Lin Yutang, Xu Dishan and the Scholarship of the Early Faculty of Arts

This is one of the biographical profiles in "The University of Hong Kong (HKU) database", covering several key scholars of the early Faculty of Arts / Department of Chinese. The purpose of this piece is to verify historical facts and separate them from apocrypha; any widely circulated claim whose provenance is doubtful is listed separately under "Unverified / To Be Checked". The factual sections follow a plain, evidence-based narrative drawn from official archives and authoritative entries; apocryphal material is flagged as such. For the founding figures and the succession of Vice-Chancellors, see faculty-and-leaders.md; for Eileen Chang and Stanley Ho, who belonged to the same wartime generation and whose studies were cut short by the war in 1941, see eileen-chang-and-stanley-ho-war-generation.md; for Hu Shih and other honorary graduates, see honorary-degrees-and-visitors.md.

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# Where did HKU's Department of Chinese come from?

The Faculty of Arts was established in 1912 with the founding of the University, and the first arts students enrolled in October of that year^※. The institutionalisation of Chinese-language study, however, was a more tortuous affair — it was not until 1927, with funding from Chinese merchants such as Tang Chi-ngong and Fung Ping-shan, that the School of Chinese Studies was formally established^※. In its early years the curriculum was dominated by former members of the Qing imperial Hanlin Academy; the academic style was conservative, centred on the Confucian classics and classical prose, and markedly out of step with the intellectual currents of the May Fourth New Culture Movement. In 1933, the School of Chinese Studies was folded into the Faculty of Arts and renamed the Department of Chinese^※.

This institutional history provides the backdrop for Xu Dishan's arrival: in the mid-1930s HKU's Chinese Department was still a teaching unit run by old-style scholars with an antiquated syllabus. It took a series of upheavals around 1935 to transform it.

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# The Department of Chinese nearly closed: How Clementi and two donors saved it

It is worth recording that the School of Chinese Studies almost died in infancy. Chinese teaching at HKU dates back to 1913, when the University hired two former Hanlin academicians, Lai Chi-hei and Au Tai-tin, as lecturers in Chinese^※; it was only formally constituted as a "School of Chinese Studies" in 1927, with Lai in the chair of Chinese history. But the School had barely found its feet when financial difficulties in 1928 led HKU to consider closing the fledgling unit altogether^※.

The turnaround came through the Governor, Cecil Clementi. A noted Chinese scholar himself and a vocal advocate of promoting Chinese culture in Hong Kong, Clementi brokered a rescue: a fundraising committee of Chinese community leaders — Chow Shou-son, Lo Hok-pang, Fung Ping-shan and others — raised a total of $200,000, securing the future of Chinese teaching^※. The money did more than stave off closure: it also left behind two buildings that still stand on the Pokfulam campus today. The merchant Tang Chi-ngong donated over $60,000 to build the School's teaching block, Tang Chi-ngong Building, completed in 1931^※; Fung Ping-shan gave $100,000 for a Chinese-language library, the Fung Ping Shan Library, which opened in 1932 and was then the University's only library devoted to Chinese collections^※. In other words, when Xu Dishan took over in 1935, he inherited a unit whose physical infrastructure had been funded by Chinese merchants but which still lacked a genuinely modern academic core — the buildings and books were there, but no scholarly tradition to speak of.

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# Why did Hu Shih recommend Xu Dishan to HKU?

On 4 January 1935, Hu Shih arrived in Hong Kong to receive an honorary doctorate of laws from the University — the first honorary degree of his career^※. During his visit he delivered a withering critique of the state of Chinese teaching at HKU, declaring that the curriculum was "entirely in the hands of a few old-style examination scholars". The University was, by coincidence, already looking to reform Chinese studies and wanted a scholar of high academic standing, fluent in English, who could speak for the department in Senate. Hu Shih put forward Xu Dishan for the post. According to HKU's official alumni records, it was Hu Shih who recommended Xu Dishan for the position of first Chair Professor of Chinese^※.

The two men went back a long way: both were veterans of the May Fourth New Culture Movement, both committed to the project of re-ordering the Chinese intellectual heritage through modern scholarly methods. That shared background determined the direction of the reforms Xu Dishan would push through once in Hong Kong — away from classical orthodoxy, towards scholarly rigour and engagement with the academic mainstream.

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# Who was Xu Dishan, and what did he bring to HKU?

Xu Dishan (1893/1894–1941), a native of Longxi, Fujian, was born into a patriotic gentry family in Tainan, Taiwan. He wrote under the pen name Luo Huasheng ("Peanut Blossom"), and is remembered in the literary world for the eponymous essay "The Peanut". His scholarly interests spanned religion, Sanskrit, Indian studies and Chinese literature: he studied at Yenching University, Columbia University (M.A. in comparative religion, 1924) and Oxford (B.Litt. in Sanskrit and Indian studies, 1926)^※, and introduced the first Sanskrit course at Yenching — he is regarded as the first Chinese to teach Sanskrit at university level in China.

