12 Facts About Wang Chi-chen

Chi-chen Wang was a Chinese-born American literary scholar and translator.

Wang Chi-chen taught as a professor at Columbia University from 1929 until his retirement in 1965.

Wang Chi-chen's father Wang Caiting achieved the Jinshi degree, the highest level of the civil service examinations and was a county magistrate in Guangdong, where Chi-chen lived for several years.

Wang Chi-chen did not study for a higher degree perhaps because, as he later wrote, he was not a "good student".

Wang Chi-chen confessed he was more interested in pursuing girls.

Wang Chi-chen returned to China in 1929 and 1935 to visit his family, which then lived in Shandong.

Wang Chi-chen was in the group that expanded the Columbia Asian studies faculty in the 1930s, in which Wang Chi-chen taught classical language and literature.

Wang Chi-chen expected his students to not only be competent in reading Chinese but fluent and idiomatic English, particularly if they were native speakers.

Wang Chi-chen resigned from her dissertation committee leaving Mills with the impression that he feared he would be in danger of McCarthyite reprisals.

Hsia, Wang Chi-chen began a correspondence with Chen Jo-hsi, a Taiwan author who was living in Vancouver.

Wang Chi-chen had gone from Taiwan to live on the Chinese mainland during the Cultural Revolution and wrote stories frankly describing life there.

Wang Chi-chen was married twice, first to Bliss Kao, and then to Yang Dalai, until his death in 2001.