The Lone Seer of an Awakening Era: Yan Fu, the Intellectual Titan from Mawei Arsenal
Fuzhou, Mawei, Tianjin, Beijing, London, Greenwich, Portsmouth, Xiamen, Shanghai Do you know who translated “survival of the fittest” into Chinese? It was a man from Fuzhou named Yan Fu. In 1898, a book called Evolution and Ethics was quietly published. Its core message—“natural selection, survival of the fittest”—exploded across late Qing China like a bombshell. Lu Xun later recalled that while studying in Nanjing, he would sit on the ground reading Evolution and Ethics on Sundays. After finishing it, his entire worldview had changed. ...