Sinologue Extraordinaire

Sinologue Extraordinaire

Originally published in "Hemisphere", Australia August, 1968

by Chen Chih-Mai

When Dr. Robert Hans van Gulik died in The Hague in September 1967, the

world press identified him as (1) a Dutch career diplomat whose last 

post was as his country's Ambassador to Japan, and (2) the author of 

a long series of detective stories featuring the Chinese statesman of 

the T'ang Dynasty, Dee Jen-djieh, who was such a master in solving 

strange and complicated murder cases.

Dr. van Gulik was indeed a diplomat of out-standing abitities and 

accomplishments, having served in a number of important and sensitive 

posts--Japan, China, the United States, India, Lebanon, Syria, Malaysla

and Kqrea, besides several terms of duty in the Foreign Ministry in The

Hague. Over a period of some fifteen years, he also wrote a number of 

detective stories, all with Judge Dee as the principal character 

against the background of T'ang Dynasty China.

But he was much more than a diplomat and a mystery story writer. From 

his early youth, he devoted himself to the study of Chinese and 

Japanese language and literature. He was a serious student of 

Oriental history and culture.In the course of a lifetime, he produced a

number of books and monographs which are universally regarded as 

penetrating and authoritative, often in areas seldom frequented by 

other Sinologues.

Languages came naturally to him. He learned them eagerly, but more as 

tools in academic work than as means of social contacts. His emphasis 

was on the ability to read a foreign language rather than to speak it 

well. He spoke all the foreign languages with a strong Dutch accent, 

but because of his familiarity with them, he was easily understood. His

method of language training was translation, usually from various 

foreign languages into Dutch or English.

Born in Zutphen, The Netherlands, in 1910, the fifth son of 

Lieutenant-General Willera van Gulik of the Dutch Army, he went to 

the Dutch East Indies when he was four years old. He stayed there for 

nine years, attending schools in Batavia and Surahaya, where he learned

the Indonesian language. In 1923 he returned to The Netherlands and was

enrolled in the Grammar School at Nijmegen. Upon graduation, he went on

to the State University at Leiden, where he studied law and polity as 

well as Chinese language and literature. In the University, he also 

acquired a command of the languages commonly required in European 

university courses--Latin and Greek, English, French and German. Upon 

receiving his Bachelor's degree, he transferred to the State University

at Utrecbt where he pursued advanced studies under the famous 

linguist Professor C. C. Uhlenbeck, learning Sanskrit and Tibetan, 

while continuing his study of Chinese and Japanese. He even helped 

Professor Uhlenbeck in compiling an English Blackfoot dictionary, 

Blackfoot being the language of a tribe of American lndians. His 

versatility in languages, ancient and modern, is evidenced' by his 

doctoral dissertation at the University at Utrecht, the subject of 

which is:

Hayagriva, the Mantrayanic Aspect of the Horse-cult in China and Japan,

with an Introduction on the horse-cult in India and Tibet.

With this highly technical monograph, he was awarded the D.Litt (cure 

laude) in 1935.

His writing career began early. When he was sixteen, still a pupil in 

the Grammar School, he began contributing poems and articles to his 

school publication Rostra, starting with a series called Tales from the

Beautiful Island, nostalgic sketches of his boyhood experiences in 

Indonesia which were, as he recalled them, "typically adolescent, 

pseudo-love and Pseudo-philosophical,,. He began writing on China 

when he was eighteen, notes and comments on classical Chinese 

literature and the arts. He was so well regarded that he was soon asked

to contribute entries on China to the Winkler Prins Encyclopedic, the 

big Dutch encyclopedia. Under the expert guidance of Pro-fessor 

Uhlenbeck, he translated from Sanskrit into Dutch the Urvaci, a play in

poetry by the great Sanskrit poet Kalidasa of the fifth century. In a 

note Dr. van Gulik made later, he said that "the translation is 

correct, being made under the guidance of Professor Uhlenbeck, but 

the Dutch style stilted, greatly influenced by my translations from 

Latin and Greek". He also noted that he decorated the book with 

vignett~ S which he drew after old Indian paintings. This point is of 

particular interest, for all his books and articles, including his 

detective stories, were profusely illustrated, often by drawings he 

made after old models. It may seem rather odd that~ despite his obvious

interest in academic studies, he never for a moment entertained the 

idea of entering the teaching profession. He explained this to me years

later by saying that, very early in his life, he became convinced of 

the wisdom of the traditional Chinese practice of combining 

intellectual pursuits with an 0fficial career. In China, he said, a 

scholar taught students only when he failed to gain entrance into the 

government service, which was true from Confucius and Mencius down to 

the present time. It was for this reason that, as soon as he had 

completed his formal education, he entered the Dutch Foreign Service 

and before long was appointed Secretary of the Dutch Embassy in 

Japan. He arrived in Tokyo in 1935, a young man of twenty-five, who 

already had acquired a command of the Japanese language and a famil 

iarity with Japanese history and culture. His first assignment to Japan

extended over seven years. He travelled all over Japan, and made 

several extensive trips to nearby China, building up a library and 

cultivating the friendship of Chinese and Japanese scholars. He must 

have cut a strange figure in China and Japan, this tall and heavy-set 

young man from Europe who took as his ideal life that of a 

traditional Chinese man of letters, a public official who indulged 

himself not only in the pursuit of poetry and the classics but also 

enriched his life by music, chess-playing, calli-graphy and painting. 

