Andrew West 魏安 (@babelstone.co.uk) Andrew West 魏安 (@babelstone.co.uk)
At Charles University in Prague last week for the annual WG2 meeting, where Prof. Sun Bojun 孙伯君 and myself presented our proposal to encode the Jurchen script
Andrew West 魏安 (@babelstone.co.uk)
Myself with Profs. Sun Bojun and Wushour Slamu, in descending height order
Andrew West 魏安 (@babelstone.co.uk)
After 15 years the Jurchen script is getting close to inclusion in the Unicode Standard with this joint proposal from myself and Prof. Sun Bojun to encode a set of 914 Jurchen characters
unicode.org/wg2/docs/n5261-Jurchen-Proposal.pdf
Andrew West 魏安 (@babelstone.co.uk)
Spot the Tangut proverb on my canvas tote bag: 𘜶𗗚𗓰𗾟，𗱕𗋽𗰖𘏚 "The great sea is vast and deep, all the waters are gathered there" (seen here on a recent visit to SOAS bsky.app/profile/babe...).
Andrew West 魏安 (@babelstone.co.uk)
One year ago, living the dream with the capybaras at Beale Wildlife Park
Andrew West 魏安 (@babelstone.co.uk)
In October 1983 I started studying for a BA in Chinese at SOAS University of London, as a mature student of 23, and here I am today, 40 years later ...
Andrew West 魏安 (@babelstone.co.uk)
... with my youngest daughter @aprilw.bsky.social who is just finishing an MA in Music here
Andrew West 魏安 (@babelstone.co.uk)
It was a four-year course, but I finally graduated after five years because I forgot to return to England after the second year studying in Beijing ...
Andrew West 魏安 (@babelstone.co.uk)
A year later, in 1989, ten years after dropping out of my first year of a geology degree course, I started studying for a PhD in Chinese literature at Princeton University, specializing in Ming-Qing vernacular fiction under the guidance of Prof. Andrew Plaks ...
Andrew West 魏安 (@babelstone.co.uk)
For the first two years we did close readings of the Ming dynasty novels 金瓶梅 and 三國演義, and for the following two years I researched and wrote my PhD dissertation on the textual history of 三國演義, which involved searching out early editions in various libraries in China, Japan, and Europe
Andrew West 魏安 (@babelstone.co.uk)
In July 1993 I defended my dissertation (Quest for the urtext: The textual archaeology of "The Three Kingdoms", some 600 pages in two volumes), and thirty years ago this month I received a large certificate written in Latin in acknowledgement ...
Andrew West 魏安 (@babelstone.co.uk)
I later wrote a distillation of my thesis in Chinese, which was published in June 1996 as 三國演義版本考 (copies are still available from the author on request)
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