Q: Being the main collaborator on Science and Civilisation in China, your name is always associated with that of Joseph Needham. For many years you have introduced people throughout the world to Needham's great work but now our readers would like to hear you talk about yourself.

H: Well my father was a soldier from Kwangtung and came from what could hardly be called a modest background. When I was young I heard my mother talk about her marriage. She said my father's best man was Liang Han-tsao and after she was married my mother's mahjongg companions were all wives of famous military men. My father fought against Li Tsung-jen, but after that, it is said, they became good friends.

In the early 1920s, China was in a chaotic condition under the rule of warlords with our own people fighting amongst each other. My father kept his name quiet and went to Southeast Asia where he started a private school, himself teaching Chinese classics. Not long after that I was born.

Q: Does this kind of background explain why your academic career has embraced East and West, science and humanities? Is not the main language of study in Southeast Asia English?

H: You could say that. Because my father did not know English we were sent to an English school where we spoke English during the day. In the evening we returned home and listened to father teaching the classics. When I later took the Chair of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong, my colleagues would joke that I was probably the first holder who had not attended a Chinese day school!

Q: You were probably also one of very few scholars who was capable of working in the departments of both physics and Chinese. How did you come to start research in the history of Chinese science and technology?

H: I originally studied physics at Singapore University. My teacher, N.S. Alexander, came from the flourishing period of physics at Cambridgein the 1930s. My MSc thesis was meteorological research into wind movements but, unfortunately. Alexander moved to Africa to become head of a school there. I realized that I might be "chasing the wind to catch a shadow."

At this time Singapore University had just founded its Chinese Department. Originally they had wanted to ask Hu Shih to be the director, but he did not come. The new director bought lots of books which gave me the opportunity to read about the history of science and stimulated my interest.

Later on the mathematics department invited me to speak at a seminar, but my original subject was physics, so what could I tell them? I decided to speak on the special qualities of traditional Chinese mathematics. The mathematician, Professor Oppenhiren, who was present at the seminar, was very interested and encouraged me to continue in the history of Chinese science and said that he was willing to be my supervisor. But he was an outsider to both Chinese language and the history of science, so he found me an external adviser at Kyoto University.

Some people in the department remembered Joseph Needham from his daysin Chungking and they knew that he was writing in my area. This was thefirst time I had heard of him and I wrote to ask him to teach me. Not long after he wrote back saying that the volume of Science and Civilisationon mathematics was already finished. He had just started writing the volume on astronomy, however, and suggested I research the Astronomical chapters of the Official History of the Chin Dynasty. When I had finishedthis as my PhD dissertation, I sent it to Cambridge to ask Needham to correct it. It was then used by him in Volume Ⅲ of Science and Civilisation.

Q: Was this how your relationship as a collaborator with Joseph Needham began? I heard that you had still not met at that time?

H: That is right. I had two external examiners for my PhD dissertation, one of whom was Joseph Needham and the other was Willy Hartner, of Frankfurt University, the European authority on the history of Chinese astronomy. They both asked me to come and do research at their institutes. I discussed with Needham the possibility of cooperating on the writing of Volume IV of Science and Civilisation, which is on the subject of chemistry.

At the end of 1957 I asked for a holiday and spent three months on a ship to England. Needham met me at Cambridge and when I had settled down I went to see Dr Lu Gwei-djen and became part of the group working on alchemy. Over the following two years I published, jointly with Dr Needham, more than six articles concerning ancient Chinese alchemy, meteorology and meridian line measurement. Under my own name were published a substantial study on comets and novas in East Asia, entitled "Ancient and Mediaeval Observations of Comets and Novae in Chinese Sources," which appeared in the magazine Vistas in Astronomy. This last publication gave me special satisfaction because of its usefulness to modern scientific research.

In 1959 I returned to Singapore where I was still as teacher in the physics department. I was then asked to become the dean of the Faculty of Arts. I continued with the preparation of the alchemy and gunpowder sections in Parts 3, 4 and 7 of Science and Civilisation, Volume V. Then, in 1968, I resigned the deanship to make it possible for me to return to Cambridge for about six months and publish various books and articles on Chinese alchemy, astronomy, mathematics and pharmacology. My direct involvement in the Science and Civilisation project stopped temporarily in1978, when I had completed the first draft of the section on gunpowder.

Q: People are curious to know how the work is delegated to researchers involved in Science and Civilisation. If there is a difference of opinion with Dr Needham, how is a consensus arrived at?

H: It is very easy. Up until now there have been more than twenty collaborators, but there are no more than four or five key people. The first is Wang Ling, who cooperated with Needham in Chungking and later came to Cambridge. Wang Ling collected materials and Needham edited and wrote, so there was no great debate. Then, of course, there is Lu Gwei-djen. Her relationship with Needham is extraordinary. I think that Dr Lu is very frank in discussions.

