附周原博士发来的英文讣告
Tsuen-hsuin (T.H.) Tsien, Curator Emeritus of the East AsianCollection of the Joseph Regenstein Library and Professor Emeritusof Far Eastern Languages and Civilizations (now East AsianLanguages and Civilizations) of the University of Chicago, passedaway in Chicago yesterday, April 9, 2015, at the age of 105. T.H.lived a long and extraordinarily full life. He liked to say that hewas born under the last emperor of China, in 1909, in Taixian,Jiangsu, China. In 1927, before entering university, heparticipated in the Northern Expedition, a military effort of theNationalist government of China that resulted in the unification ofChina. In 1928, T.H. entered Jinling University (the precursor ofNanjing University), from which he was graduated in 1932 with adegree in Library Science. After graduation, he worked first inShanghai at the Jiaotong University Library, and then in Nanjing atthe Nanjing Branch of the Peking Library (the forerunner of theNational Library of China). In December, 1941, he was personallyresponsible for shipping 300,000 rare books from the library to theUnited States Library of Congress for safe-keeping during the war;the books left the port of Shanghai, then still an open city, justdays before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and made it safelyto Washington. After the conclusion of the war, T.H. went toWashington to arrange for the return of the books. However, theoutbreak of civil war in China made their return at the timeimpossible, and T.H. remained in America together with the books.In 1947, Herrlee G. Creel (1905-1994; Martin A. Ryerson ProfessorEmeritus of Chinese Studies at the University) invited T.H. to theUniversity of Chicago to manage the Far Eastern Library (now EastAsian Collection). T.H. remained in Chicago thereafter.
It is no exaggeration to say that T.H. Tsien was the mostinfluential Chinese librarian in America. Not only did he developone of the country’s greatest East Asian libraries at theUniversity of Chicago, but he also trained a generation of studentsfor East Asian libraries around the country including those whowent on to head the East Asian libraries at Harvard and Princeton.In addition, his published scholarship continues to have a profoundinfluence on the fields of Chinese bibliography, paleography, andscience and technology. He received a Ph.D. from the University ofChicago in 1957; his dissertation, published by the University ofChicago Press in 1962 as Written on Bamboo and Silk: TheBeginnings of Chinese Books and Inscriptions, is still regardedas a classic in the field. In 1978, after retiring from hisposition as Curator of the East Asian Collection, T.H. accepted aninvitation from Joseph Needham to participate in Needham’s greatScience and civilisation in China project. In 1984, T.H.contributed Vol. 5.1: Paper and Printing, the first volumein the series to be published under a name other than Needham’s.After this time, he remained active. In 2011, his book CollectedWritings on Chinese Culture, was published by the ChineseUniversity of Hong Kong Press. It includes thirty essays on“Ancient Documents and Artifacts,” “Paper, Ink, and Printing,”“Cultural Exchange andLibrarianship,”
T.H. Tsien has now rejoined his beloved wife Wen-ching Hsu, whowas one of the first instructors of Chinese at the University, andhis eldest daughter Ginger, both of whom passed away in 2008. He issurvived by two other daughters, Mary Tsien Dunkel and GloriaTsien, as well as by his nephew Xiaowen Qian, Assistant to theCurator for the East Asian Collection of the Regenstein Library. Hehas established a legacy that will endure as long as scholarscontinue to value books.
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