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Yang Jiang

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For the city in Guangdong, seeYang gian g.For other uses, seeYang gian g (disambiguation).
In thisChinese name,thefamily nameisYang.

Yang Jiang
Dương giáng
Yang in 1941
Born
Yang Jikang (Dương quý khang)

(1911-07-17)17 July 1911
Beijing,China
Died25 May 2016(2016-05-25)(aged 104)
Beijing, China
NationalityChinese
Alma materSoochow University
Tsinghua University
University of Oxford
University of Paris
Spouse
​
​
(m.1935; died 1998)​
ChildrenQian Yuan (1937–1997)
Parent(s)Yang Yinhang (father)
Tang Xuying (mother)
Yang Jiang
Traditional ChineseDương dây
Simplified ChineseDương giáng
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinYáng Jiàng
Wade–GilesYang Chiang
Yang Jikang
Traditional ChineseDương quý khang
Simplified ChineseDương quý khang
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinYáng Jìkāng

Yang Jiang(Chinese:Dương giáng;Wade–Giles:Yang Chiang;17 July 1911 – 25 May 2016) was a Chinese playwright, author, and translator. She wrote several successful comedies, and was the first Chinese person to produce a complete Chinese version ofMiguel de Cervantes' novelDon Quixote.[1]

Biography

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She was born in Beijing asYang Jikang,[2]and grew up in theJiangnanregion. After graduating fromSoochow Universityin 1932, Yang Jiang enrolled in the graduate school ofTsinghua University.There she metQian Zhongshu.They married in 1935. During 1935–1938, they went abroad to England for further study atOxford University.In England, Yang gave birth to their daughter Qian Yuan (Tiền viện) in 1937. They later studied atPantheon-Sorbonne Universityin Paris, France.[2]They often spoke French and English to each other throughout their lives in China.[3]

They returned to China in 1938.[2]Living in Shanghai, she wrote four stage plays: two comedies of manners,Heart's Desire(1943) andForging the Truth(1944), one farce,Sporting with the World(1947), and the tragedyWindswept Blossoms(1947). After 1949, she taught at the Tsinghua University and made a scholarly study of western literature atPeking Universityand the Academy of Science. She published this work in 1979 in a compendium:Spring Mud.As authors, literary researchers, and translators, Yang and Qian both made important contributions to the development of Chinese literary culture.[4]

Yang also translated into Chinese three major European works of picaresque fiction:Lazarillo de Tormes(1951),Gil Blas(1956) andDon Quixote(1978).[5]Her Chinese translation ofDon Quixoteis, as of 2016, still considered the definitive version.[3]After deeming several English and French translations unsuitable, she taught herself Spanish. “If I wanted to be faithful to the original, I had to translate directly from the original,” she wrote in 2002. Ms. Yang had completed almost seven out of eight volumes of the translation when Red Guard student militants confiscated the manuscript from her home in Beijing. “I worked with every ounce of energy I could muster, gouging at the earth with a spade, but the only result was a solitary scratch on the surface,” Ms. Yang wrote. “The youngsters around me had quite a laugh over that.” As the Cultural Revolution subsided, Ms. Yang returned to Beijing to work on “Don Quixote.” The nearly completed draft that had been confiscated by Red Guards is said to have been discovered in a pile of scrap paper and returned to Ms. Yang. Published in 1978, it remains widely regarded as the definitive translation of “Don Quixote” in China.[6]

She was also awarded theCivil Order of Alfonso X, the Wisefor this byKing Juan Carlosin October 1986.[7]Her sister Yang Bi (Dương tất) (1922–1968) was also a translator.

Her experience doing "reform through labor" in a "cadre school"in Henan from 1969 to 1972, where she was"sent down"with her husband during theCultural Revolution,inspired her to writeSix Chapters from My Life 'Downunder'(1981).[8]This is the book that made her name as a writer in the post-Mao period.[9][10]In connection with this memoir, she also wroteSoon to Have Tea(Đem uống trà) (akaToward Oblivion), which was published in 1983.[11]

In 1988, she published her only novelBaptism(Tắm rửa), which was always connected withFortress Besieged(Vây thành), a masterpiece of her husband.[12]Her 2003 memoirWe Three(Chúng ta ba), recalled memories of her husband and her daughter Qian Yuan, who died ofcancerone year before her father's death in 1998. At the age of 96, she publishedReaching the Brink of Life(Đi đến nhân sinh bên cạnh), a philosophic work whose title in Chinese clearly alludes to her late husband's collection of essaysMarginalia to Life(Viết ở nhân sinh bên cạnh).[2]

She turned 100 in July 2011.[13]The novellaAfter the Baptism(Tắm rửa lúc sau), a coda toBaptism,appeared in 2014. On 25 May 2016, Yang died at the age of 104 atPeking Union Medical College Hospitalin Beijing.[3]

Qian Zhongshu and Yang Jiang in 1936

Contradicting a Chinese saying that it is impossible for a woman to be both a chaste wife and gifted scholar or talented artist, Qian once described Yang as “the most chaste wife and talented girl” in China.

