Gao Hua, The Historian is a collection of essays in memory of Gao Hua, the late historian of modern Chinese history and professor of Nanjing University.

In 2000, Gao Hua published How Did the Sun Rise over Yan’an? A History of the Rectification Movement, garnering critical acclaim in the academic circle. Trained as an expert on the history of Republican China, Gao ventured into studies of the history of the Chinese Communist Party, which has been seen an academic minefield in China. Without access to government research funding and official archives, Gao painstakingly combed through published materials and winnowed out valuable information with his intuition and insight. Every night after his family went to sleep and the kitchen of his home was not in use, he secluded himself in the kitchen to write his book.

When he passed away in 2011, Gao was 57, a phase of life when a humanities scholar reaches his or her intellectual prime.

Gao’s life was intertwined with CUHK. Since 1998, he had been a contributor to the Twenty-First Century, an academic journal published by the Research Centre for Contemporary Chinese Culture, the Institute of Chinese Studies. His much-applauded book How Did the Red Sun Rise over Yan’an? was published by the Chinese University Press. He visited the University many times as a visiting scholar of the University Service Centre for China Studies. Hung King-ming Jean, co-editor of Gao Hua, The Historian, was the assistant director of the centre. Readers of the book can get a glimpse of the historian’s life and China’s current academic and intellectual environment.