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"Without Learning, There is No Nourishing Art; Without Art, There is No Advancing Learning": Professor Hu Xiaoming's In-Depth Analysis of Professor Jao Tsung-i's Cultural Responsibility and Spiritual Realm

To commemorate the 110th birthday of the renowned Chinese studies master Professor Jao Tsung-i (1917-2018), Jao Tsung-I Academy of Sinology will co-organize a Lecture Series in Honour of Professor Jao Tsung-i with The University of Hong Kong Jao Tsung-I Petite Ecole, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Institute of Chinese Studies, The University of Hong Kong Fung Ping Shan Library and Hok Hoi Library in 2026. Supported by Dr Simon Suen and Jao Link, this lecture series will bring together a group of distinguished scholars and specialists well versed in Professor Jao Tsung-i’s life and academic work. The series aims to offer a comprehensive review of Professor Jao’s pioneering contributions to Chinese studies, Sinology, and the related arts, examining both the breadth of his scholarship and its lasting relevance. Through presentations and dialogues, the lectures will seek to engage the public with the depth and significance of Professor Jao’s intellectual legacy, while contributing to the continued documentation and dissemination of his research.

The third lecture of the series was held on May 9 at the Jao Tsung-I Academy of Sinology, with Professor Hu Xiaoming, Professor Emeritus and Deputy Director of the Institute of Modern Chinese Thought and Culture at East China Normal University, delivering a talk entitled An Overview of Professor Jao Tsung-i’s “Amalgamation of Scholarship and Art”. Dr John Yiu, Deputy Director of the Jao Tsung-I Petite Ecole, HKU served as moderator.

Professor Hu Xiaoming, drawing on his early work The Scholarly Record of Jao Tsung-i, discussed how Professor Jao overcame the modern academic divide between learning and art. By returning to the traditional Chinese literati ideal—the trinity of "scholar, lyricist, and painter"—Jao achieved the "master scholar" vision in which "learning resides within art." With scholarship as the bone and art as the flesh, and without any deliberate attempt to establish a school of his own, Jao constructed a cultural world that bridges antiquity and the present, and fuses East and West. Professor Hu then used Jao's theory of the "Chinese character tree" to illuminate the affinity between qin philosophy and the art of calligraphy, as well as the subsequent proposal of the Northwest School of landscape painting. This illustrated how Jao, through profound learning, entered the realm of art, and conversely, how his artistic imagination and poetic sensibility nourished his scholarship—elevating textual research beyond tedious logic to achieve a state of empathic resonance.

Taking Spring in Jiangnan and Selected Purity: The Art of Jao Tsung-i as key case studies, Professor Hu pointed out how Professor Jao, through the unity of poetry, calligraphy, and painting, reawakened literati elegance and national memory. The concept of "selected purity" (Chengxin) , he noted, embodies a spiritual state of luminous self-discipline, moral discernment, and the settling of one's being.

Professor Hu concluded that what Professor Jao meant by "shouldering responsibility" (dān hè) entails not only the toil of academic research but also a profound commitment to the integrity of cultural China, its classical spirit, and the human heart. In an age of machine replication and artificial intelligence, Jao's life practice of integrating art and learning offers a powerful response to the spiritual aridity caused by the fragmentation of modern knowledge. By incorporating the suffering of his times, cultural devastation, national mission, and compassion for life and death into his scholarly and artistic world, Jao ultimately attained the supreme state of: "An unwavering spirit for the ages, a carefree heart amidst the currents."

With this, the first three lectures of the "Jao's Heart Will Go On – Lecture Series in Honour of Professor Jao Tsung-i," organized by the Jao Tsung-I Academy of Sinology at Hong Kong Baptist University, have been successfully concluded. The gathering of distinguished scholars and the vibrant exchange of ideas have profoundly demonstrated the enduring vitality of the Jao spirit in our contemporary world.

For more information about this lecture series, please visit Jao’s heart will go on -- Lecture Series in Honour of Professor Jao Tsung-i