Lin Yutang, Hsu Ti-shan, and the Early Faculty of Arts: Lives Behind the Legend

This is a biographical sketch from the "University of Hong Kong (HKU) Database", chronicling several pivotal scholars in HKU's early Faculty of Arts / School of Chinese. Its primary purpose is to verify historical facts and disentangle them from popular myths. Widely circulated but unsubstantiated claims are collated in a separate "Unverified / To Be Confirmed" section. Method: the historical core narrates events plainly based on official archives and authoritative sources; the apocrypha is clearly signposted.

# Where Did HKU's School of Chinese Come From?

The University of Hong Kong's Faculty of Arts was established alongside the university itself in 1912, with its first arts students admitted that October^※. The institutionalisation of a Chinese-language curriculum, however, followed a far more tortuous path. It was not until 1927, with financial backing from wealthy Chinese benefactors such as Tang Chi-ngong and Fung Ping-shan, that the "School of Chinese Studies" was formally founded^※. In its infancy, the school was dominated by former officials of the Qing dynasty's Hanlin Academy, and its teaching was conservative and ossified, revolving around classical exegesis and ancient prose—a world away from the intellectual currents of the May Fourth New Culture Movement. In 1933, the School of Chinese Studies was merged into the Faculty of Arts and renamed the Department of Chinese^※.

This institutional history provides the essential backdrop for Hsu Ti-shan's arrival: the HKU Chinese Department of the day was a teaching unit led by old-fashioned literati and saddled with a dated curriculum. A series of convulsions around 1935 would transform it entirely.

# Why Did Hu Shih Recommend Hsu Ti-shan to HKU?

On 4 January 1935, Hu Shih arrived in Hong Kong to receive an honorary doctorate of laws from HKU—the first honorary degree he ever accepted^※. During his visit, he issued a stinging critique of Chinese-language teaching at the university, charging that the curriculum was "entirely in the hands of a few old degree-holders of the imperial examination system." HKU's administration was already looking to reform Chinese studies and sought a scholar of high academic standing who was fluent in English and could represent the department's interests in university-wide meetings. Hu Shih put forward Hsu Ti-shan as his proxy. According to HKU's official records of its honorary graduates, it was Hu Shih who recommended Hsu Ti-shan as the university's first Professor of Chinese^※.

Hu Shih and Hsu Ti-shan had deep ties: both were veterans of the May Fourth New Culture Movement and advocates for using modern scholarly methods to re-evaluate the national heritage. This shared intellectual DNA defined the direction of the reforms Hsu would launch upon reaching Hong Kong—abolishing classical scripture study, introducing theoretical rigour, and aligning the curriculum with the academic mainstream.

# Who Was Hsu Ti-shan, and What Did He Bring to HKU?

Hsu Ti-shan (1893/1894–1941) was a native of Longxi, Fujian, born in Tainan, Taiwan, into a patriotic gentry family. He wrote under the pen name "Luo Hua Sheng" (落花生, literally "falling peanut"), with which he titled a famous essay that made his literary name. His academic journey spanned religion, Sanskrit, Indian studies, and Chinese literature: he studied at Yenching University, Columbia University (M.A. in comparative religion, 1924), and the University of Oxford (B.Litt. in Sanskrit and Indian studies, 1926)^※, and was the first person to teach a Sanskrit course at Yenching—regarded as "the first Chinese to teach Sanskrit at a Chinese university."

On 1 September 1935, Hsu Ti-shan officially arrived in Hong Kong to take up the chair of Chinese at HKU and head its Department of Chinese^※. He was conversant in Cantonese, Hokkien, Mandarin, and English, and could participate directly in the University's senior management meetings—a communicative leap that his old-guard predecessors simply could not make. Upon taking office, he restructured the curriculum into four pillars: "literature—history—philosophy—translation." Courses expanded from about 15 to 35 by 1936^※. He also supervised M.A. postgraduates, professionalising Chinese studies research at HKU.

# What Did Hsu Ti-shan Achieve in His Six Years in Hong Kong?

Hsu Ti-shan's six years in Hong Kong (1935–1941) were far more than a desk-bound teaching appointment. As HKU's chair professor, he shouldered multiple roles against the darkening backdrop of the Second World War. Academically, he completed several studies on the history of Chinese dress—his essay "Chinese Women's Attire Over the Last Three Hundred Years" has been noted by later scholars as having influenced the writing of Eileen Chang, among others^※ (this is an observation in literary scholarship, which this archive relays neutrally without passing judgment on its literary merit).

