Wu Ningkun

Wu Ningkun (

Wu Ningkun was born on August 14, 1920 (lunar calendar), Yangzhou, Jiangsu, China. In 1939, at the end of his sophomore year at the National Southwestern Associated University in Kunming, he volunteered for the Chinese National Revolutionary Army as interpreter for the American Flying Tigers. After the Second World War, in 1946, he took up his study of English literature again at Manchester University (Indiana) and the University of Chicago. In 1951, while working on a dissertation about T. S. Eliot, he was invited to return to China and accept an academic position at Yenching University, Beijing, replacing an American professor who was forced to depart due to the Korean War. He decided to interrupt his doctoral studies and accept the invitation: "The lure of a meaningful life in a brave new world outweighed the attraction of a doctorate and an academic future in an alien land."^[4] In his memoir he recounts an anecdote about T. D. Lee, one of the fellow graduate students who had come to see him off for his journey:

"Why aren't you coming home to serve the new China, T. D.?" He answered with a knowing smile, "I don't want to have my brains washed by others." As I didn't know how brains could be washed, I did not at the time find the idea very daunting.^[4]

Not long after his return, however, Wu got his first taste of what "brain washing" could mean, in the form of enforced "thought reform" sessions.

In 1952, after one year at Yenching University, Wu was transferred to

During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) Wu and his family were again persecuted, as were so many other intellectuals and their families.

In 1980 he was rehabilitated, and he resumed his former teaching post at the Institute of International Relations.

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