Ye Weiqu (; 6 August 1929 – 11 December 2010) was a Chinese Vietnamese translator and scholar. Ye was a visiting professor at

Waseda University , abbreviated as , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the ''Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō'' by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the school was formally renamed Waseda University in 1902. The university has numerou ...

Gakushuin University is a private university in Mejiro, Toshima Ward, Tokyo. It was re-established after World War II as an affiliate of the Gakushūin School Corporation. The privatized successor to the original Gakushūin University (or "Peers School") was estab ...

and

Ritsumeikan University is a private university in Kyoto, Japan, that traces its origin to 1869. With the Kinugasa Campus (KIC) in Kyoto, and Kyoto Prefecture, the university also has a satellite called Biwako-Kusatsu Campus (BKC) and Osaka-Ibaraki Campus (OIC). Tod ...

. He was among the first few in China who translated the works of

Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese novelist and short story writer whose spare, lyrical, subtly shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal an ...

's into

Chinese language Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the wor ...

Biography

Ye was a Chinese Vietnamese born on Cholon,

French Indo-China French Indochina (previously spelled as French Indo-China),; vi, Đông Dương thuộc Pháp, , lit. 'East Ocean under French Control; km, ឥណ្ឌូចិនបារាំង, ; th, อินโดจีนฝรั่งเศส, ...

on August 6, 1929, with his

ancestral home An ancestral home is the place of origin of one's extended family, particularly the home owned and preserved by the same family for several generations. The term can refer to an individual house or estate, or to a broader geographic area such as a ...

Dongguan Dongguan (; ) is a prefecture-level city in central Guangdong Province, China. An important industrial city in the Pearl River Delta, Dongguan borders the provincial capital of Guangzhou to the north, Huizhou to the northeast, Shenzhen to the s ...

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

. In 1952, Ye went to Beijing from Hong Kong, he graduated from

Peking University Peking University (PKU; ) is a public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education. Peking University was established as the Imperial University of Peking in 1898 when it received its royal charter ...

, majoring in Japanese at the Department of East Language and Literature. After graduation, he was assigned an editor to the

People's Literature Publishing House The People's Literature Publishing House () is a large-scale publishing house in China. It was established in March 1951, and was attached to the (). It is known for scholarly publications, editions of classical Chinese literature, dictionaries, ...

and

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) is a Chinese research institute and think tank. The institution is the premier comprehensive national academic research organization in the People's Republic of China for the study in the fields of ...

. In 1966, the

Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goal ...

was launched by

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...

, Ye and his wife

Tang Yuemei Tang Yuemei (; born 1931) is a Chinese translator of Chinese Vietnamese ethnicity. Tang was a visiting professor at Yokohama City University. She is most notable for being one of the main translators into Chinese of the works of the Japanese nov ...

's whole collection of books was burned by the

Red Guards Red Guards () were a mass student-led paramilitary social movement mobilized and guided by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1966 through 1967, during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, which he had instituted.Teiwes According to a Red Guard lead ...

, the couple were sent to the

May Seventh Cadre Schools The May Seventh Cadre Schools () were Chinese labor camps established during the Cultural Revolution that combined hard agricultural work with the study of Mao Zedong's writings in order to "re-educate" or ''laogai'' (reform through labor) cadres an ...

to work in Henan. In 1976,

Hua Guofeng Hua Guofeng (; born Su Zhu; 16 February 1921 – 20 August 2008), alternatively spelled as Hua Kuo-feng, was a Chinese politician who served as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and Premier of the People's Republic of China. The design ...

and

Ye Jianying Ye Jianying (; 28 April 1897 – 22 October 1986) was a Chinese Communist revolutionary leader and politician, one of the founding Ten Marshals of the People's Republic of China. He was the top military leader in the 1976 coup that overthrew ...

toppled the

Gang of Four The Gang of Four () was a Maoist political faction composed of four Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials. They came to prominence during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) and were later charged with a series of treasonous crimes. The gang ...

, the couple were rehabilitated by

Deng Xiaoping Deng Xiaoping (22 August 1904 – 19 February 1997) was a Chinese revolutionary leader, military commander and statesman who served as the paramount leader of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from December 1978 to November 1989. After CC ...

, at the same time, they started to study

Japanese literature Japanese literature throughout most of its history has been influenced by cultural contact with neighboring Asian literatures, most notably China and its literature. Early texts were often written in pure Classical Chinese or , a Chinese-Japanes ...

. Ye died of

heart disease Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a class of diseases that involve the heart or blood vessels. CVD includes coronary artery diseases (CAD) such as angina and myocardial infarction (commonly known as a heart attack). Other CVDs include stroke, hea ...

at Chuiyangliu Hospital, in Beijing, on December 11, 2010.

Works

* ''The History of Japanese Culture'' () * ''The History of Japanese Literature'' () * () * ''Mono no aware and Tacit consciousness: Japanese Aesthetical Sense'' () * ''The Biography of Kawabata Yasunari'' () * ''The Biography of Jun'ichirō Tanizaki'' () * '' Kanikosen'' (

Takiji Kobayashi was a Japanese writer of proletarian literature. He is best known for his short novel '' Kanikōsen'', or ''Crab Cannery Ship'', published in 1929. It tells the story of the hard life of cannery workers, fishermen and seamen on board a cannery ...

) () * ''

Snow Country is a novel by the Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata. The novel is considered a classic work of Japanese literature and was among the three novels the Nobel Committee cited in 1968, when Kawabata was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Writ ...

'' (

) () * ''

Thousand Cranes is a novel by Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata which first appeared in serialised form between 1949 and 1951 and was published as a book in 1952. Plot The novel consists of five chapters, titled "Thousand Cranes", "The Grove in the Evening Sun" ...

'' (Yasunari Kawabata) () * ''

The Dancing Girl of Izu is a novel by Japanese writer and Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata first published in 1926. Plot The narrator, a twenty-year-old student from Tokyo, travels the Izu Peninsula during the last days of the summer holidays, a journey which h ...

'' (Yasunari Kawabata) ()

Awards

Chinese Translation Association The Translators Association of China (TAC) () is a national association for translation studies in China. Founded in the 1980s TAC was part of the academic response to the national Economic Reform in 1978. The incumbent President of TAC's 6th Ex ...

– Competent Translator (2004)

Personal life

In 1956, Ye married his middle school sweetheart

, also a translator, in Beijing.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ye, Weiqu 1929 births 2010 deaths People from Ho Chi Minh City Peking University alumni Japanese–Chinese translators Hoa people Vietnamese emigrants to China 20th-century Chinese translators 21st-century Chinese translators