Chu Tzu-ch'ing (22 November 1898-12 August 1948), essayist, scholar, and poet, was head of the Chinese department at Tsinghua University for many years. He was best known for his distinctive pai-hua [vernacular] essay style. Although his native place was Shaohsing, Chekiang, Chu Tzu-ch'ing was born in Kiangsu. Both his father and his grandfather were minor […]

Hsu Chih-mo (1896-19 November 1931), poet. His poetic experiments in form, nieter, and theme and his essays increased Chinese understanding and awareness of Western poetry and of the potentialities of the modern Chinese language. Hsiashih, Chekiang, was the birthplace of Hsü Chih-mo. His father, Hsü Shen-ju, was a prominent banker and a friend of the […]

Wu Han (1909-), historian and university professor, was known before 1949 primarily as a leading authority on the Ming dynasty. He served after 1952 as a deputy mayor of Peking and as vice chairman of the China Democratic League until his political disgrace in 1966. The Iwu district of Chekiang was the native place of […]

T'ao Hsing-chih (1891-25 July 1946), educational theorist and reformer who based his ideas on those of John Dewey and Wang Yangming. His theories of "life education" were embodied in the mass education and rural education movements of the 1920's and in the work-study and "national crisis education" programs of the 1930's. Born into a family […]

P'an Kuang-tan (1898-), sociologist, essayist, and propagandist for national betterment through eugenics. He was noted for his studies of family and clan genealogies. Born in Paoshan, Kiangsu, P'an Kuang-tan was the son of P'an Hung-ting, a chin-shih who was a member of the Hanlin Academy. According to P'an Kuang-tan, his family "belonged half to the […]

Liang Shih-ch'iu (1902-), literary critic, teacher, and translator of Western literature who was a leading figure in the Crescent Moon Society, a group which upheld the individual and aesthetic purposes of literary expression in opposition to the cause of proletarian realism. Although his ancestral home was in Hangchow, where his grandfather had amassed a modest […]

Fei Hsiao-t'ung (2 November 1910-), social anthropologist, became known in CKina as a pioneer in field research. He applied Western anthropological theories and methods to Chinese data. Wuchiang, Kiangsu, was the birthplace of Fei Hsiao-t'ung. His family belonged to the local gentry, but was not wealthy. He had two brothers, Fei Ch'ing and Fei Chen-tung. […]