After these few years since China has entered my atlas, I’m surprised I could still be so clueless about something as big as Joseph Needham. Li Yuese (李约瑟), as (some) people in China know him, spent much of his academic career making sense of chinese scientific history. His biography is an inspiring tale… so inspiring, in fact, it makes me feel depressed. His success at chasing his dreams against my inability to even barely shape my future around them. Well, it’s that time of the year people make new resolutions, and the book has great leads for new wonderful and unachievable long term resolutions, I’ll work on that.
Trivia: connecting the dots in that little universe of “foreigners” in China around World War II, Joseph Needham met with George Hogg, the man whose story is recounted in the movie “The children of Huangshi“. I should watch that movie again.