Lou Yulie

Lou Yulie was a Chinese philosopher and historian of Chinese thought who taught at Peking University for more than sixty years. A professor in its Department of Philosophy and honorary dean of its Institute of Religion and Culture, he was widely known in China as a leading scholar of guoxue, the study of traditional Chinese learning, and as a patient popularizer of Confucian, Daoist and Buddhist ideas. He died of illness in the early hours of 9 October 2026, aged 91.

He was born in December 1934 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, with his ancestral home in Shengzhou, and later moved with his parents to Shanghai. In 1955 he entered the Department of Philosophy at Peking University, where he studied under Feng Youlan and Tang Yongtong. After graduating in 1960 he stayed on to teach. He became a lecturer in 1979, associate professor in 1980 and full professor in 1985.

His scholarship centred on the history of Chinese philosophy, especially the metaphysical school of the Wei and Jin period, Chinese Buddhism and modern Chinese thought. His annotated edition of the works of Wang Bi became a standard foundation for the study of Wei-Jin metaphysics and won a national prize for the collation of ancient books. He also produced new annotations of Xunzi and of Wang Bi's commentaries on the Laozi and the Book of Changes. He was the founding director of the Institute of Chinese Buddhist Cultural Studies, vice-president of the National Academy of Religion from 1988 to 1995, and a member of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council from 1992 to 1997.

Lou spent much of his later life bringing traditional culture to general readers. His book The Fundamental Spirit of Chinese Culture, published by Zhonghua Book Company in 2016, won the Wenjin Book Award and was placed on national reading lists for schoolchildren. Other popular works included Fifteen Lectures on Chinese Culture. An eight-volume collection of his writings, about 2.8 million characters, was published in November 2025. He said he followed Feng Youlan's rule that scholarship should be clear to complete outsiders while still offering something new to specialists.

His study was named the Hall of Three Nots: not acting carelessly, not acting with contrivance, and not clinging. In an interview with Beijing Daily in April 2026, at 91, he urged young people to be able to take things up, see through them and let them go. His death was announced by Beijing Daily on 9 October 2026.