Prof. Göran Malmqvist just passed away in Sweden. I have never managed to meet him, although I had been trying for 3 years.
Since 2016, I have been engaging in a global project that collect oral history of sinologist in Nordic countries. This project is supported mainly by Prof. Chih-yu Shih at National Taiwan University. To complete our global project is not easy. We are racing against time, which means that we often lose. Recently, we identified a senior sinologist to be interviewed and not long after, we learned that this person had just passed away. Writing emails to experts and receiving an automatic reply of “Sorry, this is the email of Prof X who just passed away,” is sadly normal. It is also not unusual to learn that the professor we just interviewed passed away soon after the interview.
In 2016, Göran Malmqvist was still the most senior sinologist in the Nordic countries. When I contacted him in 2016, he refused to get interviewed.
He said: “I am a very old man, educated in a tradition where the definition of Sinology was quite different from that of today. I therefore fear that my recollections would seem irrelevant to most readers.”
He also indicated that he might be going to Prague and so, he thought, it would not be possible to interview him.
Notice that he used super huge fonts in his email. At one point, I noticed that some of my very senior scholar friends also always used super-sized fonts, and I guessed that this is because it is easier for them to read.
Not willing to give up easily, I enlarged the size of my fonts in my reply email. To make a long story short, Malmqvist later agreed to have the interview. But then his health turned worst and eventually it was his wife who was replying to my emails.
Through Fredrik Fällman, I get to understand that Torbjörn Lodén has an obituary in Svenska Dagbladet https://www.svd.se/ett-storre-namn-an-de-flesta-svenskar-kan-forestalla-sig
Fredrik also indicate some Chinese newspaper reports here
https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_4714179
http://www.bjnews.com.cn/culture/2019/10/18/638577.html
Julie Yu-Wen Chen