Postface 1

Professor Chen Zhi Editor in Chief, Bulletin of the Jao Tsung-I Academy of Sinology

Dear Professor Chen: I write to thank you for the gift of two books: The inaugural issue of the Jao Tsung-I Guoxueyuan yuankan. (I am already half way through Michael Loewe’s fine article on Liu Xin.) And also the book you edited: Zhongguo shige chuantong ji wenben yanjiu. Not sure of my health tonight, I am back at my computer at 1:00 AM. More later, when I’m given time. I thank you for confirming receipt of the pieces of my book that I sent you two days ago. (Not 30: one, on Xu Fengxian’s article in EC, is in six pieces. That one required careful work.) If I send no more, I think you have a book, after I will add a brief introduction. I add this now, with the understanding that I may expand it later: My work on jiaguwen and qingtongqi mingwen began in 1971, with informal instruction from Prof. David N. Keightley in his office in Berkeley, CA. I had been working on some problems concerning some archaic Chinese xuzi, and had gotten to the point where I saw I must move back from early classics into inscriptions. Hearing by accident of Keightley’s work, I phoned him from Stanford, and a warm and lasting friendship followed. In the course of time, we were participating in each other’s seminars. One Sunday even- ing in November of 1979, I was preparing myself for my seminar the next evening. My sub- ject was to be four bronze inscriptions recording royal actions. The introducer was an offi- cial named Sima Gong. I half guessed that he might be Gong he, at an earlier stage in his career. This led me to guess that the reign might be Yi Wang or Li Wang. Aware that I might be on dangerous ground, I thought, why not see what I find in the Bamboo Annals? I had Legge’s text and translation within reach. I knew, of course, that it is supposed to be a fake, but I don’t always believe what my teachers tell me. Within five minutes, I realized I had discovered gold, and that the Annals would prob- ably be my major occupation for the rest of my life. This book of papers is a small part of the result: papers that I could not take time yet to deal with. Most of them are on chronological problems, but important problems nonetheless. I address the problem of the exact date of the Zhou conquest of Shang; and I think that some of my readers will accept it. I also think I have the solution to the problem of the gan names of all of the Shang kings. And the reader is going to be asked to accept my conclusion that Jie, the worst “bad last ruler” in Chinese history, is not in Chinese history but belongs to the land of myth. Two months ago, Professor Chen Zhi called on me at my home in Los Altos. He told me of the newly created Jao Tsung-I Academy of Sinology, and wondered if I might have any unpublished work that would fit into its publication plans. This book is my answer. I am very grateful to Prof. Chen; and to Jao Tsung-I, whom I met years ago in a seminar in the office of Prof. Arthur Wright at Yale University. David S. Nivison, 13 September 2014

Open Access. © 2018 Nivison/JAS, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501505393-024

Postscript 6

Postscript

This e-mail by Professor Nivison was written but never sent. A surge of sorrow filled my heart when I read these words. I first met David Nivison in the summer of 2012, when I paid a visit to my cousin Cindy Chen whose home was near Stan- ford University. One day, while we were chatting in the living room after a meal, I noticed an aged gentlemen outside of the window walking slowly with his back hunched and his hands holding a wheelchair. One of my family members said that he was an emeritus professor from Stanford University who specialized in Chinese History, and I thought to myself that this was likely David S. Nivison. I went outside and greeted him, and asked whether he was indeed David Nivison. “Yes, I am David Nivison,” he said. We started talking right away, first at my cousin’s house and then at his, which was only some 300 meters away. In the years that followed we exchanged emails from time to time. Whenever I was in North California I would drop by his home in Stanford, and each time I visited I always saw him working in his study: piles of books were stacked next to a desk full of manuscripts and reference materials. On the very same desk there was a computer with a large screen, which was divided into two smaller screens, one for viewing Chinese text, and the other for typing English. During my visit to him in August 2014, one of his legs was put into cast and wrapped in gauze. The Pro- fessor told me he just went through an operation but that the cancer had already spread and his days apparently were numbered. He was in a hurry to finish work that was on his mind. As mentioned above, he promised to write a preface to his collected works that the Jao Tsung-I Academy of Sinology had agreed to publish. I said to him, “Please let me know once you finish it.” “In a sense, it’ll never be complete,” he replied wryly. After a pause, he added in an amused tone, “But of course, if I die, it’s complete.” I laughed at his witty reply. There was inevitably a hint of sadness in my laughter but it was evoked from a genuine admiration for this excellent scholar who spent his entire adult life immersed in scholarship. I had no idea at the time that it would be our last meeting together. He passed away two months later. In due course, the volume has come together and is now ready for publication thanks to the unswerving commitment of Drs. Adam Schwartz (Jao Tsung I Acad- emy of Sinology) and Cheng Yuhei, my other colleagues in the Academy, espe- cially Mses. Lai Wing Mi, Wang Xintong, and Mr. Travis Chan (who has kindly translated this postface into English from its original Chinese), and finally Dr. Ni- colas Williams (formerly of the Jao Tsung I Academy of Sinology, and now at Hong Kong University). I also would like to thank Jim Nivison, Professor David Nivison’s son, for his trust and effort to see this valuable publication through. It was Jim who in 2017 sent me David Nivison’s unsent letter. We have decided to

 6 Postface 1 publish the letter in its entirety to conclude the book and as a way to memorialize this zealous and industrious scholar! Chen Zhi

Fig.1: David Nivison in his home, Aug 2014

Fig. 2: Professors Nivison and Chen Zhi