Ting Hsi-lin (1893-), director of the Academia Sinica's institute of physics. He was best known as a writer of theatrical comedies. After 1949 he held a number of important cultural posts in the People's Republic of China.

A native of T'aihsing, Kiangsu, Ting Hsi-lin traveled abroad as a young man and earned an M.Sc. degree from the University of Birmingham in England. He then returned to China and embarked on an academic career, receiving appointments in 1928 as a professor of physics at Peking University and as the director of the Academia Sinica's institute of physics. He held these posts until 1945. Although he was a teacher-administrator rather than a scientist of outstanding achievement, he did achieve a certain professional recognition for his article, "A Proposed Method of Absolute Determination of 'g' by a New Pendulum," which appeared in 1930 in the first issue of the Bulletin of the Research Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica. In 1945, in company with Kuo Mo-jo (q.v.), he went briefly to Moscow for the anniversary celebrations of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It was as a playwright and not as a scientist, however, that Ting Hsi-lin made a national reputation. In 1923 he completed his first work, I-chih ma-feng [a hornet]. Although not his best play, I-chih ma-feng is fairly typical of Ting Hsi-lin's style. It is a one-act comedy about the problems besetting an engaged couple. The action is swift, with many surprises and revelations; and the dialogue, the outstanding feature of all of Ting Hsi-lin's plays, is bright, pointed, and witty. Ting Hsi-lin's output over the years was steady but small. In 1947 he published a collection of seven one-act plays entitled Hsi-lin tu-mu chü-chi. In addition to I-chih ma-feng, this collection contains Ch'in-ai-ti chang-fu [dear husband], a farce in which an ideal young bride turns out to be a man; Chiu-hou [after the wine], an adaptation of a story by Ling Shu-hua; Pei-ching-ti k'ung-ch'i [the air of Peking], which details the adventures of some small boys in Peking; Hsia-le i-chihyen-ching [blind in one eye], a conjugal comedy; Ya-p'o [oppression] , another comedy of betrothal and perhaps Ting Hsilin's best-known play in the West; and Sank'uai-ch'ien kuo-pi [three dollars, please], a humorous account of a quarrel over nothing. Ting Hsi-lin had a true feeling for comedy and satire, but his plays were unpretentious and made a direct appeal to his audiences. His simplicity of style and lightness of touch made his plays particularly popular among school and college dramatic societies and such pieces as I-chih ma-feng, Ch'iti-ai-ti chang-fu, and Peiching-ti k'ung-ch'i were at one time staged in schools all over China.

Ting Hsi-lin occasionally attempted longer pieces, of which the best known is his four-act comedy Miao-feng-shan, of 1945. In this play, a university professor turned bandit, Wang Lao-hu (Tiger Wang), first is arrested, and then released with the aid of a young girl, Miss Hua. Wang conducts her, his former captors, and his friends to remote Miao-fengshan, in which district his gang operates. Under Miss Hua's influence, Tiger Wang softens, and the play ends with his marriage to Miss Hua and with the determination of Miss Hua and the others to remain at Miao-fengshan and help Wang's band in the resistance to Japan. The play was clearly a "patriotic" work as called for by the prevailing literary doctrines of the time, but Ting Hsi-lin's dialogue and sure sense of comedy kept it from becoming a mere propaganda exercise.

After the Central People's Government was established in Peking in 1949, Ting Hsi-lin functioned in a number of high cultural posts. He served as vice minister of culture from 1949 to 1958. In 1954 he was appointed vice chairman of the Chinese People's Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, and in 1955 he became director of the Peking National Library. Ting Hsi-lin also led or participated in several cultural delegations to foreign countries. In 1951 he headed a cultural group on a tour of India and Burma; from December 1953 to February 1954 he served as head of a delegation to the India-China Friendship Conference. He was also the leader of cultural delegations sent to North Viet Nam in 1954 and to Cambodia in 1957. In 1955 he participated in the Asian Countries Conference at New Delhi, in 1958 in the Korean-Chinese Friendship Month festivities in North Korea, and in 1960 in the international commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of Working Women's Day.

After 1949 Ting Hsi-lin seems not to have produced anything either as a scientist or as a playwright, and most of his posts carried more prestige than power. As vice minister of culture, he participated in the writing of Han-tzu-ti cheng-li ho chien-hua [the orderly arrangement and simplification of Chinese characters] in 1954. A collection of his plays, Ting Hsi-lin chü-tso hsüan appeared in 1955, and a smaller selection, entitled Ya-p'o, was published in 1963. Ting Ling Orig. Chiang Wei-wen Pen. Ting Ping-tzu [272] M fit X t m m