An Academic Biography of Liu Ching-Chih: A Man of “a Pure Heart”

By Yongyan Li

This book is an academic biography of Liu Ching-chih, a renowned musicologist and translation scholar, and a prolific music critic in Hong Kong. Three Library Collections named after him are housed in the University of Hong Kong Libraries, the Hong Kong Central Library, and the Library of the Institute of Chinese Studies of the University of Heidelberg. This volume of life writing is distinguished from average biographies by its reliance on systematic analyses of an extensive array of texts and interview data. The chapters integrate chronologies, narratives, analyses and intertextual connections, with the voice of Liu foregrounded, to present a multifaceted character whose decades-long scholarship spanned across music criticism, the history of new music in China, and translation. Several chapters document Liu’s process of working on his major book projects, including A Critical History of New Music in China and A Critical History of Music in Hong Kong. One chapter portrays Liu as a scholar-music critic, and another features his leadership at the Hong Kong Translation Society. A chapter that documents Liu’s immensely rich array of academic and cultural services in Hong Kong is followed by a linguistic and cultural profile of the scholar. The ending chapter, on the biography project itself, traces the evolution of the project, explains the research methodology, and provides a metadiscoursal account of the writing of the book. The book provides a valuable reference for those who want to know about humanities scholars, public intellectuals, music criticism, music research, and civic societies in Hong Kong, for those who are curious about the academic exchange between Hong Kong and mainland China during the 1980s-1990s, and for those who are interested in an interdisciplinary approach in life writing research and the genre of life writing concerning in particular scholars.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bridge 21 Publications
• Release date: Sep 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781626430846

Yongyan Li

Yongyan Li is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, China. Her research has focused on scholarly practices, academic writing/publishing pedagogies, and the conceptualization of ‘plagiarism’ in the Chinese context. She has employed ethnographic methods, textual analyses and case studies in her interdisciplinary research. This academic biography provided an opportunity for her to explore life writing and archival research.

Book preview

Prologue

This book is an academic biography of Professor Liu Ching-chih (Liu Jingzhi ), who is known as CC to his friends and colleagues. The book is thus above all written for him, CC, and it is a gift for him.

I wrote this book for understanding—my understanding of CC’s commitment to his academic pursuance (in his words); for trust—his trust in me that I am the best person (as he put it) to write about him; and for agreement—that this is a joint project (as he called it) we agreed upon in 2004-2005 and that he had been waiting to seriously work on the project with me. Above all, I wrote this book because of respect: respecting CC as a person and as a scholar, respecting what he did, and respecting what he still wanted to do but could no longer do. I consider this book the best way for me to pay tribute to CC at both personal and intellectual levels.

The book is also written to help CC’s friends and colleagues in Hong Kong, in mainland China, and overseas to know him a little better. For his musicologist counterparts in China and other countries, whether they disagreed with, or were sympathetic to, his views on new music in China, my hope is that they might see that CC’s contributions are far wider than the controversial book that he is best known for ( A Critical History of New Music in China). In particular, I hope that his one-man’s view ( ) on new music in China, while unorthodox, has nothing to do with arrogance, elitism, or partiality. Instead, his scholarly views are fully compatible with who he is—a non-partisan scholar of free spirit, a musicologist with sophisticated technical and cultural knowledge of European music, and yet at the same time, perhaps paradoxically, a man attached to a central plain culture ( ) and a man of a pure heart ( ). For those who may have been upset by his style and have grumbled about his air in the past, I hope they might see that underlying his projection of dignity is a remarkably noble heart—that while CC is firmly principled, he is not snobbish or arrogant; and while he is ambitiously hard-working, he is humble at heart. He meets deadlines and keeps his promises; he responds promptly to emails without fail; he races against time; he is single-minded and fair-minded; and he has done a huge amount of free service to Hong Kong for decades running. Finally, for those who are CC’s friends and who thus know him well on a personal level, this volume might give them insights into his scholarly world; and for those who have regarded him as a mentor (including myself), CC’s words of wisdom recorded in this volume would continue to give them food for thought.

CC leads a project-based life and has a Beethovenian commitment to his projects. Every project of his in the past has had an outcome. I just cannot let this joint project fall through and come to nothing, despite my nearly unforgivable procrastination on the project in the past. This book is an outcome of our joint project in every sense of the term. CC is quoted extensively in the book, from his publications, emails, interviews, and other documents. Before CC’s accident in March 2019, he was writing his Memoir, with three parts finished (two parts on the Hong Kong Translation Society and one part on the (Chartered) Institute of Linguists Hong Kong Regional Society). He was yet to begin to reflect upon his decades-long research on the history of new music in China and other work. Sadly, he was not able to fulfil his plan. The present book is thus my way of completing his Memoir for him. It is sad that CC could not make himself available for consultation or for checking the book manuscript. I am therefore solely responsible for the content in this volume and its accuracy.

Two factors have had a stake in the limitations of this book: I did the research for and wrote the book in just about one year in addition to my job duties; and my domain of academic studies does not overlap with CC’s fields of scholarship. However, I do have full confidence that CC would like the way this book is written. If he could, I trust that he would read it with great interest and delight.

Yongyan Li

Unit of Social Contexts and Policies of Education

Faculty of Education

University of Hong Kong

May 2021

Chapter 1.

From Moving to Hong Kong in 1948 to Earning PhD in 1983

My personal experience has proved that life-long learning is the key to success and that hard work always pays off.

—CC at a graduation ceremony in July 2005, at the primary school where he taught from 1958 to 1964; as recounted by him in an email to Yongyan (15 July 2005)

Liu Ching-chih, or Liu Jingzhi , is known as CC to his friends and colleagues in Hong Kong. Thus throughout this book I will refer to him as CC.

