Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c15.s2.t16.3

v2.c15.s2.t16.3

He lost his parents at a very young age and lived in abject poverty since childhood. He studied and recited poems of the Tang dynasty in an old-style privately-un school. He entered Nanjing Fine Arts College in 1922. In 1928, he began to study classical literature at the Literature School of Nanjing Central University, and became a teacher of the school after he graduated in 1931. In the spring of 1935, he went to Japan and focussed on studying oriental art history in the College of Letters, Tokyo Imperial University. In 1936, he returned to China and continued to teach in Nanjing Central University. From 1939 to 1942, he worked as a researcher at the Art Archeological Research Institute of the Board of Directors of the Sino-British Boxer Rebellion Indemnity Fund, during which he organised the Chinese Art History Society and composed the *Analects of Folk Art Archaeology* (1943). In 1943, he served as a professor and academic Dean of Kunming National College of Eastern Language. In the winter of 1945, he accepted the appointment of Visva-Bharati University to teach Chinese cultural archaeology. In early 1949, he returned to China via Hong Kong and took up the post as a Professor of National School of Fine Arts of Peiping. After the establishment of People’s Republic of China (PRC), he served as a Professor and Chief Librarian of China Central Academy of Fine Arts. At the end of 1956, he was assigned by the State Council of the PRC to New Delhi, India to serve as a Chinese Adviser of the International Buddhist Art Exhibition. During the ‘Cultural Revolution’, he was persecuted