The Language and Iconography of Chinese Charms (PDF)

Alex Chengyu Fang is Associate Professor in linguistics at the Department of Linguistics and Translation, City University of Hong Kong. He is also Adjunct Professor at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. A national expert at the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) representing China on Technical Committee 37, he is an appointed expert member of the China National Technical Committee on Terminology for Standardisation. From 2016, he serves as Member of the Academic Committee of the Key Laboratory of Agricultural Biomedical Information of Hubei Province. He received his BA degree in English Language and Literature from the Guangzhou Institute of Foreign Languages and his PhD degree in computational linguistics from University College London, where he was Deputy Director of Survey of English Usage 1995-1996. He started studying Chinese coins and charms in 1995 while in London and travelled extensively in Europe, the United States, and Asia in search of charms and related literature. Specialising in coin charms from the Tang and the Song dynasties, he is co-founder and standing Vice President of the China Association of Numismatic Charms. In 2008, he sponsored the first public exhibition of Chinese charms and organised the first international symposium devoted to Chinese charms, both events taking place in Hong Kong. He was E.S.G. Robinson Fellow in 2012 and studied the Chinese charms held at the Department of Coins and Medals of the British Museum. He was invited to present his studies on Chinese charms at the Oriental Numismatic Society and the Royal Numismatic Society. He is author of nine books including Chinese Charms: Art, Religion and Folk Belief, published by the Commercial Press in Beijing in 2008.
François Thierry was born in 1950 in Paris and, after secondary school in humanities, studied history and arts in university. He focused his research on the political history of the Late Ottoman Empire. Then he travelled