Zhu Guangqian

Who is Zhu Guangqian?

Zhu Guangqian 朱光潛 is the founder of the study of aesthetics in 20th-century China. After earning his BA from Hong Kong University, he went abroad to study aesthetics at the University of Edinburgh and University College, London, then to France and the University of Strasbourg where he earned his doctorate. Later, he returned to China to write The Psychology of Tragedy, On Beauty, The Psychology of Art, On Poetry, A History of Western Aesthetics, and Letters on Beauty. In the 1930s in Beijing, Zhu Guangqian hosted a literary salon that met monthly to recite prose and poetry, east and west. Regulars included Zhou Zuoren, Zhu Ziqing, Zheng Zhenduo, Feng Zhi, Shen Congwen, Bing Xin, Ling Shuhua, Bian Zhilin, Lin Huiyin and Xiao Qian. These were pivotal figures in Republican literature, and it can perhaps be argued that the salon was important to the formation of the so-called Beijing style literature of the period.