18 Facts About Yan Fu

Yan Fu was a Chinese military officer, newspaper editor, translator, and writer.

Yan Fu is most known for introducing Western ideas to China during the late 19th century.

On January 8,1854, Yan Fu was born in what is modern-day Fuzhou, Fujian Province to a respectable scholar-gentry family in the trade of Chinese medicine.

Yan Fu first served aboard the training ship Jianwei and later on the battlecruiser Yangwu.

Yan Fu is celebrated for his translations, including Thomas Huxley's Evolution and Ethics, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, John Stuart Mill's On Liberty and Herbert Spencer's Study of Sociology.

Yan Fu critiqued the ideas of Darwin and others, offering his own interpretations.

Yan Fu served as an editor of the newspaper Guowen Bao.

Yan Fu became politically active, and in 1895, he was involved in the Gongche Shangshu movement, which opposed the Treaty of Shimonoseki ending the First Sino-Japanese War.

Yan Fu became a royalist and conservative who supported Yuan Shikai and Zhang Xun to proclaim emperor or restoration in his later life.

Yan Fu participated in the foundation of Chouanhui, an organization that supported restoring monarchy.

Yan Fu laughed at "New Literature Revolutionaries" such as Hu Shih.

On October 27,1921, after returning to his home in Fuzhou only a year earlier to recuperate from his recurring asthma, Yan Fu died at the age of 67.

Yan Fu stated in the preface to his translation of Evolution and Ethics that "there are three difficulties in translation: faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance".

Yan Fu did not set them as general standards for translation and did not say that they were independent of each other.

Yan Fu was one of the most influential scholars of his generation as he worked to introduce Western social, economic and political ideas to China.

Yan Fu was one of the first scholars to have personal experiences in Western culture, whereas many prior scholars were students in Japan who then translated Western works from Japanese to Chinese.

Yan Fu played an important role in the standardization of science terminology in China during his time serving as the Head of the State Terminology Bureau.

Later, from 1898 to 1909, Yan Fu went on to translate the following major works of Western liberal thought:.