About Nanxiu
Nanxiu QIAN, a bright light in so many lives, passed away peacefully at the age of 75, on November 16, 2022 in Houston, Texas, after a long struggle with cancer. Nanxiu was born on June 18, 1947 in Nanjing, China to Ziming Qian and Lin Zhou. She is survived by her son, Liang Zhu, Liang’s wife, Chen Xu, his daughter, Emma Linfeng Zhu; Nanxiu’s sisters, Manqian Qian, Jujing Qian, Zengyue Qian; her brothers, Dawei Qian and Dajing Qian; her nephews, Yangyang Qian, Tiaotiao Qian, Zhuo Wang, and Hua Ning; and her nieces, Jun Xie, Li Ning and Mengke Xu.
Nanxiu, it seemed, could do everything. She was a devoted mother and grandmother, an outstanding scholar of Chinese literature, an excellent poet and calligrapher, and a prize winning short-story writer, teacher and translator. She had a beautiful singing voice which enabled her to chant traditional Chinese poems with remarkable, soul-touching effect.
Nanxiu was educated at Nanjing University, where she obtained an MA degree in Classical Chinese Literature (1982), and where she taught from 1981–1986. In the late 1980s, she came to the United States to study in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University, where she received her doctoral degree in 1994. Her Ph.D. dissertation became her first book, Spirit and Self in Medieval China: The Shih-shuo hsin-yü and Its Legacy (Honolulu: the University of Hawaii Press, 2001).
From 1993 to 2022, Nanxiu taught Chinese literature at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Her primary affiliation was with the Department of Transnational Asian Studies, but she was also active in the Chao Center for Asian Studies, the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, and Medieval Studies. No one at Rice during her time paid more attention to nurturing undergraduate students, and few, if any, faculty could match her broad-ranging service to the University.
She team-taught several courses with members of the History Department and the Art History Department, and organized and obtained funding for several major academic meetings in the US and abroad––most recently an NEH.- sponsored international conference at Rice in 2017 that yielded two volumes, for which she was the principal editor: Rethinking the Sinosphere: Poetics, Aesthetics, and Identity Formation (Amherst, New York: Cambria Press, 2020) and Reexamining the Sinosphere: Cultural Transmissions and Transformations in East Asia (Amherst, New York: Cambria Press, 2020)
Her research in Chinese, Japanese and Western languages gave her scholarship particular breadth, depth and analytical rigor. She had a penetrating intellect, and the topics that interested her ranged widely. She wrote gracefully in both Chinese and English. In the West, she was best known for her pioneering and much-cited work on the enormously influential fifth-century Chinese masterpiece Shishuo xinyu (A New Account of Tales of the World), but she also wrote extensively on a great many other Chinese literary works spanning some two thousand years, from the Lienü zhuan (Biographies of Exemplary Women; first century BCE), to twentieth century fiction in Taiwan, and gender studies in contemporary American China Studies.
Her last single-authored book was Politics, Poetics, and Gender in Late Qing China: Xue Shaohui and the Era of Reform (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015), a highly regarded political and literary biography of a remarkable woman scholar in late nineteenth and early twentieth century China. Among Xue’s many achievements, her collection of the life stories of more than 200 “exemplary” foreign women demonstrated to Chinese readers, in Nanxiu’s words, how these individuals “carved their self-invented space within the maledominated world.”
Nanxiu also wrote dozens of stimulating articles, essays and book chapters in Chinese and English, authored or co-authored several books in Chinese, and co-edited several conference volumes in both English and Chinese, including Different Worlds of Discourse: Transformations of Gender and Genre in Late Qing and Early Republican China and Beyond (Leiden: Brill, 2008), Zhongguo wenxue: Chuantong yu xiandai de duihua (Chinese Literature: Conversations between Tradition and Modernity (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2007), and Tradition and Modernity: Gender, Genre, and Cosmopolitanism in Late Qing China (Leiden: Brill, 2004).
But above all, and this is the true measure of a life, Nanxiu was a truly wonderful person. Everyone who knew her enjoyed, respected and admired her. She was extraordinarily generous with her knowledge and her time, kind to everyone, and full of vitality, wit, and good humor.
She will be sorely missed.
Written by the George and Nancy Rupp Professor Emeritus of Humanities Richard J. Smith
On Nov 23, 2022, we held a small service at Dr. Nanxiu Qian's home in Houston. In attendance were her family, colleagues, and friends. Those would could not make the service in person, joined us online. We all grieved together.
On Jan 6, 2023, we laid our dear colleague Dr. Nanxiu Qian to rest at her tree at Rice. Dr. Richard J. Smith, Dr. Shihshan Susan Huang, and Dr. Julie Fette went to inspect the tree’s surrounding (including visiting Richard’s tree, and walking to Nanxiu’s tree from there). We burned incense sticks to purify the surroundings. Then we went to Nanxiu’s office, burned incense in front of her ashes, and offered flowers that Julie had prepared. Susan recited Li Bo’s poem, which Richard had selected. Richard recited the English translation. We then brought Nanxiu’s ashes to her tree, buried her ashes, burned incense, and recited Li Bo’s poem again. Nanxiu is now resting in a “xue” (hole/lair/cave)穴 three of us created.
On Apr 7, 2023 we held a memorial for Nanxiu. Many thanks to Rice University, and the Department of Transnational Asian Studies, for hosting this memorial. Special thanks for all who spoke at the event, and who shared their experiences of our Nanxiu with us all: Dr. Lisa Balabanlilar, Dr. Kathleen Canning, Dr. Richard J. Smith, Liang Zhu, Dr. Shihshan Susan Huang, Lisa Hsieh, and Sarah J. Kong.
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