Lin Qianliang is well known jokingly for his eccentricities among his friends as well as artists and art collectors in Zhejiang. A native of Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian Province south to Zhejiang, Lin, born in 1932, has a wide range of hobbies. He is an ardent specialist of traditional Chinese medicine, tea therapy, seal art, calligraphy, painting, art and antique collection, and theater.

By occupation, Lin is a TCM doctor. Before his retirement from Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, he was a TCM professor with 35 books and over 100 papers and essays under his belt. Some of his books have been translated into foreign languages. Before his retirement, he was also a member of various professional associations, and he gave lectures in Japan, USA, and Canada. As a TCM doctor, he first came up with the idea of treating patients with tea therapy after combing more than five hundred ancient books on the subject.

Lin developed his first hobby, that is, seal art, when he was about 8 years old. After he came to Hangzhou, he had the opportunity to visit Xinling Seal Art Society, the very famous organization of seal engravers and calligraphers headquartered on the West Lake. He studied under the guidance of Lu Weizhao, Sha Menghai, and Han Deng’an all artists of national renown. He was able to combine various ancient seal scripts into his own seal creations. The seal texts he has carved cover a wide range of his hobbies such as herbal medicine, tea, theater, and mirrors. These texts on seals make him an outstanding seal artist. As a seal artist, he also studied ancient Chinese scripts under the guidance of Pan Guoxian, a disciple of Zhang Binlin (1869-1936), one of the greatest ancient Chinese masters of modern times. Lin has published three books on ancient Chinese scripts. He is now a vice president of Zhejiang Association for Studies on Texts of Oracle Bones.

Over his 80 years of hobby and 40 years as a member of the Xiling Seal Art Society, Lin has published more than 10 books on seal art and built up a collection of seals.

After his retirement, Lin lived in San Francisco for a few years where he became a Peking Opera fan influenced by Peking Opera shows at local Chinese communities. He was so passionate about the opera that he became an amateur Peking Opera artist. He wrote two Peking Opera scripts and composed arias. In addition, he compiled and published a Chinese primer so that the children born in America of the first-generation Chinese immigrants could get acquainted with their mother-tongue.

Over the years, Lin Qianliang has built up a huge collection of letter papers. Letter papers were important stationery in ancient China. Some were manufactured by stationery and art studios and schools and some were designed by artists and scholars including some big names. The oldest letter papers in Lin’s collection are those printed in the Ming (1368-1644) and the Qing (1644-1911). Many of these letter papers present special designs and patterns such as painting, seal impressions, and poems. Lin’s huge collection of these letter papers adds up to several tens of thousands.

Lin has also a collection of several thousands of mirrors. On the basis of his studies of these mirrors, he has developed a system to categorize mirrors and put them into different sets and give names to categories; he has also developed a theory that highlights the ten functions of these mirrors.

Lin Qianliang really does not mind if other people call him eccentric. Instead, he thinks it is okay if his hobbies are billed as eccentricities. He even wrote an explanation to lampoon his eccentricities. After all, he has a wide range of hobbies and these hobbies add colors to his life. If his happiness and joy are equal to eccentricities, he doesn’t mind being called an eccentric.