In this opening chapter which was my entry point when I started on this book project in March 2020, I will present a broad-stroke sketch of CC’s early life history, from his childhood up until his earning PhD from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) in 1983. In telling the life story, I will rely on a variety of sources: some interviews I conducted with CC,¹ our emails, his publications, emails from his friends in response to my enquiries in 2020, and other published and unpublished texts. Compared with the subsequent chapters which likewise aim to reconstruct aspects of CC’s academic life, in this chapter I do not delve into his early scholarly output, or specifically, his two books which were based on his MPhil and PhD thesis research on Yuan zaju at HKU (Liu, 1980a, 1990a), but will only shed light on their significance by citing others’ comments. This chapter presents CC as a Beethovenian character and aims to convey the message that his fighting spirit, diligence and talent preluded his illustrious accomplishments on the many fronts in life in the subsequent decades.

1.1 CC from Tianjin to Hong Kong and his early music life

CC was born in Shanghai on 21 February 1935, or the 17th of the first month of the Year of the Pig in the Lunar Calendar. He recalled in an email to me:

I am not sure how many places I lived at from when I was two years old. After my birth in 1935 in Shanghai, my father was transferred to the north. There was a very old photo in which I was about two years old, in my father’s arms. I once asked my father when the picture was taken, and he told me it was when he was in Dandong—I am not too sure whether the name is correct or what it is called now—in the northeast of China. I might have lived in other small towns in the northeast. Then my father moved to Weihaiwei, Yantai, Longkou in Shandong in the late 1930s. (31 August 2008)

Dandong, which CC mentioned in the quote above, is located in the southeast of the Liaoning Province, China and is said to be the north pole of China’s coastal line. So that was where he was at about two years old.

It should be pointed out that CC regards Hubei (another province), traditionally a central plain ( ) region in Chinese conception, as his ancestral home. It is likely that Hubei was where one or both of his parents originally lived. In line with his designation of the ancestral home, CC has a central plain sentiment ( ) and is emotionally attached to a central plain culture ( ) (see Chapter 10 Section 10.8 and Chapter 11 Section 11.1.1). This cultural allegiance has a significant impact on him as a scholar.

CC has an elder brother and a younger sister. The family relocated several times as his father’s job as a Customs Officer changed locations. As CC described in Liu (2003a), until one point in 1945, the family of five spent some time in Longkou, a coastal town of the Shandong Province, in the northeast of China. Following the Anti-Japanese War (1937-1945), Longkou became a battlefield for some remaining troops of the Japanese invaders, the Communist Eighth Route Army, and the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) Army. In August 1945, with some other families, the family of five fled down to Tianjin on a wooden boat along the east coast of the country, on a long and dangerous journey, with narrow escapes from storms and heavy rain. In Tianjin, it took CC’s father over a year to resume his post with the Customs House, against the odds of the bureaucracy of the Kuomintang government.

With the father’s income, the family was able to make the ends meet. According to CC’s account in Liu (2003a), he and his younger sister studied at a nearby Christian primary school, called Pei Zhi ( ) Primary School,² while his brother was sent to a Christian middle school in Peking (Beijing); both schools were church-run and valued music education. The elder brother was on a school choir and would sing some tunes of adapted European Lieder and hymns, such as Schubert’s Ave Maria and Serenade when back home from school during holidays. From the Japanese who set up stalls to sell their belongings on the streets of Tianjin before departing, CC’s brother bought at very low prices some records of classical European music. When the brother was back to school in Peking, CC would listen to the records on a manually operated record-player. He thus had the first encounter with classical European music, and experienced differences in style and temperament between Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The music brought him an incredible experience at 11 years old, he recounted (Liu, 2003a, p. 25; 2003b). In an interview conducted in 2003 (Mak, 2003), CC said it was love at first hearing between him and European music, when he was 11 years old:

I was born in Shanghai and watched quite a bit of Peking Opera while growing up in northern China. I did not start to listen to European music until two years before emigrating to Hong Kong [from Tianjin in 1948]. But it was love at first hearing. I fell in love with European music ever since then. (Mak, 2003, p. 12)

When CC was in the sixth grade of primary school, at 12 years of age, he started to read works of the May Fourth new literature. He enjoyed reading Ba Jin’s Torrents Trilogy—Family, Spring and Autumn while listening to the classical music (Liu, 2003a, p. 25).

In May 1948, CC’s father was transferred from the Customs House in Tianjin to work at the Tsim Sha Tsui Kowloon Railway Station in Hong Kong. The family thus left Tianjin for Hong Kong. During the three-week journey by ship, CC finished reading a ten-volume Chinese version The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Liu, 2003a, p. 25). He entered the Pui Ching ( ) Middle School in Hong Kong in the same year. Although he continued to read the May Fourth new literature and believed in communism at the time, it was music that infatuated him. There was a Forward ( ) Bookstore on the Nathan Road, on his way from home in Tsim Sha Tsui to the school on the Waterloo Road, Kowloon. Two books that he bought at the bookstore, both authored by Romain Rolland and translated into Chinese by Fu Lei (1908-1966), became his lifelong companions ever since and crucially shaped his personality and character: Jean-Christophe (four volumes, 1948, Shanghai Camel Bookstore) and Beethoven (1949, Shanghai Joint Publishing). CC has often talked about the life-long impact of the books on him. For example, he wrote:

The two books, Jean-Christophe and Beethoven, have been with me for half a century, deeply influencing my personality and outlook upon life. The pressure from life and career has sometimes made me feel hesitant and depressed, or stray away, but the two books have remained my best companions and my most reliable support. (Liu, 2003a, p. 26)

There is no question that the two books significantly contributed to the formation of CC’s Beethovenian character.

