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Professor Xu Wenkan has devoted his scholarly career to the study of Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Altaic and Austronesian linguistics, Chinese lexicography, the academic histories of Sino-Western communications and Oriental studies.
Born to an intellectual family in Shanghai in October, 1943, Xu Wenkan's father was Mr. Xu Senyu, a famous scholar in the Republic of China. From his teenage years, Xu Wenkan showed deep interest in ancient Chinese ethnohistory. In 1960, Xu started his college education in the Department of History at East China Normal University (ECNU). Among the scholars in the department, Professor Li Jigu of Japanese and Eurasian studies, influenced him the most. Xu began to concentrate his studies on Indo-European linguistics, especially on Tocharian by reading works by Holger PEDERSEN, Sylvain LEVY and WANG Jingru, etc.
After graduation, Xu Wenkan taught for a long time in a middle school. The "Cultural Revolution" (1966-1976) deprived him of the right scholarly activities such as reading academic materials. In 1977, Xu participated in the editing of The Comprehensive Chinese Dictionary, while doing part-time research on the Tocharian questions. After reading articles by Zhang Guangda, Geng Shimin, Han Kangxin, etc., Xu postulated that the...