Regent's Now Magazine 2019 WEB

REGENT’S NOW COLLEGE LIFE
Nobel Laureate Dr Mo Yan
becomes Honorary Fellow
of Regent’s Park College
OPGDI is also privileged to be home to the Mo Yan International
Writing Centre, headed by Dr Mo Yan, the first Chinese Nobel Laureate
in Literature. Mo Yan became an Honorary Fellow of the College on
Wednesday 12 June during a special ceremony.
Dr Mamtimyn Sunuodula, Head of the East Asia section at the Bodleian
Library, was present for these events. He reflects:
“The visit to Oxford by celebrated Chinese author and Nobel Laureate for
Literature Dr Mo Yan in June 2019 is a significant event in the history of
literary and intellectual exchanges between China and the UK. During his
week-long stay in Oxford, Mo Yan was awarded an Honorary Fellowship
by Regent’s Park College and delivered public lectures. Accompanied by
two other equally prominent Chinese writers, Su Tong and Yu Hua, Mo
Yan visited the Bodleian Library to present his work and to see some of the
Library’s earliest Chinese books.
The origin of cultural and literary exchanges between the UK and China
can be traced to the Bodleian Library’s Chinese collections. The founder
of the Library, Sir Thomas Bodley (d. 1613), bought the Library’s first
Chinese book in 1604, just two years after it opened its doors. The book is
an incomplete copy of Four Books, an essential collection of Confucianism.
Arguably, the book is the earliest acquisition of a Chinese book by any
library in the world. Thomas Bodley recorded in the book the name of
the donor who enabled the purchase and the year, but it was in the wrong
end of the book and written upside in relation to the Chinese text. The
Library acquired well over one hundred volumes of Chinese books by the
end of the seventeenth century. However, no one in the British Isles had
the knowledge of either the language or the script for eighty-three years
until 1687 when the Bodleian employed a Chinese Jesuit convert to decipher
its books. The Chinese convert, Shen Fuzong, spent six weeks in Oxford
cataloguing Bodleian Library’s collection of Chinese books and teaching
Bodley’s Librarian Thomas Hyde about the language, culture and history.
The interest Shen’s visit helped to stimulate in England and the relations he
built up with Thomas Hyde began a process that saw a continuous flow of
cultural, literary and linguistic exchanges over the centuries that followed
and still resonates today.
“The visit to Oxford by celebrated
Chinese author and Nobel
Laureate for Literature Dr Mo
Yan in June 2019 is a significant
event in the history of literary
and intellectual exchanges
between China and the UK.”
The establishment of the Mo Yan International Writing Centre in Regent’s
Park College is aimed at building on the centuries-old historical relations
between Oxford and China and deepening mutual understanding and
literary exchange.”
Dr Shidong Wang, FRSA, is Director of the Oxford Prospects and Global
Development Institute. Dr Mamtimyn Sunuodula is Head of the East Asia
section at the Bodleian Library.
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