During his middle school years at Pui Ching, CC enjoyed a full spectrum of European music:

During my junior high school years at the Pui Ching Middle School, I enjoyed a great number of works of European classical and romantic music, including the orchestral creations of Beethoven, Schubert, Schuman, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Tchaikovsky, and the keyboard works of Bach, Chopin and others. But I did not listen to a lot of vocal and opera music. (Liu, 2003a, p. 26)

He also attended night classes after school at the Christian Institute of Sacred Music ( ) (established by Shao Guang in 1950) from the autumn of 1951 for about two years (Liu, 2003a, 2006a). As a young high school student in a class of adult students, he attended classes on various subjects including lessons taught by Lin Sheng-shih on theory on composition, musical analysis and history of music (Liu, 2000a, p. 217; Liu, 2003a, p. 27). History of music was CC’s favourite (Liu, 2003a, p. 27). He spoke of the burgeoning of his interest in the history of music and aptly pointed out that it was then that the seeds for his later work on the history of new music in China were sown:

I remember that Mr Lin often brought to class volumes of The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians to talk about the historical backgrounds and the styles of the works from the classical school and the romantic school. I was excited and studied avidly, writing detailed notes. I also got interested in reading English books on the history of European music, which laid a foundation for my knowledge of the field. I only attended music history classes from Mr Lin at the Christian Institute of Sacred Music for two years, but these two years had a far-reaching impact on me: of the many subjects, it was the history of music that I would choose as my research subject later. Forty-five years on, my A Critical History of New Music in China was published in 1998. The book aroused prolonged discussions in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. I think the seeds for the book were sown when I was attending the lessons of Mr Lin half a century before. (Liu, 2006a)

In the 1950s throughout his middle school years and after his graduation, CC was an enthusiastic concert-goer; he particularly enjoyed Hong Kong Sino-British Orchestra’s performances (Liu, 2003a, p. 27). In (Concerts in Hong Kong in the 1950s) (Liu, 2017b) (see Chapter 7 Section 7.3.2), he wrote:

In order to look for materials of the concerts in the 1950s, the present author consulted related documents at the University of Hong Kong Libraries’ Special Collections, the Hong Kong Music Academy, and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, requested information from several senior personalities in the music circle, and gathered some miscellaneous accounts from a few remembrance texts. This paper is written on the basis of all these, in the hope of presenting an outline of the concerts in the 1950s. In fact, the present author was also a loyal member of the audience of the concerts in Hong Kong in the 1950s and has been one too in the subsequent half of a century. Therefore, the present article also contains some personal memories. (Liu, 2017b)

So CC was a loyal member of the audience of the concerts in Hong Kong in the 1950s and has been one too in the subsequent half of a century, in his own words. There is probably not a second person in Hong Kong (or the whole of the Greater China region) with a comparable long history of concert-going experience; his huge volumes of music criticism texts (see Chapter 8) have a unique, half-a-century-long commitment behind them.

Between 1949-1950, CC’s father lost the job at the Tsim Sha Tsui Kowloon Railway Station, which impacted on the family income and hence CC’s payment of school fees. CC described in an interview with me:

In 1949 China was liberated; the mainland Customs House wanted my dad to go up to work in Guangzhou. He refused to go and immediately lost his job. Then he worked as a clerk with the British Army in Hong Kong, with a very low salary. So problems ensued. No money for my tuition when I was in the third year of the senior high. I had to apply for student grants to cover my school fees.

The financial strain at home at the end of CC’s school years also contributed to his setbacks in trying to move on to university study right after graduation from high school.

1.2 Passing the examinations of LTSC (1962), AMusTCL (1962) and LRSM (1963), while being an increasingly disillusioned school teacher (1958-1966)

Upon completion of his study at Pui Ching, CC suffered setbacks in trying to get into university. He even tried in Guangzhou, China in 1953 but could not secure a university place in the mainland, as he mentioned in an interview with me. In 1958, CC became a teacher at a primary school in a village in Taipo and he would teach there until 1964. It was during this time that he took and passed the public examinations of Licentiate of the Tonic Sol-Fa College of Music (School Music) (LTSC) (1962), Associate-in-Music of the Trinity College of Music (Theory and Practice of Composition) (AMusTCL) (1962), and Licentiate of Royal Schools of Music (Theory of Music) (LRSM) (1963).

From the late 1950s to the early 1960s, in preparation for these qualification examinations, CC took weekly lessons with Lin Sheng-shih to study harmony (Liu, 2006a). He also studied music theories with a British teacher who was visiting Hong Kong, at the rate of 80 dollars a lesson, quite expensive by the standard of that time, and equivalent to about over 1000 Hong Kong dollars today, as he recalled in an interview with me. Additional information is available in (A profile of Professor Liu Ching-chih) that prefaces the Hong Kong Central Library’s Catalogue of the Liu Ching-chih Collection (see Chapter 5 Section 5.3):

While preparing for the qualification examinations, Prof. Liu studied harmony and counterpoint with William Lovelock, an English music educator, and studied piano with Ms Xu Cao Lu Run who graduated from Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester.³ (Hong Kong Central Library Special Collection Documents Editorial Committee, 2015, p. 3)

One thing notable from the extract above is that CC studied piano in those years, i.e., in the late 1950s and the early 1960s. He would later drop piano, to his regret (see Section 1.5).

When I asked CC whether the qualification examinations were difficult, he responded: For us of course it was difficult. For them [Europeans] it’s not so difficult, because they do these things from being a kid. Like doing acrobatic skills—for those growing up doing it it’s not difficult, right? CC’s success in the challenging examinations should be regarded as the first significant achievement in his life and was an early demonstration of his Beethovenian perseverance and willpower.

Appendix 1.1 a) and b) show two pictures of a few books apparently studied by CC during the late 1950s-early 1960s in preparation for the qualification examinations.⁴ These books are now part of The C. C. Liu Collection at the University of Hong Kong Libraries and are housed in the Music Library (see Chapter 5 Section 5.1).

While working for the qualification examinations noted above, CC also studied in a two-year in-service teachers’ training programme, became a qualified music teacher, and then went to teach in a secondary school in 1964; he would teach there until 1966. During this time, he also got married and his son was born in the mid-1960s, which meant he had a family to support too. His wife (whom he later divorced) taught private lessons of piano to a group of students, to whom he taught music theory, for the sake of income and earning a living, as he put it in an interview with me. In terms of his salary as a school teacher, although he had diplomas of music qualifications, his lack of a Bachelor’s degree at the time meant that his salary was lower than a graduate salary which was enjoyed by those with a Bachelor’s degree. During those years, he was also hoping to go to Germany to study music theories and composition; therefore he diligently studied German and piano in his spare time. Those years were far from easy. He shared in an email:

I didn’t have much choice in my career as I was led, or even forced, to do what I did to earn a living. […] When I was a teacher during the 1950s and 1960s, I got up at 5:30 in the morning and after teaching I had to study and teach private music lessons to support the family and my mother and my sister and brother. Life was indeed hard and I had strong reasons to be depressed and to commit suicide. But I survived. (4 March 2006)

CC is a Beethovenian combatant and this first became clear in those years of his being a school teacher.

