Note of praise

Cha had "a bit of a stammer" but was fluent and scintillating with his writing, Yeung said, adding, "He preferred writing to talking."

"When I worked as his executive secretary at Ming Pao, he wrote down the instructions on a note and passed it to me. If he thought I had done a good job, he would send me a note of praise, while seldom talking to me in the office. He treated other employees in the same way," he said.

"Maybe that's because speaking Cantonese made him nervous. He was most comfortable with the Jia-xing dialect, from his hometown."

Born in Haining, Jiaxing, East China's Zhejiang province, in 1924, Cha divorced twice before marrying Lin Leyi in 1976.

Cha was surrounded by family members when he died at the Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital.

The author, who lived on Hong Kong Island for the most of his life, describes in his novels the magnificent landscapes of the Chinese mainland, especially the Mongolian Plateau. Yeung said, "The scenery is so beautiful and the writing widens our imaginations."

Weijie Song, associate professor of Chinese Literature at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said Cha also intentionally focuses on the ethical, and cultural crisis in the transitions from the Song to Yuan and Ming to Qing dynasties, and explores topics including the ethnic conflict between Han and non-Han peoples, the collective memory under colonial rule, and broad and narrow nationalisms.

According to Petrus Liu, associate professor of comparative literature at Boston University, Cha's works contain an encyclopedic knowledge of traditional Chinese history, medicine, geography, cosmology and even mathematics.

Chun Chun-fai, the author of Hong Kong studies on Cha's novels, said that in the 1980s many people born in Hong Kong were studying abroad. They returned to the city to work, but knew little about Chinese culture. It was Cha's novels that allowed them to understand the spirit that Chinese society promoted and to appreciate the charm of Chinese literature.