Works

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Plays

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  • Heart's Desire(Vừa lòng đẹp ý) (1943).
  • Forging the Truth(Lộng thật thành giả) (1944).
  • Sporting with the World(Du hí nhân gian) (1945).
  • Windswept Blossoms(Phong nhứ) (1947).

Novels

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  • Baptism(Tắm rửa)(1988)
  • After the Bath(Tắm rửa lúc sau)(2014)

Essays

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  • Six Chapters from My Life 'Downunder'(Trường cán bộ sáu nhớ) (1981)
  • About to Drink Tea(Đem uống trà) (1987)
  • We Three(Chúng ta ba) (2003)

Her 2003 essay collection “We Three,” about her family life with her late husband and their daughter, was a national bestseller. Yang Jiang's daughter Qian Yuan gave the name of this bookWe Three.She has written the outline for it, but unfortunately died after five days in 1997. Yang withheld the news of their daughter's death from her husband Qian Zhongshu until his passing in 1998. After her husband's death, Yang compiled and edited his unpublished works, the most celebrated beingWe Three.[14]The opening line forWe threeis:

“This is a long dream of ten thousand miles. The scene was so real that it felt like a dream after waking up. But a dream being a dream, is nothing but a dream.”

“There is no absolute happiness in human life. Happiness always comes with worry and anxiety,”

  • Reaching the Brink of Life(Đi đến nhân sinh bên cạnh) (2007)

At the age of 96, Yang surprised the world withReaching the Brink of Life,a philosophic work whose title alludes to her husband's collection of essaysMarginalia to Life.[14]Reaching the Brink of Lifeis a self-reckoning that may well be Yang's most personal book. The first half of the book is structured as a self-dialogue about life, death, and the afterlife; the second part contains an assortment of family anecdotes and reading notes—the fragments of a life. What emerges from its pages is not merely the predictable inward turn toward self-consolation of a learned person facing death; in Yang's declaration of faith and her insistence that the afterlife be 'fair' is an affirmation of personal metaphysics in a nation that has long promoted collectivism while discouraging religion and ‘superstition'.[5]

"Body and soul is a twisted. Together with good evil."

Translation work

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See also

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References

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  1. ^A family besieged now beloved.China Daily,17 November 2003. Retrieved 26 May 2016.
  2. ^abcdCary Huang and Oliver Chou (25 May 2016).Yang Jiang, bestselling author who wrote on the pain of living through persecution during Cultural Revolution, dies at 104.South China Morning Post.Retrieved 26 May 2016.
  3. ^abc"Yang Jiang, Chinese writer and translator of 'Don Quixote,' dies at 104".The Washington Post.often spoke French and English to each other throughout their lives in China.
  4. ^Dương giáng đi xong trăm tuổi nhân sinh(in Simplified Chinese).People's Daily.Retrieved26 May2016.
  5. ^abRea, Christopher (June 2011)."Yang Jiang's dương dây Conspicuous Inconspicuousness A Centenary Writer in China's 'Prosperous Age'".China Heritage Quarterly(26).
  6. ^Qin, Amy (26 May 2016)."Yang Jiang Dies at 104; Revered Writer Witnessed China's Cultural Revolution".The New York Times.ISSN0362-4331.Retrieved18 April2017.
  7. ^Li, Naiqing (30 May 2011).Dương giáng trăm năm thục tử ánh nguyệt tuyền thanh(in Chinese).Sina.Retrieved26 May2016.
  8. ^Lévy, André (2000).Dictionnaire de littérature chinoise(in French) (1st ed.). Paris:Presses Universitaires de France.pp. 364–365.ISBN9782130504382.
  9. ^Li-hua Ying,Historical Dictionary of Modern Chinese Literature,The Scarecrow Press, 2010, p. 234.
  10. ^Shapiro, Judith (25 November 1984)."The Re-Education Of A 'Stinking Intellectual'".The New York Times.
  11. ^Li, Hongrui (26 May 2016)."Yang Jiang: A woman's legacy through words".China Daily.Retrieved26 May2016.
  12. ^Dương giáng cùng tiền chung thư(in Simplified Chinese).China Writers Association.28 July 2011.Retrieved26 May2016.
  13. ^Yang, Guang (21 July 2011)."At the margins of life".China Daily.Retrieved27 July2011.
  14. ^ab"Yang Jiang, bestselling author who wrote on the pain of living through persecution during Cultural Revolution, dies at 104".South China Morning Post.Retrieved16 April2017.

Further reading

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Literary works by Yang Jiang in English translation
Studies of Yang Jiang's life and works
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Media related toYang Jiangat Wikimedia Commons

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