黄廷元与他的七弦琴
Huang Tingyuan and His Seven-Stringed Qin
黄廷元的一生，外人看到的是实业家、革命党人与报人——商界、政界两头周旋，案牍劳形。然而在这片喧嚣之外，他始终保有另一面：通音律，擅七弦琴，且不把古琴视为文人独处的清玩，而是凝聚家族的方式。
To the outside world, Huang Tingyuan's life was that of an industrialist, a revolutionary, and a newspaperman — moving between the worlds of business and politics, worn down by paperwork and public duty. Yet beyond this clamour, he always kept another side of himself: versed in music, skilled at the seven-stringed qin, he never treated the instrument as a scholar's solitary pastime, but as a way of holding the family together.
据友人庄克昌记述，某年中秋，他应邀至黄廷元家中赏月。酒阑月高，余兴未了，黄廷元遂与女儿取出数张七弦琴，陈于回廊，净手焚香，合奏《高山流水》。庄克昌闻曲，感慨道：“冷冷然韵出霜钟，颐养天年，寄诸七弦，手抚目送，宜其克享遐年已。”
According to the account of his friend Zhuang Kechang, one Mid-Autumn Festival he was invited to Huang Tingyuan's home to view the moon. As the wine drew to an end and the moon rose high, with the evening's mood still unspent, Huang Tingyuan and his daughter brought out several qin, set them out along the corridor, washed their hands and burned incense, and played Gao Shan Liu Shui (High Mountains, Flowing Water) together. On hearing the music, Zhuang Kechang remarked with feeling: “Cool and clear, the tone rings out like a frosted bell; to nurture one's later years, entrusted to these seven strings, hands moving, eyes following — no wonder he was fit to enjoy such a long life.”
— 庄克昌 Zhuang Kechang
黄廷元对古琴有一个朴素的信念，据家族后人追述，他常说：“自己一个人弹，没有意思。”这几乎是他整个古琴观的核心。他膝下子女众多，数位太太亦善琴，他亲自修改琴谱，将单人曲目改编为可以两人或四人合奏的版本。逢中秋设宴请客，孩子们围坐圆桌，两两相对展开乐器，合奏助兴。面对面的演奏方式，让彼此通过眼神与呼吸同步——一方停，另一方自然停；一方起，其余人随之而入。这套传统延续至他的子女一辈，夫妻之间、父辈与子辈之间，皆有对弹。
Huang Tingyuan held a simple belief about the guqin. According to family descendants, he often said: “Playing alone by myself is no fun.” This was, in a sense, the heart of his whole outlook on the instrument. He had many children, and several of his wives were also accomplished players; he personally rearranged scores, adapting pieces written for a solo player into versions for two or four performers. At Mid-Autumn gatherings, the children would sit around a round table in pairs, facing one another with their instruments, playing together to add to the festivities. Playing face to face let them stay in sync through eye contact and breath — when one stopped, the other would naturally stop too; when one began, the rest would follow in. This tradition carried on into his children's generation, with duets played between husband and wife, and between parent and child.
以上插图出自连环画《辛亥英杰黄廷元》，由黄章谊整理并译为英文。点击图片可放大查看。 The illustrations above are taken from the graphic biography Ng Teng Guan, Hero of the Xinhai Revolution (《辛亥英杰黄廷元》连环画), compiled by Huang Zhangyi and translated into English. Click an image to enlarge.
连环画序言 · Preface to the Graphic Biography
厦门市翔安区委宣传部支持并出版了这本书《辛亥英雄黄廷元》，令身为黄廷元的后代和淘化大同公司的工作人员的我们感到荣幸和自豪。
We, the descendants of Ng Teng Guan, and the staff of Amoy Canning, are proud and honoured that Xiamen City Xiang An District Committee Publications Ministry supported and published this book “Ng Teng Guan, Hero of the Xinhai Revolution”.
黄廷元是我们公司，淘化大同公司，的创办人。自公司成立后，100多年来，我们传承了和追随了黄廷元的文化遗产，一直为消费者提供安全卫生及健康的食物，并发扬他的无私慈善精神。
Mr Ng Teng Guan is the founder of Amoy Canning and for over 100 years since the establishment of our company, we have been continuing the heritage that Mr Ng Teng Guan passed down to us. We follow the legacy to continue providing safe and healthy foods for consumers as well as promoting the selfless philanthropic spirit of Mr Ng Teng Guan.
我们希望您看完这本书后，会体会我们公司和家庭所一直珍惜的核心价值观。
We hope that after reading this book, you will come to understand the core values that our company and our family have always treasured and adhered to.
