...that's what I think I will have to do, after reading this piece in today's NYT:
Born in China at the end of the Qing dynasty, the son of a Presbyterian minister, Mr. Lin had a Western education in Shanghai and earned graduate degrees at Harvard and the University of Leipzig. He settled in Beijing, where he taught English at the National University and wrote urbane, bantering newspaper essays on contemporary Chinese culture.
The 1920s were a time of political agitation and forced side-taking. Mr. Lin initially aligned himself with the revolutionary impulses of the day, but simultaneously probed China’s deep past. After experiencing Communist political harassment in Beijing, he increasingly took the ideologically disinterested middle way of the Taoist scholar as his model. He became both a critical traditionalist and a skeptical modernist, a description that can be applied to many Chinese contemporary artists today.
I have his translation of Chuang Tzu, which I have consulted over the years, and a copy of one his US best sellers, My Country, My People, which I haven't read. A vague awareness of his political presence in the 1930s flits across my mind, absorbed perhaps from some left-wing criticism of him. In any event, I have not encountered this other book:
“The Importance of Living” appeared, and its antimaterialist, pro-leisure message was an instant hit with anxious, overachieving America. The book was on the New York Times best-seller list for a year; it still has fans.
Anti-materialist and pro-leisure: sounds promising...
Here are a couple of links on him: 1) from the UMASS Warring States Project, which is quite sympathetic; and 2) a piece from Hong Kong, which views him as an early globalization cosmopolitan; and 3) a couple of PDF files of his daughter's biography of him, part 1 and part 2.
That should get us started. One question might be: was he the Yu Dan of the early twentieth century?
Ah, so stange this comparison!Linyutang is a great writer,Yudan is nothing and totally not comparable to him.
Especially, her title of "excellent memeber of CCP" makes me puke.
Posted by: nickwong | September 15, 2007 at 08:13 AM
sorry,the misspelling:strange.
Posted by: nickwong | September 15, 2007 at 08:16 AM
Nick,
I was thinking of the role of popularizer of ancient thought. You may be right, Lin Yutang may be the superior writer and mind, but they both are, it seems to me, working to make ancient thought relevant and accessible to a more general audience. That's what the comparison raised in my mind...And, yes, their politics are clearly rather different.
Posted by: Sam | September 15, 2007 at 09:03 AM
understand your point of view, maybe I'm a little emotional:)
Thanks!
Posted by: nickwong | September 16, 2007 at 06:28 AM
I came across The Importance of Living in a used bookstore in Kuala Lumpur. It's a real gem.
Here's a quote of his I came across that reminds me of something Chuang Tzu might say:
"Personally, I think that one writ of habeas corpus is worth more than all the Confucian philosophy ever written."
(quoted by Jacob G. Hornberger in Tyranny and the Military Commissions Act)
Posted by: The Western Confucian | September 16, 2007 at 04:39 PM