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Culture seen through eyes of a scholar

By Hong Liang (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-26 07:41

With his signature crew cut, thick horn-rimmed glasses and expressive gestures, he stands out among the well-groomed crowd in the lobby lounge of Shanghai Four Seasons Hotel on a Friday afternoon. Relaxing on the overstuffed sofa when we met, Prof Qian Wenzhong exudes the charisma more in tune with that of a celebrity in show business than a scholar of ancient Sanskrit.

Qian appears in his various TV talk shows to feel as much at home under the limelight in the studio as on the lecterns in the classrooms of Fudan University.

Indeed, the flamboyant professor, known not only for his scholastic achievements, but also his expansive lifestyle, is widely seen to enjoy popularity far beyond anyone else in academia both inside and outside the university campus.

Never a modest man, Qian seems to revel in the never-ending controversy surrounding his many firebrand remarks on his talk shows and his widely-known taste in designers' clothing, fine foods and expensive cars.

His detractors, including those who detest his unconventional interpretation of Chinese history and others who are simply jealous of his success, have launched a massive campaign on the Internet, trying to strip him of his credibility. In a way, those attacks, sometimes vicious, and often personal, seem to have helped further boost Qian's popularity beyond the core of his fans who regularly watch his shows.

His latest series of talks on the Three-Character Classic in China Central Television's Lecture Room is said to have attracted enough new viewers to help catapult the program to among the top three slots from the second last position. "I don't hate the people who attack me in public," Qian says. He actually feels grateful for their attention.

Public attention, on a national scale has brought fame and fortune to Qian. In addition to Lecture Room, which is broadcast countrywide, Qian also hosts a talk show on a Shanghai TV station and makes frequent guest appearances on TV in other cities. His books, including a collection of his essays and compilations of his various TV lectures, are among the perennial best sellers in Shanghai bookstores.

Toying with his leather-bound Dunhill cigarette case, Qian says that it's not his style to discuss money matters and denies that he is, as many of his detractors have suggested, a slave to branded fashion. "Brand names mean little to me," Qian says. But "I am fastidious about quality".

Sometimes he can't help but let his fastidiousness slip in expressing his less-than-complimentary comments on the system and, in the process, rubbing some powerful people on the wrong side. "Deep down, I am a radical," he confides. But, of course, he is a radical who has learned, the hard way, to play the game in the highly bureaucratic world of academia.

Like many other free-thinking intellectuals of his generation, Qian has mastered the skill of walking the fine line of self-expression, and profiting from it, without drawing the ire of the authorities.

To please the viewing public, he may appear to be fiercely critical of the various shortcomings of the system.

But he hardly ever lays the blame on any particular person or organization.

Born and bred in Shanghai, Qian confides that he harbors a secret love for Hong Kong, where freedom of expression is fiercely guarded by the people and adequately protected by the rule of law.

He also believes that Hong Kong is the custodian of the Chinese traditional value that has faded into the cultural backdrop on the mainland. Hong Kong has long been derided by Chinese on the mainland and in Taiwan as a cultural desert. "I disagree," Qian says. "The Hong Kong people I know have retained a deep sense of traditional Chinese culture," he says.

I am sure he didn't say this because of me, a Hong Kong person.

E-mail: jamesleung@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 08/26/2009 page9)