Recalling the man who opened China's classics to the West
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The man who translated "A Dream of Red Mansions" into its classic English text (1974) is being mourned as a distinguished intellectual who made it his life's work to introduce great Chinese literature to the English-speaking world.
Yang Xianyi, 94, died last Monday in Beijing. A funeral was held yesterday at Beijing's Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery.
Starting around 1940, Oxford-educated Yang, together with his British wife Gladys Margaret Taylor, translated great works of Chinese literature, including the lyrical poem "Li Sao" by Qu Yuan from the 4th century BC, and works by Lu Xun, among many others.
Translations included "Records of a Historian" (a selection by historian Sima Qian, who died around AD 85), "The Courtesan's Jewel Box: Chinese Stories from the 10th-17th Centuries," and many others. Especially famous was the 1974 translation of the classic novel, "A Dream of Red Mansions" about the decline of a feudal family.
Yang worked to bring both works of Chinese literature to the West and works of Western literature to China. His aim was always to be true to the original but accessible to the reader.
His works were published mostly by Beijing's Foreign Language Press, becoming standard texts for scholars throughout China.
He also translated into Chinese Shaw's "Pygmalian," Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey," Aristophanes' "The Birds," "The Song of Roland" and many other works.
Yang was born in 1915 into a wealthy banking family in Tianjin and was tutored at home in the Chinese classics.
In 1936 he entered Merton College, Oxford University and studied classics for two years before shifting to English literature.
He was so brilliant that he turned Milton into classical Chinese verse.
At Oxford he met Taylor, the daughter of missionaries in China.
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