The spacious 40-plus-square-metre sitting room with a panoramic view of downtown Beijing still seems too small for Wang Shixiang.

He wades through it skillfully but somewhat precariously, with its narrow paths carved out by furniture and piles of books.

Wang Shixiang and his wife Yuan Quanyou pose for a picture in their courtyard. [File photo]

Its modern furnishings - bookshelves, small plain armchairs, a single-bed and a TV set propped up at one side - are almost eclipsed by the scholarly and grand Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) hardwood desk.

At 89 and with only one good eye, Wang still spends the better part of his day at his antique desk, writing and editing to add to his already extended list of works.

It came as no surprise when the Dutch Embassy in Beijing announced late last month that Wang Shixiang will be granted the principal honour at the 2003 Prince Claus Awards in early December. It is a handsome sum of 100,000 euros from the royal Dutch house for prominent individuals who have made distinguished cultural achievements.

"Wang Shixiang is unique, because he has delved into the two polar points of traditional Chinese arts and crafts - from the very classy to the very mundane," said Tian Jiaqing, a researcher known for his studies in classical Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) furniture.

But it has been his broad range of studies, from classical Chinese furniture, ancient Chinese lacquer ware, music and bamboo carvings to miscellaneous traditional crafts - the making of moulded gourds for crickets or pigeon whistles, for example - that Wang Shixiang has distinguished himself.

Salient books

The theme for this year's Prince Claus Awards is "the Survival and Innovation of Crafts," recognizing that globalization has become the fashion. Cultural boundaries are being obliterated as youngsters worldwide listen to the same pop songs, watch the same blockbuster movies, read the same best-sellers and play the same games over the Internet.

The front and back of the seven-stringed guqin named "Dasheng Yiyin'' treasured by Wang Shixiang display cracks on the lacquer, a sign of the instrument's age. Made in the early Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907), the instrument measuring 120.5cm by 20.5cm in the Fuxi style was repaired and played by Guan Pinghu (1897-1967), a renowned guqin master.

"To me, the topic of how to preserve traditional Chinese culture today is too big to answer in short," Wang said with a wry smile in an interview with China Daily.

He was thumbing through a proof copy of "Lacquer Decoration," which will go to press before the end of this year.

The new book is a reglossed reprint of the Ming Dynasty work of the same title. The only known original "Lacquer Decoration" in the world is now kept in a Tokyo library.

But as he keeps writing and editing, Wang shows us that books are what he deems the salient way for posterity to learn about the exquisite but various ingredients of distinctive Chinese culture - which has been continuing without disruption for several millennia.

"There was a time when it was so difficult for us scholars to publish," Wang said.

Back in 1958, he only had his annotation on "Lacquer Decoration" mimeographed in some 200 copies, but his notes served as the compendium for crafts people to use in continuing lacquer art.

He started to publish books when he was approaching the golden age of 60. The past 20 years or so have been the golden harvest season for Wang. He keeps churning out new books not only in Chinese but in several foreign languages using international publishers.

The titles are easily acquired just by typing his name into Internet search engines.

Besides the reprint of the ancient Ming Dynasty book, which has consumed a lot of his energy, his own "Notes on Bamboo Carving" is also being lined up for printing.

A cultured life

A large part of what Wang has written and published is what he has gleaned from his personal life and hands-on experiences.

Wang was born and brought up in a family whose forefathers served in the Qing imperial courts for three generations.

From the late Qing to early years of the Republic, his father Wang Jizeng was a Chinese envoy first in France and then in Mexico and remained with the foreign service until his retirement. His mother, Ji Zhang, and his uncles, all with fine classical Chinese upbringings, also studied abroad.

As a result, his childhood straddled across the cultures of both East and West. While attending US schools, Wang also learned ancient Chinese classics, practised calligraphy and painting with ink and brush, among other things, with private tutors.

"But I was a boy who loved outdoor games more than books," he said, even though researchers today say those outdoor games laid a solid foundation for his later research into the very mundane but pungent elements of the traditional Chinese cultural life.

Teenagers nowadays spend their leisure hours on computers, but Wang and his pals played with crickets and raised pigeons, dogs and even eagles.

At one time, he wrote about his beloved pigeons in his English compositions for several weeks running until his English teacher threatened to mark "poor" onto all his papers about pigeons.

During the early days when he was a pre-medical student at Yenching University, he failed tests in mathematics, physics and chemistry.

He then was able to transfer to the Chinese Language Department. Four years later in 1938, Wang earned a bachelor's degree in Chinese literature and enrolled himself into the graduate programme at Yenching. Throughout four years there, he continued to pursue his hobbies.

Wang's life took a dramatic turn from fun to serious scholarship in spring 1939, when his mother died.

