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| Lin Yutang (1895-1976) Chinese writer whose original works and translations of classic Chinese texts became very popular in the West. Lin Yutang was born in southeastern China and his father was a Christian minister. Lin studied at St John's University in Shanghai and later at Harvard. He moved to France and Germany, and got a dregree at Leipzig University; In the beginning of the Twenties he taught English literature at Beijing University. LinYutang was very active in the popularization of classical Chinese literature in the West; he worked to a new method ofromanizing the Chinese, and created an indexing system for Chinese characters. After 1928 he lived mainly in the United States, where his translations of Chinese texts remained popular for many years. His many works represent an attempt to bridge the cultural gap between the East and the West. He was frequently nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His first two books, My Country and My People (1935) and The Importance of Living (1937), written in English in a witty style, brought him international fame. Others include Between Tears and Laughter (1943), The Chinese Theory of Art (1967), and the novels Moment in Peking (1939) and The Vermillion Gate (1953), Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage (1973). He was buried at his home, in Yangmingshan, Taipei, Taiwan, now turned into a museum. |