Pioneering educator and researcher passes at 107

Share - WeChat

Canadian educator and anthropologist Isabel Crook, who pioneered English language teaching in New China, died on Sunday in Beijing at the age of 107.

Crook was born in Chengdu, Sichuan province, and was engaged in ethnological studies of China and the nation's rural development for her entire career.

After tying the knot with David Crook (1910-2000), a committed communist from the UK, Isabel went to London with her husband, where they took part in the World Anti-Fascist War.

In 1947, the Crooks traveled to Shilidian village in Hebei province, where they observed and joined the land reform program.

The following year, the couple decided to stay in China and teach at what is now Beijing Foreign Studies University, where they embarked on a six-decade career in English language education and helped cultivate New China's first foreign affairs personnel and a large group of outstanding scholars and diplomats.

As an anthropologist, Isabel Crook has published monographs including "Xinglong Chang: Field Notes of a Village Called Prosperity (1940-1942)" with her early colleague Yu Xiji, works on Shilidian with her husband, and "Prosperity's Predicament: Identity, Reform, and Resistance in Rural Wartime China (1940-1941)" with US historian Christina Gilmartin (1946-2012).

Her works shared firsthand details of China's revolutionary period and development with the world and helped reader better understand the pre-modern Chinese countryside and changes in villages introduced by the Communist Party of China.

Isabel Crook became a lifetime honorary professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University in 2007 and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Toronto in 2008. She was recognized as one of the country's ten most important foreign language teachers in 2016 and in 2018, one of the 40 most influential foreign experts during 40 years of reform and opening-up.

In 2019, Crook was awarded the Friendship Medal, China's top honor for foreigners, for her contributions to the nation's language education.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Next   >>|