CC was dissatisfied throughout his school teaching years and in fact, he got increasingly disillusioned, as he put it. By around 1965, he had decided that he just did not want to teach any more. He explained in an interview with me:

Firstly, there were all kinds of contests to win prizes; all principals hope your choir will win a prize. Secondly, those middle school students, the boys, were undisciplined and had no respect for music at all. I felt I had no dignity, stuck at the lowest rank in the status system of the whole school.

He had a higher aspiration than being a school teacher:

For many people it’s hard to give up teaching to turn to another job. Firstly, you can’t do anything, as a teacher, apart from teaching; you can’t write, you can’t manage, you can’t administer. Secondly, in a middle school you just give, you don’t take—not like in a university, you can do research and go to conferences. In a middle school, you can’t take anything, just give. I thought this wouldn’t do; I had a higher aspiration.

A senior teacher who taught Chinese said to him that he did not look like a teacher and he should go and become a banker. The suggestion of becoming a banker was made to CC at that low point of his life, presumably because a banker had a privileged social status, with a good salary, or perhaps because the senior teacher saw an air in CC that matched the image of a banker. But the idea of becoming a banker was just a joke to CC, as he did not have the least interest to pursue in that direction. At his heart he wanted to pursue a scholarly path.

In case there might be an impression that CC was a lousy school teacher because he had a higher aspiration and got increasingly disillusioned, then a recollection from Steven K. Luk, CC’s student in the 1960s and the supportive publisher for CC’s books (Liu, 2009a, 2010a, 2013a, 2014a) much later, is worth highlighting:

CC was my high school music teacher, and today the only teacher I still am in contact with. As a teacher, he has given us poor kids a great deal of guidance and support in the 60s when we were growing up. (Email, 16 July 2020)

Luk’s comment is perhaps unsurprising: even though CC’s heart was not in school teaching during those years (1958-1966), as a teacher with a higher aspiration and a Beethovenian free spirit, he would have for sure inspired the kids around him.

Appendix 1.2 shows a photograph of Luk and CC together in 1971. When forwarding it to me (3 February 2017), CC said: A photo of me and Steve in 1971 at New Asia College. Luk himself spoke of the picture in response to my enquiry:

CC was at my graduation ceremony at New Asia [New Asia College, Chinese University of Hong Kong] probably May 1971. This showed he is a very caring teacher. I had left the secondary school where he taught for several years, and he was no longer teaching there. He still remained in contact with a handful of his students. (Email, 27 July 2020)

Being a very caring teacher (as Luk put it) is an aspect in CC’s character which seems to have been largely eclipsed by his identity of being a dedicated and at times controversial scholar, if one focuses on his scholarly life which commenced in the late 1970s and boomed from then on. But this quality of being a very caring teacher has its clear manifestations in both his being a great mentor to many younger people (including myself ) in later years (see Chapter 11 Section 11.2.5), and his being a responsible and thoughtful teacher as a Visiting Professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music from 2004 to 2017 (see Chapter 6). The trait is also in line with his other qualities, such as being a loyal friend, again as Luk put it (see Chapter 11 Section 11.2.1).

As an aside for the photo shown in Appendix 1.2, on receiving it from CC, I said to him jokingly: It seems CC has transformed many times since a young adult, alluding to his photos taken at different points of time over the decades. He followed up, asking with curiosity and playfulness: Is there a resemblance to the present aged CC? I believe I answered no. But I have never doubted that his fine qualities, which are not necessarily revealed in his photos, but which I aim to demonstrate in the present book, have remained unchanged over the decades.

Interestingly, in July 2005, CC had an opportunity of being invited back to the primary school where he taught from 1958 to 1964 to address a graduation ceremony. His account of the visit in an email to me after the event, with touching reflections, is worth quoting at length here:

It was a 90-minute graduation ceremony and a 90-minute lunch plus 30-minute interval between the ceremony and the lunch, and plus the to-and-fro driving time (two hours), totalling five and a half hours. I was exhausted when I reached home. […]

I didn’t follow the text of the speech provided by the Headmaster. My speech was not very long, telling the pupils, parents and teachers that I taught English and music from 1958 to 1964 at the school, well before the parents of the pupils were born.:) (They all laughed.) I also told them that afterwards, I taught at a secondary school in Kowloon for two years and joined the BBC as a translator from 1966 to 1973. Thereafter, I got my MPhil and PhD while working at HKU and by now I have published 36 books.

The message in my speech contained three points: (i) Now I realised the reason why people attached so much importance to Chinese, English and mathematics, because to be effective in life and work, these three subjects were the most important knowledge we should acquire. They are still the most important subjects for us, people in Hong Kong, to master, given the rise of China; (ii) My personal experience has proved that life-long learning is the key to success and that hard work always pays off; and (iii) people should plan their career and pursue it with determination.

I didn’t look at the script. I just improvised. One young male teacher told me that he got a lot of inspiration from my speech and he was thinking of his future plans, when I toured the school premises after lunch. He also said that he would definitely take me as his model. I was very sincere when I spoke. The Headmaster told me that my speech was extremely enlightening.

I still remember the scene when I went to the school for the last time in July 1964 to tender my resignation, exactly 41 years ago. I have no regret for what I have done during the past four decades, because I have always made my best efforts to achieve what I planned to achieve, even if I failed sometimes.

It was only a primary school graduation ceremony, but it has provided a good opportunity for me to reflect.

