Su Xuelin | |
|---|---|
 Su Xuelin in 1933 in Wuhan | |
| Native name | 蘇雪林 |
| Born | (1897-02-24)February 24, 1897 Rui'an,Zhejiang,China |
| Died | April 21, 1999(1999-04-21) (aged 102) Tainan,Taiwan |
| Occupation | author, scholar |
| Nationality | Chinese |
| Period | 1897-1999 |
| Su Xuelin | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional Chinese | 蘇雪林 | ||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 苏雪林 | ||||||||
| |||||||||
Su Xuelin orSu Hsüeh-lin (Chinese:蘇雪林; 24 February 1897 – 21 April 1999) was a Chinese writer andscholar.
Su Xuelin was born to a family of officials native toAnhui province in 1897. Her grandfather, Su Jinxin, served as a magistrate in several counties inZhejiang province, where Su Xuelin was born. Her mother was surnamed Tu, but had no formal first name, instead going by the nickname To-Ni. Su's father held a minor official position, first under theQing dynasty and then theRepublic of China. Su had three brothers and two sisters.[1]
Su studied inAnhui, and laterBeijing under the supervision ofHu Shih. During theMay Fourth Movement, she penned an essayGreen Skies and a novelThorny Heart which won critical acclaim. In 1922 she went to France and returned to China in 1925. Then she taught atSoochow University andWuhan University.
Su was an opponent ofLu Xun, a contemporary Chinese writer, and wrote toCai Yuanpei to dissuade him from serving as the chairman of the committee to prepare Lu's funeral after Lu died in 1936. This provoked anger from the leftists in China who vociferously castigated Su. In 1949, when theChinese Communist Party overthrew the republic, she moved toHong Kong, where she was offered a position as an editor and translator by theCatholic Church in Hong Kong. However, Su was not able to find materials for her research in Hong Kong, so she left for Europe a year later, still supported by the Catholic Church. After visitingVatican City, she went to France. While there, she took courses at theCollège de France, where she was influenced byÉdouard Paul Dhorme,Paul Demiéville, andGeorges Dumézil. However, Su found that French sinology was irrelevant to her scholarship, and left France after only two years.[2] Around the period she shifted her research concentration on ancient texts, such as those written byQu Yuan and ofGreek andRoman mythology.
From 1952 Su taught inTaiwan, atNational Taiwan Normal University andNational Cheng Kung University. She retired in 1973 and was awarded the first title of Honorary Professor at Cheng Kung University.[3]
Su converted toRoman Catholicism in 1924.[2][3] In her autobiographyFu Sheng Jiu SI, Su stated that she was a descendant ofSu Zhe, a renowned poet of theSong dynasty.[4]
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