Yang Jiang

Yang Jiang (simplified Chinese: 杨绛; traditional Chinese: 楊絳; pinyin: Yáng Jiàng; 17 July 1911 – 25 May 2016), born Yang Jikang (simplified Chinese: 杨季康; traditional Chinese: 楊季康; pinyin: Yáng Jìkāng), was a Chinese playwright, author and translator. She wrote several successful comedies, and was the first Chinese person to produce a complete Chinese version of Don Quixote from the Spanish original.

After graduating from Soochow University in 1932, Yang Jiang enrolled in the graduate school of Tsinghua University where she met her husband Qian Zhongshu. During 1935–1938, they went to Oxford and University of London for further study. At that time, they had their daughter Qian Yuan (錢瑗). They returned to China in 1938. Both Yang and Qian went to academics and made important contributions to the development of Chinese culture. On 25 May 2016, Yang died at the age of 104 at Peking Union Medical College Hospital in Beijing.

Works

• Widow of the scholar-novelist Qian Zhongshu, she wrote a memoir called We Three (我們仨), recalling her husband and her daughter Qian Yuan (錢瑗) (1937–1997), who died of cancer one year before her father's death.
• Another memoir penned by her is Six Chapters from My Life 'Downunder' (幹校六記), a lyrical and humorous record of the difficult times faced by Yang and her husband when they were sent to work on farms in the late '60s and early '70s during the Cultural Revolution. In connection with this memoir, she also wrote Soon to Have Tea (將飲茶), which was published in 1983.
• In 1988, she published her only novel Baptism (洗澡)， which was always connected with Fortress Besieged (圍城), a masterpiece of her husband.
• At the age of 96, she surprised the world with her latest work Reaching the Brink of Life (走到人生邊上), a philosophic work whose title in Chinese clearly alludes to her late husband's collection of essays Marginalia to Life (寫在人生邊上).

Yang also rendered the picaresque novels Lazarillo de Tormes and Alain-René Lesage's Gil Blas into Chinese. She turned 100 in July 2011.