(15 July 2005)

What CC said in the message quoted above would make everyone ponder. The email also indicates what a remarkably reflective person CC is (see Chapter II). He has an immensely rich inner world, which is revealed in many ways: in his publications, his teaching, his mentoring of younger people, his conversations with friends, and his sharing in emails (I am so privileged to be on the receiving end for many years!).

1.3 Working for the BBC as a Senior Translator (1966-1973) and earning a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of London (1972)

Being a school teacher could not fulfil CC’s higher aspiration. A turning point came when CC seized an opportunity of responding to a job advertisement of the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). He passed an exam and an interview. He recalled in an interview with me: I believed that old lady at the interview liked me; perhaps she felt I was quite a BBC type of man. He joined the BBC’s Hong Kong Bureau as a Senior Translator in 1966, when he was 31.

Henry Pavlovich, whom CC worked with over the affairs of the (Chartered) Institute of Linguists Hong Kong Regional Society for three and a half years or so between 1998 and 2001 (see Chapter 10 Section 10.3.4), happened to have worked for the BBC as well, but after CC and in a different section. Pavlovich gave an anecdotal sharing upon my enquiry:

And you’re right—I had forgotten that CC once worked for the BBC in the Hong Kong bureau. That must have been in the early 1970s before I knew him personally: I was on the Russia desk in the late 1970s. I think when I moved to the China desk in the early 1980s, the BBC no longer had a HK bureau. But senior BBC people on the China desk sometimes spoke in awe about someone called CC Liu and how you had to be careful trying to argue with him because he was an expert on China, especially on the political significance of operas! (Email, 13 May 2020)

It is interesting to learn from Pavlovich’s recollection that during those BBC years, CC already had a perspective on the political significance of operas. The operas should refer to the so-called model works (yangbanxi) operas during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Such operas would be in his purview of new music in China (Westernised Chinese music) later and a whole chapter in his A Critical History of New Music in China (Liu, 1998a, 2009a, 2010a) would be devoted to the model works. Pavlovich’s account below helps to explain what was meant by the political significance of operas:

When I worked for the BBC a very long time ago, […] sometimes significant announcements would be made to the population through broadcasts of particular operas—it was to do with changes of political policy […]. If you knew the significance of what happened in the operas, then you could guess what was happening in politics! (Email, 13 May 2020)

Pavlovich’s sharing indicates that CC’s interest in new music and in the connection between politics and new music dated back to the 1960s, long before he started his research project on the history of new music at the Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong in the early 1980s (see Chapter 2).

At the BBC Hong Kong Bureau, CC did his job competently and strengthened his English at the same time, as he shared in an interview with me:

In fact, the BBC did not offer a very high salary, but I learned a lot. Materials from mainland China were translated into English and sold to the consulates all over the world. Even though my English was not that good, I understood Putonghua very well. My English became better, because all the time there’s an editor improving for me.

During this new stage in his life, without delay, CC took another significant step towards pursuing his higher aspiration: registering for an external Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree programme, in Chinese Studies, with the University of London (UoL). The external BA programme of the UoL focused on the training of sinologists, CC noted in an interview with me:

One had to pass nine test papers to receive the degree: half of a paper was Chinese composition; the other eight and a half papers were all for answering in English questions about The Analects, Mencius, Lu Xun’s novels, Ba Jin’s novels etc.

The study programme was pretty tough: No supervisor, no teachers, no specified scope of study; you just do it by yourself. So they said if you can get the external degree, you are really something. CC sailed through with a Beethovenian willpower again. In 1968, of the 20 candidates who entered the preliminary examinations, seven passed and he was one of the seven; in 1972, of the seven who took the final examinations, one passed—and that was him.

In an interview conducted with him at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in the autumn of 2011, CC mentioned his years of being a school teacher and then a BBC translator as follows:

I made a living, worked for diploma examinations, and studied music at the same time, without neglecting any one of them. I always engaged myself in self-study, with little time for recreation. (Zeng, 2013, p. 246)

That was CC in the younger days; but multitasking and extreme diligence are his life-long characteristics.

1.4 Becoming an anti-colonial, innovative administrator at the University of Hong Kong (1973)

As soon as CC received a pass in the autumn of 1972 from the external BA programme of the UoL, he applied for a post of Information Officer at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). In April 1973 he joined HKU after working for the BBC for six years. Looking back, he considered himself quite lucky. Once you got into the HKU, the world is all yours—he spoke of the drastic change in his life upon joining HKU. Indeed, it was a watershed in his life and career. On various occasions of retrospection, he remarked: HKU is an important turning-point in my life. It is at HKU that his decades-long research project on the history of new music in China was launched, that he started to raise funds for his academic work from well-to-do people whom he got to know from performing his job duties (see Chapter 2), that he began to be involved in serving many civic societies (see Chapter 10), and that various changes occurred in his life. He described the transformation that joining HKU brought to his life in an interview with me:

On entering HKU, I became a well-protected person—because it has a good system, being one of the two universities in Hong Kong at the time. The Chinese University of Hong Kong had just been established. HKU was the oldest university, with a better system.

CC’s comment on becoming well-protected in HKU’s good system or well-established bureaucratic structure should not be interpreted as meaning that he started to have an easy time, however. In fact, he ran into clashes with the colonialism at the University: I was a misfit in the administration at HKU because the whole set-up of the University was extremely colonial, including the Chinese administrators. He challenged, rather than accommodated, the colonial practices. One example was his introduction of a bilingual policy, in his capacity of being an Information Officer responsible for both press releases and internal announcements, working in a department under Registry from 1973 to around 1980. Under the bilingual policy that he initiated, some press releases and internal announcements started to be published bilingually in both Chinese and English; three translators worked under him to assist him in that, although he did a lot of translation himself too all the time. The bilingual mandate was enforced against odds, for English was supposed to be the medium of written communication in the University at the time. So they didn’t like me, he said. He explained why adding a Chinese version was necessary in an interview with me:

There were two facts that you cannot ignore. Firstly, we had always had Chinese newspapers [for the general public in Hong Kong]; so we should have Chinese texts in the press releases. Secondly, we had Term Three staff—labourers, office assistants, and drivers—who did not know English; you have to send information, such as that on Terms of Service or on holidays, to them in Chinese, or bilingually. Can you ask the cleaners to read English? Previously, they did not understand [the English texts] and stayed in the dark. Do you think that’s fair?

