Yang Kuan, styled Kuanzheng, was a Chinese historian specializing in pre-Qin dynasty Chinese history.
14 Facts About Yang Kuan
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Yang Kuan is considered an authority of the Warring States period, and his History of the Warring States, first published in 1955, remains the most authoritative treatment of the subject.
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Yang Kuan was born in Qingpu County, Jiangsu Province in 1914.
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Yang Kuan attended the prestigious Suzhou High School, whose teachers included famous scholars Lu Shuxiang and Ch'ien Mu, one of the greatest historians of modern China.
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In 1939, just three years after graduating from college, Yang Kuan was invited by Gu Jiegang, founder of the Doubting Antiquity School, to contribute to Gu's influential compilation Debates on Ancient History.
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Yang Kuan is generally considered a member of the Doubting Antiquity School, as he argued that the pre-Xia dynasty history recorded in ancient texts was "historization" of prehistoric mythology, a position that is widely accepted by today's historians.
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Yang Kuan further differed from Gu in that he believed that the extant history of the Xia dynasty was pure mythology.
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In 1946 Yang Kuan was appointed curator of Shanghai Museum, a position he continued to hold after the Communist People's Republic of China replaced the Republic of China in 1949.
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Yang Kuan published his most influential work, History of the Warring States, in 1955.
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Yang Kuan made further revisions in the third edition of 1985.
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In total Yang Kuan published more than a dozen books and 225 essays.
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In 1984 Yang Kuan moved to the United States, settling in Miami, Florida.
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Yang Kuan continued to write in the US, and published an autobiography.
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Yang Kuan died in Miami on September 1,2005, aged 91.