Eugene Wu steps down as head of Harvard-Yenching Library

By Ken Gewertz

Gazette Staff

Eugene Wu shakes his head as he glances at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that line his office at 2 Divinity Ave. They are far from bare, and that is what is concerning him right now.

"I was planning to be out of here by the 19th, and I'm trying to wind up my affairs. I've donated quite a few of my books to the library, but . . . you see how much more there is to be done."

It's no wonder that Wu is having a hard time extricating himself. He has been librarian of the Harvard-Yenching Library for the past 32 years.

Under his leadership, the Harvard-Yenching Library has undergone tremendous growth and change. Its holdings have more than doubled, rising from 407,424 volumes when Wu took over in 1965 to nearly 900,000 volumes today. Important resources have been added, such as the Meiji Microfilm Collection -- 16,000 reels of microfilm of all the books known to have been published in Japan from 1868 to 1912.

A Vietnamese collection was begun in 1973, which now comprises more than 10,000 volumes. And thanks to new funding, the Library is within sight of achieving a long-sought goal -- the computerization of all its records in both Romanized and vernacular scripts.

The Harvard-Yenching Library is currently the largest university library for East Asian research in the United States. Looking toward the future, Wu is confident that it will continue to enjoy that distinction.

"I hope the library will be able to maintain its pre-eminence. I think it will. We have a good foundation on which to build."

A Great Scholarly Legacy

In a tribute to Wu, read at a Nov. 22 dinner honoring his achievements, President Neil L. Rudenstine emphasized Wu's talent for building human relationships and the role it has played in helping him achieve his goals.

"Gene has always understood that a library is more than just its collections; it must also include the community of students and scholars who use the library's collections. He has been a missionary to the community of East Asian scholars and librarians and has always looked for ways to propagate the faith in the power of scholarship to promote understanding of a part of the world so poorly understood by many in the West."

Wei-Ming Tu, professor of Chinese history and philosophy and director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute, said that Wu "cares deeply about the well-being of the great scholarly legacy that he has endeavored so much to foster. His contribution to the life of the mind of Harvard East Asianists is indelible."

Moreover, Tu said, Wu's "ability to accommodate, to adapt, to deal with irrationality reasonably and calmly is legendary," a factor that has contributed immeasurably to the Harvard-Yenching Library's reputation for being convenient and user-friendly.

A Pioneer System-Builder

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Harvard-Yenching Library is that its growth and development during its 70-year existence has been guided by only two men -- Wu and his predecessor, A. Kaiming Chiu.

Chiu came to Harvard in 1925 as a graduate student in agricultural economics. The recipient of a traditional Confucian education, Chiu had been selected by the Chinese government to study Western learning, first at Western-run schools in China and later at the Library School of the New York Public Library.

From there he entered Harvard as a Ph.D. candidate, and in 1927 Archibald Coolidge, director of the Harvard University Library, asked him to take charge of the Chinese-Japanese Collection, which later became the Harvard-Yenching Library. He was to retain this position for almost 40 years.

One of Chiu's greatest accomplishments was to devise a satisfactory system for cataloguing books in Chinese and Japanese, something that had never been done before. The procedure he invented came to be known as the "Harvard-Yenching System," and was published in 1943 by the Committee on Far Eastern Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies. It was adopted worldwide and remained in use for the next 40 years.

Travels of a Soldier-Scholar

Wu's path to Harvard was at least as serendipitous as that of his predecessor, and with an even greater element of adventure. Born in Szechwan Province, China, Wu served as a translator with the Chinese army during World War II. In 1944 he was seriously wounded by bandits near the famous Huang-kuo-shu waterfall. After recovering, he was sent to the United States to help Chinese soldiers learn to operate American airplanes and weapons with the aim of recapturing the Burma Road. For his contribution to the war effort, Wu received the United States Medal of Freedom.

When the war ended, he and his fellow translators were given the option by their government of remaining in the U.S. as students if they could gain admission to an American college. Wu and four others were accepted by the University of Washington, where they were nearly the only Chinese members in the entire student body.

After 1949, when the Communists took over China, there were no more subsidies from home, and Wu had to work to support himself. He remembers working the night shift at Green Giant, canning vegetables for $1.10 per hour. Another job involved living in a labor camp and sleeping on straw mattresses.

"It was hard, but you don't mind things like that so much when you are young," Wu said.

Wu's work situation improved when he was hired to write out file cards for the university's small collection of Chinese books. It was his first library job.

After earning a bachelor's degree in history in 1950, Wu entered the University's Library Science program, the first Chinese student to do so. He earned his MLS degree in 1951.

Wu's first job was at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, cataloging the school's Chinese and Japanese materials. He eventually became curator of the East Asian collection and remained there until 1965, when he received an offer to come to Harvard.

Repository of History

Wu is proud of the many changes he has managed to bring about during his 32 years at the Library's helm. During his tenure, the Library's budget has gone from a little over $200,000 to almost $2.5 million, but Wu stresses that a greater proportion is now spent on acquisitions and less on personnel.

Among those acquisitions, he is particularly pleased with the Library's Tiananmen Archive, comprising approximately 1,200 handbills, posters, and pamphlets from the 1989 pro-democracy movement and subsequent massacre. Among these materials are about 3,000 photographs, including many of the "big character posters," that appeared in Tiananmen Square at this time, giving vent to ideas, criticisms, and frustrations of people involved in the movement.

Attracted by the wealth of material the Library has collected, ranging from the ephemera of the Tiananmen Archive to the ancient classics of traditional learning, numerous scholars from around the world now visit the collection.

"We have become increasingly a national and international resource for East Asian studies," Wu said.

In addition to his work as a librarian, Wu has continued to write and publish scholarly works. He is the author or co-author of several books and has published many articles in library publications and journals of East Asian studies.

After retirement, Wu and his wife plan to move to the San Francisco area to be nearer to their children. He hopes to do more writing and has plans to write a political history of China in the 1920s, concentrating on relations between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. He also hopes to write a history of the Harvard-Yenching Library.

"The Harvard-Yenching Library has been instrumental in the growth of East Asian studies, not just at Harvard, but all over the country. I think it's an important story to tell."