It is worth mentioning that CC also launched a campus bilingual bulletin called Interflow (see Chapter 9 Section 9.1).

With his strong character and resistance to colonialism in a colonial environment, CC created adversities for himself. In an email to me in December 2013, CC mentioned meeting an old HKU colleague, Henry Wai, at lunch and explaining to the latter why he was disliked by the lady Registrar in the 1970s. CC’s account in the email went:

I had a vegetarian dish for lunch by myself at SCR [Senior Common Room] on the 14th floor.⁵ When I was on my way out after I finished my lunch as well as newspaper reading, there was the Registrar (Henry Wai) also having his lunch alone. So I sat down and had a chat with him. We have known each other since 1973 when I first joined the University […] He asked me why the lady Registrar at that time disliked me? I said it’s because I was much older than those Chinese colleagues in the Registry and I was somewhat different as compared with my Chinese colleagues who were more obedient and humble. I was not trained in the colonial way. (11 December 2013)

I was not trained in the colonial way—what a clear statement that was. In the same vein, CC recounted in an interview with me how he was transferred from the original post of Information Officer to the Estates Office (around 1983), in order for him to be dismissed:

Those foreigners all had a domineering attitude, considering themselves superior to the Chinese, and I conflicted with them. So I was assigned to do some work that nobody wanted to do [laughing]. Sideline me, marginalise me, you know? At some point I was transferred to the Estates Office, because the Head of that Office was a Brit, known for his dismissal of Chinese staff. They thought I would be dismissed as soon as I got there.

As luck would have it, it turned out that CC got on extremely well with the Head and they became good friends. As CC got busy at the Centre of Asian Studies (CAS) from the mid-1980s, the Head of the Estates Office was fine for him to go over to the CAS to attend meetings and conferences. Later, CC was even granted a year-long leave to visit the St Antony’s College, University of Oxford as a Visiting Fellow from October 1988 to July 1989 (Liu, 1989c), which made his enemies mad, as he put it.

In line with his push for a bilingual policy when working as an Information Officer, examples of his initiatives while working at the Estates Office also bespoke his anti-colonial stance. One move was to give his staff half a day’s off on the Lunar New Year’s Eve, in view of the importance of the occasion for the Chinese:

They only had the Christmas Eve off previously. When I went there, I gave half a day’s off on the Lunar New Year’s Eve. They were all very happy, because Chinese people took the eve of the Lunar New Year seriously. Before that, only the foreigners were looked after: the Christmas was considered important, while the Lunar New Year was not.

Another example was that when in charge of allocating the staff quarters of the University, CC reformed the existing system, offending as a result some expatriates who took their privilege for granted. He vividly described how foreigners were typically given advantage over their Chinese counterparts in the colonial University:

They [the people serving the bureaucratic structure of the University] normally gave privilege to foreigners, whereas they were very mean to the Chinese. To the white-skinned, they automatically became subservient: Yes, Sir. To the Chinese, they put on an official’s tone.

His introduction of a new grading system for housing allocation created discontent on the part of some foreigners who expected preferential treatment:

Some protested. So I said, you can’t accept it? Go and talk to the Vice-Chancellor. This is our policy. Some came and argued arrogantly: With my status, can’t I have better housing? Our houses were of different grades. The longer you have served and the more children you have, the higher the grade you can receive. Some thought they could gain advantage based on their status. I did not let them. So those foreigners were very unhappy about me.

Meanwhile, with the roll-out of the new regulations on housing allocation, CC also let off the steam of many and got some friends, he said.

Parallel to CC’s performance of administrative duties was a process of his horizon being broadened and his outlook upon the world being transformed, to which both his work at HKU and his first ever overseas trip in 1976 (see also Chapter 8 Section 8.2 for the latter) contributed. His broadening of horizon at HKU had much to do with his getting to know a good number of higher-society personalities (as he put it) as a result of being a public relations (PR) officer in charge of various major functions of the University, such as honorary doctorate conferment ceremonies and handover ceremonies on monetary donations to the University. He explained:

Because I was doing PR, it means some big functions and cocktail parties were organised by me. When someone donated money, I would organise a handover ceremony. For instance, for a donation of 16 million, I would organise a big cocktail party, announce the speeches etc. So I got to know many well-to-do people.

I interacted with these people, which broadened my horizon, CC said. Connections with a good number of influential personalities outside the academy would enable him to raise funds for his academic activities when he started his research on the history of new music in China at the CAS later (see Chapter 2). It should also be noted that broadening horizon and seeking to be an international-minded man (as he put it), an inclination consistent throughout his life, was a deliberate choice on his part at the time. His involvement in a wide array of academic and cultural services outside the University from the 1970s-1980s onwards (see Chapter 10) demonstrated this effort. As he put it: I have different contacts outside my job. I don’t want to lead a parochial and routinised life. I believe in diversification in everything, or pluralism.

It is worth mentioning that in the late 1970s, CC was also the Director of the Certificate Programme for Musicology, Extra-mural Studies Department of HKU. This is indicated in the author’s biographical line in Liu (1978a), an early music review written in an academic style (see Chapter 8 Section 8.2).

