Julia Ching

Julia Ching, CM RSC (1934 – October 26, 2001) was professor of religion, philosophy and East Asian studies at the University of Toronto.

Biography Born in Shanghai in 1934, Ching fled the Republic of China as a refugee during World War II. After completing high school at Sacred Heart Canossian College in Hong Kong, Ching studied at the College of New Rochelle in New York and then served as an Ursuline nun for two decades, completing a master's degree at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, before obtaining a doctorate in Asian studies at the Australian National University in Canberra. She taught at Columbia and Yale before joining the University of Toronto faculty in 1978. Her younger brother is Frank Ching, , a journalist for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the South China Morning Post.

Ching rose to prominence as a world expert on the neo-Confucianism and religion of the Song and Ming dynasties of 10th- through 17th-century China. She wrote or edited 15 books including her definitive studies of the leading Ming Confucian, Wang Yangming, and the leading Song Confucian, Zhu Xi. In 2000, she was named a member of the Order of Canada.

Ching's interests were not limited to scholarship. She participated in movements for world responsibility such as the Inter-Action Council, Science for Peace, and the Canadian Pugwash. She was also a busy commentator, frequently called on to interpret breaking news from China for the Canadian news media. In response to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, she published Probing China's Soul (1990), a book on protest and dissent in China.

She and her husband Willard Oxtoby adopted a Chinese son.

Works

Julia Ching. "'Authentic Selfhood': Wang Yang-Ming and Heidegger". The Monist, Volume 61, Issue 1, 1 January 1978, Pages 3–27. Julia Ching. Confucianism and Christianity: A Comparative Study. New York: Kodansha International. 1978. xxvi+234 pp. . Hans Küng and Julia Ching. Christianity and Chinese Religions. New York: Doubleday, 1989. 309 pp. Julia Ching. Probing China's Soul: Religion, Politics, and Protest in the People's Republic. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990. 269 pp. Julia Ching. The Philosophical Letters of Wang Yang-ming. Canberra, Australia: Australian National University Press, 1972. 142pp.