¹ This is the case with “Sinologies” in other post-Communist states as well. Currently, there is a trend to develop “Chinese Studies” in political science departments in the countries of the former Eastern Bloc, often cut off from the existing local “Sinological” expertise and represented by scholars without working knowledge of the Chinese language and relevant education about China. To add to the confusion, they are simultaneously classified as social sciences and “area studies.”

² Upon completing this article, the author received an article by her former student in which he presents the history of Czech Sinology from the perspective of teaching Classical Chinese. Interested readers may find abundant details and further nuances there; see Ondřej Škrabal, “The History of Teaching Classical and Literary Chinese in Czechia,” in Teaching Classical Chinese, edited by Li Wen and Ralph Kauz (Großheirath: Ostasien, 2021), 33–87.

³ On Dvořák, see Olga Lomová et al., Ex Oriente lux: Rudolf Dvořák (1860–1920) (Prague: Filozofická fakulta UK, 2020).

⁴ On Czech history, see Jaroslav Pánek and Oldřich Tůma, A History of the Czech Lands (Prague: Karolinum Press, 2018, 1st edition 2009).

⁵ The university was originally established in the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1348. Its main language of instruction was Latin, and it remained so even after the Thirty Years’ War when the Czechs lost their independence and became part of the Habsburg monarchy. During the educational reforms of Joseph II in 1784, German became the official language of instruction.

⁶ Lomová, Olga, “Oriental Philology in the Service of Bettering Man: Rudolf Dvořák's Czech Translation of the Daodejing,” Studia Orientalia Slovaca 17 (2018), 65–83Google Scholar.

⁷ His other internationally known research dealt with the poets Bâkî (1526–1600), and Abū Firās (932–968), whose critical editions with commentary he published with Brill in Leiden.

⁸ See reviews by Chavannes, Édouard, “R. Dvořák: Chinas Religionen. Erster Theil. Confucius u. seine Lehre,” in Revue de ĺhistoire des religions 17 (1895), 303–7Google Scholar; “Dr. Rudolf Dvořák: Chinas Religionen. Zweiter Teil: Lao-tsi und seine Lehre,” in Revue de ĺhistoire des religions 24 (1903), 71–74.

⁹ Between the world wars, Czechoslovakia was among the ten most industrialized countries in the world, and it aspired to expand its exports to the Near East and Asia. For a brief history of the Oriental Institute, see: Ondřej Beránek, Oriental Institute (Prague: Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 2014).

¹⁰ For Průšek's early life and his sojourn in Beijing, see Olga Lomová, “Beiping Initiation: Jaroslav Průšek and Chinese Literary History,” The China Experience and the Making of Sinology: Western Scholars Sojourning in China, edited by Guillaume Dutournier and Max Jakob Fölster (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, forthcoming).

¹¹ In Leipzig he also took Japanese classes and later would also initiate Japanese studies at Charles University.

¹² Jaroslav Průšek, “Životopis. Přehled vědecké a literární činnosti. Tvorba sinologická” [Autobiography. Overview of Research and Literary Work. Sinological Works], MÚA, personal papers of Vincenc Lesný, cart. 17, No. 639.

¹³ The wartime enthusiasm for Sinology is documented in an interview with Augustin Palát as part of an oral history project initiated by Professor Chih-yu Shih from the Department of Political Science of National Taiwan University. For the transcript in English translation, see www.china-studies.taipei/act02.php.

¹⁴ Jaroslav Průšek, “Foreword,” in Chinese History and Literature (Prague: Academia, 1970), 6.

¹⁵ An English translation of the book was published (Jaroslav Průšek, My Sister China, Prague: Karolinum, 2002), as well as a Chinese one (Pu Shike 普实克, Zhongguo, wode jiemei 中国, 我的姐妹, Beijing: Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chubanshe, 2005). The book was unanimously mentioned by the first postwar generation of Czech scholars interviewed for the National Taiwan University oral history research project. See also Olga Lomová, “Beiping Initiation.”

¹⁶ For further details about the Sinological program in Prague and Olomouc in the 1950s, see Škrabal, “The History of Teaching Classical and Literary Chinese in Czechia,” 47–51.

