Constantly uprooted
After he came to Taiwan, Kung Te-cheng, who often joked he had never spent a day in school, received honorary doctorates from South Korea’s Sungkyunkwan University, Reitaku University of Japan and National Taiwan University. In his younger years in the Kong family home, talented tutors such as Wang Yuhua, Zhuang Gailan, Wu Boxiao and Zhan Chengqiu, and then after relocating to Geleshan, Lü Jinshan and Ding Weifen, offered guidance to Kung and laid a solid foundation for him in the study of the traditional Chinese classics, the Chinese script, poetics, ancient bronze artifacts, calligraphy, English, and the seven-stringed Chinese zither, or guqin. Beginning in 1948 he studied in the United States, where he was schooled in Western scholarship and came to affirm democratic values. During this period he was instructed by Fu Ssu-nien, whose erudition and character he greatly esteemed.
During his long teaching career, Kung also funded and pioneered the production of a black-and-white film, Ceremony: Marriage Customs of the Scholar Class. The project represented a personal breakthrough. Some of his disciples, who actually performed in the film, appeared at the exhibition, where they recounted how it was shot.
Kung was a master of five traditional calligraphic scripts: kaishu, (regular script); xingshu (semi-cursive); caoshu (cursive); zhuanshu, (seal script), and lishu (clerical script). He left behind an enormous amount of outstanding calligraphy, which formed an important part of the display.
As the descendant of a sacred ancestor, from childhood Kung was humble and austere. Throughout his life, righteousness, sincerity, self-cultivation and wise management of family life served as his moral guidelines, and he sought to fully express them in his behavior. The scroll featuring four Chinese characters by his own hand, “Remain true to one’s word, and show respect for others in one’s actions,” which was on display at the exhibition, is based on a passage in the Analects of Confucius. A motto passed down within the family, it is also an encouragement to future generations.
Amidst the turbulent seas of history, Kung sought to maintain the role of the pure scholar. Even when he was invited to serve in influential posts such as member of the National Assembly, president of the Examination Yuan, advisor to the presidency or Confucian-descendant-as-diplomat, he adhered to the maintenance of Confucian tradition, and always behaved with impeccable propriety and discretion.
In the period immediately after his relocation to Taiwan, on several occasions he visited Japan, Korea, Europe and the United States to host ceremonies venerating Confucius. In 1984, he held talks with Pope John Paul II, and this meeting of giants from East and West was portrayed as a key moment in 20th- century history.
In late 1948 and early 1949, relics formerly housed in Beijing’s Palace Museum and in Nanjing’s National Central Library and National Central Museum were relocated to Taiwan. When they were stored in the newly built Beigou Warehouse at Wufeng in Taichung in 1955, the Kung family’s relics were also placed there. Soon afterward, the collections were placed under the administration of the newly created Joint Management Office of the National Palace Museum and Central Museum, and in 1956 Kung Te-cheng took over as chairman.
During his tenure, Kung fully carried out his responsibilities, cataloguing the relics and chronicling their provenance and history. He arranged for their display in the United States, a momentous event that resulted in American support for the construction of the National Palace Museum at Waishuangxi in Taipei’s Shilin District.
20th-century calligraphy master Wang Xiantang’s “Yilan Mansion,” with inscriptions by Tai Jingnong, Zhang Jing, Dai Junren, Qu Wanli, Li Bingnan and Zhao Anan.