News and Events
Death of Professor David Pollard
| It is with great sadness that we mourn the passing of one of our former colleagues, Professor David Pollard. |
| David Edward Pollard was born in Kingston on Thames in 1937 and attended St John’s Primary School and Tiffin Boys School. During national service he was selected for the then secret Chinese Language Course and served in Hong Kong. This experience changed his life. When he took up his place at Downing College, Cambridge, he switched from Modern Languages to Chinese. On graduation he was offered a scholarship at Stanford. On returning to the UK in 1962, he was appointed Lecturer in Chinese at the School of Oriental & African Studies, London University, where he became Chair Professor of Chinese in 1978. |
| David joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1989 as Chair Professor of Translation Studies. After his retirement, he served as Research Professor at the City University of Hong Kong, Visiting Fellow at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, and Renditions Fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. |
| In 2003 David and his wife Eva moved to Salisbury, England while retaining their base in Hong Kong. They split the year between the two places and made annual family visits to Melbourne until CoVid 19, and subsequently David’s ill health, put an end to travel. |
| David published many of his best works after retirement. They include The True Story of Lu Xun, The Chinese Essay and Real Life in China at the Height of Empire Revealed by the Ghosts of Ji Xiaolan. In 2017 he wrote his academic autobiography in Chinese for the Hong Kong literary magazine Chengshi wenyi. |
| David is survived by his wife Eva Hung, his daughter Louise and son-in-law Glenn Thomson, his granddaughters Hannah and Rebecca, and his former wife Janese. |
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