¹⁷ For the formation of the unique collection of modern Chinese art in Prague, which benefitted from the personal collections of Czech artists, particularly of Vojtěch Chytil, who taught at the Beiping Academy of Arts in the 1920s, see Pejčochová, Michaela, “The Formation of the Collection of 20th-Century Chinese Painting in the National Gallery in Prague—Friendly Relations with Faraway China in the 1950s and Early 1960s,” Arts asiatiques 67 (2012), 97–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also her Emissary from the Far East: Vojtěch Chytil and the Collecting of Modern Chinese Painting in Interwar Czechoslovakia (Prague: National Gallery, 2019), and also contributions to a book she edited together with Clarissa von Spee, Modern Chinese Paintings and Europe. New Perceptions, Artists Encounters, and the Formation of Collections (Berlin: Reimer, 2017).

¹⁸ For interviews with Augustin Palát, including rich photographic documentation, see Ivana Bakešová, Augustin Palát: Vzpomínky na Čínu a sinologii [Memoirs of China and Sinology] (Prague: Česko-čínská společnost, 2016). A selection of photographs taken by Palát in China in the 1950s was also published; see Augustin Palát, Cesty Čínou před půl stoletím [Travels in China Half a Century Ago] (Prague: Česko-čínská společnost, n.d.). On Věna Hrdličková and Zdeněk Hrdlička, see Lucie Olivová, Věna Hrdličková, Zdeněk Hrdlička: Bibliography 1945/46–2002 (Prague: Oriental Institute, 2002), which includes a short biography.

¹⁹ On the postwar fusion of Romantic images of ancient China and enthusiasm for building socialism, see Olga Lomová and Anna Zádrapová, “Beyond Academia and Politics: Understanding China and Doing Sinology in Czechoslovakia after World War II,” in Sinology in Post-communist States, edited by Chih-yu Shih (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press), 1–26.

²⁰ Nový Orient 1 (1945), 1.

²¹ Nový Orient is also discussed in Olga Lomová and Anna Zádrapová, “Beyond Academia and Politics.”

²² Xu Weizhu 徐伟珠, “Hanxuejia Pu Shike Zaojiu de Bulage ‘Lu Xun Tushuguan’” 汉学家普实克造就的布拉格‘鲁迅图书馆’ [Lu Xun Library established by Průšek, a Sinologist], Beijing Di Er Waiguoyu Xueyuan Xuebao 252 (2016.4), 1–7.

²³ For preliminary research on the UNESCO East–West initiative, see Huttunen, Miia, “Three Halves of a Whole: Redefining East and West in UNESCO's East–West Major Project 1957–1966,” Kulttuuripolitiikan tutkimuksen vuosikirja 5 (2017), 140–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Miroslav Oplt et al., Asian and African Studies in Czechoslovakia (Moskva: Nauka, 1967). The chapter about Sinology was written by Augustin Palát.

²⁵ There were also vested commercial interests. The Czech auto and machinery industries in particular targeted China (and other friendly Third World countries) for export. For details, see Aleš Skřivan, Československý vývoz do Číny 1918–1992 [Czechoslovak export to China: 1918–1992] (Prague: Scriptorium, 2009).

²⁶ Personal communication, Zlata Černá, June 20, 2021. This issue is, however, more complicated than personal memories may suggest, due to the natural inclination of witnesses to anachronistically adapt their lived experience to fit the new values shaped after radical political change occurred, as is the case with the recollection of the Communist past after the Soviet led invasion in 1968 and the fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989.

²⁷ Průšek, Jaroslav, “Subjectivism and Individualism in Modern Chinese Literature,” Archiv orientální 25 (1957), 261–83Google Scholar.

²⁸ On Jaroslav Průšek and his broad research interests in the context of contemporary Sinology, see Olga Lomová, “Jaroslav Průšek, A Man of His Time and Place,” The Journal of the European Association for Chinese Studies 2 (2021), 169–96, DOI: https://doi.org/10.25365/jeacs.2021.2.169-196. Leo Ou-fan Lee has collected major Průšek's research on literary modernity in China in Jaroslav Průšek, The Lyrical and the Epic: Studies in Modern Chinese Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980).

²⁹ Jaroslav Průšek, “Lu Hsün's Huai Chiu: A Precursor of Modern Chinese Literature,” HJAS 29 (1969), 169–76; Jaroslav Průšek, Three Sketches of Chinese Literature (Prague: Academia, 1969); and Mao Tun: Šero svit (Prague: Svoboda, 1950).

³⁰ On the “objective history” of modern Chinese literature, which contains both original insights, and ideological bias typical of the period, see Průšek's long review article “Basic Problems of the History of Modern Chinese Literature: Review of C.T. Hsia, A History of Modern Chinese Fiction,” T'oung Pao 49 (1962), 357–404.

