Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c15.s2.t68: Tan Chung
Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c15.s2.t68
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Tan Chung
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Tan Chung (April 18, 1929 - ) is the eldest son of a renowned Chinese Indologist Tan Yun-shan (1898-1983), who under the guidance of Rabindranath Tagore established and taught in Cheena Bhavana, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan and made India his home since 1928. Following in his father’s footsteps, Tan Chung made India his home for more than four decades, imparting knowledge of Chinese language, history and culture to several generations of Indian scholars. He is regarded as a symbol of India-China cultural interaction, becoming the crucial link in exchanges between the two countries at all levels.
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Tan Chung was born in 1929 in the Johor State of Malaysia and received primary education in Xiang Xiang Tao Kan Elementary School in Hunan, China, after which he completed his schooling in the Lantian Junior School and the National Teacher’s College affiliated to the Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University. Although he visited India in 1929 with his mother as an infant, it was in 1955 that he moved to India where he graduated with Master’s degree from Visva- Bharati, and was subsequently awarded PhD degree in History from the University of Delhi.
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He began his teaching career in the Indian National Defence College as a Chinese teacher, after which he taught at the Foreign Language Institute
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Tan Chung
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of the Ministry of Defence, India, till 1963. He joined University of Delhi as a Lecturer of Chinese language in 1964 and taught there till 1978. During his years in the University of Delhi he joined as the founding teacher at the Center for Chinese Studies in 1964, which, with a grant from the Ford Foundation evolved into the Department of Chinese Studies and then the Department of East Asian Studies. From 1978, Tan Chung taught Chinese language at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University. During this period, he came to be the driving force of the department as he almost single-handedly developed the syllabus and course material for the students of Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree; he also served as the Chairperson of the Centre for African and Asian Languages in School of Languages of Jawaharlal Nehru University as the Chinese Language programme was a part this Centre. He retired from the Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1994.
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Tan Chung was one of the founders of the China Study Group in 1969, which grew into the Institute of Chinese Studies (ICS) in 1990. He has been an Honourary Fellow and Co-Chairperson of ICS and an Emeritus Fellow since 2002. From 1990 to 1999, Tan Chung was Professor-Consultant and Head of the East Asia Section at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi. After moving to Chicago in 1999 he became Academic Associate at the Center for East Asian Studies of the University of Chicago. Tan Chung has been a prominent advocate of the geo-civilisational concept of ‘Chindia’.
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Over many decades, he has written many books in Chinese and English on aspects of Chinese language, culture and literature, modern Chinese history, and civilisational interactions between India and China; his early publications in English are, ‘*China and the Brave New World: A Study of the Origins of the Opium War*’ (1840-42) (Allied Publishers, 1978), ‘*Triton and Dragon: Studies on Nineteenth-Century China and Imperialism*’ (Gyan Publishing House, 1985) and ‘*Classical Chinese Poetry*’ (in the Classics of the East series, The MP Birla Foundation, 1991), used as textbooks in Indian universities. His ‘*Dunhuang Art Through Eyes of Duan Wenjie*’ (1994) is a reference book for art courses on US and other English language campuses. His edited works in English include ‘*Across the Himalayan Gap: An Indian Quest for Understanding China*’ (1998), and ‘*In the Footsteps of Xuanzang*’ (1999), published by IGNCA and Gyan Publication. His ‘*India and China: Twenty Centuries of Civilizational Interaction and Vibrations*’, co-authored with Professor Geng Yinzeng of Peking University, is included in the encyclopaedic series of History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilisation (Centre for Studies in Civilisations, New Delhi, 2004). Recent English books published by Tan Chung include ‘*Rise of Asian Giants: The Dragon-Elephant Tango*’ (2008), ‘*Tagore and China*’ (co-edited with Amiya Dev, Wang Bangwei and Wei Liming, 2011),
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In Chinese, major publications of Tan Chung are, ‘*Tan Yun-shan and India China Cultural Exchanges*’ (《谭云山与中印文化交流》, 1998), ‘*Chindia: Ideals and Reality*’ (《CHINDIA中印大同: 理想与实现》2007), ‘*Tan Yunshan*’ (co-edited with Yu Longyu《谭云山》)（与郁龙余合编, 2012), and ‘*Across the Himalayan Gap: A Chinese Quest for Understanding India*’, (co-edited with Zhang Minqiu and Ravni Thakur, 2013).
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Based in US, Tan Chung continues to be deeply engaged in several intercultural projects that take him frequently to India and China, publishing prolifically in international journals and newspapers. In 2010, he was awarded the ‘*Padma Bhushan*’, the third highest civilian honour by the Government of India and the ‘*China-India Friendship Award*’ by the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. He was conferred the title of ‘*Desikottama*’ by Visva-Bharati in 2013.
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India and China: Twenty Centuries of Civilizational Interaction and Vibrations, written by Tan Chung & Geng Yinzeng, front cover