(also Hu Shih-chih). Born Dec. 17, 1891, in Shanghai; died Feb. 24, 1962, in Taipei. Chinese writer, scholar, and political figure.
Hu studied in the USA, receiving a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1917; he was an adherent of pragmatism. He taught at Peking National University from 1917 to 1927, from 1931 to 1937, and from 1945 to 1948. From 1938 to 1942 he was China’s ambassador to the USA, and from 1958 to 1962 he served as president of the Academia Sinica.
A champion of a “literary revolution,” Hu worked to establish a new literature in the vernacular (pai-hua); his approach was, however, formalistic and inconsistent. His literary works include the collection of poems A Book of Experiments (1920), the play A Life’s Work (1919), and translations of short stories by such writers as Guy de Maupassant and A. P. Chekhov. In the 1920’s Hu took part in the movement to “put the national past in order” and published A History of Literature in the National Language (1927) and the first volume of A History of Literature in Pai-hua (1928). From 1928 to 1932 he was a member of the literary group known as the New Crescent Society. He published scholarly works on the Chinese classical novel and subsequently ceased his literary activity.
In the mid-1950’s Hu’s methodology and scholarly theories were sharply criticized in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). After the formation of the PRC in 1949, he went to the USA and eventually took up residence in Taiwan. Hu was anticommunist and anti-Soviet.
V. V. PETROV