Chia-ying Yeh | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
叶嘉莹 | |||||||||
 Chia-ying Yeh's wedding photo (1948) | |||||||||
| Born | Florence Chia-ying Yeh (1924-07-02)July 2, 1924 | ||||||||
| Died | November 24, 2024(2024-11-24) (aged 100) | ||||||||
| Other names | Ye Jiaying, Jialing, Chia-ying Yeh Chao, Chia-ying Chao-Yeh | ||||||||
| Academic background | |||||||||
| Alma mater | Fu Jen Catholic University (Beijing) | ||||||||
| Doctoral advisor | Gu Sui [zh] | ||||||||
| Academic work | |||||||||
| Discipline | Chinese literature | ||||||||
| Sub-discipline | Classical Chinese literature | ||||||||
| Institutions | |||||||||
| Notable students | Pai Hsien-yung,Chen Yingzhen,Xi Murong, Jiang Xun | ||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 葉嘉瑩 | ||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 叶嘉莹 | ||||||||
| |||||||||
| Jialing | |||||||||
| Chinese | 迦陵 | ||||||||
| |||||||||
Florence Chia-ying YehFRSC (July 2, 1924 – November 24, 2024), also known asYe Jiaying (simplified Chinese:叶嘉莹;traditional Chinese:葉嘉瑩),Jialing (迦陵), and by her married nameChia-ying Yeh Chao, was a Chinese-born Taiwanese-Canadian poet andsinologist.[1] She was a scholar ofclassical Chinese poetry. Yeh taught for 20 years at theUniversity of British Columbia (UBC), and was a professor emerita from her retirement in 1989. She was a Fellow of theRoyal Society of Canada.[2] After retiring from UBC, she taught atNankai University inTianjin, where she was the founding Director of the Institute of Chinese Classical Culture.
Chia-ying Yeh was born inBeijing on July 2, 1924. Her family was from the prominentManchu clan ofYehe Nara, originally ofTümedMongol ethnicity.[3] The famousQing dynasty poetNalan Xingde was from the same clan. Her grandfather was a Qing official, and her sinicized family shortened its surname to theHan ChineseYeh after the fall of the Manchu Qing dynasty in 1911.[3]
Yeh began composing poetry at the age of ten. She was admitted to the Chinese department ofFu Jen Catholic University (Beijing) in 1941, where she studied under the well known scholar of poetryGu Sui [zh].[4][5] After graduating in 1945, she taught in the then capitalNanjing, and married Chao Chung-sun (赵钟荪), a navy employee, in March 1948. By the end of the year, theKuomintang government was losing theChinese Civil War and began its retreat toTaiwan. Yeh also moved with her husband to Taiwan, and settled inChanghua, where Yeh found a teaching job at a secondary school. She gave birth to her first daughter Chao Yen-yen (赵言言) in August 1949.[4][6]
During theWhite Terror period of Taiwan, numerous intellectuals were suspected of being Communist sympathizers and imprisoned without trial. In December 1949, Yeh's husband Chao Chung-sun was arrested on suspicion of being a Communist spy. In June 1950, Yeh was herself jailed, together with the principal and six other teachers at her school. She brought her daughter to the prison as the baby was less than a year old.[4] She was released soon afterwards, but her husband was imprisoned for more than three years.[6]
In the 1950s, Yeh taught classical Chinese poetry atNational Taiwan University,Tamkang University, and Fu Jen University in Taiwan.[2] WritersPai Hsien-yung,Chen Yingzhen,Xi Murong, andJiang Xun [zh] were some of her students. She is often honoured as "the teacher of masters."[5]
She moved to the United States in 1966,[4] and taught atMichigan State University andHarvard University. She then settled inVancouver,British Columbia, Canada, where she taught at theUniversity of British Columbia from 1969 until retiring in 1989.[2]
After Canada established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, Yeh returned to China for the first time in 1974, and visited her brother who still lived in their old home. She composed a long poem to commemorate the visit.[6]
Starting in 1979, Yeh returned to China every summer to teach at numerous universities,[5] includingPeking University,Beijing Normal University,Nankai University,Tianjin Normal University,Fudan University,Nanjing University,Nanjing Normal University,Xinjiang University, andLanzhou University.[4] She often paid for her own travel expenses and taught for free. She said that in mainland China there was a great desire to rediscover classical Chinese literature after the turmoil of theCultural Revolution.[5]
After Yeh retired from UBC in 1989, many Chinese universities invited her to teach in China full-time. She chose to teach atNankai University inTianjin, because her nephew was an alumnus and it was near her hometown Beijing.[4] Nankai established the China Comparative Literature Institute (later renamed to Institute of Chinese Classical Culture) in 1993, headed by Yeh.[5] She returned to UBC every summer to teach and research.[2]
In May 2014, Nankai University held the Chinese Poetry International Seminar to commemorate Chia-ying Yeh's 90th birthday. For the occasion, former Chinese PremierWen Jiabao wrote a work of calligraphy of one of Yeh's poems.[7]
Yehturned 100 on July 2, 2024,[8] and died on November 24.[9]
Yeh donated half of her pension fund from UBC to establish two scholarships at Nankai University.[2][6] One is called the Yongyan (Yung-Yen;咏言) Scholarship, which combines the given names of her elder daughter Chao Yen-yen and son-in-law Chung Yung-t'ing (钟咏庭), who died together in a car accident in 1976. The other is called Tuo'an (驼庵), in memory of her teacher Gu Sui, whosehao was An-ming (安明).[6]
Chia-ying Yeh published many scholarly works, almost all in Chinese. Her only major publication in English wasStudies in Chinese Poetry (1998), co-written withHarvard University scholarJames Robert Hightower. HerJialing Poetry Manuscript, published in 2000 inTaipei, includes 540 poems she composed between 1939 (when she was 15) and 1995.[2] She has been called a modernLi Qingzhao, the famousSong dynasty Chinese poet.[10]
In 1997, Hebei Education Publishing House publishedThe Collected Works of Jialing (迦陵文集) in 10 volumes. In 2000, Guiguan Book Company of Taiwan publishedThe Collected Works of Chia-ying Yeh in 24 volumes.[10]
