1. Jian Youwen was a Chinese historian, public official, and sometime Methodist pastor, known in particular for his writings on the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
16 Facts About Jian Youwen
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Jian Youwen taught at Yenching University, the University of Hong Kong, and Yale University.
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In 1914, Jian Youwen attended Oberlin College where he earned his undergraduate degree in 1917, and obtained his master's degree from the University of Chicago in 1919, then returned to China in 1921.
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Jian Youwen joined the Nationalist Party in 1926 and developed a close relationship with General Feng Yuxiang, the "Christian Warlord", who appointed him head of his political department in 1927.
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Jian Youwen's interest in politics grew, and from 1933 to 1946 he was a member of the Legislative Yuan.
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Jian Youwen was a student and later close friend to the artist Gao Jianfu and, according to Eliza Ho, was an important influence on his work.
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Socially, Jian Youwen was renowned as a talented reteller of the coarse humor of the traitor Han Fuju.
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In 1949, Jian Youwen returned to Hong Kong where he became a professor at Hong Kong University.
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Jian Youwen was a visiting fellow at Yale from 1964 to 1965, the institution that now houses the Jen Yu-Wen Papers.
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Jian Youwen was renowned mainly for his expertise on the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and was one of the first scholars to take a serious interest in the period.
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Jian Youwen's Taiping tianguo dianzhi tongkao was published as a three-volume work in Hong Kong by Mengjin Shuwu in 1957, and by Yale University as a single volume in 1978, translated by W J F Jenner as The Taiping Revolutionary Movement.
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Jian Youwen wrote several other works on the Taiping period, all of which are considered authoritative.
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Jian Youwen described Guangdong as "the origin of revolution", and in the 1940s was active in the promotion of Guangdongese culture.
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Jian Youwen was a devout Christian, not only in his personal affairs but especially in public life.
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Jian Youwen wrote essays against the Anti-Christian movement in China, and translated Marshall Broomhall's biography of Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to the country, as well as biologist John Merle Coulter's Religion and Science.
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Jian Youwen inherited a proposal from his predecessor to convert the Guangzhou City god temple, which he saw as a relic of a superstitious and backward era, into a secular facility to promote the consumption of goods produced in Guangdong.