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Beijing Forum Figures(3): Mr. and
Mrs. Owen, ―No Culture Shock
between us‖ PKU NEWS 2004--08—25
By Wang Fanfan
http://ennews.pku.edu.cn/news.php?s=93924688
PKU News, Beijing, Aug 25th, 2004: Mr. and Mrs. Owen from Department of East
Asian Languages and Literatures of Harvard University attended Beijing Forum and
received interview from PKU News Center.
Mentioned Mrs. Owen, many people will remember her Chinese name Tian Xiaofei
and her extraordinary experience during her growing up: entering Peking University
at the age of thirteen, writing beautiful poems and proses, graduated from Harvard
University and being a member of the faculty there. She is regarded as the
combination of academic and creation. His husband Stephen Owen was the former
director of Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures of Harvard
University, he is also a highly venerated professor in classical Chinese literature.
After graduated from the English Literature Department of Peking University, Tian
Xiaofei went to USA to study comparative literature. When asked the recent interest,
she told us she is now very interested in three periods of time in the Chinese history:
Wei, Jin and the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the late Ming Dynasty and the
Cultural Revolution, for example, last year she published a book named ―Golden
Lotus: A Commentary by Qiushui tang‖. She emphasized the importance of study the
literature of Wei, Jin and the Northern and Southern Dynasties, although the history
is very short. She is now working on a book about the palace culture of the Liang
Dynasty, and she thought every aspect of literature of Liang Dynasty is very creative
and the history does not give it a right evaluation.
When mentioning the relation between creation and academic research, Tian Xiaofei
said she was still writing proses and poems in the meantime of his academic
research. In her opinion, the academic research is the combination of reason and
sensibility. The way of academic research which she prefers is based on the text, but
the aim is to expose the beauty of literature. In nowadays the academic research of
the classical literature places too much emphasis on reason.
Both of the couple have an agreement on the academic research that the diligence is
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