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Biography of Yen Fu
Name: Yen Fu
Birth Date: 1853
Death Date: 1921
Place of Birth: Fukien Province, China
Nationality: Chinese
Gender: Male
Occupations: scholar, translator
Yen Fu
Yen Fu (1853-1921) was a Chinese translator and scholar. His translations and annotations were enormously influential in introducing European thought regarding political theory and sociology to China.Born in Fukien Province to a scholar-gentry family, Yen Fu was early exposed to China's traditional learning. This education, which would have led to competition in the civil service examinations and an official career, was aborted when his father died in 1866, leaving the family in straitened circumstances. Young Yen then continued his education as a student in the school of the Foochow Shipyard. There he learned English and studied Western science. He also traveled extensively, visiting Singapore and Japan, and in 1877 went to England, where he studied at the Greenwich Naval College. Thus at the age of 26 he was, among Chinese, one of the best-informed about the Western world.Throughout most of the ensuing years, until 1906, Yen served as superintendent of the Tientsin Naval …showed first 150 words…
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…showed last 150 words…the Manchu dynasty in 1912. After the revolution, he progressively retreated from the "radical" ideas of his earlier years. He lent his reputation and advice to the unsavory regime of Yüan Shih-k'ai. And, as a result of the butchery of World War I, Yen became utterly disillusioned with the West and concluded that the nondynamic values of traditional China were of greater benefit to human welfare than were the Promethean drives of the Europeans. He died in 1921, completely pessimistic regarding the effects of historical evolution on China. Further Reading The only study of Yen Fu in English is Benjamin I. Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (1964). This work is an intellectual biography that treats Yen's life only sketchily; it does, however, offer deep insights into the nature of the cultural conflicts that occurred when China was confronted with the challenge of the West.
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