Recalling the man who opened China's classics to the West
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His autobiography "White Tiger" (2002) tells of an early life abroad of carefree travel, adventure, indulgence and savoring European art and culture. It also tells of later suffering.
His academic work was so-so. Just for fun, 24-year-old Yang translated "Li Sao," or "The Lament" into the English form of heroic couplets in the style of John Dryden, stunning the academics. Today the book is a classic throughout Europe.
He and his wife returned to China in 1940 and spent the war years teaching in the interior, including Chongqing, where many intellectuals had fled the Japanese occupation.
Life was difficult and their left-wing sympathies sometimes got them into trouble. His family had lost its wealth.
In 1953, Yang together with a group of scientists and artists, met Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai.
Mao shook Yang's hand and after Zhou told him about Yang's translation of "Li Sao," Mao asked skeptically: "Can it be translated?"
"Don't you think all literature can be translated?" Yang responded. Mao smiled a little disdainfully, Yang recalled, later writing that Mao did not believe such a great work in Chinese could ever be well rendered in another language.
Though Yang and his wife had worked for the pro-Communist underground, Yang was later accused of being a foreign spy and criticized during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) for omitting quotations from Mao in his translations.
He was forced to endure "struggle sessions" and clean the toilets in the Foreign Language Press where he worked.
"I made each toilet glitter," he later wrote. "The toilets I cleaned were the tidiest."
In 1968 he and his wife were separated and imprisoned for four years.
After they were released, they continued their mission of translations.
They traveled, practiced calligraphy and Chinese ink painting.
Yang stopped translating in 1999 when his wife Gladys died.
His retired life was spent in reading, smoking and drinking wine.
He always retained his humor.
"He loved drinking," recalls Lu Gusun, a leading lexicographer and a famous professor of English literature at Fudan University. "Each time I went to Beijing, I would take him several bottles of wine."
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