His Chinese and Japanese friends in those days spoke and wrote fondly 

of him, collating literary endeavurs with him frequently and giving him

their own calligraphic works and paintings, all of which he cherished 

with loving care throughout his life. Instead of undertaking analytical

studies of the classics as most Sinologues do, his first serious 

project was to pursue an obscure subject, that of the Chinese lute (

ch'in), a zither-type stringed instrument which the Chinese have been 

playing since remote antiquity. He studied the lute from all angles, 

seeking references to it in the classics and literature, learning its 

scores, playing the instrument under the guidance of a Chinese teacher,

and ending up by writing a large volume on it. The Lore of the 

Chinese Lute: An Essay in Ch'in Ideology is an authoritative work which

has no parallel even in Oriental literature. It was published in 1941 

by the Sophia University in Tokyo as a monograph of the series 

Monumenta Nipponica, of which he was an editor from the beginning. 

Besides the erudition of the work, one is particularly amazed by a 

short and concise preface he wrote, which is in a Chinese literary 

style so classical that few Chinese writers would attempt it in this 

age. As far as written Chinese is concerned, he was a rank 

conservative. He refused to write in vernacular Chinese (pai hurt) 

which has become the vogue in modern China, and he even refra~ed from 

punctuating his writings in the modern manner. It was only natural that

he opposed vigorously the "simplification" of the Chinese lan-guage 

undertaken by the Chinese Communists. His interest in the lute led 

him to explore how the instrument and its music found their way into 

Japan. It appeared that a Chinese Buddhist monk by the name of Tung-

kao, who came to -Japan in 1677, could have been responsible for the 

development of "the lore of the lute" in Japan. For many years, Dr. van

Gulik painstakingly traced the footsteps of this rather obscure Chinese

monk

all over Japan, collecting a 'vast amount of materials from temples and

old bookshops. In his notes, he recorded the ecstasy he experienced 

when he accidentally came across in Kyoto a large scroll by Tung-kao. 

It was his intention to write a biography and to edit and publish the 

complete works of the monk. Unfortunately, the outbreak of the 

Pacific War in 1941 forced him to leave Japan in a hurry. and some of 

the materials he so assiduously collected, including the priceless 

scroll, were lost. After Pearl HarbOr, Dr. van Gulik was trans-ferred 

to Chungking, where he served as First Secretary of the Dutch Embassy 

in China. Those were difficult days for him, as his country was overrun

by the Nazis and China was engaged in a desperate struggle with a 

substantial portion under enemy occupation. But Dr. van Gulik was his 

old self, going about town cultivating the friendship of Chinese men of

letters and artists. lie even gave several public recitals of the 

lute to raise money for the common war effort

During these years, he also met Miss Shui Shih-fang (Frances Shui), a 

university graduate from a good Chinese family. He quickly fell in love

with Miss Shui and they became engaged. He took his future bride around

to meet his Chinese friends who set up parties during which he 

recited his most recent poetic compositions and played. the lute. Dr. 

van Gulik and Miss Shui were married on December 18, 1943, in 

Chungking, first in a Christian ceremony and later in a Chinese 

ceremony, both of which were attended b y a large number of Chinese 

writers and artists 4~ who showered the couple with their works as 

wedding presents. The union was a very happy one, to which three sons 

(Willem Robert, Pieter Anton and Thomas Mathijs) one daughter (

Pauline Francis) were born. With the assistance of his friends, The 

Selected Works of Tung-kao, a slender volume containing what was 

salvaged of the materials pertaining to the Chinese monk, was published

in Chungking. The bulk of the volume consists of poems Tung kao 

composed to express his longings for the Ming Dynasty, which had, by 

the time Tung-kao migrated to Japan, fallen under the Manchus. The most

rewarding reading, however, is Tung-kao's biography written by Dr. 

van Gulik, again in classical Chinese. He was, however, unable to prove

conclusiveiY that it was indeed Tung-kao who first brought the 

Chinese lute into Japan. There were Japanese writers who maintained 

that the ancient instrument had found its way into Japan long before 

Tung-kao set loot there. At the end of the second world war, by which 

time Dr. van Gulik had stayed in China for almost four years, he was 

recalled to The Hague- A year later, he was sent to Washington to serve

on the Far Eastern Commission, the eleven-nation body in charge of 

formulating policies for the occupation of Japan. In 1948, when the 

basic policies had been laid down. he was again assigned to Tokyo to 

supervise their implementation. In war-devastated Tokyo, he re-

established the facilities to pursue his academic studies with his 

accustomed vigour.

(to be continued)

THE AUTHOR: Dr. Chen Chih-Mai, who was Ambassador of the Republic of 

China in Australia, and Ambassador to Japan.