The Man Who Loved China audiobook

He decided initially to make a great historical list, a list of every mechanical invention and abstract idea—the building blocks of modern world civilization—that had been first conceived and made in China. If he could managed to establish a flawless catalog of just what the Chinese had created first, of exactly which of the world’s ideas and concepts had actually originated in the Middle Kingdom, he would be on to something. If he could delve behind the unforgettable remark that emperor Qianlong had made to the visiting Lord Macartney in 1792—“We possess all things…I have no use for your country’s manufactures”—if he could determine what exactly prompted Qianlong to make such a claim, then he would perhaps have the basis or a truly original and world-changing work of scholarship. Simon Winchester - image fr0m rolfpotts.com Other great British explorers, like Livingston, Scott, Drake, and Cook sailed, rode, or walked into places that had never been seen by Westerners, producing useful and accurate maps of the places they explored. Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham strode into places in China that, while they might have been visited by Europeans, had maybe not been properly noticed, and created the equivalent of a map to their history, and the history of scientific development in China. He would produce one of the monumental intellectual works of the 20th century, Science and Civilization in China, and revolutionize how the West perceived a nation that had come to be regarded as a basket case. Like Moses, Joseph Needham did not survive to see the final product of his efforts, but he knew that it would come to be, as he had dedicated his energy, genius, love for, and obsession with China to fueling the engine to its final destination. There are, to date, twenty four “substantial published works” in the project, according to the Needham Research Institute, with more in process. Of course, as a remarkable Englishman, Needham would not be complete without his share of eccentricities, peculiarities, and oddities. He was a nudist for one. Those of delicate sensibility afloat on the River Cam in Cambridge knew that there was a certain section of the waterway that might feature suit-free swimmers, and when to shield their gaze. Needham might be found among the bathers. He was also a practitioner of the open marriage. It is unlikely that his wife, Dorothy, the daughter of his Cambridge mentor, was much of a sexual wanderer, but Needham was a notorious womanizer. Of course there was one woman in particular who caught his fancy, and sparked Needham’s life work. 有缘千里来相会 She was named Lu Gwei-djen, and she was Chinese, born thirty-nine years before in the city of Nanjing, and a scientist like himself. They had met at Cambridge six years earlier…In falling headlong for Gwei-djen, Joseph Needham found that he also became enraptured by her country. She taught him her language, and he now spoke, wrote, and read it with a fair degree of fluency. She had suggested that he travel to China and see for himself what a truly astonishing country it was—so different, she kept insisting, from the barbaric and enigmatic empire most westerners believed it to be. Lu Gwei-djen was a gifted biology researcher who came to Cambridge specifically to study with Needham and his wife, also a high-level scientist. Six months in, she and Needham were an item. Dorothy put up with it.Lu Gewi-djen – from HCSC Foundation – Needham - from USA TodayThe times were dramatic when Needham made his first visit to China in 1943. Japan occupied a considerable portion of the country. The trip took years to arrange, having to run a gauntlet of political interference. But once he arrived Needham immediately began identifying elements of contemporary Chinese civilization, technology and science, that dated back hundreds, and sometimes thousands of years, predating similar abilities in the west. He found that much of what was presumed to have originated in Europe had in fact begun in the Middle Kingdom. Needham made it his life’s work to dig into the history of all the Chinese science and technology history he could get his hands on to feed what he already knew would be his magnum opus. He travelled extensively in the non-occupied areas of China, at times barely escaping ahead of Japanese invaders. Although he compiled a massive amount of information, the crux of his concern rested on what would come to be called The Needham Question or The Grand Question, why…had modern science originated only in the western world? Much later on…a second question presented itself—namely why, during the previous fourteen centuries, had China been so much more successful than Europe in acquiring knowledge of natural phenomena and using it for human benefit? Simon Winchester tracks Needham’s life from early childhood until his passing at age 95. He worked until the very end. And a remarkable life it was. His focus, of course, is on the time in which Needham acquired an interest in China and the subsequent lifetime labors. (只要功夫深，铁杵磨成针) A fair bit of ink is given to his relationship with Lu Gwei-djen, as it should be. And there is considerable reportage on Needham’s political views, and the trouble those got him into during the shameful McCarthy period of the Cold War. (一人难称百人心/众口难调) This makes for fascinating reading. Winchester also lets us in on what a pain in the neck it was for Needham, however, intrepid, to make his way around China on his investigations, in the absence of reliable transport. His life and status at Cambridge comes in for a look as well. Like the poor we will always have office politics with us. (强龙难压地头蛇 )Joseph Needham is indeed one of the most remarkable people of the 20th century. I confess I had never before heard of him, which may say more about my educational shortcomings than Needham’s undeserved obscurity, but I will presume that there are many like me, (fewer, to be sure, on the eastern side of the pond) to whom the story of Joseph Needham will be a revelation. Simon Winchester has made a career out of writing about great accomplishments and the people responsible. (一步一个脚印儿) He has done us all a service to bring this amazing character to our attention. With the growth of China into one of the premier economic and military powers on the planet, it may not ensure a good fortune, but it would probably be a worthwhile thing to know as much as possible about its history and culture.Publication - 2008Review posted – 3/6/15=============================EXTRA STUFFLinks to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pagesAn interesting wiki on the Historiography of scienceIf you feel like getting a start on reading Needham’s life work, you might check in with the Needham Research Institute . There are many photographs available there taken by Needham on his China visits.A few other books by Simon Winchester - -----The Perfectionists-----Pacific-----Krakatoa-----Atlantic-----The Map That Changed the World-----The Professor and the MadmanThere are plenty more Winchester books out there. I listed only the ones I have read.The following are the full entries for the Chinese items included in the review. I found them in the China Highlights site.有缘千里来相会 yǒu yuán qiān lǐ lái xiāng huì - Fate brings people together no matter how far apart they may be. This proverb points out that human relationships are decreed by Fate.只要功夫深，铁杵磨成针 (zhǐ yào gōng fū shēn, tiě chǔ mó chéng zhēn) - If you work hard enough at it, you can grind even an iron rod down to a needle. This proverb encourages us to persevere in whatever we undertake. Just as the English proverb has it:"Constant drilling can wear away a stone".一人难称百人心/众口难调(yī rén nán chèn bǎi rén xīn / zhòng kǒu nán tiáo) - It is hard to please everyone.强龙难压地头蛇 (qiáng lóng nán yā dìtóu shé) - Even a dragon (from the outside) finds it hard to control a snake in its old haunt. This means: Powerful outsiders can hardly afford to neglect local bullies.一步一个脚印儿( yī bù yī gè jiǎo yìnr ): Every step leaves its print; work steadily and make solid progress.

