Yu, Ying-shih, 1930-The Michael Henry Strater University Professor of East Asian Studies
Princeton University
from Taiwan Headlines
http://www.taiwanheadlines.gov.tw/20010504/20010504s3.htmlFriday, May 4, 2001
Historian Yu Ying-shih retiring from Princeton
Published: May 4, 2001
Source: China Times
Noted historian Yu Ying-shih is scheduled to officially retire Friday from Princeton University. A member of Academia Sinica, Yu is widely respected throughout the Chinese-speaking world for his work on the history of Chinese philosophy.Princeton University has decided to highlight his contributions to the study of the history of Chinese thought by holding a seminar entitled "China's Future and Past," to which the university has invited prominent scholars from Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, the United States, and Japan.
Academia Sinica, in the meantime, saw a wonderful opportunity for Taiwan when it learned of Yu's retirement plan, and instructed Wang Fan-sen, director of the National Science Council's Humanities & Social Sciences Department, to invite Yu to return to Taiwan and direct the academic research of young scholars here.
Yu is well known in the academic community for the depth and breadth of his learning, and his expertise is not limited to a single area. Besides being intimately familiar with the history of the Tang Dynasty, Yu's highly regarded publications have touched upon every period of Chinese history from ancient to modern. He first achieved widespread recognition in Taiwan in 1973 when his Anti-Intellectualism and the Tradition of Chinese Thought was published in installments over a 20-day period in a local literary supplement.
His writings eventually became well known in mainland China in the 1990s as the country began allowing greater latitude for intellectual inquiry. PRC intellectuals have come to greatly admire his trenchant political commentary, and one Taiwanese scholar who travels frequently to mainland China reports that the level of esteem for Yu in the mainland is comparable to that accorded to Academia Sinica President Lee Yuan-tseh, who holds a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
In addition to their admiration for Yu's academic brilliance, mainland scholars also look up to him for his criticism of the communist regime.
Yu has also established himself as a leading light in the United States. When Chien Mu, a noted historian specializing in the Ming dynasty and modern Chinese history, visited Harvard University a few years ago and called upon Edwin Reischauer, director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute and former U.S. ambassador to Japan, he thanked Reischauer for all the financial support that the United States had provided over the years for the University of Hong Kong's New Asia College. Reischauer reportedly responded, "It was certainly worth it, for we got Yu Ying-shih in return!" In thanking Chien, the founder of New Asia College, for "giving" Yu to Harvard, Reischauer affirmed Yu's outstanding reputation in U.S. academic circles.
Yu's strong standing is also apparent from the fact that he has taught at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton - three Ivy League universities. He is the first Chinese scholar ever to do so, and full professorships at all three of these universities is undoubtedly rare. Yet when he learned that former students in Taiwan were planning to write an extended article for the press detailing his illustrious career, he declined to take part, thus demonstrating the humble attitude that is the mark of a true scholar.
Yu once said that he maintains "only a passing interest in politics," and that even though he is a regular observer and commentator, he has no intention of getting personally involved. Since the 1980s he has published many articles of political commentary in Taiwan, and his views have always been taken very seriously by the authorities here. After the Tiananmen Square Massacre of June 4th, 1989, he rallied the U.S. academic community to take out a full-page advertisement in the New York Times in a show of public support for the democracy movement in mainland China.
Although Yu has not published any political commentary for the past several years, and now devotes all his energies to his academic studies, he nevertheless continues to maintain a close interest in Taiwanese politics. Whenever his friends in Taiwan phone him, he always gets around to discussing his thoughts on the political situation here, and his deep concern for Taiwan always shows
from Beijing Spring
Yu Ying-shih, a prominent historian and professor of history at Princeton University. Left China in 1950, Mr. Yu has been a leading critic of the tyranny of the Chinese communists. After 1989, he played a critical role in helping the fleeing activists settle in the U.S. and in setting up the Princeton China Initiative.
The Conference to honor Professor Yu Ying-shih Retirement. From Princeton
University: China's Future and Past
http://www.reviewtide.com/action/Yuying.htm
Publications:
Willard J. Peterson, Andrew H. Plaks, and Ying-shih Yu, eds., The Power of Culture: Studies in Chinese Cultural History (The University of Hong Kong Press, 1994)
Yu, Ying-Shih. Trade and Expansion in Han China. Berkeley, 1967.
Yu, Ying-Shih, "'Oh Soul, Come Back!' A Study of The Changing Conceptions of The Soul and Afterlife in Pre-Buddhist China", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 47, no. 2 (Dec., 1987), pp. 363-395.
Yu Ying-shih. "Mr. Wu Ho-su’s Life and Ethics: Eulogy,"
http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/acad_unit/hrob/faculty/mitchell/hosuwu.htmYÜ Ying-shih (1977). Food in Chinese Culture. New Haven & London: Yale UniversityPress. ["Han", pp. 53-84]
YU, Ying-shih (1986). "Han Foreign Relations". a D. TWITCHETT and J. K. FAIRBANK (Ed.), The Cambridge History of China. Vol 1: The Chin and Han empires (pp. 377-463). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ying-shih Yü, "Intellectual Breakthroughs in the T'ang-Sung [Tang-Song] Transition," in Willard J. Peterson et al., eds., The Power of Culture (Shatin, HK, 1994), 158-71
Yu Ying-Shih “The Two Worlds of Hung-lou meng” Renditions 1974.2: 5-21.
Yu, Ying-shih, "Some Preliminary Observations on the Rise of Ch'ing Confucian Intellectualism," Tsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, New Series 11 (1973) pp. 105-144.
