White Tiger: An Autobiography of Yang Xianyi

by Yang Xianyi

It all began with a dream. A young woman saw a white tiger leap into her lap. It was both auspicious and unlucky -- her son, the fortune-teller said, would grow up with no brothers, and his father's health would be endangered by his birth. That son, however, would have a distinguished career, after going through many misfortunes and dangers. The dream was prophetic. The child was his mother's only male child and his father died of illness when the boy was only five. He grew up during the wartime and period of political turmoil in China, passing through many troubles, and he has had a very distinguished career. He is Yang Xianyi, renowned scholar, translator and interpreter of Chinese and Western literature. This delightful memoir of Yang Xianyi gives a candid and entertaining account of himself as a lighthearted and mischievous young man who immersed himself in the learning of European culture, ancient and modern, when he studied at Oxford in the 1930s. But it is also the illuminating self-portrait of a deeply patriotic intellectual living in a China under the throes of change, giving rare insight into the survival of a courageous, witty and principled individual during the harsh century of Chinese liberation.

328 pages, Paperback

First published March 19, 2002

Reviews

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yang Xianyi was one of the most important people in my life from the time I met him through Geremie Barmé at the start of the 1980s in Beijing. I wrote about my memories of him and his wife Gladys in the online China Heritage Quarterly, which devoted an entire issue (March 2011) to this remarkable man. Below is the link to my essay but I encourage you to peruse the other tributes and recollections as well. Vale Xianyi. I miss you.

http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org...

(ps and thank you, Brendan O'Kane, for reminding me to add this book to my shelves)

[Rui Feng · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prisoners were treated with great contempt, as lower forms of life, but the guards never dared to apply torture. It was against the rules.

Prisoners would quarrel amongst themselves. When they came to blows and caused a commotion, the guard outside would come in and stop them. Sometimes the younger hooligans would bully and make fun of some silly old men who they disliked. There was an old Chinese Catholic, over sixty, who sometimes would mutter prayers and sing to himself the "Ave Maria", and this got on their nerves. Then the young hooligans would throw bedding over his head and beat him up. They would not beat him too viciously or cause him any harm, because he was too old and frail; but then afterwards the old man would sing to himself the "Ave Maria" again. I think that old Catholic was later released. The young hooligans never had any trouble with me. They all liked and respected me, and thought of me as their teacher. They asked me to teach them Chinese poetry and some English to while away their time, .... (p. 245)

What does this tell?

[Inpul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uncensored edition is more shattering.