Wolfgang Behr / 畢鶚 （氒/厥/攸）

Congratulations to @mz0rki, who defended her fascinating thesis @AOI/UZH on Tuesday. Everything you always wanted to know about 物 and much more ...

NEW What was life like for a female palace servant in ancient China? Analysis of stress factors on skeletons from Qin Dynasty mausoleums enables reconstruction of their daily activities, ranging from weaving and cleaning to ceremonial kowtowing. (£) doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2…

Intl J of Taiwan Studies: Introduction: The Austronesian Languages of Taiwan, Linguistic Heritage and Language Policies brill.com/view/journals/…

I just heard via a colleague who lives in the same street, that Rodo Pfister (*14.10.1962 in Langenthal,) passed away a few days ago. He was a prolific Early China scholar, with encyclopedic interests in the history of medicine, sexology, materia medica, drugs and spices, (1/14)

was fremd erscheint, klärt sich erst allmählich oder gar nicht auf." I am sure that the travel he has embarked on now, with or without his leib, his senses and certainly without a goal, will not be his final one. (14/14)

also in the introduction of his dissertation where he wrote: "wir unternehmen eine tastreise über die verschiedenartigen zonen des leibes und des menschlichen verhaltens. wie auf jeder reise, werden einige passagen beschwerlicher und andere leichter zu durchqueren sein; (13/14)

which passed his way. As an adopted child fathered by a traveling saisonnier he never really knew growing up in what he described as a very repressive and religious petit-bourgeois community, his desire for freedom and fully self-determined life, (10/14)

Sociopolitical, Ecological, and Climatic Factors" (doi.org/10.1007/S10745… of 2005). He also loved to debate sinological topics in various online forums and he cooperated with colleagues or strangers, never tiring of citing the most obscure and learned sources on a topic (9/14)

independent.academia.edu/rodopfister, where the last recorded publication is the very important co-authored "The Circulation of Yersinia pestis in Central Eurasia before and during the First Plague Pandemic (Second to Eighth Century CE): Palaeogenetic and Historical Evidence and (8/14)

and participating in conferences, whenever he could afford it. He kept publishing on many subjects close to his heart and I suspect his harddisk will be a veritable Borgesian library. The breadth of his scholarship can be gathered from his well-kept academia presence here: (7/14)

preferring the independence of his little apartment in Basel, which he labeled as "Research Institute for the History of Afroeurasian Life Sciences (RIHAELS)" for tax and grant application purposes, leading the life of a modern scholarly recluse, living "hand to mouth", (6/14)

including all the more juicy parts, as "Der beste Weg unter dem Himmel sexuelle Körpertechniken aus dem alten China ; zwei Bambustexte aus Mawangdui" (Zürich: Museum Rietberg, 2003). Despite several attempts, he never found his way back into institutional academia, (5/14)

was already monumental when he handed it in 2001, but it kept growing into three volumes with more than two thousand pages, when it became available as a book on demand in the 2010s. Luckily also published a short translation of two of the texts, (4/14)

He received his Licentiatus philosophiae at UZH in 1993 and concentrated on the Mawangdui sexual texts for his dissertation: The text, "sexuelle körpertechniken im alten China: seimbedürftige männer im umgang mit lebens-spenderinnen: drei manuskripte aus Mawangdui" (4/14)

in Zurich 1982-1993, then Chinese Calligraphy and Painting at the Zhejiang Academy in 1985-86, before embarking on ethnographic fieldwork in Burundi and Ruanda during the most violent phase of the Hutu and Tutsi war in 1987-88. (3/14)

historical geography, OC phonology and many other topics. Rudolph who disliked the first name in his passport and used "Rodo" as his pronoun long before pronoun discussions became fashionable, had studied Sinology, Ethnology, Art History and Anthropological Psychology (2/14)

The Chinese Communist Party has embraced the study of Greek and Latin—as, in some ways, an antidote to the modern West. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/yl-IXJ