³¹ Müller, Eva, “In Commemoration of the Work of Professor Jaroslav Průšek in Berlin and Leipzig,” Acta Universitatis Carolinae, Philologica 3, Orientalia Pragensia 16 (2007), 11–24Google Scholar.

³² The monographs were (in chronological order): Berta Krebsová, Lu Sün: sa vie et son oeuvre (Prague: Editions de l'Académie tchècoslovaque des sciences, 1953); Dana Kalvodová, Ting Ling, život a dílo [Ding Ling: Life and Work] (Prague, 1953); Zbigniew Słupski, The Evolution of a Modern Chinese Writer: An Analysis of Lao She's Fiction with Biographical and Bibliographical Appendices (Prague: Academia, 1966); Anna Doležalová, Yü Ta-fu: Specific Traits of His Literary Creation (Bratislava: Publishing House of The Slovak Academy of Sciences, 1971). One edited volume was published in Berlin: Studien zur modernen chinesischen Literatur: Studies in Modern Chinese Literature (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1964). It was followed by two volumes dedicated to comparative studies of literary modernity in Asia and the Near East published in Prague in English, Oldřich Král et al., eds., Contributions to the Study of the Rise and Development of Modern Literatures in Asia, 2 vols. (Prague: Oriental Institute, 1965–1968). On the basis of these two volumes, a Czech monograph on this topic was later published and eventually translated into Polish: Setkání a proměny: vznik moderní literatury v Asii [Encounters and Changes: The Rise of Modern Literature in Asia], edited by Zlata Černá (Prague: Odeon, 1976); in Polish as Spotkania i przemiany: narodziny nowoczesnych literatur w Azji (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1983).

³³ Dictionary of Oriental Literatures, 3 vols., edited by Jaroslav Průšek (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1974).

³⁴ There were exceptions. Linguist Jaromír Vochala (1927–2020), who taught Chinese language at Charles University for many years, was educated in the 1950s at Beijing University, and there were other Czech students in China at the same time, who after their return did not work in academic institutions; some, however, would occasionally publish translations from Chinese, and wrote popular books and articles about China, thus contributing to Czechoslovak Sinological production of the time.

³⁵ On Alekseev, see the recent review article by Harbsmeier, Christoph, “Vasilii Mikhailovich Alekseev and Russian Sinology,” T'oung Pao 97 (2011), 344–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Harbsmeier captures Alekseev's philological and cultural aspirations, which were also dear to Průšek, the much more modest scope of his own work notwithstanding.

³⁶ See the transcript of the interview with Milena Doleželová-Velingerová (English translation) from Chih-yu Shih's project mapping Sinologies globally: www.china-studies.taipei/act02.php.

³⁷ Milena Doleželová published the recollections of European and American scholars, including the Czech Dana Kalvodová, of their teacher Wu Xiaoling 吳曉鈴 (1914–1995): Wu Xiaoling Remembered (Prague: DharmaGaia, 1998).

³⁸ For the results of her field research, see “The Origin and Character of the Szechwan Theatre,” Archiv orientální 34 (1966), 505–23, and “Theatre in Szechwan,” Interscaena: Acta Scaenographica (Prague: Scénografický ústav, 1972), 1–92.

³⁹ Dana Kalvodová published three volumes of literary translations. Besides a selection of early stories by Ding Ling (Deník slečny Suo-fej a jiné prózy [Miss Sophia's Diary and other stories], Prague: SNKLHU, 1955), she also published an annotated selection of Guan Hanqing's 關漢卿 dramas (Kuan Chan-čching, Letní sníh a jiné hry [Snow in Summer and Other Plays], Prague: SNKLHU, 1960), and an annotated full translation of Kong Shangren's 孔尚任 Peach Blossom Fan with an introductory essay about the author and the chuanqi 傳奇 genre (Kchung Šang-žen, Vějíř s broskvovými květy, Prague: Odeon, 1968). The dissertation of Xénie Dvorská was published in Chinese as Wu Kangni 伍康妮, Chunqiu Zhanguo Shidai Ru, Mo, Dao Sanjia zai Yinyue Sixiang shang Douzheng 春秋战国时代儒, 墨, 道三家在音乐思想上的斗争 [Ideological struggle between Confucianism, Mohism and Daoism during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods] (Beijing: Yinyue Chubanshe, 1960).

