Two small clarifications about Magnus Fiskesjö’s post (“Li Xueqin dies at 85 [1]”):
- My piece in the New York Times did not fail to mention how Li “actively helped build up and promote the currently dominant reactionary view of culture and heritage.” In fact, I wrote in the 1st paragraph of my New York Times obituary that Li helped change the focus of Chinese historiography “toward emphasizing the wonders of the country’s past, a traditionalist approach in line with the Communist government’s efforts to identify itself with ancient China.”
I also devoted a large chunk of the obituary to his work in pushing 信古, including his work on the Xia-Shang-Zhou project and how it was criticized by many scholars.
- Professor Fiskesjö’ perceptively asked about the Guardian’s statement that Mr. Li was 86 years old. I wondered about this myself. This was the age given by the official obituary in China, which adopts a way of dating people that I’ve found common in China. It isn’t quite the traditional way, as the person doesn’t gain a year right after 過年, but instead the age is simply calculated based on the birth and death years (in this case, 1933 and 2019). And so the obituary might have simply adopted that. However, Mr. Li was born on 28 March 1933, and as a western publication the Times used the western way of only adding a year to someone’s age after they’ve passed their birthday. Hence, to us, he was 85 years old when he died.
best regards,
Ian Johnson <iandjohnson@gmail.com>