Hsieh Hung-lai (9 May 1873-2 September 1916), Chinese Christian author and publicist, known as H. L. Zia, was secretary of the national committee and director of the publications department of the YMCA in China (1904-1916). Under his direction, the Association Press in China became one of the most influential YMCA publishing efforts in the world.

The son of a Presbyterian minister, H. L. Zia was born, the eldest of two brothers and four sisters, in Shaohsing, Chekiang. His father, an early convert of the Presbyterian mission in northern Chekiang, had shown such talent as a youth that he had been sent to Hangchow College for three years of study. After graduation, he had established two small schools near his home before deciding to prepare for the ministry. His theological training consisted of private tutoring with the Reverend Samuel Dodd, during the course of which he reportedly copied several volumes of his tutor's lectures.

H. L. Zia received early training in the Chinese classics. In 1892, at the age of 19, he entered Buffington Institute in Soochow, which had been established 20 years earlier by the Methodist mission. (Later, it was merged with other schools to become Soochow University.) After three years of study, he was graduated in 1895. He then began teaching physics and chemistry at Anglo-Chinese College in Shanghai (also a forerunner of Soochow University). Zia soon showed himself to be a gifted teacher, interested equally in the intellectual and ethical development of his students. He maintained friendships with many of them throughout his life, and even during periods of strain and overwork he devoted long hours to correspondence with former students.

In 1900 H. L. Zia, in addition to his teaching, undertook part-time editorial and translation work at the Commercial Press in Shanghai. At the same time, he began editing materials for the National Committee of the Young Men's Christian Association for use in high schools and colleges throughout the country. He also taught in a YMCA night school. After deciding in 1904 to devote full time to the YMCA, H. L. Zia became a secretary of its national committee and director of the publication department in China. In the next 12 years he became possibly the foremost Christian publicist and author in China and made the YMCA publication department in China one of the most influential YMCA publishing efforts in the world.

H. L. Zia believed that there was a need for an "easy wen-li" style in written Chinese which would command the respect of the literati as well as being more intelligible to the average reader than the terse and elliptical style of traditional literary Chinese. Because he was writing mainly for Chinese students who were being introduced to Western literature and ideas, Zia had an incentive, as translator and interpreter, to develop a dignified, but direct and interesting style. It has been suggested that his success as a stylist in vernacular Chinese helped to prepare the Chinese literary world for the pai-hua [vernacular] movement later advocated by Ch'en Tu-hsiu, Hu Shih (qq.v.), and others.

H. L. Zia contracted tuberculosis in 1907. In January 1909 he went to the United States and spent a few months in the mountains of Colorado. After returning to China in October 1909, he went to the mountains at Kuling, Kiangsi, to seek relief from the advancing illness. Zia made a thorough study of the causes, prevention, and cure of tuberculosis and wrote one of the best-known lay treatises on the disease in China, Consumption: Its Nature, Prevention, and Cure. In 1910, aware that there was no hope for recovery, Zia moved to his home near West Lake in Hangchow to devote his remaining years to the work he loved best. He continued to serve as editor in chief of the YMCA Association Press, administering a staff of 12 men in Shanghai. He edited three magazines and supervised an immense output of books, pamphlets, and tracts, many of which he wrote himself.

Zia was a charter member of the board of directors of the Hangchow YMCA. One of his close associates remarked that "no man understood the YMCA more clearly than Mr. Zia." As a key member of the joint union evangelical committee of the Hangchow churches, he created a vital program for the committee and showed his devotion to the church by participating actively in its work long after he had given up his other activities.

When Sherwood Eddy, one of the leaders of the World Student Christian Movement, visited Hangchow in October 1914 in the course of an evangelistic campaign in China, H. L. Zia prepared a corps of Bible-study leaders beforehand and directed the follow-up program after his visit. He also wrote a series of study courses for general use throughout the Eddy conferences. Near the end of his life, when two prominent Hangchow citizens sought his help in organizing an informal circle of friends to discuss philosophical and ethical problems, H. L. Zia established the Fortnightly Club in cooperation with Eugene E. Barnett, the American YMCA secretary. Although his strength was failing, he met regularly with the group, his broad knowledge and his forthright Christian outlook drawing together a varied group of officials, lawyers, educators, and businessmen.

H. L. Zia worked intensively throughout his life. During his last week, when suffering severe pain and in a state of semi-consciousness, he kept his writing equipment at hand to make occasional notes. After his death in September 1916, at the age of 43, more than 20 memorial services in his honor were held in the leading cities of China.

In the course of his brief career as an author, an editor, and a translator, H. L. Zia, through unflagging industry, produced more than 200 books, pamphlets, and articles in English and Chinese. While working with the Commercial Press, he published textbooks on physics, chemistry, general science, biology, and geography. He also prepared texts in the main branches of mathematics from algebra through calculus.

As the director of YMCA publications in China, H. L. Zia produced large quantities of consistently excellent materials. He compiled the first edition of the YMCA hymnbook. Most of his writings, however, dealt with the practical application of the Christian faith. The term, "social service," long identified in China with the YMCA, was first used and was made current by H. L. Zia when he was editor of the Association Press. In 1918 Paul Hutchinson, in later years editor of the Christian Century in the United States, said of Mr. Zia that he "made the imprint of the YMCA known throughout China, and it is largely due to him . . . that the publications of the YMCA are today making a real impression on the thinking men of China—something that can be said of no other [Christian] publications." Men instinctively trusted H. L. Zia's wisdom and judgment, responded to his sympathy, and sought his counsel and assistance. Great as the impact of his writing was, his more enduring influence probably lay in the "depth, vitality, and multiplying power" of his personal relations, through which he was able to inspire many Chinese to significant achievement and strong faith. For the YMCA, Eugene Barnett summarized the results of H. L. Zia's work: "No man has been more influential in shaping the Association movement in China during the formative years and in informing it with lofty ideals and enduring principles." One of H. L. Zia's children, Grace Zia Chu, wrote The Pleasures of Chinese Cooking (1962) and conducted classes in cooking in New York. A grandson, Samuel C. Chu, received his Ph.D. at Columbia University and wrote Reformer in Modern China: Chang Chien, 1853-1926, published in 1965.