Zhong Jingwen

Zhong Jingwen (Chinese: 钟敬文, March 20, 1903 – January 10, 2002) was a Chinese folklorist. Sometimes called the "father of Chinese folklore studies", Zhong pioneered folklore studies from the 1920s to 1980s. Born in Eastern Guangdong in 1903, he attended Sun Yat-sen University and co-founded the Folklore Society of SYSU, the first folkloristics society in China, alongside prominent academics such as Gu Jiegang and Dong Zuobin. He briefly served as the chief editor of two folklore periodicals and published a monograph on folk arts. He was fired from the university in 1928, and later served as a visiting professor at Waseda University in Tokyo.

In 1949, he accepted a professorship at Beijing Normal University. The following year, he became the first vice-chairman of the Research Society of Chinese Literature and Arts alongside chairman Guo Moruo. After academia and folkloristics were disrupted by the Cultural Revolution, Zhong played a key role in the refoundation of folklore studies in China, serving as the first president of the China Folklore Society and the head of China's first folklore doctoral program during the early 1980s. He began work on a six-volume series entitled History of Chinese Folklore, which was completed and published by one of his students after his death.