Qian Zhongshu was born on November 21, 1910, and died on December 19, 1998. He was a Chinese writer and expert in literature. He is best known for his humorous novel Fortress Besieged, his nonfiction works written in many languages, and his work helping translate the writings of Mao Zedong into English. His name is also sometimes spelled as Ch'ien Chung-shu or Dzien Tsoong-su.

Life

Most of what is known about Qian Zhongshu’s early life comes from an essay written by his wife, Yang Jiang. Born in Wuxi, Qian was the son of Qian Jibo, a traditional Confucian scholar, a member of a wealthy family with land and influence, and a professor of Chinese language at several universities, including Tsinghua University, St. John’s University, and National Central University in Nanking. By family tradition, Qian was raised by his eldest uncle, who did not have a son. Qian was originally named Yangxian, with the name Zheliang as his respectful name. However, when he was one year old, he participated in a tradition called zhuazhou, where children are shown objects to grab. Qian grabbed a book, and his uncle renamed him Zhongshu, meaning “fond of books,” while Yangxian became his personal name. Qian was a very talkative child. His father later changed his respectful name to Mocun, meaning “to keep silent,” hoping he would speak less.

Both Qian’s name and respectful name reflected his future. He remained talkative when discussing literature with friends but stayed quiet about politics and social matters. Qian loved books. As a child, his uncle often took him to teahouses, where he would read storybooks about folklore and history. He would later tell these stories to his cousins.

At age 6, Qian attended Qinshi Primary School but left after less than six months due to illness. At age 7, he studied in a private school run by a family member but left after a year because it was inconvenient. His uncle then taught him. At age 11, Qian entered Donglin Elementary School, but his uncle died that year. He continued living with his aunt, even though her family’s financial situation worsened. Under his father’s strict teaching, Qian learned classical Chinese. At age 14, he left home to attend Taowu Middle School, an English-language school in Suzhou. In 1927, he was admitted to Furen Middle School, an English-language school in Wuxi. At age 20, Qian’s aunt died.

Although he struggled with math, Qian did well in Chinese and English on the entrance exam to Tsinghua University. He was admitted in 1929 and ranked 57th among 174 male students. One of his few friends was Achilles Fang, a young scholar. Qian often skipped classes but made up for it by reading extensively in Tsinghua’s large library, which he claimed he “read through.” During his college years, he began collecting quotes and taking notes. He studied with professors like Wu Mi, George T. Yeh, and Wen Yuan-ning.

In 1932, Qian met Yang Jiang. They became engaged in 1933 and married in 1935. Two years after graduating from Tsinghua in 1933, Qian taught at Kwanghua University in Shanghai and wrote for English-language publications like The China Critic.

In 1935, Qian received a scholarship to study abroad. He and his wife went to the University of Oxford. After two years at Exeter College, he earned a Bachelor of Letters. Shortly after his daughter, Qian Yuan, was born in England in 1937, he studied for a year at the University of Paris. In 1938, he returned to China and became a professor at Tsinghua University, which had moved to Kunming due to war and was part of the National Southwestern Associated University. In 1939, after visiting relatives in Shanghai, he went to Hunan to care for his sick father and temporarily left the university. In 1941, he was briefly trapped in Shanghai.

Because of the instability during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War, Qian did not hold long-term jobs. However, he wrote most of his books, including Fortress Besieged, Human, Beast, Ghost, and Written in the Margins of Life, during the late 1930s and 1940s. After World War II, in the late 1940s, he worked at the National Central Library in Nanjing, editing an English-language publication called Philobiblon.

In 1949, Qian began teaching at Tsinghua University. In 1952, Tsinghua became a science-focused institution, and Qian was removed from teaching. He worked as a researcher at Peking University’s Institute of Literary Studies, alongside his wife. He also helped translate Mao Zedong’s writings into English.

During the Cultural Revolution, Qian was persecuted like many other intellectuals. He was forced to work as a janitor and lost access to books. He read his notes instead and began planning to write Limited Views during this time. Qian, his wife, and their daughter survived the hardships, but his son-in-law, a history teacher, died by suicide.

After the Cultural Revolution, Qian returned to academia. From 1978 to 1980, he visited universities in Italy, the United States, and Japan, impressing audiences with his knowledge and wit. In 1982, he became deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and spent the next decade working on Limited Views.

Limited Views made him famous in academic circles, while his novel Fortress Besieged brought him public recognition. The book was reprinted in 1980 and became a bestseller. Many illegal copies and “continuations” followed. His fame grew when the novel was adapted into a TV series in 1990, starring Chen Daoming and Ying Da.

