Pierre Ryckmans (28 September 1935 – 11 August 2014), better known by his pen name Simon Leys, was a Belgian-Australian sinologist and translator. He lived in Australia from 1970. His work focused on the politics and traditional culture of China, calligraphy, French and English literature, the commercialization of universities, and nautical fiction. His trilogy Les Habits neufs du président Mao (1971), Ombres chinoises (1974) and Images brisées (1976) denounced the Cultural Revolution in China and the idolizing of Mao in the West.Ian Buruma, "The Man Who Got It Right", The New York Review of Books, 15 August 2013; also: Ian Buruma, "The Man Who Got It Right", chinafile.com. Retrieved 26 September 2020.
Early life and education Pierre Ryckmans was born in Uccle, an upper-middle-class district of Brussels, to a prominent Belgian family living in a house on Avenue des Aubépines. He was the son of a publisher, the grandson of Alfonse Ryckmans, an Antwerp alderman and vice president of the Senate, the nephew of Pierre Ryckmans, a governor general of the Belgian Congo, and Gonzague Ryckmans, a professor at the Université catholique de Louvain and a recognized expert of Arabic epigraphy.Philippe Paquet, " Le sinologue belge Simon Leys est décédé ", La Libre Belgique, 11 août 2014.Pierre Mertens, "Réception de Simon Leys", Académie royale de langue et de littérature françaises de Belgique, 30 May 1992.
He attended the Servites de Marie primary school near his home, then studied Greek and Latin humanities at the Cardinal Mercier diocesan school in Braine-l'Alleud. There, one of his teachers, abbé Voussure, "finished ingraining in him an unwavering Christian faith." From 1953 he studied law and art history at the Université catholique de Louvain.
Career In 1955, his father died prematurely. In May, as one of ten young Belgians invited to spend a month in China, he took part in a conversation with Premier Zhou Enlai.Daniel Sanderson, "An Interview with Pierre Ryckmans", China Heritage Quarterly, No. 26, June 2011. The experience made him sympathetic to the Maoist regime:Reed Irvine, The Cameras Can Lie, AIM (Accuracy In Media) Report, February 1978: "His interest in China was triggered by a trip that he made to the People's Republic when he was nineteen. He was sympathetic to the Maoist regime until 1966." "I confidently extended to the Maoist regime the same sympathy that I felt for all things Chinese.""Pierre Ryckmans (Simon Leys), an old China hand, died on August 11th, aged 78", The Economist, 23 August 2014. The trip convinced him that "it would be inconceivable to live in this world, in our age, without a good knowledge of Chinese language and a direct access to Chinese culture". Upon his return to Belgium, he finished his studies in art history and set out to learn calligraphy.
In the summer of 1958, he travelled to Étel, a port in French Brittany, to board one of the last remaining tuna boats. The account he wrote of the fishing expedition was not published until 45 years later, under the title Prosper.Introducing Prosper by Simon Leys, with illustrations by Gildas Chasseboeuf, Le Chasse-Marée, N. 240, 6 April 2012.
After being awarded a small bursary from the Nationalist government in Taiwan, he enrolled at the Fine Arts department of National Taiwan University in Taipei. There he studied under the guidance of Puru, a Manchu and cousin of Puyi, the last emperor, and began research for his future PhD dissertation on Shitao, a Chinese painter in the Qing empire.
After completing his studies in Taiwan in 1960, he was called up for military service in Belgium. Instead, he chose to become a conscientious objector and perform civil service in the field of development cooperation for the next three years. First, thanks to the intervention of Eurasian writer Han Suyin,whose mother was Flemish and father was a Belgian-educated Chinese engineer he was able to take up a part-time student and teaching job at Nanyang University in Singapore. However, in 1963, under suspicion of being a communist by the Lee Kuan Yew regime, he had to pack up and leave for Hong Kong, at the time a British colony.
For two years he taught at the New Asia College, one of the colleges of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He lived in a Kowloon squatter area, sharing with three friends a small accommodation they dubbed Wu Yong Tang (《無用堂》the "hall of uselessness") and living a life redolent of an Eastern Scènes de la vie de bohème.Albert Gauvin, Simon Leys et Le Studio de l’inutilité, Phillipe Sollers/Pileface website, 27 April 2012.
He supplemented his income by writing summaries of articles from the mainland Chinese press and collecting testimonies from refugees from the mainland on behalf of the Belgian diplomatic delegation.Laurent Six, "Aux origines d’Ombres chinoises: une mission de six mois au service de l'ambassade de Belgique en République populaire de Chine", Textyles, N. 34, 2008, pp. 65–77. He also gleaned information from China News Analysis, a weekly publication produced in Hong Kong by the Jesuit scholar Father László Ladány. These reports would become the basis of his 1971 book Les Habits neufs du président Mao (translated as The Chairman's New Clothes).
He also taught courses at the local Alliance française. In 1964, he married Han Fang Chang, a journalist he met in Taiwan, and became the father of twins in 1967.Biographie de Simon Leys, Who's who.Philippe Paquet, "Affaire Simon Leys: longue marche pour la vérité et la justice", Lalibre.be, 12 December 2011.
