As a Chinese writer and literary translator, the life and working experiences of Ye Junjian has displayed a classic example of cultural translation. He serves as a bridge between the past and the present of China as well as between China and the western world.
In 1914, Ye Junjian was born in a remote village in this country, at a time when the monarchy had just been overthrown. During his youth, China was suffering from domestic devastation and had a strong interest in exploring opportunities overseas.
In 1920, Ye Junjian was admitted at Wuhan University. Four years later, the Chinese people's ‘War against Japanese Aggression' broke out. Owing to successive years of tangled warfare among warlords which had already begun in the late 1920s and intense conflicts between the national government headed by Chiang Kai-Shek and the communists pioneers, Ye struggled for the next few years. At one point, before the war, he went to Japan to continue his studies, but was arrested there for 'subversive activities'. In his autobiographical fiction trilogy The Tranquil Mountains, he wrote down this destructive and troubled period.
In 1944, Ye Junjian came to the UK, employed by the Wartime Publicity Department. He published hundreds of speeches and delivered them through BBC. In these speeches he stated the Chinese people's war efforts against the Japanese invaders. After the end of the hostilities, he continued his studies at King's College, Cambridge. During his four years at Cambridge, he steeped himself in literature, associated with leading people in fields of arts, literature and translations, and wrote his first autobiographical fiction in English.
In 1949, after the victory of the Communist Party of China, Ye Junjian returned to his homeland. In the next 30 years, he translated a great number of European books, while enduring further hardship during the Great Cultural Revolution.
In 1978, under China's Opening-Up policy, Ye Junjian was free to travel again and was also able to write more freely. He lived in the period when China rekindled the flame of hope and rebuilt its curiosity towards the outside. In 1999, Ye Junjian passed away, aged 85.
Nowadays, China is opening up once more, sending young people abroad and introducing our culture to the outside world. But China is also importing elements from other advanced cultures, and is reclaiming cultural relics once lost in western museums.
As for what's happening throughout the world, Ye Junjian is a symbolic pioneer. He is a bridge, connecting the most ancient civilization, China, with the west, and back. He is also a profound symbol linking the various important events in the more recent Chinese history, that of the 20th century (the late 1920s to late the 1970s).
(Translated by Yuxuan Zhu, edited by editing group, Diana & Sijia Hu)
