Qu Lindong was born in December 1937 in Feidong, Anhui Province. He is a senior liberal arts professor and doctoral supervisor at Beijing Normal University. He has long been engaged in teaching and research in historical theory and the history of Chinese historiography, and served as director of the Center for Historiography Theory and History of Historiography, a key research institute of the Ministry of Education. His works include An Outline of the History of Chinese Historiography and Studies in Tang Dynasty Historiography; he also edited multiple works, including Ancient Chinese Historical Theory, and published the ten-volume Collected Works of Qu Lindong in 2017. His book Inquiring into the Past and Following the Times is a work of history reading that reflects his scholarly approach of grounding himself in historiographical tradition while attending to the issues of the times, and it has had a positive influence in popularizing historical theory and guiding readers to understand the course of Chinese historiography.
