Triangulating textual data analyses in writing an academic biography of a humanities scholar in Hong Kong

Abstract

In 1975 when Joseph Needham was 75, he told me his plans on writing and publication of his huge project on Science and Civilisation in China. He said he would not be able to complete this project, but his collaborators would. At that time (I was 40) I did not fully appreciate the precious qualities of real scholars that their ambition extends beyond their life span and that their research was not only their concern but is also the concern of generations after generations. Now I fully understand the spirit of true scholars. (Email, 24 December 2016) The person who shared the above with me via email in 2016 is Liu Ching-chih, a musicologist and translation scholar, and the most senior and prolific music critic in Hong Kong. Liu and Needham became good friends after their first meeting in 1975 at the University of Hong Kong. It is clear that Liu resonated with Needham’s remark which stayed with him for decades. Liu himself has said, “our academic pursuance would last a lot longer than our life-span” (Email, 27 July 2005). Such remarks by “true scholars” are awe-inspiring and can touch the hearts of generations. Yet surprisingly, few biographies of scholars, in particular humanities scholars, with a focus on their scholarship, exist. My forthcoming book, an academic biography of Liu Ching-chih (known as C. C. Liu in Hong Kong), addresses this gap. At the time of the book writing (in 2020), Liu was no longer available for consultation, having had an accident in 2019 at age eighty-four and become unable to communicate. Other than using old interviews with Liu, I triangulated different analytic methods in surveying a wide range of published and unpublished texts intertextually and interdiscursively. The findings generated through rigorous processes of analyses were presented creatively, including through case stories, comparative profiles, and timelines, with different sources of data triangulated. This book on a humanities scholar presents an innovative example of a scholarly biography, which may be an emerging genre in the world of life writing.