Just a Scholar: The Memoirs of Zhou Yiliang (1913-2001)

One of China’s premier historians of the twentieth century, Zhou Yiliang (1913-2001) experienced many of the tumultuous events of that century. Born into a wealthy family, his father saw to his pre-college education through a range of tutors which afforded him not only a profound traditional Chinese education but a modern one as well–including virtually native fluency in English and Japanese. He later earned degrees in Beijing before leaving to study and earn a Ph.D. at Harvard during the years of World War II. Given the dearth of Americans who knew Japanese, he was called up in the 1940s to help teach Americans that language. He returned to China after the war, took up academic positions, and found himself the object of severe controversy as the events of post-1949 China unfolded, especially those of the Cultural Revolution. These are his memoirs of his extraordinary life and work.