Professor Mao Zhaoxi is a preeminent scholar of national and international renown for his achievements in the field of prehistory. He is also a well known hero for his dedication and contribution to cultural preservation undertakings in Zhejiang and the rest of China. His activities and appeals have led to the successful preservation of a huge amount of cultural heritages and the founding of a great number of museums. He is also one of the prime movers behind some national laws and regulations for the preservation and protection of cultural heritages.

In my eyes， Professor Mao Zhaoxi is a teacher， a friend， a seeker of truth and a speaker of honesty.

I studied under his guidance 27 years ago. I remember seeing him speaking in front of the huge blackboard in the lecture theater. Dressed in a white shirt with the shirttail kept in， the smiling professor beamed energy and amity; he spoke in a standard mandarin occasionally intermingled with some words in English， Japanese and the Hangzhou dialect. Some professional words such as Australopithecus， Ramapithecus， Java man and Neanderthals are still vivid in my memory of his lectures on prehistory.

The most memorable of his lectures， however， were those focused on appreciation of western music. He would bring a phonograph and a stack of disc records to the lecture room and play music for us. The lectures were very popular and sometimes students stood outside the classroom and gawked through the corridor windows. Through his lectures I got to know about Beethoven， Tchaikovsky， Mendelssohn and many other important composers.

Professor Mao Zhaoxi is an aficionado of classical music. Nowadays he has his record player with him wherever he travels. When he visits a foreign country， local stores are always his target in search of second hand disc records.

To my surprise， I have come to know the professor’s other hobbies quite late and by accident. One day I was visiting him at his office at the provincial people’s congress. Beside some bookshelves and a desk， I spotted an array of ferns in plastic pots on the floor. It turned out that Mao is also an amateur biologist. He is quite familiar with zoomorphic and paleontological terms. And he has a working knowledge of traditional Chinese medicine.

It was not until June， 2005 that I became accidentally aware that he is a zealot of astronomy when I listened in to his conversation with a visiting Japanese scholar. While attending an international conference at Tonga， a country in the Polynesian islands in the southern Pacific Ocean， he studied the sky with a reference to a star chart he had brought all the way from China and spotted Crux in the southern sky. Back home， he talked nostalgically about the dream he had as a teenager. He said he became crazy about astronomy in high school. Then he beamed when he said proudly that he had at last realized his dream at the age of 72 by locating Crux in the southern sky.

Of his various hobbies， reading books is always his number one passion， testified by the bookshelves stacked with his beloved books in all his offices. He has visited bookstores in Singapore， Seoul， London， Tokyo， Kyoto， Osaka， Kobe and Fukuoka. On a five-day visit to Tokyo， he managed to find time to visit bookstores there in four days.

As a scholar of prehistory， Professor Mao Zhaoxi emphasizes the affinity between textual records and material objects. Thanks to his initiative， the university began to offer archaeological lectures to students who majored in history. He was the man behind the establishment of a museum at the history department of the Hangzhou University (part of Zhejiang University today). In the early 1980s the university started a major of cultural heritage and museum studies for undergraduates under his proposal. The four-year special course has contributed to the undertakings of museums and cultural heritage in the province. In 1998， a dinosaur species found in Sichuan Province was named after him as Omeisaurus maoianus in honor of his work and support.

Upon graduation from Zhejiang University in 1949， Mao began to teach prehistory and anthropology in 1951. Over years he also taught world history， Chinese history， Japanese history and Indian history.

He has published important papers on issues in the eastern civilizations concerning， for example，how rice farming got transmitted from Zhoushan archipelago to Japan， how rice originated in Zhejiang more than 8，000 years ago， how ancient stone tombs in China and other countries in East andSoutheast Asia should be classified.

Since 1983， Professor Mao has assumed many government posts. He has worked as director of the Zhejiang Culture (Cultural Heritage) Bureau， deputy president of the Zhejiang People’s Congress and member of the standing committee of the National People’s Congress. Now in his 80s， Professor Mao is still dedicated to his lifelong goals of cultural undertakings.#8194;□