Learning Without Satiation and Mastering Methods—Xu Teli
Xu Teli was born in 1877. From his youth, he loved reading passionately, believing that reading could "clarify the principles of life and the principles of society." At the age of 18, to earn a living, he chose to become a private tutor over becoming a doctor, thus embarking on a path of "teaching for life." However, while he taught students during the day, he still studied under a master at night, because only by "understanding the principles himself" could he "teach those principles to his students."
Xu Teli placed great emphasis on methodology in reading and accumulated a set of self-study experiences. At age 20, he prepared to study the rigid "eight-legged essay" format to take the imperial examinations of the time. Once, he walked 80 li (about 40 kilometers) to Changsha city to visit the renowned Mr. Chen Yunfeng, hoping the scholar would review his eight-legged essay practice. After examining Xu's work, the elder scholar gave a critique: "There is still 'a glimmer of insight.'" Then he asked, "Why are you studying the eight-legged essay instead of just reading books?" Patiently, Mr. Chen explained to Xu Teli that the eight-legged essay, prescribed by the Ming and Qing imperial examination systems, had a rigid form, serving as a tool to restrict people's thinking and uphold feudal rule. Half a year later, Xu visited Chen Yunfeng again. This time, the scholar gifted him a fan inscribed with these words: "It is valuable to have a teacher when reading, but even more valuable to have books. In the countryside, where there are neither teachers nor books, books themselves become your teacher. Zhang Zhidong's 'A Guide to Book Titles' is the path to buying books, and 'Words from a Light Chariot' is the path to reading. With these two books, one can benefit for a lifetime." Xu Teli was overjoyed and immediately ran to a bookstore to purchase both "A Guide to Book Titles" and "Words from a Light Chariot," bringing them home as his self-study guide. From then on, he abandoned the eight-legged essay entirely and kept firmly in mind the principle: "It is valuable to have a teacher when reading, but even more valuable to have books." Reflecting on the past later, Xu Teli said emotionally, "The method of reading I learned in my life benefited greatly from that scholar."
Reading classical texts was time-consuming and demanding, so Xu Teli never sought quantity. He followed two principles: "setting a quota" and "perseverance." For example, the "Shuowen Jiezi" contains 540 radicals, and he read only two per day, planning to finish the entire book in a year. He believed that merely seeking more without understanding or memorizing was as good as not reading at all. When teaching middle school students using this same book, he required them to memorize one radical each day after class, completing the book in two years. Some students insisted on learning six radicals at once on Saturdays, but when it came time for dictation, most could not write them down. He said this was the "harm of not learning a set amount and failing to maintain consistent study."
"Reading without writing is not reading" was a famous saying of Xu Teli. While teaching at the First Normal School of Hunan, he noticed a common problem among students: they read too much and too quickly, without seeking deep understanding. He shared his own long-earned, hard-won self-study experience with them. He believed it was not a problem to read fewer books, but a problem to swallow them whole without digestion. He taught his students that reading required digestion, learning to think critically and evaluate the value of what they read. He instructed them to mark key points in their books, write down their reflections and opinions in the margins, and copy passages they found particularly insightful. Reading in this way, "one sentence counts as one sentence, one book as one book." Among his students, Mao Zedong was the most resolute and successful in practicing this method. Within a few years, Mao filled several wicker baskets with reading notes, rapidly improving his literary and intellectual cultivation.
When Xu Teli read "The History of the All-Union Communist Party," the bookstore initially only had the first volume, so he bought and read that. Later, when he heard there was a complete Soviet edition with both volumes, he borrowed the second volume to copy. Because it was selective copying, he first conducted detailed analysis before copying, resulting in a deeper understanding of the second volume than the first. He then returned to selectively copy the first volume again. From this, he drew a conclusion: "Buying books is not as good as borrowing them; reading is not as good as copying; copying everything is not as good as selective copying."
In 1919, the 43-year-old Xu Teli was already a highly respected educator in Hunan Province. However, upon learning that educators like Cai Yuanpei and Li Shizeng had initiated a movement for work-study programs in France, he actively joined their ranks. Many expressed surprise, but Xu Teli had made his decision after careful consideration. He greatly admired the work-study program's motto: "Work diligently, study frugally, to enhance the knowledge of laborers." He said, "I am 43 this year; before I know it, I'll be 44, 45, and then 60 will be upon me. If at 60 I am still as unlearned as I was at 43, won't those 17 years have been wasted? Won't everything I've done in those 17 years have made no progress? Regretting it at 60 would be too late. Why not start learning from today?" Thus, he set aside his role as a teacher and, as an ordinary elderly student, set off with the youth to France to acquire new knowledge and new skills.