A biography of a man who devoted his life to things Chinese, Joseph Needham. One of the ancients said a full life, like a full day, is long enough. When Needham died in his early 90s, two days after he came to work his usual full day in the library, he went to a long-deserved rest. Needham (1900-1995) was the author (and in some cases co-author or organizer) of the 20-plus volumes of Science and Civilization in China, a work of such magnitude that it has been compared to the Oxford English Dictionary. The work, still in print, has been universally praised by critics. It is a catalog of Chinese achievement showing that the Chinese invented almost everything of significance long before the Europeans, Greeks or Egyptians including such things as printing, gunpowder, inoculation, the compass and even biological weapons. The exploits of Needham, a biology professor at Cambridge, could have filled several lives. His archaeological exploits were akin to Indiana Jones. His wife agreed to an open marriage in the 1930s, which in practice meant that she was faithful to him while he had a long-term mistress and many adventures on the side. Needham’s lifelong mistress was Chinese woman, originally one of his graduate students. He fell in love not only with her but with her dense, complex culture. Needham was a radical socialist, a writer of letters to the Times, a fan of Morris dancing (British folk dancing) and a regular guest preacher in an ultra-liberal church. Late in life he was a globe-trotting fundraiser trying to finish the book project and to create a library at Cambridge to house his collection of Chinese books and artwork. He fell out of favor with the US establishment in the 1950s when he was duped by the Russians into providing scientific verification to a report that said the US had used biological weapons on North Korea. Subsequently he was banned from entering the US during the McCarthy era. All this and a wonderful love story to boot: after Needham’s elderly wife died, Needham married his Chinese mistress when they were both in their 80s. The author of the book, Simon Winchester (b. 1944) is a British journalist who worked most of his life for The Guardian. He has written many magazine articles and a dozen non-fiction books. Top photo of a Chinese earthquake detector from 140 AD. Picture from china.usc.eduChart from The Genius of China by Robert Temple on hyperhistory.com The author from ogseurope.com[Revised 2/6/23, pictures and shelves added]