1.5 Earning MPhil (1979) and PhD (1983) degrees by researching Yuan zaju

CC mentioned he was very miserable from 1979 to 1981. The clashes with some colonial-minded staff in the University’s bureaucratic structure could be a factor. But the main cause for the misery seemed to be his first marriage. He referred to his nasty divorce experience from 1979 to 1986, which meant he finally divorced in 1986, after prolonged legal procedures. He admitted that by working in an HKU environment where the world is all yours (as he put it, quoted earlier), his ego was inflated. The inflated ego probably added conflicts into his marriage. Still, the marriage was a mistake to him and he has never doubted that the divorce was a right decision. He even said: When I look back, I think the only big mistake I made was the first marriage. This was not a joke on his part; the big mistake that he made in the younger days was put to right through divorce in a resolute manner. In addition, one could only surmise that with his ambition, stamina, and Beethovenian personality at the time, he would not have patience for a relationship that was not up to his standards. At any rate, the freedom from a problematic marriage must have injected new energy into him. From the relationship breakup he got custody of his daughter (who was born in the early 1970s); looking after his daughter was also part of his hectic life before the daughter went to study in England.

CC coped with the misery from his failing marriage by devoting himself to research degree studies, outside his administrative work. He registered for the Master of Philosophy (MPhil) study at HKU in 1977. He got the degree in 1979 (in Classical Chinese Literature). Then he immediately registered for the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) study in 1980, and obtained the degree in 1983 (also in Classical Chinese Literature). He worked on Yuan zaju or drama operas of the Yuan Dynasty for both his MPhil and PhD research. Probably various factors led to CC’s choosing to research zaju. Two might be the following: his sinology-oriented training during his study for BA from the University of London, and his being in the stream of classical Chinese literature for research studies under the supervision of Lo Hong-lit, a renowned classical Chinese scholar (who also happened to be a Chinese subject teacher of his at the Pui Ching Middle School).⁶ CC’s two degree theses were later both published as books: A Study of Guan Hanqing’s Dramatisation of the San-guo Stories (Liu, 1980a) and A Study of the Yuan Dynasty’s Dramatisation of Shui-hu Stories (Liu, 1990a).

Connection between his work on zaju and his later research on the history of new music in China seems remote. Yet he pointed out in an email to me: "Zaju was the earliest opera-form in China, 300 years earlier than the first European operas" (1 August 2005; see also Liu, 1995b; 1996a, p. 263). Marveling at the two already impressive thesis-based books (Liu, 1980a, 1990a) in view of his gigantic body of scholarly output in the subsequent decades, I said to CC in an email: "Compared with all the later works to come, the two books on zaju were only like a morning exercise for you! He responded: I like the comparison" (1 August 2005). For the occasion of CC being awarded Honorary Fellowship by the Hong Kong Translation Society (HKTS) in October 1991 (see Chapter 9 Section 9.2), Ian Wong composed a citation for CC and commented on his scholarly versatility, with a reference to the solid scholarship in Liu (1990a) as well:

Dr Liu is talented and versatile. He is both an experienced translator and a scholar of translation; he has in-depth knowledge of zaju in the Yuan Dynasty, European and modern Chinese music theories, and music history. Anyone who has read his authored and edited books would come to this understanding. A Study of the Yuan Dynasty’s Dramatisation of Shui-hu Stories [Liu, 1990a], published at the end of last year by the Joint Publishing (HK) Ltd., is up to 500 pages, with over 600 references in Chinese and foreign languages—such diligence is extraordinary in the highly commercialised society of Hong Kong. (Liu, Lin & Jin, 2000, p. 552)

Ian Wong’s comment is fair. No less revealing is a commendation of the book (Liu, 1990a) from Stephen H. West, sinologist and professor at the University of California (Berkeley). Towards the end of a two-year attachment at Peking University, West wrote a letter to CC (CC shared a photocopy of the typewritten letter with me around 2004-2005). West said the following in the letter:

I have just finished reading the Peking University library copy of your YUAN REN SHUIHU ZAJU YANJIU [Liu, 1990a] and thoroughly enjoyed it. It is a fine piece of work and representative of the kind of close reading that drama really needs if it is ever going to be viewed as serious literature. […] I am very enthusiastic about your work. […] I have been deeply indebted to your work. It is so radically different from other Chinese writing on Yuan drama, I don’t know what its reception might be here or in Hong Kong, but from the standpoint of western training, it represents the kind of philological, textual, and analytical discipline that has marked the best of, for instance, Renaissance drama studies. Congratulations. (22 March 1992; quoted with permission from West, email 19 October 2021)

West’s comment on the book (Liu, 1990a) as being radically different from other Chinese writing on Yuan drama is significant. CC’s later book A Critical History of New Music in China (Liu, 1998a, 2009a, 2010a) is also radically different from other Chinese writings on new music, hence intensely controversial in mainland China (see Chapter 3). Other than demonstrating his unique insights as a scholar, CC’s research on Yuan zaju (Liu, 1980a, 1990a) provided early strong evidence of his scholarly gift, even though this early work might be easily overshadowed by his later scholarship. Appendix 1.3 shows the covers of the two books.

On reflection, CC observed that the humanities training that he received through his MPhil and PhD studies at HKU, together with the earlier study for the BA external degree from the University of London which had a sinologist-training orientation, enhanced his humanistic side, whose foundation was first laid through his reading of the May Fourth new literature during his teenage years. He also pointed out that the humanistic approach balanced his earlier ‘purely music’ perspectives gained from studying for the diplomas of LTSC (1962), AMusTCL (1962) and LRSM (1963). It can be suggested that such balancing is significant, as it is strongly evidenced in CC’s writings, including music reviews, in the subsequent decades (see also e.g., Chapter 8 Section 8.3.3).

During those busy years, from studying for BA in the late 1960s to completing his PhD in 1983 while all the time doing a full-time job, one thing that CC regretted very much was dropping playing the piano. In an interview with me he explained why it was a regret: Playing the piano is an enjoyment, an enjoyment of the sounds. It’s sensuous—it’s not academic, it’s not a rational thing. So dropping piano means the loss of an ability to create the kind of sensuous enjoyment that comes with playing the instrument, from his perspective. Although CC did not become a pianist or a composer (he wanted to be one when he was a middle school student), his creation would take other forms in the subsequent decades: the series of academic seminars he would organise at the CAS, HKU, the dozens of monographs he would edit or write, the numerous research articles he would compose, and the many thousands of music reviews and other essays that he would write tirelessly.

Chapter 2.