⁴⁰ Zlata Černá, personal communication, June 20, 2021. Dr. Černá vividly remembered reading the Shijing 詩經 with Ji Zhenhuai, including how he was completely immersed in the traditional yin 吟 poetry recitation.

⁴¹ The conference was cancelled and moved to Senigallia, Italy, the next year. Some of the papers prepared for the Prague conference, including Průšek's presentation, were subsequently published in Prague: The May Fourth Movement in China: Major Papers prepared for the XX. International Congress of Chinese Studies (Prague: Oriental Institute, 1968).

⁴² For the official Chinese response to the invasion translated into English, see “Chinese Reactions to the Invasion of Czechoslovakia,” Studies in Comparative Communism, 2 (1969), 115–24.

⁴³ Chinese Statelets and the Northern Barbarians in the Period 1400–300 B.C. (Prague: Academia and Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1971).

⁴⁴ Zlata Černá, “Jedinec jako osobnost v jazyce prózy: charakterizační umění v čínské a evropské středověké povídce” [An individual as a personality in the language of fiction: the art of character depiction in Chinese and European medieval stories], in Kulturní tradice Dálného východu (Prague: Odeon, 1980), 195–10.

⁴⁵ Milena Doleželová-Velingerová mainly developed Průšek's idea that the beginnings of Chinese literary modernity predated the pre-May-Fourth literary revolution in an edited volume dedicated to the early-twentieth-century novel (The Chinese Novel at the Turn of the Century, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980). Much later she would return to debating the May Fourth paradigm in another edited volume (The Appropriation of Cultural Capital: China's May Fourth Project, edited by Milena Doleželová-Velingerová, Oldřich Král, and Graham M. Sanders (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001). Pavel (Paul) Kratochvíl published a much-cited book, The Chinese Language Today: Features of an Emerging Standard (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1968). Zbigniew Słupski, who dedicated his first monograph to Lao She, would turn to pre-modern literature after he left Czechoslovakia (“Three Levels of Composition of the Rulin Waishi,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 49 (1989), 5–53). In Warsaw, he also lectured and published about Confucianism and other topics of ancient China.

⁴⁶ After Anna Doležalová published her dissertation about Yu Dafu, she devoted herself mostly to PRC literature, including Slovak translations. Marián Gálik mainly researched the literary theory of Republican China and comparative studies (which he established himself with his first monograph based on his dissertation supervised by Průšek about modern Chinese literary theory: The Genesis of Modern Chinese Literary Criticism (1917–1930) (London: Curzon Press, 1980). See also his Milestones in Sino-Western Literary Confrontation (1898–1979) (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1986).

⁴⁷ Today it is known as the Institute of Oriental Studies. It publishes the English-language Journal of Asian and African Studies. On its history, see http://orient.sav.sk/en/history/.

⁴⁸ This took place on the first Thursday each month in the apartment of Zlata Černá (Zlata Černá, personal communication, June 20, 2021).

⁴⁹ He still succeeded in publishing two books prepared in the 1960s: Wang Čchung, Kritická pojednání: výbor z díla čínského filosofa: 1. stol. n. l. [Lunheng by Wang Chong, selections from a Chinese philosopher, 1st century A.D.], translation, introduction, and commentaries Timoteus Pokora (Prague: Academia, 1971); and Hsin-lun (New Treatise) and Other Writings by Huan T‘an (43 B.C.–28 A.D.) (University of Michigan Press, 1975). After that he published several research articles in European (mostly German) journals, and over 300 reviews and short articles in Czechoslovak journals. Writing reviews was important for Pokora, as it was the only way to obtain Western scholarship, which was otherwise inaccessible in Prague after 1968. For a full bibliography with a short biography, see Josef Fass, Jiří Šíma, and Vladimír Liščák, Timoteus Pokora: Bibliografie 1952–1987 [Timoteus Pokora: Bibliography 1952–1987] (Prague: Oriental Institute, 1994).

⁵⁰ Work on the dictionary started in 1959, and the outline was prepared in collaboration with general linguist Ladislav Zgusta (1924–2007), who would later become famous internationally for his theoretical work in the field of lexicography. As the dictionary was published after he emigrated to the US, his name is not mentioned. For his work on the dictionary, see Augustin Palát in Miroslav Oplt, Asian and African Studies in Czechoslovakia, 78.

⁵¹ China Handbuch, edited by Wolfgang Franke and Brunhild Staiger (Düsseldorf: Bertelsmann Universitätsverlag, 1974); Dictionary of Oriental Literatures; and Selective Guide to Chinese Literature 1900–1949 4 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1981–1990).