I cannot recall when I last felt as passionate about a book as I do with this spellbinding work by Simon Winchester. I am also passionate about the amazing life of Joseph Needham, an Englishman who was born at the end of the Victorian era in 1900, who rose to such splendid heights in academia, fell from grace due to his views on the American armed forces using biological weapons during the Korean War and was finally vindicated, leading to his works on China.So purely as a taster and the rest is up to you to read the book to find out the full story:Needham was an academic from Caius College, Cambridge with a doctorate in BioChemistry, happily living in an open marriage (13 September 1924) with Dorothy Moyle (aka Dophi), also an academic, who specialized in the biochemistry of muscle. They remained devoted to one another until her death.Needham was flamboyant, apart from being extremely clever, he loved women, was an active nudist, linguist, socialist and supporter of communism, and a trencherman apart from other things. His life couldn’t have been better but his world was turned upside down in 1937 when he met Lu Gwei-djen, the brilliant young biochemist from Nanjing, in China. They took to one another immediately, although it was six months before they became lovers. She was to remain his mistress and muse throughout her life. Dophi also liked her very much and the three were often together.But it was Gwei-djen who was to be the catalyst in Needham finally going to China. Her father had always told her that China had made a greater contribution to world science than anyone in the west had done. She kept stressing this fact to Needham and in the end he went to China to find out all about these inventions. They were all amazing. Luck always plays a part in life however and Needham was selected in 1939 to take part in a mission to China to help the country’s academics who had all disappeared into the hinterland. The Sino-Japanese war that began in 1937 had the Japanese targeting all the Chinese universities and thus the reason for their fleeing. But it was all of the inventions that Needham discovered in China from 1943-1946, the people he met and the lifestyle that were to remain with him all his life even when he returned to Cambridge; his helping to set up UNESCO in Paris that were to lead to his lifetime work, “Science and Civilization in China”, Cambridge Univ. Press, 7 volumes, started in 1954 and continuing until Needham’s death.Even so, at the end of his life he often puzzled over the fact that China had suddenly lost its drive in inventions and was overtaken by the west. Why? He was never to find out. He had various ideas but nothing concrete.A fabulous book! I’ve ordered his first volume of “Science and Civilization in China” and I cannot wait to read it. A trifle pricey but worth every penny!PS: https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-lon...Quite an interesting report. Whether true or not has not been proved.

In mulling over the Kindle page for The Professor and the Madman, Winchester's more famous book, my eye was caught by the entry for this one. I'd first encountered Needham's work on a library shelf in my youth, when it was many fewer volumes, 3 or 6 maybe -- I remember the covers were black, at about eye level, because that's how readers' minds work -- thought it sounded really cool -- science history! two great tastes that taste great together! -- and I should get back to it.I should get back to it. I should likely have grabbed it then. Sadly, I do not find it on Kindle. My public library has one (!) of the many volumes, and an abridgement version on paper. Abridgements tend to lack the interesting weird details writers relish, but I wouldn't be up for 24 volumes anyway, being still stalled halfway through the unabridged 4 volumes of The Journey to the West. The real thing looks like bait for academic libraries/interlibrary loan. Shall try the abridgement first.Anyway, back to the book -- instantly available on Kindle, hah -- that I just read. Very readable, very worthwhile. With any biography except auto-, one is getting a picture of two people, the subject and the writer, and teasing out one from the other requires a conscious process, but both lenses were fascinating to look through. It does make me want to go hunt up Needham's own words, however. Which is a pretty salutary effect I suspect Winchester would approve.Ta, L.(Which means I remember a book I did not even read half a century later, although I grant I ran across references to it a few times in the intervening decades. How much of an impression would it have made if I had checked it out that day...?)

Great background reading for anyone contemplating the epic task of taking on the fifteen (and more) volumes of Science and Civilisation in China -- one the greatest compendiums of knowledge, a supreme feat of imagination and will power, and one of the most lasting bridges built between the east and the west.Winchester provides the historic and political backdrop for the composition and allows us to understand why it was such an important work — why it was so necessary and so brave an undertaking, and how challenging a task it really was. Winchester also brings alive for us the eccentric and lovable man behind the work and thus makes the forbidding work more accessible by humanizing it, since we now know the moving will that animates it. It is a grand narrative and quite befitting such a grand achievement.