While in Hong Kong, Ryckmans was introduced to French sinologist René Viénet, then a member of the Situationist International, by another sinologist, Jacques Pimpaneau, whom he had met at the New Asian College.Laurent Six, "Chine: Comment Pierre Ryckmans est devenu Simon Leys", Rue89, 13 August 2014. René Viénet, who took the view that Chinese press reports on the Cultural Revolution were less sanitized than the writings of Western journalists and sinologists, obtained Pierre Ryckmans's agreement for his essay Les Habits neufs du président Mao to be published in Paris by Champ Libre, a publishing house run by Gérard Lebovici.Jean-Claude Michéa and Aude Lancelin, "Simon Leys, le fléau des idéologues", Le Nouvel Observateur, 31 August 2014.
For his PhD thesis, Ryckmans chose to translate and comment on a masterpiece of the history of Chinese art, the treatise on painting by Shitao. It was published in 1970 by the Institut Belge des Hautes Etudes Chinoises in Brussels, under the title Propos sur la peinture du moine Citrouille-amère de Shitao. Contribution à l'étude terminologique des théories chinoises de la peinture.Rowan Callick, Pierre Ryckmans’ early books triggered outrage and controversy in Europe, The Australian, 12 August 2014.
On his publisher's advice, he decided to assume a pen namePierre François Souyri, Simon Leys, Les Habits neufs du Président Mao, Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 1973, volume 28, N. 4. to avoid being declared persona non grata in the People's Republic of China. He chose "Simon" as his first name, a reference to the original name of the Apostle Peter, and "Leys" as his second name, a tribute to the main character of Victor Segalen's René Leys published in 1922, in which a Belgian teenager residing in Peking in the final days of the Qing Dynasty entertains his employer with accounts of the intrigues and conspiracies taking place behind the walls of the imperial palace."Pierre Ryckmans (Simon Leys), an old China hand, died on August 11th, aged 78", The Economist, 23 August 2014: "But his chosen surname contained a subtle clue as to who he really was. "Leys" was a homage to "René Leys", a novel by the French author Victor Segalen, in which a Belgian teenager in old Peking regales his employer with tales of the hidden intrigues and conspiracies taking place within the imperial palace. It is also suggested that his nom de plume is an allusion to a dynasty of painters from Antwerp under the name of Leys, with Henri Leys as its most famous representative.
In 1970 Ryckmans settled in Australia and he taught Chinese literature at the Australian National University in Canberra, where he supervised the honours thesis of future Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.Nicholas Stuart, Kevin Rudd: An Unauthorised Political Biography, Scribe, 2007.
He returned to China in 1972 for six months as a cultural attaché for the Belgian Embassy in Beijing.
In 1983 Ryckmans appeared on the literary talk show Apostrophes on French television."Les intellectuels face à l'histoire du communisme", Apostrophes (French TV talk show) ep'sode screened on 27 May 1983; archived by the Institut national de l'audiovisuel (ina.fr). The host, Bernard Pivot, had also invited Maria-Antonietta Macciocchi, a "China expert" and author of the book Dalla Cina. After the latter had waxed lyrical on the subject of the New China, Ryckmans responded ferociously, pointing out errors of fact that suggested she had not verified her sources before writing her book, a work that he judged as being "d'une stupidité totale" (totally stupid) or "une escroquerie" (a fraud)."Simon Leys face à M.- A. Macchiochi", youtube.com."Ryckmans vs Macciocchi on 'China experts' and the Cultural Revolution (1983)", wideworldofquotes.com.
In the period 1987–93, he was Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Sydney. He took early retirement, later explaining that, near the end, "deep modifications" had begun to affect universities in Australia and worldwide, "transformations ... progressively taking the university further away from the model to which I had originally devoted my life".Simon Leys, "An Idea of the University", address to the Campion Foundation Inaugural Dinner, Sydney, 23 March 2006; reprinted in: Simon Leys, The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays (Melbourne: Black Inc., 2011).
Later life and death Following his retirement he returned to Canberra, where he lived for the remainder of his life.
He died of cancer in Sydney at the age of 78, in August 2014, surrounded by his wife and four children, Etienne, Jeanne, Louis and Marc.Rowan Callick, "Chairman’s New Clothes author Pierre Ryckmans dies aged 78", The Australian, 11 August 2014.Michael Forsythe, "Pierre Ryckmans, 78, Dies; Exposed Mao’s Hard Line", The New York Times, 14 August 2014.
Works Ryckmans wrote in French, English and Chinese.
His books on the Chinese Cultural Revolution and on Maoist Chinabeginning with his trilogy Les Habits neufs du président Mao (1971), Ombres chinoises (1974) and Images brisées (1976)gave scathing descriptions of the cultural and political destruction in mainland China while denouncing the hypocrisy of its western defenders.
In 1971, on the advice of his publisher, he decided to adopt a pseudonym before the release of Les habits neufs du président Mao, in order to avoid the risk of becoming a persona non grata in the People's Republic of China.Martin Childs, "Professor Pierre Ryckmans: Sinologist and one of the first to reveal the shocking reality behind China's Cultural Revolution", The Independent, 9 August 2014. He chose "Leys" after the main character of Victor Segalen's novel René Leys (published in 1922).Simon Leys, "Victor Segalen, les tribulations d'un poète en Chine", in Figaro Littéraire, 3 February 2005.