As National Palace Museum Director Tu Cheng-sheng (
After obtaining a bachelor's degree and a master's degree at National Taiwan University, Tu studied at the London School of Economics, but he later gave it up after deciding to probe into Chinese and Taiwanese history. As soon as he came back to Taiwan in 1980, Tu worked as a researcher at the Institute of History and Philology at Academia Sinica and served as the Institute's director from 1995 to 2000.
FILE PHOTO: LIBERTY TIMES
With a specialty in ancient China, Chinese social history and medical history, Tu, 60, is also noted for his activism and dedication to history education.
After becoming the director of the National Palace Museum in 2000, Tu focused on making the museum more accessible to domestic and international communities. Last January, Tu organized a special exhibition "the Emergence of Taiwan on the World Scene in the 17th Century," which attracted a large number of visitors.
Tu was also devoted to establishing a branch of the National Palace Museum in Chiayi County and helped arrange the museum's collection for display in Germany when first lady Wu Shu-chen (
Except his performance as a curator, Tu is known for serving as the committee convener for compiling the junior-high school textbook series named Knowing Taiwan (認識台灣) in 1996, which focused on teaching young students about the different historic, geographic and social aspects of Taiwan.
However, some pro-unification academics and legislators said the textbooks were an attempt to "sever the nation," and have vehemently opposed the use of the textbooks, forcing them to be integrated into other courses as supplementary reading matter.
But the controversy over Knowing Taiwan was later considered to be part of the first trend of promoting the Taiwanese identity under former president Lee Teng-hui (
Although he is an authority on Chinese history, Tu has studied Taiwanese history and has proposed a theory called "the Concentric Circle," which stresses teaching young students about Taiwanese history first, and then learn about Chinese history and modern history.
"The ethnic groups and lifestyles in Taiwan are diverse and cultures in Taiwan are thus diverse, too," Tu said in a speech on March 21. "We are supposed to look at our history on a basis that Taiwan is an principal part and establish a historical perspective with diverse angles and concerns."
"I encourage students to know history from the things closest and most familiar to them and explore it more and more broadly," Tu said.
The Ministry of Education planned to apply Tu's "theory of concentric circle" as the new guidelines for high school history textbooks last October but it was again boycotted by People First Party (PFP) Legislator Lee Ching-hua (
Many critics commented that Tu is a learned and hardworking researcher but also quite firm on what he thinks right.
Cheng Pang-chen (
"I think Tu is a scholar who handles public speaking very well and has a very broad historical mind. I have high expectations for his performance," Cheng said.
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