Qian Zhongshu

Qian Zhongshu (November 21, 1910 – December 19, 1998) was a Chinese writer and scholar. He was best known for his novel, Fortress Besieged among general readers.

Life

Born in Wuxi, Qian Zhongshu grew up under the care of his eldest uncle, who did not have a son. Qian was initially named Yangzhi (仰之). When he was one year old, according to a tradition practised in many parts of China, Qian was given a few objects laid out in front of him. He grabbed a book. His uncle then renamed him Zhongshu, literally meaning "being fond of books". His father later also changed his zi to Mocun, literally meaning "to keep silent", in the hope that he would be less talkative.

Although he never did shake his chatty nature, Qian was indeed very fond of books. When he was young, his uncle often brought him along to tea houses at night. There Qian was left alone to read storybooks on folklore and historical events, which he would repeat to his cousins upon returning home.

When Qian was ten, his uncle passed away. He continued living with his widowed aunt, even though their living conditions worsened drastically due to the severed income. At fourteen, Qian left home to attend a school in Suzhou.

Despite failing in Mathematics, Qian was accepted into the Department of Foreign Languages under Tsinghua University in 1929 because of his excellent performance in Chinese and English languages. He met his wife Yang Jiang in Tsinghua and married her in 1935.

In the same year, Qian received government sponsorship to further his studies abroad. Together with his wife, Qian headed for the University of Oxford in Britain. After spending two years at Exeter College, he received a Baccalaureus Litterarum (Bachelor of Literature). He then studied for one more year in the University of Paris in France, where his daughter Qian Ai was born, before returning to China in 1938.

Due to the unstable situation during the second Sino-Japanese War, Qian did not hold any long-term jobs until the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949. However, he wrote extensively during the decade of chaos and uncertainty. His most celebrated novel, Fortress Besieged, and many other shorter works were completed and published during this period.

In 1949, Qian was appointed a professor in his alma mater. Four years later, an administrative adjustment saw the change of Tsinghua into a Science and Technology-based institute, with its Arts branches merged into Peking University (PKU). Qian was relieved of teaching and worked entirely in the Institute of Literary Studies under PKU, where his job was actually translating Mao Zedong's collected works into English.

During the Cultural Revolution, like many other prominent intellectuals of that time, Qian suffered heavy persecution. He was very much stripped of his favorite pastime - reading. However, he saw it through and continued to write. In 1982, he was instated as the deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He then began working on his magnum opus, Guan Zhui Bian (管锥编), which occupied the next decade of his life.

On December 19, 1998, Qian passed away in Beijing due to sickness. The Xinhua News Agency, a mouthpiece for the state, labelled him "an immortal" - a term usually reserved for revolutionary martyrs.

Literary achievements

Qian Zhongshu was one of the most well-known Chinese authors to the Western world. His most famous novel, Fortress Besieged, published in 1947, has been translated into English, French, German, Russian, Japanese and Spanish. His other works include Men-Beasts-Ghosts (人·兽·鬼) and The Marginalia of Life (写在人生边上).

Qian also wrote elaborate notes on Chinese classics, showing his erudition and insight into a comparative study of different cultures. For all of this, literature was not his primary employment, he was the translator for much of Mao Zedong's collected works, which occupied most of the remainder of his active professional life. Only recently have translations of his earlier works become widely available, though Fortress Besieged was adapted into a television mini-series in China in 1990.

Qian's magnum opus is the five-volume Guan Zhui Bian (管锥编), literally the Pipe-Awl Collection, translated into English as Limited Views. Begun in the 1980s and published in its current form in the mid-1990s, it is an extensive collection of short essays on poetics, semiology, literary history and related topics written in an erudite classical style. Qian's command of the cultural traditions of Classical and Modern Chinese, Ancient Greek (in translations), Latin, English, German, French, Italian and Spanish allowed him to construct a towering structure of polyglot and cross-cultural allusions. He took as the basis of this work a range of Chinese classical texts, including the Classic of Poetry, the Tao Te Ching, and the Complete Prose of the Pre-Tang. From neglected details in these works, he found points of connections with works from other literatures.

Qian's wife, Yang Jiang, was also a writer and translator, best known for her translation of Don Quixote into Chinese.

See also

• List of Chinese authors

es:Qian Zhongshu zh:钱钟书