Sinica to Kunming by way of Changsha and Kweilin, and he moved it to Szechwan in 1941.

In 1930 Fu became a professor of history at Peking University. He published a summary of his methods, "Shih-hsueh fang-fa t'ao-lun chiang-i kao" [provisional syllabus on historiography], in the sixth issue of Chi-k'an. As a historian, he made significant contributions to the study of the Shang and Chou dynasties and to the study of Chinese intellectual history. In 1930 he published an article, "Hsin-huo pu-tz'u hsieh-pen hou-chi pa" [notes on a newly discovered oracle-bone inscription], in which he applied epigraphic evidence to the problem of the relationship between the Shang and Chou states and to the origin of the Ch'u state. In 1932, after the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, Fu published the first volume of his projected Tung-pei shih-kang [outline of Manchurian history]. He submitted it as a memorandum to the Lytton Commission, which was investigating the Mukden Incident on behalf of the League of Nations. This hastily prepared volume was severely criticized by such historians as Miao Feng-lin, and Fu decided to give up the project. In 1937-38 he prepared for publication the Hsing-ming ku-hsun pien-cheng [studies on the ancient meanings of "nature" and "destiny"], which appeared in 1940. In the 1932-36 period he also wrote a number of current events articles for the Tu-li p'ing-lun [independent critic] and for the Tientsin Ta Kung Pao.

From 1938 to 1948 Fu was a prominent member of the People's Political Council, and he participated in political consultations between the National Government and the Communists. He visited Yenan and returned thoroughly disillusioned with the Chinese Communists. Nevertheless, he was a fearless critic of administrative defects in the Nationalist regime. In 1945 he was appointed acting chancellor of Peking University. He served in the post for three years and added colleges of engineering, agriculture, and medicine to the existing colleges of arts, science, and law. In 1946 he supervised the return of the institute of history and philology from Lichuang, Szechwan, to Nanking. In 1947, exhausted by his wartime and postwar activities and suffering from chronic high blood pressure, he went to the United States for treatment and rest. He spent almost a year in New Haven, Connecticut.

In the spring of 1948 Fu was elected in absentia to the Legislative Yuan and was appointed an academician of the Academia Sinica. After he returned to China in August, he was asked by Chu Chia-hua, the president of the Academia Sinica, to organize its evacuation to Taiwan. Because of the bulkiness of its equipment, the institute of science and engineering could not be moved, but the institute of history and philology and the mathematical research department of the institute of science and engineering was moved safely. The invaluable library of the institute of history and philology was transported to Taiwan without appreciable loss.

In January 1949 Fu became chancellor of Taiwan University. In December 1950, while reporting on conditions at the university to the Taiwan provincial assembly, he suffered an attack of high blood pressure and died. In commemoration of his services to the university, Fu's remains were interred on campus in a specially constructed Greek-style mausoleum. His collected works, Fu Meng-chen hsien-sheng chi, in six volumes, were published in Taipei in 1951, with a preface by Hu Shih.

Fu Ssu-nien married twice. His first wife, whom he married in 1911, was Ting Fu-ts'ui. They were divorced in 1934, and Fu then married Yü Ta-ts'ai.