Hu Shi specialised in the history of Chinese philosophy and the history of Chinese literature. His ideas concerning different schools of thought, historical vision, and the idea of double lines for literature had a deep and far-reaching impact on academic development. In addition, he started "Redology" and revived the study of the history of Chinese Zen Buddhism.
Background
Hu Shi was born on December 17, 1891 in Shanghai, China to a tea merchant family from the township of Jixi in southern Anhui.
His father became a Cultivated Talent the lowest degree-holder, in 1865, and went into public service in 1882, serving in posts from the northern border in Manchuria to the southernmost Hainan Island, ending up in Taiwan before the island's cessation to Japan in 1895. Just before the death of his father, Hu Shi and his mother left Taiwan for their ancestral home in Anhui.
Education
Hu Shi received his basic education at the age of five in Jixi. He studied in a private school for nine years, and received a firm grounding in ancient Chinese linguistics. He was later enrolled in Meixi College and Chengzhong College in Shanghai, which exposed him to western ideologies.
On 16 August 1910, he was sent to study agriculture at Cornell University in the United States. In 1912 he changed his major to philosophy and literature. After receiving his undergraduate degree, he went to Columbia University to study philosophy. At Columbia he was greatly influenced by his professor, John Dewey, and Hu became Dewey's translator and a lifelong advocate of pragmatic evolutionary change, helping Dewey in his 1919-1921 lectures series in China.