In the night of December 3, the most attractive program of the Law School, Listening invited 78 years old life Professor Jinfan Zhang of CUPL. The eighth lecture room was packed to a capacity in a lively atmosphere. At 6: 40, companied by staffs, Professor Zhang entered the room and began the interview. The meeting was chaired by Ruijuan Wang, the exchange student from Wuhan University.
From the document film, we found Professor Zhang’s study was not luxurious but elegantly decorated. What surprised the audients was millions of books on the surrounding bookshelves. Professor Zhang recollected that with his first favorite book, the Three Kingdom, he began to have preference to history and decided to contribute his whole life in the subject of historic research. The other reason to determine his research direction was his profound and complicated feeling about his hometown, the Northeast China where invaded by Japanese armed force in 1930s. He gradually understood the utmost importance of history to a country in particular to national confidence.
At the beginning of the new century, the most exciting event for Chinese academic community was the publication of the General History of Chinese Legal System. The launching ceremony for the publication was held in the Great Hall of the People, the most solemn and important place in China. This book was the fruit of Professor Zhang and other 70 scholars’s painstaking work over 40 years and strengthened China’s status as the research centre of the history of Chinese legal system around world.