Leo Ou-fan Lee, the acclaimed scholar of modern Chinese literature, has decided to make Hong Kong his home after more than 40 years studying and teaching at the most prestigious US universities. A professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard University, Lee recently completed a stint as Y.K. Pao Distinguished Visiting Professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Committed to Harvard until the end of the year, Lee, 64, will then return to settle in Hong Kong and take up a post at Chinese University. A divorcee, Lee fell in love soon after arriving in Hong Kong in 1998. Together with his new wife, he wrote a book based on their affair, Guo Pingchang Rizi [Our Everyday Lives], which was adapted into a radio play broadcast on RTHK last year. 'When I married Esther, at the age of 60, I did not expect much: a companion, some stability, but I find a happiness I have never known,' says Lee at his flat on the HKUST campus. Leaving Harvard will mean earning less money, but, he says, 'Hong Kong is a lovely city. One can find the extreme left and the extreme right, the architecture is western, and I can give talks in Chinese and in English. It's fate. My good friends are in Hong Kong. [Chair professor of Lingnan University] Joseph Lau, my best friend, is here. My wife, Esther, comes from Hong Kong. 'Hong Kong is in decline. That's why I want to stay. China does not need me. Taiwan does not need me. The SAR government is losing all the opportunities to make this city a great one. It is too eager to bring in culture from the mainland. Hong Kong has a rich culture, and Hong Kong people should be more aware of other cultures.' In demand in academic circles worldwide, Lee has taught at leading universities such as Harvard, Princeton, California Los Angeles, Chicago, Indiana, Dartmouth College and three universities in Hong Kong - HKUST, Chinese University and the University of Hong Kong. In 2002, he became an Academician at the prestigious Academia Sinica institution in Taiwan and last year, gave talks at Tsinghua University in Beijing, on the topic 'Sherlock Holmes in China'. Respect for Lee's talent is not restricted to academic circles. He is sought after by newspapers and journals to write articles, in particular Ming Pao Monthly and the Nineties Monthly. But it was his column in the Hong Kong Economic Journal that made him well known. Writing columns, he says, allows him to 'participate as a public intellectual'. 'It's not just the money. It's the feeling of getting connected to the Chinese world. After writing academic English for more than 30 years, it is refreshing to teach bilingually and to write in Chinese.' Lee became a popular speaker after volunteering to give talks while a visiting scholar at the University of Hong Kong. 'Because my salary was high, I felt I should do more,' he says. His appearances at Hong Kong University's Journalism and Media Studies Centre last year drew packed houses. 'I am thinking of giving more public talks and raising money to set up a foundation to promote culture. And I will write more novels.' Born in a village in western Henan, Lee fled to Taiwan with his parents in 1949. His mother was a pianist and his father a violinist who played in a quartet with Ma Xiaojun, father of world-famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Lee's given name, Ou-fan, is a Chinese translation of the Greek god of music, Orpheus. 'I named myself Leo, after Leo Tolstoy. I found out that the life of Orpheus was sad,' he says. After graduating from National Taiwan University in 1962, Lee went to study at Harvard in the US. His PhD thesis was published by Harvard University Press in 1973 as The Romantic Generation of Modern Writers. Princeton then offered him a professorship that would give him tenure in four years, instead of the normal six. In 1976, Lee left Princeton to teach Chinese literature at Indiana University. 'In the 1970s, in the US, there was no such thing as modern Chinese literature,' he says. 'The academic world just thought that there was no literature in modern China.' Six years later, Lee moved to Chicago University. 'When I went to Chicago, I was so scared because the scholars there were so knowledgeable. A professor of one discipline usually has a tremendous knowledge of another discipline. I locked myself up in a small room, like a prison cell, in the library and read from eight or nine in the morning till midnight. I held seminars in the library and lived like a monk, for eight years. I am not a deep scholar ... I am a broad one and I like many things: music, film, painting, literature.' Lee attributes his popularity on the mainland to his writings on Lu Xun, author of The Story Of Ah Q and The Diary Of A Madman. Although Lu was banned in Taiwan, Lee was fascinated by the writer he describes as 'a tormented modernist who did not know what to do in China'. But a book on Lu proved too tough for Lee to write for many years. 'I wrote some chapters, didn't like them and threw them away. It was not possible to just write about Lu Xun's role in history.' Voices From the Iron House: A Study Of Lu Xun was finished while Lee worked at Chicago University in 1987. That year he married dancer Wang Lan-lan, daughter of Chinese writer Nieh Hua-Ling and step-daughter of American poet Paul Engle. The marriage lasted a decade. In 1999, Lee released his third book, Shanghai Modern, The Flowering Of A New Urban Culture In China, 1930-1945. The Chinese translation of the book on the city's architecture and literature is still a best-seller. Lee's two novels in Chinese attract almost as much attention as his non-fiction but translators are put off by the weight of their puns and literary allusions. His first novel, Confessions Of A Profligate, is a love story, while his most recent fiction, published in 2001, Hunter Of The East, is a spy thriller story set in Hong Kong.
