Derek Bodde, 94; China Scholar, Author Was 1st U.S. Fulbright Scholar

Derek Bodde, 94, a China scholar who wrote an eyewitness account of Mao’s revolution during a 50-year career that began in 1948 as the nation’s first Fulbright scholar, died Nov. 3 in Philadelphia. The cause of death was not disclosed.

Bodde, a longtime professor at the University of Pennsylvania, was known for his knowledge of the Qin dynasty of the late third century BC. He translated Feng You-lan’s massive history of Chinese philosophy and was an expert on Chinese law of the 18th and 19th centuries.

He also established himself as an authority on Chinese politics of the late 1940s after spending the 1948-49 academic year in Beijing in the Fulbright program.

Bodde observed firsthand the transition from the Nationalist government to the Communists and published “Peking Diary: A Year of Revolution” in 1950. It is the first full-length account of the Chinese revolution by a nonpartisan outsider.

He wrote other influential books, including “Tolstoy and China,” which examined Chinese influences on the great Russian novelist.

Bodde was born in Brant Rock, Mass., and spent three years of his childhood in China when his father taught at a university there.

He majored in English at Harvard University, and later spent six years in China after winning a Harvard scholarship for postgraduate work.

Bodde earned a doctorate in Chinese studies from Leiden University in the Netherlands in 1938, and began teaching at the University of Pennsylvania later that year. He retired in 1975.