Scholar Who Rescued 30,000 Volumes Of Chinese Literature From Japan’s WWII Invasion Of Shanghai Has Died At 105

T.H. Tsien, “who was born in China in the twilight of the reign of its last emperor, was a young librarian there during the Japanese occupation, which lasted from 1931 until the end of World War II. Working in secret, he was charged with keeping a trove of precious volumes, some dating to the first millennium B.C., from falling into the occupiers’ hands.”