Historiography for a general audience

In Memory of Academician HSU CHO-YUN

Academician HSU CHO-YUN was a great mentor to our foundation, and we are grateful for his extensive guidance and insightful advice on our development. He sketched the blueprint, while our founder, JANE CHEN, led the foundation to bring his vision to life through practical action.

Professor HSU was not only a man of profound knowledge and a well-rounded and perceptive individual, but he was also a historian for the general public. He believed that the transmission of knowledge should not be confined to academic halls but should also reach the public, lecturing to business leaders and the general populace. His courses, which connected history with the present, were a pioneering initiative at the time, and the books published from them were highly cherished by readers.

He once said, "Throughout my life, I've had many opportunities to participate in social affairs, and promoting the foundation's activities is truly something I treasure." The Min-Lung Forum REPLAY pays tribute to and honors Professor HSU CHO-YUN with the theme "History for the General Public." The audio-visual quality of these precious lectures may not be perfect due to the passage of time, but as Professor HSU once said, "Learning is a lifelong pursuit," and we must "allow ourselves to constantly improve our understanding of the world, the past, and the future."

Thank you, Professor HSU. The inspiration and expectations you held for our foundation will forever remain in our hearts.

Lecture Series

I｜Viewing People through History (2003–2004) 　

II｜Viewing the Future through History (2005–2006)

III｜Viewing Leadership through History (2007) 　

IV｜The Current Economic Upheaval, Globalization, and Our Future (2009)

V｜The Concept of Life in Harmony between Heaven and Humanity (2010)

VI｜Between Heaven and Humanity—Development and Restraint (2011)

HSU CHO-YUN (1930~2025)

Academician of Academia Sinica; Ph.D., University of Chicago; former professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of History. Author of Sixty Years of American Vicissitudes: The Observations of a Chinese Scholar, The Spiritual Life of the Chinese People, History of the Western Zhou Dynasty (revised edition), Seeking the Ancient, The Characteristics of Ancient Chinese Culture, among others.

Having lived through wartime in his youth, he traveled extensively throughout China—by land and water, through villages and countryside—coming to know the lives and thoughts of the common people. Spending half of his life in the United States, he taught students whose backgrounds reflected the general makeup of society, and, working alongside colleagues with shared academic pursuits, most engaged in social history research. This gave him the opportunity to closely observe changes in American society and culture.

His lifelong learning was rooted in social and cultural history, as he sought knowledge in sociology, anthropology, and archaeology. Believing that highly specialized academic research often focuses on political and elite institutions while neglecting the lives and ideas of ordinary people, he dedicated his later years to exploring and introducing popular culture.

In 2020, he received the Fourth Global Chinese Culture & Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sinology; in 2024, he was awarded the Sixth Tang Prize in Sinology, honoring his outstanding contributions to the field.