When I was a student at the University of Oslo studying Chinese, Joseph Needham used to come up to our department. As one of the few students with a car, it was my job to pick him up at the airport, ferry him about town, and generally take care of him. I was with him at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo while he studied the construction of the Viking ships, remarking at some of the similarities with ancient Chinese shipbuilding (a subject mentioned in the book). When he left one of his ever-present cigars in the ashtray of my car I didn't throw it away for months although I hate cigars. Reading the story of this remarkable man's life, who introduced the world to the real China and its monumental history and scientific discoveries, was spell-binding because while we all witnessed the brilliance of this man, few of us knew much about his personal life (aside from enjoying a glass of wine or two in the evenings with we students). I guess all those visits to Oslo paid off because one of my professors, Christoph Harbsmeier, ended up writing one of the later Science & Civilisation volumes.

This book got me from the very start with his constant question of Why no developement. I was very impressed by the comment of former Secretary of State Haye (Haye?) about 1920 to the effect that one could tell what policy to adopt for the next five hundred years by watching China, despite the at that time apparent lack of effect China had on the world. What I love about the book overall is Needham's single-minded devotion to learning in detail about the language, although there is more than one, culture(s) and history of the land from which his mistress came, and then that he, she, and his wife shared that devotion. And that, most importantly of all, he set the historical record straight on the most ancient accomplishments of Chinese civilization, things that even Chinese historians had not had or taken the time to dust off and publish. Then he fought tooth and nail against racism and classism of all forms (perhaps thanks to that stay with a working class family when he was a young boy). What a tenacious and driven person, to whom we all owe a debt of history and following one's own conscience for the working classes, even if he was a bit overly naive at times.

I found this book an absolutely wonderful read. Its title is perfect. Joseph Needham was an academic, a socialist and a biochemist - and he did indeed love China very deeply.The first part of the book covers his trip to China in 1943. China was at war with the Japanese, and they had overrun a third of the country to the east. He was sent to western China – which was free of Japanese influence. His task there was to do what he could help Chinese scientists carry on working – basically he was an enabler - he got items flown in that they needed for their research. He was also there to fly the British flag. His big awakening was the discovery of how innovative the early Chinese had been in inventing things. All sorts of breakthroughs he had attributed to Europe he now found had in fact been discovered first in China. He led eleven expeditions while there, covering 30,000 miles, and learning an incredible amount about Chinese scientific achievements. It was absolutely fascinating to read about his adventures in this country. Whilst there he also met, and became good friends with - Zhou Enlai – later to become China’s first premier and foreign minister under Mao. I thought that the second part of the book – dealing with his return to the UK – would be a let down, but it was every bit as exciting as the first half. Initially upon his return he was lauded for all his work in China, and his proposition that he write a book about early Chinese inventions was greeted with enthusiasm. His college at Cambridge give him leave to stop teaching, so he could concentrate on writing this magnum opus. He had a massive amount of raw material to sift through, both what he had gathered and what other people had sent him. Life was looking good.Then he had a huge fall from grace. In 1952 the Chinese accused America of using biological warfare against the North Koreans in the Korean War. Needham was sent out to investigate and concluded the Chinese were right.....and the British and the Americans were absolutely furious. British newspapers came down on him with vitriol, as did his fellow academics. How dare he come down on the side of the Chinese! History proved them right too – the sites Needham had been shown turned out to have been rigged up by Soviet Union and Chinese agents. Needham was in disgrace.Then again (there is so much excitement in this book!) there was another mammoth turn around in his fortunes – in 1954 his first book about Chinese scientific inventions was published - and everybody thought it was brilliant. Suddenly the untouchable became the golden boy. In the end he wrote a complete series of books on the subject, all hailed as outstanding.After various political upheavals at his college, he rose up the academic ladder to eventually become master of the college in 1965. Throughout his career he always remained passionately committed to socialist principles.Most of all, he is remembered for revolutionizing attitudes in the West towards Chinese achievements.... His books have never been out of print.The above is a very squashed up description of what is a fascinatingly rich and insightful book. It is also enormously readable, and I had difficulty putting it down. Highly recommended.