On the cultural front, he served as chairman of the "Sino-British Cultural Association of Hong Kong" and presided over more than 50 public lectures^※ on subjects ranging from national identity and the responsibilities of youth to wartime literature. He was also openly involved in the work of the Hong Kong branch of the "All-China Anti-Japanese Association of Writers and Artists"^※, wielding culture as a weapon to mobilise anti-Japanese sentiment. He lent his support to the war-relief organisations headed by Soong Ching-ling.

On 4 August 1941, Hsu Ti-shan died of overwork at his Hong Kong residence, aged just 48^※. He was buried at the Chinese Christian Cemetery in Pokfulam, his headstone inscribed "The grave of Professor Hsu Ti-shan of the University of Hong Kong"^※. His tenure lasted a mere six years, yet it fundamentally reshaped the profile of Chinese scholarship at HKU.

# Chen Yinke's Brief Encounter with HKU

Following Hsu Ti-shan's death, HKU invited the eminent historian Chen Yinke (1890–1969) to assume the chair of Chinese in September 1941^※. At that time, Chen had been preparing to take up a chair in Sinology at the University of Oxford, but altered course for Hong Kong when HKU tendered its offer. He gave lectures on Sui-and-Tang history; by some accounts, he spent over two months expounding on a single poem, Wei Zhuang's "Lament of the Lady of Qin"—an approach emblematic of his scholarly credo of mastering historical context to illuminate underlying principles.

But Chen's teaching career at HKU was extraordinarily short-lived: on 8 December 1941, the Pacific War broke out, and Japanese forces swiftly occupied Hong Kong, suspending all classes^※. The Japanese occupation authorities tried to persuade him to head a cultural institution with generous pay; he refused outright. He shuttered himself away to write, completing parts of his Draft Political History of the Tang Dynasty, before fleeing back to mainland China via a circuitous route in 1942^※. For Chen Yinke, HKU was an academic encounter that lasted "only a few months, cut short by war." The main body of his scholarly legacy lies in mainland China; that he nonetheless lectured here is a matter of documented record.

# Lin Yutang and HKU: Setting the Record Straight

The title of this article includes "Lin Yutang," making a clarification imperative at this point.

Lin Yutang (1895–1976), who won international fame through English-language works such as My Country and My People and The Importance of Living, was one of the most influential twentieth-century Chinese writers to "interpret China" for the West. He certainly spent a portion of his later life in Hong Kong—but his formal institutional affiliation was with The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), not the University of Hong Kong (HKU)^※.

In 1967, Lin was appointed a research professor at CUHK and commissioned to compile the Lin Yutang Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage^※. Published by The Chinese University Press in 1972, the dictionary contained approximately 8,000 character head entries and some 85,000 words and illustrative sentences^※, representing the crowning achievement of a lifetime's dedication to linguistics. Lin Yutang died in a Hong Kong hospital on 26 March 1976, aged 80^※.

Why do popular accounts occasionally associate Lin Yutang with HKU? Two plausible reasons: first, like Hsu Ti-shan, he was a celebrated literary translator of the May Fourth generation, so they are often discussed alongside each other in cultural histories; second, he passed away in his later years in Hong Kong, and the geographic tag "Hong Kong" is often applied indiscriminately. Based on all verifiable documents currently available, this archive has found no record of a formal academic appointment between Lin Yutang and the University of Hong Kong. To conflate the two is a myth; readers and those who cite such sources should exercise caution.

# Successive Heads of the Early Faculty of Arts / School of Chinese at HKU (1927–1964)

The institutional evolution of the Department of Chinese at HKU unfolded in three phases: "late-Qing literati — May Fourth scholars — post-war reconstruction." Here is a chronological outline of the key figures:

# Unverified / To Be Confirmed

• Direct interaction between Lin Yutang and HKU: No records found in available documentation. The widely circulated claim that "Lin Yutang once lectured at HKU" cannot be verified by this archive and is not accepted. Readers with concrete sources are encouraged to submit them.
• A direct teacher-student relationship between Hsu Ti-shan and Eileen Chang: Both were at HKU during the same period (1939–1941), but there is no documented evidence of direct interaction between them (Hsu was in the Department of Chinese; Chang was a student in the Faculty of Arts' English programme). The assertion that she "studied under his tutelage" is conjectural; this archive, following official records, makes no such claim.
• Chen Yinke's eye surgery in relation to HKU: Some accounts mention the deterioration of Chen's eyesight during his time in Hong Kong, but this archive has found no archive records directly linking his condition to HKU's medical history. The claim remains pending verification.
• Whether Hsu Ti-shan was "personally invited by the Governor of Hong Kong" in 1935: Sources vary. What emerges from HKU's official archives is an appointment made "on the recommendation of Hu Shih." The "Governor's personal invitation" may be a journalistic embellishment; this archive's narrative follows the documented record of Hu Shih's recommendation.