希望您继续支持我们公司。谢谢。
We look forward to your continued support. Thank you very much.
黄章谊 · 黄廷元孙子 · 淘化大同集团董事经理
George Huang Chang Yi · Grandson of Ng Teng Guan · Managing Director, Amoy Canning Group
欲成家国事，须读圣贤书。
物我皆无尽，死生宁有殊。
痴骨归大块，雄心还太虚。
一场名利浮云外，百载光阴转瞬间。
需尽人间子孙职，勿贻泉壤祖宗羞。
To accomplish great things for family and country, one must read the books of the sages.
Neither the world nor the self is without end — how, then, could life and death truly differ?
These foolish bones return to the great earth; this restless ambition returns to the vast void.
Fame and fortune drift beyond reach like clouds; a hundred years pass in the blink of an eye.
Yet fulfil your duty as descendants in this world, and bring no shame to the ancestors beneath the earth.
黄廷元晚年手书遗训，赠与后裔
A testament in Huang Tingyuan's own hand, written in his later years and left to his descendants
五联遗训，一边说家国担当，一边说生死虚妄。一个将毕生心力倾注于实业与革命的人，在暮年写下“一场名利浮云外”——或许正因看穿了功名，他才在七弦琴声中，找到了另一种意思。
These five couplets of testament speak, on one hand, of duty to family and country, and on the other, of the emptiness of life and death. A man who poured his life's energy into industry and revolution wrote, in his later years, that “fame and fortune drift beyond reach like clouds” — perhaps it was precisely because he had seen through worldly success that he found, in the sound of the seven strings, another kind of meaning.
传承者
The Keeper of the Story
这些故事与画面，能够留存到今天，很大程度上要归功于黄廷元的曾孙黄章谊。晚年的他，把整理、翻译、传扬祖父的生平，当作自己毕生的使命——不是出于怀旧，而是不愿让这段家族记忆随时间湮灭。
That these stories and images survive today owes a great deal to Huang Tingyuan's great-grandson, Huang Zhangyi. In his later years, he treated the work of compiling, translating and spreading his grandfather's story as a lifelong mission — not out of nostalgia, but because he refused to let this family memory fade with time.
2019年4月16日，黄章谊作为黄廷元家族后裔寻根团团长，组织海内外子孙回到家乡厦门寻根谒祖，让散居世界各地的后辈认识共同的根脉，追思先祖的创业精神和卓越功勋。寻根团在厦门江夏堂举行祭祖仪式，参观江夏堂家风家训馆，并出版《辛亥英杰黄廷元》连环画，生动展现先祖黄廷元生平。
On 16 April 2019, Huang Zhangyi led a delegation of Huang Tingyuan's descendants — gathered from both China and abroad — back to their ancestral home of Xiamen to trace their roots and pay respects to their forebear, so that descendants scattered across the world could recognise their shared origins and reflect on their ancestor's pioneering spirit and achievements. The delegation held an ancestor-worship ceremony at Jiangxia Hall (江夏堂) in Xiamen, visited the Jiangxia Hall Family Precepts Museum, and published the graphic biography Ng Teng Guan, Hero of the Xinhai Revolution, vividly portraying Huang Tingyuan's life.
2010年，黄章谊耗时三年，将《辛亥英杰黄廷元》译为英文，书名定为《Huang Tingyuan: A Pioneer of Modern China》。他亲自校订译稿，增补家族档案中的书信、照片，全书分上下两卷，涵盖黄廷元从商战到革命的完整历程。该书通过剑桥大学出版社发行，分送给居住在美、英、加等9国的黄氏后裔，还被新加坡国家图书馆、马来西亚大学图书馆列为华人史研究藏书。
In 2010, over the course of three years, Huang Zhangyi translated 《辛亥英杰黄廷元》 into English under the title Huang Tingyuan: A Pioneer of Modern China. He personally revised the translation and supplemented it with letters and photographs from the family archive; the completed work runs to two volumes, covering the whole of Huang Tingyuan's journey from commerce to revolution. It was published through Cambridge University Press and distributed to Huang family descendants living across nine countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, and has since been catalogued as a research holding on Chinese history at the National Library of Singapore and a university library in Malaysia.
“祖父的故事不仅属于家族，更是海外华人追求现代化与民族独立的缩影。”
“My grandfather's story belongs not only to our family — it is also a microcosm of overseas Chinese people's pursuit of modernisation and national independence.”
— 黄章谊，《Huang Tingyuan: A Pioneer of Modern China》译者序 · Huang Zhangyi, Translator's Preface
而他最深的忧虑，也正来自这份沉甸甸的传承。
And his deepest fear grew out of precisely this weight of inheritance.