⁵² This program was branded as “Oriental studies.”

⁵³ Jaromír (1927–2020), teaching language together with his wife, Wang Ruzhen (1934–1998), compiled textbooks and published a monograph on Chinese script (Jaromír Vochala, Chinese Writing System: Minimal Graphic Units, Prague: Univerzita Karlova, 1986). Their textbook of classical Chinese was translated into German and published in East Germany: Jaromír Vochala, Žu-čen Vochalová, and Klaus Kaden, Einführung in die Grammatik des klassischen Chinesisch (Leipzig: Enzyklopädie, 1990). Vochala also published Czech translations of Chinese poetry (selections from the Shijing 詩經, Han yüefu, and the Chuci 楚辭), and much later published a complete translation of the Lunyu 論語.

⁵⁴ See, for example, the dedication in Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era: “To Jaroslav Průšek whose work made this book possible.” Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era, edited by Merle Goldman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977).

⁵⁵ There were only very few doctoral written between 1968 and 1989, none of them published, and their authors do not work in academia.

⁵⁶ Čínská filosofie: pohled z dějin [Chinese philosophy: The view from history] (Lásenice: Maxima, 2005).

⁵⁷ In Slovakia, Marián Gálik has been very active, mainly publishing internationally, in English and in Chinese. Of Průšek's students, he is the most prolific author. From his numerous edited volumes and articles, of special note is his research on the Bible in modern Chinese literature: Influence, Translation and Parallels: Selected Studies on the Bible in China (Sankt Augustin: Monumenta Serica Institute, 2004). Many of his works, including research on the history of Czechoslovak Sinology, have been published in Chinese translations. For bibliography of his work up to 2009 see http://orient.sav.sk/wp-content/uploads/Bibliography_Dr.Galik_.pdf. Another of Průšek's Slovak students, Anna Doležalová, who researched modern literature, died in 1992. In the meantime, the next generation of Sinologists started to shape the field in Slovakia. For reasons of simplicity, I leave Slovak Sinology which is now independent of Prague from my subsequent overview.

⁵⁸ Dana Kalvodová could have her previous research about Ming drama published only at this point in time (“Kchung Šang-Ženův vějíř s broskvovými květy: kapitoly ke studiu mingského dramatu” [Kong Shangren's Peach Blossom Fan: A Contribution to Research about Ming Drama], Prague: Karolinum, 1993). She also published several new research articles, mostly in Czech (for a complete bibliography, see Anna Cvrčková and Lenka Chaloupková, “Bibliografie Dany Kalvodové” [Dana Kalvodová Bibliography], Divadelní revue 32.1, (2021), 111–24). For an English-language publication after 1989, see her The Bamboo-leaf Boat: Acta Universitatis Carolinae, Philosophica et Historica 5, Theatralia X (Prague: Univerzita Karlova, 1994), together with James Crump and Ursula Dauth. Věna Hrdličková, besides publishing numerous popular books in Czech about Chinese culture, particularly about gardens, did important research about Chinese and Japanese storytelling that was published internationally. For details, see Vibeke Børdahl, “In Memory of Věna Hrdličková, 1925–2016,” CHINOPERL 35 (2016), 83–88.

⁵⁹ Učební slovník jazyka čínského [Learner's dictionary of Chinese language] 1–4 (Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého, 1998–2000). Collaboration with Chinese native speakers, particularly Tang Yunling 唐雲凌 (1935–2019) was essential for the dictionary.

⁶⁰ See mainly recent articles by Hana Třísková, e.g., “Is the Glass Half-full, or Half-empty? The Alternative Concept of Stress in Mandarin Chinese,” Studies in Prosodic Grammar 4 (2019.2), 64–105; Hana Třísková, “De-stress in Mandarin: Clitics, Cliticoids and Phonetic chunks,” in Key Issues in Chinese as a Second Language Research (New York: Routledge, 2017), 29–56.

⁶¹ The dissertations were often written in English, were subsequently published, and reached an international audience: Lukáš Zádrapa, Word-class Flexibility in Classical Chinese: Verbal and Adverbial Uses of Nouns (Leiden: Brill, 2011); Kamila Hladíková, The Exotic Other and Negotiation of Tibetan Self: Representation of Tibet in Chinese and Tibetan Fiction of the 1980s (Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého, 2013); Ondřej Klimeš, Struggle by the Pen: The Uyghur Discourse of Nation and National Interest, c. 1900–1949 (Leiden: Brill, 2015); Zornica Kirkova, Roaming into the Beyond: Representations of Xian Immortality in Early Medieval Chinese Verse (Leiden: Brill, 2016).

