Renowned historian passes away at 95

Renowned historian Hsu Cho-yun, professor emeritus of history and sociology at the University of Pittsburgh, passed away at 95 on Monday in Pittsburgh, the United States, multiple sources said.

Over the past decades, Hsu, who received training in both China and the US and specialized in ancient Chinese social and cultural history, has influenced generations of scholars and lay readers from home and abroad, particularly with his studies of early Chinese periods such as the Western Zhou (c.11th century-771 BC), Qin (221-206 BC) and Han (206 BC-AD 220) dynasties.

Hsu was born into a family of literati in Xiamen, Fujian province, in September 1930, and raised in Jiangnan, which encompasses the southern regions in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. He moved to Taiwan with his family in 1948.

After graduating from Taiwan University, he went to the University of Chicago and graduated with a PhD in humanities in 1962. He arrived in Pittsburgh in 1970, and one year later, he achieved the status of full professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Throughout his career, he taught and lectured at higher education institutions including Duke University, Taiwan University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, apart from the University of Pittsburgh, where he worked for 30 years on the faculty.

The historian's representative academic works include Western Chou Civilizations and Han Agriculture: The Formation of Early Chinese Agrarian Economy (206 BC-AD 220), apart from a body of influential works, such as China: A New Cultural History, which bridge the gap between scholarship and public knowledge.

In his later years, Hsu dedicated himself to summarizing, revising and expanding upon his scholarly works and observations, further enriching his insights and creating a prolific output in publications.

He particularly called for more attention to be paid to the conditions and roles of the younger generation, interpreting on social media his reflections on the historical positions of both China and the US, sharing his life stories and offering encouragement and support for young people.

In collaboration with the WeChat public account Xinshixiang, his last livestreaming show took place on June 23.

Born with physical disability and having experienced the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45) in his childhood, Hsu lived an arduous yet fruitful life. He once said: "I was always a bystander because I couldn't move freely or play with other children, which had a lot to do with my lifelong commitment to studies in history. Historians are bystanders."

David Der-wei Wang, a professor of Chinese literature at Harvard University, wrote in an article in 2023 recalling his friendship with Hsu that their discussions in recent years, mostly held over the phone, spanned a variety of academic topics and frequently focused on the situations on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Hsu once quoted Song Dynasty (960-1279) poet Lu You in the cultural show Thirteen Talks, "But what grieves me is not to have seen our land united." With tears in his eye, he added that people of his generation, who experienced the war, could not get over the pain and stop this regret, and that he had planned to be buried next to his parents in his hometown in Wuxi, Jiangsu province.

Writer Xu Zhiyuan, the host of the show, told China Daily that he was already a reader of Hsu's works as a university student. "He helped me reconfirm the importance of historical spirit and humanistic consciousness and will constantly guide me in a rapidly changing era," Xu said.

Wang, the professor, wrote in his article that with memories of war, displacement, famine and death embedded in his perspectives on historical and contemporary situations, Hsu had made the lives of ordinary people, and the interconnectedness between individuals, a fundamental aspect of his thinking.