Yu Ying-shih | |
|---|---|
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| Born | (1930-01-22)22 January 1930 |
| Died | 1 August 2021(2021-08-01) (aged 91) |
| Relatives | Paul Yu Chen Hsueh-ping (Father-in-law) |
| Awards |
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| Academic background | |
| Education | |
| Thesis | Views of life and death in later Han China a.D. 25–220 (1962) |
| Doctoral advisor | Yang Lien-sheng |
| Influences | Ch'ien Mu |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions | |
| Doctoral students | Ray Huang |
| Yu Ying-shih | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional Chinese | 余英時 | ||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 余英时 | ||||||||||
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Yu Ying-shih (Chinese:余英時; 22 January 1930 – 1 August 2021)[1] was a Chinese-born American historian,sinologist, and theGordon Wu '58 Professor of Chinese Studies, Emeritus, atPrinceton University. He was known for his mastery of sources for Chinese history and philosophy, his ability to synthesize them on a wide range of topics, and for his advocacy for a new Confucianism. He was a tenured professor atHarvard University andYale University before his time at Princeton.
He was the elder brother of philosopher, educator, and university presidentPaul Yu.
Yu's father, who had studied at Harvard, taught history inTianjin, and at the start of thesecond Sino-Japanese War sent him to live with his aunt from 1937 through 1946 in ruralAnhui province, where they would be safe from Japanese invasion.[2] He later recalled that "althoughrujia 儒家 [Confucian] culture was in a degenerate state, it nevertheless controlled the activities of daily life: by and large, all interpersonal relationships—from marriage and funeral customs to seasonal festivals—adhered to therujia norms, supplemented by Buddhist and Daoist beliefs and practices."[3] Wartime shortages meant that sometimes the family had no money for rice, forcing them to eat potatoes. "I hate potatoes," he later told an interviewer. The situation was too chaotic for him to attend school, so he read whatever material he could find, for instance, his aunt's popular novels.[2]
In 1949, he enrolled inYenching University, but shortly came to Hong Kong for reunion with his family.[4]: 89 He then studied in the newly foundedNew Asia College, later incorporated intoChinese University of Hong Kong. The founders of New Asia College, which Yu joined as a student, were staunchly anti-Communist, rejected the iconoclasticNew Culture Movement but did not see Western liberal thought as the alternative. Yu studied withCh'ien Mu, a scholar rooted in traditional Chinese philosophy, and became the first graduate of the college.[5]
Yu came toHarvard University in the United States to pursue his PhD in Chinese history.[4]: 89 He then taught at various universities includingUniversity of Michigan, Harvard,Yale University andPrinceton University. As Yale historianJonathan Spence commented, Yu is one of the few people to have beentenured at these threeIvy League universities. In 1973, he went back to his alma mater, New Asia College, as its Head of college and also the Pro Vice-Chancellor of University for two years,[5] before returning to Harvard. In 1977, he moved to Yale to take up the position of Charles Seymour Professor in Chinese History. He then moved to Princeton in 1987 to be Professor of East Asian Studies until his retirement.[6]
In 1974, he was elected as a Fellow atAcademia Sinica, and has kept this position until his death.[1] In the 1970s, he became one of the members of the school board ofNew Asia Middle School.[7] When asked later why he had moved to Princeton he said: "They had a really interesting library", probably meaning theEast Asian Library and the Gest Collection. He retired from Princeton in 2001.[2]
He died at his home inPrinceton, New Jersey during his sleep on 1 August 2021.[1]
While still in Hong Kong, Yu started to write books and pamphlets in Chinese commenting on the problems of intellectuals and democracy in the People's Republic.[8] He was particularly tenacious over the years in presenting the achievements ofChen Yinke (1890–1969), the greatest modern scholar of Tang dynasty China, who was at first supported and then hounded to death by the revolution. Yu was moved to study Chen upon encountering Chen's draft work "OnLove in Two Lives" at theHarvard-Yenching Library.[4]: 89 In 1983, Yu published hispolemical essay,On the Scholarly Spirit and the Late State of Mind of Chen Yinke.[4]: 80 Yu contended that Chen's shift from history to poetry had profound moral and political implications.[4]: 81
His Harvard PhD thesis was published asTrade and Expansion in Han China; a Study in the Structure of Sino-Barbarian Economic Relations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). Scrupulous and thematically relevant monographs, mostly published in Chinese, explored the role of intellectuals, especially early modern moral and political critics such asFang Yizhi (1611–71),Dai Zhen (1723–77), andZhang Xuecheng (1738–1801), who had been neglected in earlier scholarship. Yu also mastered the scholarship aroundHonglou Meng, the novel known in English asDream of the Red Chamber, a masterpiece exploring the decline of a rich family at the height of the Qing empire in the late 18th century.
The insistent, modest, meticulous voice of history which Yu developed in these studies was the one he used in the debates over democracy in the 1980s and 1990s. Some people, including both the defenders of the state in Beijing and western modernization liberals, still insisted that democracy and Confucianism were incompatible. But Yu developed the philosophical and historical arguments perhaps implicit in the thought of his mentors: liberal Confucian values, once freed from the imperial ideology of the dynasties, are essential to democracy: The independent spirit of the scholar both models and creates responsible criticism of politics. Confucian values had always insisted on the critique of political power, moral judgment grounded in historic comparison, the voice of the people in governance, the contingent nature of the political mandate, public discourse, the responsibility of the individual for social action, and could even be developed for a contemporary view of women's rights.[9]
Yu developed a critical view of therevival of Confucianism in mainland China. He commented "the Chinese Communists are not Confucianists."[10] He held that there were two kinds of Confucianism to be found in China's history: "the Confucianism that had been persecuted, the other is the Confucianism that has persecuted people." He termed the state sponsorship of Confucianism in China today "the kiss of death."[11]
In October 2014 it was reported that Beijing had ordered the banning of works by Yu Yingshi.[12][13]
Yu gave a televised speech on 22 November 2019 in which he said that some Taiwan media act as the mouthpiece of the PRC in Taiwan.[14]
Yu Ying-shih was elected to theAmerican Philosophical Society in 2004.[15] On 15 November 2006, he was named the third recipient of theJohn W. Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the study of humanity. He shared the 2006 prize withJohn Hope Franklin.[16] He is the inaugural winner of theTang Prize in Sinology, which recognizes scholars conducting "revolutionary research" and is selected by theAcademia Sinica.[17] Yu used his Tang Prize winnings of NT$10 million to establish the Yu Ying-shih Fellowship for the Humanities.[18] Asteroid28966 Yuyingshih, discovered byBill Yeung in 2001, was named in his honor.[19] The officialnaming citation was published by theMinor Planet Center on 6 April 2019 (M.P.C. 112430).[20]
Yu received honorary doctorate in arts from theUniversity of Hong Kong in 1992 and honorary doctorate in law from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1977.[6]
To honour his contribution to sinology, New Asia College andChung Chi College have set up the series "Yu Ying-shih Lecture in History" in 2007 to invite distinguished scholars to speak about Chinese history.[21]
Prominent Chinese-American historian Yu Ying-shih (余英時) warned on Friday (Nov. 22) of Taiwan media outlets acting as mouthpieces for the Chinese government.
