LI XUEQIN 李學勤 (1933–2019)

Abstract

The death of Li Xueqin is a great loss to international sinology and the field of Early China studies. There can be few readers of Early China who have not read any of his work, which is often cited in the articles published herein. He also contributed articles to the journal and participated in our forums. Moreover, Early China 35–36 (2012–13), guest-edited by Xing Wen 邢文, was dedicated to Li in honor of his eightieth birthday and included “Interviews with Li Xueqin” by Wang Tao and Sarah Allan, in which he discussed his life and work.1 Li Xueqin was one of the first Chinese sinologists to travel abroad when China opened up after the Cultural Revolution, visiting Australia in 1979 and the United States not long afterwards. He was already well known outside of China from his publications. Li was unusual among his generation of Chinese sinologists in having serviceable English. Like so much else that he knew, his English was largely self-taught, from reading books in English. This reading also gave him unusual sophistication about Western society and he adapted easily, making a number of friends from a generation that we have been losing one by one, including K. C. Chang, Noel Barnard, David Nivison, and David Keightley. Others, fortunately still with us, included Michael Loewe and Léon Vandermeersch. From the time of these first visits on, Li Xueqin played an important role in promoting international scholarly cooperation and collaboration through institutional exchanges, international conferences and publications. He also often introduced Western scholarship in his teaching and writing. I met him in 1981 and had the extraordinary good fortune of collaborating with him on numerous projects over the subsequent decades. Many other Western scholars were also the beneficiaries of his friendship and intellectual generosity.