Joseph NEEDHAM was a brilliant scholar who seemed to care about, and revel in, everything. A leading biochemist at Cambridge University, a flamboyant leftist, an accomplished linguist, Needham (1900-1995) had an intellectual range at age 25 that impressed colleagues so much that he was said to be on his way to becoming the Erasmus of the 20th century.
One summer day in 1937, a knock came on his wooden door at Cambridge from the hand of a comely graduate student from China named Lu Gwei-djen. Needham was married, but it did not prevent his magnetic interest in Lu. Meeting her changed the trajectory of his life, and of Western scholarship about China.
As the two lay naked in bed sharing a smoke one evening, Needham asked Lu to show him how to write "cigarette" in Chinese. He was immediately captivated by the timeworn beauty of the ancient characters, and declared his ambition to learn the entire language. He did so swiftly, and it only fed his curiosity and spurred his determination to understand the origins and achievements of China's illustrious culture, one of the most complex in human history.
That project consumed the rest of his life. Volume by volume, Needham created "Science and Civilisation in China," a breathtakingly panoramic study of topics including astronomy, politics and zoology, and the interconnectedness of all. Wonderfully written, it became a 24-volume foundation for, and an inspiration to, generations of China scholars, journalists and writers drawn to the country's colorful enigma.
One such writer was Simon Winchester, the skilled storyteller and author of the lively "The Professor and the Madman" on the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Like many avid readers of books about China, Winchester repeatedly went back to "Science and Civilisation." Unlike others, Winchester decided to decode the man behind it.
What a story it turns out to be. "The Man Who Loved China" is a charming literary and cultural adventure that captures the unadorned brilliance and infectious enthusiasm of this remarkable man, with his outsized intellectual ambition and his endearing zest for life.
His own scholar's robe
Needham won an assignment to China as a British diplomat during World War II. Landing in Chungking, he had a local tailor make him a floor-length Chinese scholar's robe of blue silk, which he wore every day. He traveled extensively and at considerable risk, navigating the desert to see the Buddhist cave art at Dunhuang, skirting Japanese enemy lines along China's southern coast and collecting cartloads of artwork and books and cultural treasures. (The British diplomatic service paid for unlimited shipments home.)
