Ning-tsu Malmqvist

Ning-tsu Malmqvist (; ; June 9, 1931 – November 5, 1996. ) was a pioneering Chinese-Swedish cultural intermediary, translator, author, and educator. Born in Beijing and raised in Chengdu, Sichuan, she was one of the founding members in the Department of Chinese at Stockholm University. Beyond her work as an educator of Chinese language and heritage, she was a foundational figure in translating Chinese culture for the Swedish public. She was one of the rare non-European appearances in the Swedish public sphere during the mid-20th century, notably through her 1972 and 1980 cookbooks. and televised demonstrations as early as 1967

Early life Ning-tsu Ch'en was born in 1931 in Beijing but grew up in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. Her father, Ch'en Hsing-k'o, was a professor, and her mother, Liu K'o-chuang, was a school principal.

In 1948, Swedish sinology student Göran Malmqvist arrived in Chengdu on a Rockefeller Fellowship to study Chinese dialects, and lodged with the Ch'en family. The two married on 24 September 1950 at Tao Fong Shan Christian Centre (道風山) in Hong Kong.

Career Academic

Malmqvist served as a tutor in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Faculty of Oriental Studies, at the Australian National University, Canberra.

In 1965, Göran Malmqvist was appointed Professor of Sinology at Stockholm University. Together, they established the newly created Department of Chinese within the Faculty of Oriental Languages. She taught Chinese there from the department's founding until her retirement, teaching generations of Swedish students the Chinese language and culture, including , the head of the Stockholm China Center.

Malmqvist co-translated Zhang Xianliang's novel Half the man is the woman into Swedish with Lena Jönsson, and co-edited Leva i Kina: 45 kineser berättar öppenhjärtigt om sig själva (Tr: Living in China: 45 Chinese people talk candidly about themselves) with Göran Malmqvist (Forum, 1988) and edited a collection of Chinese short stories in 1977.

Culinary

In 1967, she made a landmark appearance on Swedish television demonstrating Chinese cooking in Swedish. her work represented a foundational act of cultural translation. Malmqvist authored two foundational cookbooks that adapted traditional Sichuanese methods to locally available Swedish ingredients: Att äta med pinnar i Sverige (Forum, 1972) and Ningtsus kinesiska kokbok (Forum, 1980).

Family Ning-tsu Malmqvist and Göran Malmqvist lived in London, New York, Beijing, and Canberra before eventually moving back to Stockholm. They had three sons: Anders, Per and Gunnar.