The event will be conducted in Mandarin. AI translation in English will be provided.

Before Netflix, there was Shaw Brothers. And one man was at the heart of it.

Chua Boon Hean (penname Liu Bei’an, 1905-1995) was a renowned Singaporean poet, writer and cultural figure. He was among the 14 founding members of the Singapore Association of Writers in 1970, and his narrative poem Colourless Rainbow received the Singapore Book Council Award in 1978 and the prestigious Southeast Asia Write Award in Thailand in 1988.

Beyond literature, Chua spent more than three decades serving as the Manager for the Shaw Organisation in Singapore, overseeing film distribution, exhibition and even wrote film scripts for Shaw’s Malay film production. His family later donated his handwritten film scripts, annotated screenplays, and collection of rare books to the NUS Libraries, which became important resources for the study of Chinese literature, cinema, and popular cultures in Singapore and Malaysia.

A Scholar's World: The Life and Literary Circle of Chua Boon Hean explores Chua's life, career, and friendship, examining how his passion for literature, cinema, and the arts helped to shape the development and consumption of Chinese popular cultures in Singapore and Malaysia. Chua was also closely involved in establishing the connection, leading to Koh Siow Nam’s donation of over 7,000 volume collection to the University of Singapore Chinese Library in the early 1960s.

The programme features three presentations by one researcher and two librarians, together with a display of selected materials from the Chua Boon Hean and Koh Siow Nan collections. Through these rare manuscripts, publications, and archival materials, participants will gain a deeper appreciation of Chua's career as a “trans-media” cultural figure and how he weaved in and out seamlessly across the scholarly/literary field, business sector and the world of Chinese popular cultures in Singapore and Malaysia.