Talk:Gu Jiegang

Gu Jiegang is currently a World history good article nominee. Nominated by Generalissima (talk) (it/she) at 04:21, 13 February 2025 (UTC) An editor has indicated a willingness to review the article in accordance with the good article criteria and will decide whether or not to list it as a good article. Comments are welcome from any editor who has not nominated or contributed significantly to this article. This review will be closed by the first reviewer. To add comments to this review, click discuss review and edit the page. Short description: Chinese historian (1893–1980)

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A fact from Gu Jiegang appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 11 March 2025 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows: Did you know... that historian Gu Jiegang secretly continued research into children's copybooks during the Cultural Revolution? A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2025/March. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Gu Jiegang.

In the article Gu Jiegang is associated with criticism on the Three Kingdoms. Since Gushi Bian is a critical studie on the traditional view on the most ancient Chinese historical traditions I think the Three Kingdoms does not make any sense and should be replaced by Three Dynasties (三代, Xia, Shang, Zhou), since Gu Jiegang is also very critical about 三皇 and 五帝 (Three August Ones and Five Emperors). Guss2 11:54, 14 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To add to this article: an assessment of Gu's contributions. 173.88.246.138 (talk) 18:07, 6 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

'Instead, he wrote that the ruling class had made it too profitable for scholars not to work alongside the state, eventually leading to the triumph of Confucianism, which provided legitimacy and social control (through the enforcement of the clan and family systems) for the ruling class.'

The logic should be clarified. It is not clear how the first would 'lead' to the second. 62.73.72.3 (talk) 20:43, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This review is transcluded from Talk:Gu Jiegang/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Generalissima (talk · contribs) 04:21, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Premeditated Chaos (talk · contribs) 22:22, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'll take this. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:22, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Blah blah you know how I review so I'll get on with it.

• "where he continued folklore studies" - "where he continued to study folklore" reads a little more naturally imo
• "outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War" suggest dating this
• "but was forced to condemn ... he was appointed to head..." dates for these also?'
• Book of Documents is italicized in its own article, why not here?
• "ultimately descended" I don't think ultimately is doing much for you here
• "would later attribute" WP:WOULDCHUCK - I know this is an essay but "later attributed" works just as well and cuts the extra word
• This is basically a style nitpick, but it reads a bit repetitively to start a sentence with "As Gu" then semicolon it to "as an expert"
• Do we know why the grandfather preferred X classic to Y classic? I assume it's because the latter two were part of the Big 5 Confucian texts but maybe that should be explicit?
• "Gu profusely read the essays of the political theorist Liang Qichao." idk if profusely is adding much value here.
• "The dictatorship of Yuan Shikai" I might contextualize this somewhat as we've gone from a socialist revolution to some dictator guy quite rapidly
• "lost focus in coursework" feels awkward. "lost his focus on" or "lost focus on his" maybe? Or even a wholesale revision? Something like "ignored his coursework in favour of attending Peking opera" might be kind of fun
• "However, Gu was unimpressed" I think you can ditch the however without losing much
• "Wang Guowei was another major influence" this may or may not be in the sourcing, but do we know why? like, "because of his focus on X" or "because of opinion Y"?
• "He was very inspired" "very" isn't doing much here
• "lured his conservative roommate Fu Sinan into attending his lectures" 😂 although I'm curious if it worked
• Since we just named Fu Sinan, do we need to repeat the whole name in the next sentence?
• "initially intended" using "initially" here implies that its aims eventually became something different, if so, what?
• "in the Peking University" is there a missing word here like "journal" or something?
• "these were published in an October 1920 column in Beijing Morning Post" - was this one single publication on one single day in October 1920, or like, for all of October 1920 he had a regular recurring column?
• "variety of historiographical texts. He read critiques " you could probably smooth this into one sentence with something like "including critiques"
• "return again to Suzhou in mourning for" - "to mourn for" maybe, or even "forced to return to Suzhou again following the death of his grandmother"... right now it's just slightly novelesque
• "on the creation of Chinese historical tropes" I feel like this needs a little more explanation/context
• "Qing" or "Qin"? You seem to use both
• "which were later manipulated to adhere to Confucian principles beginning in the Qin and Han periods" I think you can ditch either "later" or "beginning", possibly even both, unless the manipulation continued beyond the Qin and Han periods.
• "had previously dismissed" we already know this was previously since it's past tense. Also I don't know that Youwei needs to be sequestered in parentheses
• "Gu later compiled" similarly, we know this must be later, since he couldn't have done it before he got these letters, and we're going to get the publication date in a minute also
• "professors had frequently went on strike" - gone rather than went I think, unless you ditch the "had"
• "the police open-fired" - "opened fire" or perhaps a reword to something like "the police shot into the crowd at a student protest"
• Why does Chen Wanli get a redlink and his name in Chinese characters rather than the ILL everybody else has? (If he doesn't have a zh.wiki article to link to, possibly he's not notable?)
• I thought Gu liked Hu Shih, why is he suddenly denouncing people for being in his clique?
• Is the first mention of his speech disorder when someone's making fun of it? Feels like that might be something to mention in Early life first