"I felt ashamed of myself for the years I'd played away and I was determined to do something to repay the care and high expectation my mother had had for me," he said.

In the next three years, he worked on his thesis "On Theories of Ancient Chinese Painting - from Pre-Qin period (before the years of 220 BC) to the Song Dynasty (960-1279)," which he continued on after graduation and completed in 1943.

Nearly 60 years after he penned the work, Wang saw his first scholarly research in print for the first time last year.

Ups and downs

Ever since 1939, Wang has kept his scholarly momentum in times of excitement, frustration or humiliation in his life.

As a young scholar, he found himself lucky to conduct field archaeological and research work with eminent scholars, including architect and archaeologist Liang Sicheng (1901-72), in Chongqing between 1943 and 1945.

When the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45) ended, Wang took up the job of retrieving precious artefacts from the hands of the Japanese and Germans who had stolen them from the Forbidden City, the royal palace of several Chinese dynasties. He was the right young man for the job with his connections and upbringing.

"This was one of the most important tasks I've accomplished for my country," Wang said.

The job took him not only to the Northeast China provinces and to Tianjin but also to Japan. He was a connoisseur, a detective and a diplomat. He successfully brought home to the Palace Museum between 2,000 to 3,000 pieces of relics and rare books, some of them still considered unique national treasures.

He wouldn't dream of today's media frenzy for the home coming of even one piece of the precious relics. But he did want to become a life-long guardian and curator of those precious relics he had helped to save, when he returned to Beijing and to the Palace Museum in August 1949 from a year's study trip to the art and history museums in the United States and Canada.

But he couldn't and then wouldn't, after he was wrongly jailed for 10 months and expelled from the Palace Museum in 1953. In 1957, he was branded a "rightist," a political stigma he had to carry for 21 years. And he drove a cow plough to till the farmland and sweated through the years between 1969 and 1973 in a village in Central China's Hubei Province.

But Wang has survived, with the help and company of his beloved wife Yuan Quanyou, who died of cancer last Wednesday.

"We made a mutual decision to 'cherish ourselves,' and 'doing something that would be beneficial to our people,'" he said.

Wang kept on researching and writing whenever time and chances allowed, and Yuan made a lot of sketches to go with his manuscripts.

Most of their meager income went toward buying and collecting ancient and folk Chinese artifacts, from classical Chinese furniture to other collectibles, which were fast disappearing in times of political turmoil and social change.

He has been best known for his innovative approach to scholarship. For every art and craft he has studied, from classical furniture, lacquerware, bamboo carvings to moulded gourds, he has also worked with his hands as a craftsman, said Tian Jiaqing.

He must ascertain the points he makes.With his diligence and innovative ideas, Wang carved out his own esteem in the circle of scholarly Chinese learning.

For instance, his 200 copies of the mimeographed "Annotated 'Lacquerware Decoration'" ran out fast and lacquerware factories in East China's Fujian and Jiangsu provinces sent people to handcopy his work.

In 1985, he won a Ministry of Culture award as one of the most distinguished individuals in the fields of culture, history and museum studies. He became a member of the prestigious Central Research Institute of Culture and History and a member of the top national advisory body, the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

For public benefit

In times of difficulties, "we were confident that in 10, 20 or 30 years we could present something that would be recognized as worthy and that we could obtain a just and impartial judgment from the people," Wang wrote in the preface of his album "Self-Cherished Treasures of Twin-Pine Studio."

The album was published last year and won a major German award for fine printmanship.

As their ages advanced, Wang said he and his wife had to think of ways of having their collections better taken care of.

In 1993, he and his wife donated all the Ming Dynasty furniture they had spent half a century collecting, repairing and preserving to the Shanghai Museum.

The around 140 artifacts detailed in the album "Self-Cherished Treasures of Twin-Pine Studio" will go on auction by China Guardian on November 25 in Beijing.

These relics range from the rare Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) guqin (seven-stringed plucked instrument), Liao (960-1125) and Yuan (1271-1368) dynasty copper Buddhist statues, Ming Dynasty paintings and calligraphy or Qing Dynasty lacquerware to recreational playthings.

All constitute the very distinctiveness of the classical and folk Chinese culture.

"We decided to put the artifacts for auction in the hope that those who pay the money will be more careful about guarding and preserving the valuable relics," Wang said.

The money the family gets from the auction will be donated to Project Hope, a programme helping children from poor families to complete their school education, Wang said.

Likewise, the 100,000 euros Wang is granted from the principal Prince Claus award will go for the building of a Sino-Dutch Friendship School in a poverty-stricken county.

"The value of human life is not what you possess, but what you observe, enjoy, and then what you discover, study and elevate into knowledge so as to help further the cultural development," he said. 

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