Another main collaborator is Lu Pin-hsun, who was originally researching acoustics at Oxford when Needham used his thesis. He is now the chief editor of Science and Civilization, and I will take over from him. Our cooperation began when we were PhD students; he taught me how to draft an article and how to incorporate appropriate materials into a book.

I do not know about the others but my personal attitude is that this is Needham's book and I should respect his ideas. As for those who joined the project later, the plan has been greatly expanded. Most of it is managed by the individuals concerned and then subjected to the editor. This can be seen in Ch'ien Tsun-hsun's volume on making paper, for example, which is all his own work. In this way there are no great arguments.

Q: The fact that the four main collaborators are all Chinese people will inevitably make people wonder why China has not produced its own Needam.

H: I think that Joseph Needham's contribution to this century is irreplaceable. He was not the first person to research into the history of Chinese science, but he was the first to wield such great influence. His achievements have been extraordinary.

I feel quite deeply about the system at Cambridge which allows outstanding people to pursue their own interests. There is probably no other place in the world where you can be so free of administration, personnel and rather trivial worries. Perhaps it is because of this that I had such a big shock when I had just arrived at Cambridge and realized that you can just call up anybody, no matter how great a scholar they might be, and they will be willing to discuss any problem with you and help out. Such a lack of reserve is unheard of in the competitive universities of the United States, Australia or other places.

Q: You said that in 1978 you had to stop cooperating with Needham for a time. Was that because you had other plans?

H: Yes, in 1973 I migrated to Australia, where I became a professor at Griffith University and director of the Contemporary Asia Research Institute, and while I was there I finished the volumes of Science and Civilisation on gunpowder and weapons. Then, in 1978, I asked leave to take up the Chair of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong. But while in Hong Kong I also set up the Hong Kong Fund to collect money for the Needham Research Institute, so you can see that when I was not involved with the writing of Science and Civilization, my cooperation had begun in a new way.

Q: From being a physicist to becoming a researcher in the history of Chinese science, then being the first to hold the Chair of Chinese in Hong Kong without having attended a Chinese school--how have you handled all these different roles?

H: No matter whether in the department of physics or Chinese, I have always tried to build a bridge between the sciences and humanities. When I was dean of the Faculty of Arts in the University of Singapore in 1964 it occurred to me that the history of Chinese science was never discussed. It was a new university, so how could I not try a fresh approach?

I thought of introducing some science into the humanities to show that in the history of Chinese science literary figures played an important role, just as scientists had made contributions to the arts. In fact, in the history of Chinese science, much valuable evidence can be found in the great literary works of writers like Li Po, Tu Fu, Lu Yu, Po Chu-i,Han Yu and others. If you understand a little Chinese science then you can get a deeper insight into Chinese poetry. With my Australian colleagues I published work on the mystical poetry of Lu Yu and Po Chu-i. I published several books with some colleagues in Hong Kong, one on the restoration of a Tun-huang manuscript on astrology, another on astronomical records extracted from the Ming Veritable History and another on the restoration of a lost alchemical work by a Ming prince. A dictionary of alchemical synonyms in the Tao-tsang Canon was also compiled by a colleague at my suggestion.

Q: This idea of finding science in literature is very interesting. Can you give us some examples from the great poets?

H: The article concerning this appeared in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies and it was also published the World of Chinese in Taiwan in1987, so I would direct interested readers to those articles. For those with a scientific background, Po Chu-i is especially interesting. You can see that his poems are full of scientific nouns, especially concerning the transformation of cinnabar (ed. mercuric sulphide).

In one poem Po Chu-i says how the blush that comes from drinking wine is more divine than the after-effects of eating the sage's cinnabar. In fact, he was trying to transform some cinnabar, only he did not dare to try it out. In those days many people had poisoned themselves on cinnabar. Later he converted to Buddhism, saying that mystical Taoism was not right for him, but in fact his studies of the Tao were not complete. You see, in fact the Chinese did not distinguish between science and literature. Lu Yu was a great writer but also a chemist.

The categories of modern education give rise to many problems, the lesser of which is everyone going their own way with no cross fertilization. More serious is the inability to mix and the envy of those in other fields; students of humanities know nothing of the sciences, while those of science have no interest in the humanities. It is very unfortunate.

Q: The debate over specialist or general education is very fierce in Taiwan. In the light of your experience of working in the educational systems of so many different countries, which system is most ideal and can overcome the division between the sciences and humanities?