On 1 September 1935, Xu Dishan formally arrived in Hong Kong to take up the Chair of Chinese and head the Department of Chinese^※. Fluent in Cantonese, Hokkien, Mandarin and English, he could participate directly in the University's senior management meetings — a crossover none of his old-school predecessors could manage. He restructured the curriculum into four pillars — literature, history, philosophy and translation — expanding the offerings from roughly 15 courses to 35 by 1936^※, and supervised master's (M.A.) students, driving the professionalisation of Chinese studies at HKU.

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# What did Xu Dishan achieve in six years in Hong Kong?

Xu Dishan's six years in Hong Kong (1935–1941) were anything but a quiet life of teaching. As Chair Professor, he took on multiple roles under the gathering clouds of the Second World War. On the academic front, he completed several studies on the history of Chinese dress — his essay "Chinese Women's Dress of the Last Three Hundred Years" would, later scholars have found, influence the writing of Eileen Chang and others^※ (this is an academic observation, reported here plainly, without adjudicating on literary merit).

On the cultural front, he served as chairman of the Sino-British Cultural Association (Hong Kong), chairing more than 50 public lectures^※ on subjects ranging from national identity and the responsibilities of youth to resistance literature. He was also publicly active in the Hong Kong branch of the All-China Resistance Association of Writers and Artists^※, using culture as a weapon of anti-Japanese mobilisation, and supported Song Qingling's war-relief organisations.

On 4 August 1941, Xu Dishan died of exhaustion at his home in Hong Kong, aged just 48^※. He was buried in the Chinese Christian Cemetery in Pokfulam, beneath a headstone reading "Tomb of Mr Hsu Ti-shan, Professor of The University of Hong Kong"^※. He held the chair for only six years, yet he transformed the study of Chinese at HKU beyond recognition.

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# Why did the death of one professor shake the whole cultural scene of Hong Kong?

Xu Dishan's sudden death, in a Hong Kong already tense with the threat of war, provoked mourning that reached far beyond the academy. When the news broke, institutions and schools across the city flew their flags at half-mast, and the clock tower bells of the Tsim Sha Tsui and Central piers rang in mourning^※; on 21 September, more than 400 cultural organisations and nearly a thousand representatives gathered for a "Memorial Meeting for Mr Hsu Ti-shan"^※. The scale of the tribute speaks to his standing in the network of intellectuals who had come south: he was not only a Chair Professor at HKU but an organiser of wartime cultural mobilisation, and he died in middle age, at the height of his powers.

The roll-call of mourners was equally striking. According to published compilations, the first wreath to arrive was from Song Qingling; wreaths and elegiac couplets also came from Mei Lanfang, Ye Gongchuo, Yu Dafu, Xu Beihong and other figures of the literary and art worlds^※. The writer Lao She, a friend of many years, wept at the news: "Dishan was the best of friends to me, and now he is dead." Xu's daughter, Xu Yanji, remembered into her old age two couplets at the memorial service, one of which read "the heart of a child"^※. Such details put human warmth behind the clinical archive phrase "died in post of overwork": a scholar who had spent himself between the lectern and the anti-Japanese cause earned a collective tribute rarely accorded by his contemporaries.

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# Chen Yinke's brief encounter with HKU

Chen Yinke's connection with HKU actually predates Xu Dishan's death. According to the record, in 1941 he had accepted an invitation to teach Sui and Tang history at the University — it was Xu Dishan who had invited him; after Xu's death, Chen succeeded him as head of the Department of Chinese^※. Chen Yinke (1890–1969) was at the time also preparing to take up a chair in Chinese studies at Oxford, but the war in Europe prevented the move, and he stayed on to teach in Hong Kong^※. In his lectures on Sui and Tang history, he famously devoted more than two months to a single poem, Wei Zhuang's "Lament of the Lady of Qin" — two months on one long poem is a vivid demonstration of his lifelong method of "using poetry as historical evidence and excelling in philosophical interpretation", and an anecdote scholars never tire of citing.

Chen's time at HKU, however, proved extremely short. On 8 December 1941, the Pacific War broke out, Japanese forces occupied Hong Kong almost immediately, and the University suspended classes^※. Under occupation, supplies were scarce and life grew hard. Because Chen spoke Japanese, the Japanese authorities treated him with considerable courtesy, even offering generous remuneration to head cultural institutions — he refused all of it and accepted no favours^※. He closed his door and wrote, completing parts of the Sketch of the Political History of the Tang Dynasty in straitened circumstances, before making his way out of Hong Kong back to mainland China in 1942^※. For Chen, HKU was an academic encounter "of only a few months, cut short by war"; the main body of his scholarship belongs to the mainland. But the facts are documented: he taught there, and he held his moral ground under occupation. The same occupation that began in late 1941 also cut short the studies of Eileen Chang, Stanley Ho and other HKU students (see eileen-chang-and-stanley-ho-war-generation.md) — the chairs of the Chinese Department and the classrooms of the Arts Faculty fell silent together that winter.