Please skip the audiobook, read by a narrator as arrogant as Joseph Needham himself :) I expected more excerpts from his infamous multi-volume tome, but instead was treated to a fascinating trek into 1930's rural China through the eyes of this brilliant womanizer. Entertaining but enraging.Quotes :-------"The master said 'Some have made flying cars with wood from the inner part of the juju tree, using ox-leather straps fastened to returning blades so as to set the machine in motion.' - Phu Poo Tza, 320 A.D. from Science and Civilization in China, Vol. IV, Part II""John Hay, America's Secretary of State at the turn of the 20th century, remarked in 1899 that China was now the storm-center of the world, and whoever took the time and trouble to understand this mighty empire would have a key to politics for the next five centuries.""... The Chinese, far from existing beyond the mainstream of human civilization, had in fact created much of it... Over the eons, the Chinese had amassed the range of civilizing achievements that the outsiders who would be their ultimate beneficiaries had never even vaguely imagined... printing, the compass... blast furnaces, arched bridges... vaccination against smallpox... toilet paper, seismoscopes... powered flight..." "One of the things which the early Portuguese visitors to China in the 16th century found the most extraordinary about the bridges was the fact that they existed along roads often far from any human habitation.""President Roosevelt offered soothing words; his family too had long and intimate links with China, the Delanos having been partners in one of the greatest Chinese tea shipping firms...""He went down local caves and found to his amazement scores of the finest measuring machines and scales squirreled away there, safe from bombing... men in white coats patiently titrating and calibrating and weighing with precise lenses... hundreds of feet below ground.""China, 4000 miles from Shanghai to Kashgar, 3000 miles from Hinan Island to the Gobi Desert, was like a vast shapeless sponge for any invading army. It could soak up and fold and suffocate endless supplies of men and material, and still itself remain healthy, whole, and intact.""Stein was and still is widely villified in China for his trickery and plunder, as were a succession of greedy treasure hunters who came after him. Among them was Langdon Warner of Harvard, an art historian who in due course carried off 26 of the Duhuang cave frescoes, and did so with such dash and swagger that he became one of Steven Spielberg's models for Indiana Jones.""Four thousand years ago, when we couldn't even read, the Chinese knew all the absolutely useful things we boast about today." - Voltaire, The Philosophical Dictionary, 1764..

Simon Winchester does the kind of research that could never be accomplished with a Google search. His work is layered and so impossibly thorough that reading his books makes me fearful that this kind of scholarship could become extinct with the quick-draw research that the net generation has become accustomed to. The Man Who Loved China is about Joseph Needham, a researcher much like Winchester. In fact, it is very meta that one of the world's greatest researchers should write a book about one of the world's greatest researchers. Needham dedicated his life to documenting scientific discovery in China. Admittedly, I would not want to read any of the six volumes that Needham devoted his life to but I did enjoy reading about his journey. He was a quirky but committed academic - just the kind of men I appreciate. The people and places that crossed his path, seemingly serendipitously, make this story engaging and fun to read. This may not be knowledge that I'll use in my daily life but the holistic nature of the research is inspiring.

Also known as "The Man Who Loved China" in American editions (because our versions are necessarily dumbed-down), this is the story of Joseph Needham's quest to understand an Eastern culture to which he was introduced in adulthood. A professor of chemistry and one with no official qualifications to undertake a work of rigorous history, he embarked on one of the most ambitious, lengthy, and meticulously researched pieces of scholarship in human history. At twenty-eight volumes and still in print, "Science and Civilisation in China" is (I would find out) a modern masterpiece.Simon Winchester has a loving eye for detail, and this is what fills his books with such wonder. He also seems to be more successful when the object of his inquiry is a character rather than a place or epoch (see his brilliant "The Professor and the Madman" to American readers, vs. the less regarded "Korea"). Needham is a perfect study for Winchester's discerning talents - at once brilliant, multilingual, hypersexual, a gymnosophist - one of several new words you will learn - charming and dashing, and, again, brilliant. You will inescapably notice that Professor Needham bears no small resemblance to the author, who has a love for detail, and for whom no small morsel of knowledge is too frivolous to be examined and ingested.Joseph Needham, a married man, was introduced to the Chinese language and culture by Lu Gwei-Djen, a 33-year old Chinese woman who was working in a Cambridge University laboratory under his supervision. This is the fulcrum on which his life would begin to turn, with the full weight of history behind it. It would be such a shame to spoil his extraordinary journey with plot-like summations. As one never to be so blessed with such tremendous mental gifts and interests, I can only understand his story like we enjoy a shooting-star, as a flash of brilliant, incomprehensible wonder, and, minding that Needham's death was at 94 years old, it is always gone too soon.

Winchester's account of Joseph Needham shows a Needham-esque fascination with intricate detail -- be it the social world of Edwardian England or the topography of western China. At the same time the author shares Needham's enthusiasm for enormous questions -- How much does the Western world owe to Eastern ingenuity? What accounts for the flaring up or dying down of a society's intellectual drive? All told, the book gives a highly thought-provoking tribute to Needham. You gotta admire a guy whose passion for a Chinese woman led him to tear down walls of prejudice between civilizations.