H: I think that the English system has the greatest problems. Australia, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia mostly use the English system, which specializes too early. It is better in Japan, where the first two years of university are devoted to a more general education so that students are familiar with and able to talk about things outside their specialty. Even if it is only a little, it is very important.

Q: It must then be exceptionally difficult to bridge the gap in this early-specializing system. How can you do it?

H: I started a course at the university on the history of Chinese science with the same lectures for both students of humanities and of the physical sciences, but with different homework. At present I am writing, in Chinese, a set of textbooks which I plan to use from February this year at National Tsing Hua University.

Q: I am very pleased to hear that you are going to teach in Taiwan. Last year you took over the Needham Research Institute and you are now formally Needham's successor. Last year, when it was Needham's ninetieth birthday, the British newspapers hailed him as the greatest British scholar of this century. Following on from this, what kind of pressure are you under?

H: Needham first raised the question of my taking over early in 1986,when I was in Hong Kong. We had collaborated for so many years and it was an offer I could not refuse. So I resigned my university posts and became director at the beginning of 1990.

To be Dr Needham's successor does not mean that I shall have to pretend to be another Joseph Needham. Some people have asked me: "Dr Needhamis a Marxist, are you going to continue his political thinking?" My attitude is very clear, as long as Dr. Needham is able to continue with his writing I want to look after the other affairs of the Institute, thus enabling him to concentrate on his great work without interference.

Everyone is awaiting the conclusion of Science and Civilization, and everyone hopes to see it completed soon, but it is difficult to hurry upgreat scholars who are always very busy. It is not like getting students to do their homework. Dr. Needham's writing is even more erudite, so who knows when it will be finished. My responsibility is to push them to completion, but this is really not an easy task.

Q: People wonder whether you will adopt a new way of working when Science and Civilization has been completed? I remember that you once compared Eastern and Western research institutions in the field of the history of science. It seemed that you were saying the Needham Research Institute was completely instigated from the office of the Master of Caius College (ed. Joseph Needham), while that of Kyoto University was supported by the whole university and worked with the students. Can the Institute develop a research program that will accept research students in future?

H: This is probably the road that we will have to go down. Although the Institute is called the "Needham Research Institute," the finance comes from many places. I think that we have a responsibility to serve people outside and make available our books and collections as well as raising the next generation of young students. Otherwise our sponsors will ask: "We are obviously grateful for Needham's contribution, but was it really necessary to put up this large building and spend all this money?"

As for whether I have any new method of working, for more than half a century Joseph Needham has looked at Chinese science as a modern Western scientist with a good understanding of Chinese culture. Indeed, the modern trend of studying the subject is to interpret it in terms of modern knowledge. I thought it might be useful to complement this approach by looking at the subject from the eyes of a traditional Chinese scholar assisted with some knowledge of modern science.

Q: I heard that you plan to expand the scope of research from ancient China to the whole of East and Southeast Asia?

H: Yes, the Institute has no support from the university, so much of the money we need comes from funds in Asian countries. Because of this we also want the Institute to contribute to Asian research. The research plan for Japan and North Korea has already begun, and we are in contact with Bangkok to encourage research into the history of Thai agriculture and porcelain. There are many students interested in these subjects. As for how much we can do, the scope is very big but we must see what we can afford.

Apart from this, we have found many scholars from Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China who can take part in the project. When these research projects are completed then each one will come out as a book. Science and Civilization in China will also be continually revised.

Q: Is there any plan for research students?

H: I hope to bring about student exchanges between Cambridge and Tsing Hua, so that research students can come here to write theses while also attending courses in Cambridge or London. This would be ideal and it will come about step by step. In February I will go to Tsing Hua University and perhaps I will take some research students to have a look around. Later, if the Institute can accept some students, no matter whether they are from the United States, East Asia, Japan. . . students from all over can live together and research and discuss. That would be very good.

Q: It seems that Dr Needham's ideal of "one family within the four seas" can be realized within the Needham Research Institute at least. Thank you for your time and our best wishes for your trip to Taiwan.

[Picture Caption]

For many years Professor Ho has strived to bridge the gap between the humanities and science.

Sponsorship to build the Needham Research Institute has come from many different sources.

The indexing system developed by Needham for the East Asian History of Science Library is very precious.

Completing Needham's great project is the priority of the Institute. Future research will be expanded to cover East and Southeast Asia.

Professor Ho hopes to arrange exchanges of students between Tsing Hua and Cam bridge universities.

Sponsorship to build the Needham Research Institute has come from many different sources.

The indexing system developed by Needham for the East Asian History of Science Library is very precious.

Completing Needham's great project is the priority of the Institute. Future research will be expanded to cover East and Southeast Asia.

Professor Ho hopes to arrange exchanges of students between Tsing Hua and Cam bridge universities.