Qian Zhongshu’s failure to return to Southwestern United University in the fall of 1939 is controversial; rumors abound that Qian thought the school was beneath him. One biographer, for example, relates that Qian said, “The Southwestern United department of foreign languages simply wasn’t satisfactory; Ye Gongchao was too lazy, Wu Mi, too stupid, and Chen Futian, too coarse.” Ai Mo 爱默, Qian Zhongshu zhuan gao 钱钟书传稿 [Draft Biography of Qian Zhongshu] (Tianjin: Baihua wenyi chubanshe, 1992).
Chen was born in Hawaii and obtained a PhD from Harvard in 1923. In 1948, he moved back to Hawaii. Possibly he is in the photo above, but which person is he?
Wu Mi -- the romanticist; apparently he is seated third from the right -- the guy with the pocket square, I guess?
Ye Gongchao, standing, at right in this 1940 photo of professors and students from the Southwest United department of foreign languages (thanks to Wu Xuezhao, Wu Mi's daughter).
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