Qian avoided the media and politics but contributed to digitizing Chinese classics later in life. People often visited him, and a story says he once told a British admirer, “Is it necessary to know the hen if one loves the eggs it lays?”

In 1994, Qian was hospitalized, and his daughter became ill in 1995. His daughter died of cancer on March 4, 1997. Qian died in Beijing on December 19, 1998.

Former residence

Qian's former home, which is 1,600 square meters in size, is located at Xinjiexiang #30 and #32 in Wuxi, Nanjing. It was constructed in 1923 by Qian's grandfather, Qian Fujiong. In 1926, Qian's uncle, Qian Sunqin, added five buildings and several extra rooms on the western side of the home's back area, covering 667.6 square meters. The entire complex is an example of traditional courtyard-style homes common in the Jiangnan region. Inside the home, there are unique separate buildings, such as Haixu Shulou and Meihua Shuwu. In 2018, the former home was nominated for protection as an important cultural relic site. The home now has related exhibitions and is open to the public for free.

Works

Qian lived in Shanghai from 1941 to 1945 during Japanese occupation, when he published most of his works. A collection of short essays titled Written in the Margins of Life was published in 1941. Human, Beast, Ghost, a collection of short stories, mostly humorous and critical, was published in 1946. His most famous work, Fortress Besieged, appeared in 1947, but it gained widespread attention only in the 1980s. On the Art of Poetry, written in classical Chinese, was published in 1948. Fortress Besieged has been translated into English, French, German, Russian, Japanese, and Spanish. It represents a different style of modernism that was not widely studied in the history of modern Chinese literature. Humans, Beasts, and Ghosts has been translated into English, French, and Italian.

In addition to translating Mao Zedong’s works into English, Qian was asked to create an anthology of poetry from the Song dynasty while working at the Institute of Literary Studies. The Selected and Annotated Song Dynasty Poetry was published in 1958. Although Qian included poems that reflected class struggle and quoted Mao Zedong, the work was criticized for not being Marxist enough. However, it was highly praised by critics outside China, especially for its introduction and footnotes. In a new preface written in 1988, Qian described the work as a difficult compromise between his personal preferences and the academic standards of the time.

Seven Pieces Patched Together, a collection of seven literary essays written and revised over many years in everyday Chinese, was published in 1984. It was translated into English by Duncan Campbell as Patchwork: Seven Essays on Art and Literature. This collection includes the famous essay “Lin Shu’s Translation.”

Qian’s most important work is the five-volume Limited Views. Started in the 1980s and published in its final form in the mid-1990s, it is a detailed collection of notes and short essays on poetry, literary symbols, literary history, and related topics written in classical Chinese. As one of the last writers to use classical Chinese extensively, Qian’s choice of language challenged the idea that classical Chinese could not express modern or Western ideas, a belief common during the May Fourth Movement. Ronald Egan notes that the work indirectly criticizes the Cultural Revolution.

In addition to modern and classical Chinese, Qian knew English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Latin. This allowed him to include references to many languages and cultures in his work. He used many Chinese classical texts, such as the I-Ching, Classic of Poetry, Verses of Chu, Commentary of Tso, Records of the Grand Historian, Tao Te Ching, Lieh-tzu, Jiaoshi Yilin, Extensive Records of the T'ai-p'ing Era, and Complete Prose of the Pre-Tang Dynasties. He often provided new insights by comparing these texts with Western literature. As he noted: “This is a major scholarly work that shows the author’s deep knowledge and effort to connect ancient and modern ideas, Chinese and Western traditions, to help each other shine.”

Posthumous publications

In 2001, a 13-volume edition of Works of Qian Zhongshu was published by Joint Publishing. This edition was a luxury, hard-covered version, unlike the inexpensive paperbacks of Qian’s works released during his lifetime. The publisher stated that experts carefully checked the text for accuracy. One important part of this edition, Marginalias on the Marginalias of Life, showcases Qian’s writing skills by combining humor and irony. This collection includes writings originally published in magazines and other books, but the pieces are not arranged in a clear order.

Other books published after Qian’s death faced strong criticism. The official work Supplements to and Revisions of Songshi Jishi began in 1982. Over the next ten years, Qian worked hard to complete this project. The 10-volume version, published in 2003, was criticized for poor quality. In 2003, Liaoning People’s Publishing House released the same work. A copy of Qian’s original handwritten version was published in 2005 by another publisher. In 2004, parts of Qian’s notebooks were also released as exact copies, but these were criticized for being poorly edited. In 2005, a collection of Qian’s English writings was published, but it was also criticized for poor editing.

The Commercial Press, following an agreement with Yang Jiang, has started publishing photographs of Qian Zhongshu’s reading notes. These publications include many volumes in both Chinese and other languages.