Organising research seminars and publishing seminar monographs at the Centre of Asian Studies (CAS), University of Hong Kong

Let me finish first. My views are not necessarily correct. But let me finish, OK? Don’t be so angry. We don’t lose temper in academic discussions. I have my views; you can disagree with me.

—CC responding to challenges from Doming Lam, at the 4th Seminar on The History of New Music in China (10-13 September 1990) (Liu, 1992b, p. 55)

As mentioned in the foregoing chapter, CC registered for PhD study at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) in 1980, right after he obtained MPhil in 1979; he received PhD in 1983. Thus from the late 1970s to the beginning of the 1980s, while doing his full-time administrative job, he was also researching Yuan zaju for degree studies. Beyond that, he was starting to publish music reviews (see Chapter 8 Section 8.2) and publish on the front of translation too (see Chapter 9). Significantly, he was also conceiving a decades-long research programme on the history of new music in China. From the first article he published in the research programme, (The new music movement during the Mao era) (Liu, 1980b), to his last piece in the programme, (Perspectives in historiography as reflected in book reviews— Responses to comments on A Critical History of New Music in China) (Liu, 2018a), his mega-project spanned across four decades. His reflection on this project was meant to be an important part of his Memoir. Now that he could not fulfil the writing plan, devoting three chapters of the present book, i.e., Chapters 2 to 4, to reviewing his work on the project, would be justified.

2.1 CC launching his decades-long research project on the history of new music in China

CC described himself as having a complicated background on his way to becoming a researcher, with years of exploration and effort before joining HKU and then battling through years of administration at HKU, before launching for himself an academic career as a Fellow at the Centre of Asian Studies (CAS), HKU in 1981. For CC, embarking on a path of researching the history of new music in China at the CAS was not accidental, but was a conscious choice with deliberation, and a choice then tested and reaffirmed through decades of devotion.

From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, while writing his degree theses, apparently CC was also pondering what he wanted to pursue long-term as his scholarly interests. In an interview with me he explained metaphorically why he did not choose European music as his focus of research, or in his view, why someone living in China (Hong Kong included) cannot be a first-class researcher of European music:

After studying humanities subjects, I realised my background cannot support a career of studying European music. Firstly, European music is one of the most beautiful art gems of the human art; if you want to study it, you have to know European languages: Italian, Latin, German, and French. If you can only read English, then two-thirds of the research literature on European music you can’t read. You can only become a second-class, third-class researcher. I don’t want to be such a researcher. Secondly, your living environment is not the kind as in Europe; you live in China and eat salted fish and eggs, rather than butter—you simply cannot compete with others, if you want to study European music. Appreciation is fine.

In an interview with Vincent Mak (Mak, 2003), CC also mentioned his background of Chinese culture (as opposed to European culture) as a factor for his choosing to research Chinese music rather than European music:

Speaking of music research, in fact I felt Chinese people suffer from congenital deficiency in researching European music. There is a big gap between traditional Chinese culture and European culture in terms of music, religion, and the consequent forms of expression and aesthetics. […] Plus the differences in language, cultural environment, and social norms, I felt I do not meet the requirement of having a solid basis for researching European music. (Mak, 2003, p. 12)

In deciding upon his focus in researching Chinese music, he chose new music (i.e., Westernised Chinese music, in his definition), rather than traditional Chinese music, again for good reasons. He explained in the same interview with me:

If I studied traditional Chinese music, I must be conversant in classical Chinese, right? This being not the case, I applied my knowledge of European music to studying the new music in China in the 20th century which is influenced by European music. I read materials in Chinese and know European music, thus studying Chinese music is the best choice—I can utilise my knowledge of European music while studying Chinese music. I’m trained in European music— this is my capital to exploit.

These understandings of what advantages he had and what he potentially fell short in, formulated by the early 1980s, shaped CC’s life in the following decades: This way I divided my time in life. On the one hand, I listened to European music and wrote music reviews; on the other hand, I studied Chinese music. Looking back, he believed he had made the right decision:

I think the path I took is correct. I’m not a well-trained musicologist, for in terms of language I’m already at a disadvantage [only knowing English but not other European languages]. I won’t become conceited like some guys in mainland China. Reading about European stuff only in Chinese [as they did]—how can that do? […] Should I have studied European music? How could that be possible by reading in English only?

As revealed in Chapter 1 Section 1.3, when he was working for the BBC, CC was already taking an interest in what he would call new music later, sharing views with colleagues on the politics in the model works (or yangbanxi during the Cultural Revolution). In fact, he also started to collect relevant research materials during those years (see Chapter 5 Section 5.1). In 1980 for the occasion of the fourth anniversary of Mao Zedong’s death, the editor-in-chief of Ming Pao Monthly, Tung Chiao, invited contributions to a special issue of the journal to cover various aspects of Mao’s time. CC was recommended by Chen Kwan-yiu, the then Director of the CAS, HKU, to write a piece on music. Based on some materials already collected, CC wrote an article of over 20,000 characters, titled (The new music movement during the Mao era) (Liu, 1980b). Around the time of working on the article, he submitted an application to the CAS for affiliation as a (Research) Fellow and he became one in March 1981, which allowed him to carry on his research. In his Progress Report prepared in March 2018 (signed date 28 March 2018) for submission to the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (HKIHSS) (incorporating the CAS in 2009), CC gave a retrospective

My career in the research of New Music in China started in 1980 when Ming Pao Monthly published my long article on The New Music Movement during the Mao Era in commemoration of the fourth anniversary of the death of Mao Zedong, in its December 1980 issue. It was this article that led me to become a Centre Fellow at the Centre of Asian Studies in March 1981.

On completing writing the article for Ming Pao Monthly, CC felt a lot more research on new music in China needed to be done: it struck me that I could build on the basis of the article and continue research in this field (Prologue, in Liu, 2010a, p. 1). Becoming a Fellow at the CAS provided him with the needed institutional support (Mittler, 2005, p. 5) for the purpose.

Like he had been managing his administrative job and degree theses at the same time, on becoming a CAS Fellow,