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# Lin Yutang and HKU: separating fact from conflation

The title names Lin Yutang, so let us set the record straight.

Lin Yutang (1895–1976), author of My Country and My People, The Importance of Living and other celebrated English works, was one of the twentieth century's most influential Chinese writers in introducing China to the West. His later years did indeed include a "Hong Kong chapter" — but his institutional ties were to The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), not The University of Hong Kong (HKU)^※.

In 1967, Lin Yutang was appointed Research Professor at CUHK, where he led the compilation of the Lin Yutang's Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage^※. The dictionary was published by CUHK in 1972, containing about 8,000 head characters, roughly 85,000 entries and examples, and incorporating many new coinages of the time^※. Lin spent roughly five years on the project, fulfilling a decades-old ambition and answering a real need in contemporary Chinese-English translation — CUHK later made the dictionary available online for researchers. It is the crowning work of his lifelong philological endeavour, and it constitutes his only formally documented academic relationship with Hong Kong. On 26 March 1976, Lin Yutang died in a Hong Kong hospital, aged 80^※.

One more piece of biography is worth untangling, because it is often misplaced: Lin's most controversial administrative post in later life was not in Hong Kong at all, but in Singapore. In October 1954 he became the founding president of Singapore's Nanyang University; the following April he resigned, after a clash with the board over philosophy, funding and appointments^※, before the University had even formally opened. That episode has nothing to do with HKU or CUHK; it is mentioned here only because it is routinely lumped together with his "Hong Kong years" — collapsing Lin's administrative career, his teaching career and his final resting place all under the HKU banner is precisely the kind of slippage from which apocrypha grow.

Narratives that casually pair Lin Yutang with HKU probably arise for two reasons: first, he and Xu Dishan were both noted literary translators of the May Fourth generation, and cultural histories often treat them side by side; second, he died in Hong Kong, and the geographic label "Hong Kong" gets used loosely. On the documentary record currently available, this database has found no evidence of any formal academic appointment linking Lin Yutang to The University of Hong Kong. Conflating the two is an instance of apocrypha, and readers and citation-writers should be on their guard.

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# Heads of the early Faculty of Arts / Department of Chinese (1927–1964)

The institutional evolution of HKU's Department of Chinese falls into three phases: the late-Qing scholars, the May Fourth scholars, and the post-war reconstruction. The timeline of key figures:

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# From "a single teacher" to an international journal: how the Department of Chinese rose from the rubble

The three years and eight months of Japanese occupation all but erased the foundation Xu Dishan and Chen Yinke had built. In 1946, after the war, Ma Jian took up the Chair and headship to rebuild the department; according to the University's official history, when he took over almost no teaching staff remained^※. Reconstruction meant starting from the basics — recruitment, timetabling, reappointment — and reassembling a teaching unit that had all but dissolved. The war had made a difficult job vastly harder.

The real expansion and internationalisation came in the twelve years under the British sinologist Frederick S. Drake. He was appointed Chair Professor and Head of Department in 1952, founded the Institute of Oriental Studies the same year, and launched the English-language Journal of Oriental Studies in 1953^※, giving Chinese studies at HKU, for the first time, a stable publication outlet for the international scholarly community. He also brought in scholars who would become intellectual heavyweights, among them the historian Luo Xianglin and the internationally renowned master of Chinese classical learning Jao Tsung-I^※. From Lai Chi-hei's Hanlin-era classical scholarship, through Xu Dishan's four-pillar modernisation, to the international journal and stellar faculty of the Drake years, the three-phase arc of Chinese studies at HKU — "late-Qing scholars, May Fourth scholars, post-war reconstruction" — completed its foundational stage. For the other branches of this scholarly lineage, and for the founding figures and successive Vice-Chancellors, see faculty-and-leaders.md.

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# Unverified / To Be Checked

• Direct connection between Lin Yutang and HKU: No record has been found in the currently available literature; the popular claim that "Lin Yutang once taught at HKU" cannot be verified by this database and is not accepted. Readers with a specific source are welcome to come forward.
• Direct teacher-student relationship between Xu Dishan and Eileen Chang: The two were at HKU at the same time (1939–1941), but no documented teacher-student interaction exists (Xu was in the Department of Chinese; Chang studied English in the Faculty of Arts). The suggestion that Chang "studied under" Xu is conjecture; on the basis of official archives, this database does not make that claim.
• Chen Yinke's eye surgery and its link to HKU: Some accounts mention Chen's eye condition worsening during his time in Hong Kong, but this database has found no archival record directly connecting it to HKU's medical history; the point remains unverified and to be checked.
• Whether Xu Dishan was "personally invited by the Governor" in 1935: Sources differ. The HKU official record shows "appointed by the University on the recommendation of Hu Shih"; the "personal invitation by the Governor" version may well be embellishment. This database follows the documented record: the official archives and Hu Shih's recommendation.

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