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In 1998, needing help to get a manuscript translated into Chinese, I was introduced by mail to Shao Dongfang, then teaching at the National University of Singapore. Shortly after our initial contact, he decided to move permanently to the United States, where his wife was already employed as a computer expert. Three years before Shao became the head librarian at the East Asia Library at Stanford University in 2003, he and I had framed a project for research and publication on the Bamboo Annals (Zhushu jinian), the focus of my monograph and some of Shao's already published work. The Bamboo Annals is an ancient chronicle discovered eighteen centuries ago in a royal tomb in North China, written in the fourth century BCE (the presently available continuous text is of disputed authenticity). We obtained funding for our project from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, to support Shao for two years.
This has resulted (so far) in two publications in Chinese: my own monograph (eighty-eight pages as translated by Shao), published in Taipei (Zhongguo Yanjiu Luncong 10 ) in 2002; and also in 2002 a book of selected papers by ten scholars, Jinben Zhushu jinian lunji, evenly divided on the authenticity problem. This book we edited together, though most of the work was Shao's. Related to this, there have been joint speaking engagements and conferences involving us both, notably the 2002 meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Washington DC. On another occasion, Shao gave a lecture on our work in Taipei, and I joined in the discussion by telephone.
Our relationship has become one of permanent collaboration. Shao took up the task of getting my 1966 book on Zhang Xuecheng published in Chinese. The result has been two publications, by different translators and publishers, in Taipei and in Beijing, both in 2003. Shao did the editing for both, a difficult and exacting task in this kind of thing. We are now engaged in readying our manuscript resulting from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation project for publication, aiming at 2006. Somewhere ahead is the task of perfecting and publishing Shao's Hawaii doctoral dissertation on Cui Shu (1740-1816). This may allow me an opportunity to repay Shao Dongfang in small part for all that he has done for me.
Shao's appointment as curator of the East Asia library was well deserved good fortune for him, but otherwise good fortune for both of us. Since then I have had an invaluable collaborator close at hand, putting me in touch with librarians, scholars and publishers in China, finding material he could see I needed to read, and having copies made for me. Shao prepared the basic bibliography-not small-for our project, to which we have both been adding. He has taught me how to access and exploit the internationally available databases for Chinese history. My ninth decade of life is going to be far more productive than it might otherwise have been.
David S. Nivison
David Shepherd Nivison is the Walter Y. Evans-Wentz Professor of Oriental Philosophies, Religions and Ethics, Emeritus. He was educated at Harvard and graduated summa cum laude in 1946 (class of 1944). He was a member of the Stanford faculty from 1948 to 1988, serving as the Walter Y. Evans-Wentz Professor of Oriental Philosophies, Religions and Ethics from 1983 to 1988. Before that Nivison was chairman of the department of Philosophy from 1969 to 1972, and again from 1975 to 1976. He was acting chairman of the department of Asian Languages in 1983 and from 1985 to 1986. Numerous awards and distinctions have marked Nivison's scholastic career, including the Prix Stanislas Julien from the Institut de France in 1967 for his book The Life and Thought of Chang Hsueh-ch'eng; and a year-long Guggenheim Fellowship awarded in 1973. He also served as president of the American Oriental Society, western branch, from 1971 to 1972, and as president of the American Philosophical Association, Pacific division, from 1979 to 1980. Nivison has presented more than sixty-five professional papers in diferent parts of the world, and is the author of numerous books, articles, and reviews.
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