D. C. Lau (; 8 March 192126 April 2010) was a Chinese
sinologist and author of the widely read translations of ''
Tao Te Ching
The ''Tao Te Ching'' () or ''Laozi'' is a Chinese classic text and foundational work of Taoism traditionally credited to the sage Laozi, though the text's authorship and date of composition and compilation are debated. The oldest excavated por ...
'',
Mencius
Mencius (孟子, ''Mèngzǐ'', ; ) was a Chinese Confucian philosopher, often described as the Second Sage () to reflect his traditional esteem relative to Confucius himself. He was part of Confucius's fourth generation of disciples, inheriting ...
and ''
The Analects'' and contributed to the
Proper Cantonese pronunciation movement.
D. C. Lau studied Chinese under
Xu Dishan at the
University of Hong Kong
The University of Hong Kong (HKU) is a public research university in Pokfulam, Hong Kong. It was founded in 1887 as the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese by the London Missionary Society and formally established as the University of ...
, but fled to Mainland China in 1941 just before the Japanese occupied Hong Kong. In 1946, he was offered one of the first scholarships for a British university and studied Western philosophy in
Glasgow University (1946–49). In 1950, Lau would take up a post at
London University's School of Oriental and African Studies, developing SOAS into a world-renowned centre for the study of
Chinese philosophy
Chinese philosophy (Simplified Chinese characters, simplified Chinese: 中国哲学; Traditional Chinese characters, traditional Chinese: 中國哲學) refers to the philosophical traditions that originated and developed within the historical ...
.
He was appointed in 1965 to the newly created Readership in Chinese Philosophy and in 1970 became
Professor of Chinese in the University of London. In 1978 he returned to Hong Kong to take up the Chair of Chinese Language and Literature at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. On his retirement in 1989, he began to computerise the entire body of extant ancient Chinese works, with a series of sixty concordances.
[Biographical information from Penguin Classics version of The Analects (1979)]
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References
1921 births
2010 deaths
Chinese sinologists
Scholars of ancient Chinese philosophy
Alumni of King's College, Hong Kong
Academics of SOAS University of London
Hong Kong expatriates in the United Kingdom
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