⁶² Jiří Hudeček earned his Ph.D. at the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge and subsequently published his dissertation as Reviving Ancient Chinese Mathematics: Mathematics, History and Politics in the Work of Wu Wen-Tsun (London: Routledge, 2014). He also supervised Jan Vrhovski's dissertation about mathematical logic in Republican China, which was recently submitted. Vrhovski is currently working as a researcher at the University of Ljubljana and publishes extensively on modern Chinese philosophy.

⁶³ Táňa Dluhošová, Bitevné polia povojnovej literatúry na Taiwane (1945–1949): časopisy, diskusie a literárne diela [Fields of battle in postwar Taiwanese literature (1945–1949): journals, debates, literary works] (Prague: Oriental Institute, 2021). Substantial parts of this book were previously published in English and in Chinese as journal articles. See also the “Taiwan Biographical Onthology (TBIO),” http://tbio.orient.cas.cz/.

⁶⁴ Jarmila Ptáčková, who received her Ph.D. from Humboldt University (Berlin), recently published Exile from the Grasslands: Tibetan Herders and Chinese Development Projects (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020).

⁶⁵ Michalea Pejčochová, besides publishing a comprehensive catalogue of the modern painting collection at the National Gallery in Prague (Masters of 20th-Century Chinese Ink Painting from the Collections of the National Gallery in Prague: National Gallery in Prague—Collection of Oriental Art, Waldstein Riding School Gallery, April 30—November 2, 2008, Prague: National Gallery, 2008), does substantial research on the history of Chinese art collecting in the former Czechoslovakia (see n. 17, above). Helena Heroldová publishes mostly on the Náprstek Museum's collections, recently in English Between Cultures: Manchu and Han Dress during the Late Qing (Prague: Národní muzeum, 2017).

⁶⁶ At Palacký University in Olomouc, Sinology is taught in the Department of Asian Studies (https://kas.upol.cz/en/), and in Brno, in the Department of Chinese Studies (https://cinskastudia.phil.muni.cz/en/about-us/people).

⁶⁷ See numerous local publications by David Uher (Ph.D. Nanjing University) and Tereza Slaměníková (Ph.D. Olomouc). At Palacký University in Olomouc, there is currently a large cross-disciplinary project under way with support from the European Regional Development Fund (SINOFON; https://sinofon.cz/). It aims “to introduce a new research approach toward rising China, grounded in the dialogue between key regions on its borders.” It brings together a diverse group of Czech and international scholars, mostly not working on China, and unlike the interdisciplinary approach promoted by Průšek in the past, this team, due to its size and divergent research interests, is only loosely interconnected; the project is also not directly related to teaching. As a result, it is hard to predict what impact it will have on Czech Sinology in the future, if any.

⁶⁸ Most recently Wang, David Der-wei, The Lyrical in Epic Time: Modern Chinese Intellectuals and Artists Through the 1949 Crisis (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chen Guoqiu 陳國球, Shuqing chuantong lun yu Zhongguo wenxue shi 抒情傳統論與中國文學史 (Discourses on the Chinese Lyrical Tradition and Literary Historiography) (Taipei: Shibao Wenhua, 2021).

⁶⁹ Berta Krebsová studied in Paris with Paul Démieville and René Grousset; Věna Hrdličková spent two years at Radcliffe College in Cambridge (Massachusetts), and her husband, Zdeněk Hrdlička, at Harvard University. See also interview with Věna Hrdličková from Chih-yu Shih's project: www.china-studies.taipei/act02.php.

⁷⁰ Chan-fej-c' [Hanfeizi], translated by Lukáš Zádrapa (Prague: Academia, 2011–2013); Sün-c': tradičně Sün Kchuang [Xunzi, known as Xun Kuang], translated by Lukáš Zádrapa (Prague: Academia, 2019); Kniha vrchních písařů: výbor z díla čínského historika [Book of Grand Scribes: Selection from Ancient Chinese History], translated by Olga Lomová and Timoteus Pokora (Prague: Karolinum, 2012); Kniha Laozi: překlad s filologickým komentářem [Laozi: Translation with philological commentary], translated by David Sehnal (Prague: Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, 2013).