1. Yang Lien-sheng was the first full-time historian of China at Harvard and a prolific scholar specializing in China's economic history.
13 Facts About Yang Lien-sheng
1. 2.
Yang Lien-sheng entered Tsinghua University in 1933 and studied in the department of economics, graduating in 1937.
3.
Yang Lien-sheng nonetheless studied with the eminent historian Chen Yinke, who supervised his thesis.
4.
Yang Lien-sheng benefited from instruction in the Japanese language from Qian Daosun, whom Yang Lien-sheng later scorned for becoming a puppet administrator for the Japanese after 1938.
5.
Gardner became a professor at Harvard, and helped Yang Lien-sheng to enroll there, and was especially helpful to Yang Lien-sheng after he arrived.
6.
Yang Lien-sheng taught many graduate students who went on to careers in the field, including Yu Ying-shih, Kao Yu-kung, Chang Fu-mei, Chang Chun-shu, and Rulan Chao Pian.
7.
Yang Lien-sheng's first book, Money and Credit in China was a slim volume of little over 100 pages, but provided the foundation for research by many scholars because it clarified some 300 basic terms, put trends in chronological order, and put these trends against the political and military historical background.
8.
Yang Lien-sheng's diaries reveal that in the 1950s he felt doubtful of many foreign scholars, wary of Fairbank's political skills and Benjamin Schwartz's generalizations.
9.
Yang Lien-sheng saw his mother, traveled extensively, reunited with a number of old colleagues and met younger scholars.
10.
Yang Lien-sheng was struck by their isolation from world scholarship, however,.
11.
Yang Lien-sheng worked very hard to maintain relations with old friends in Taiwan and, after relations with the People's Republic resumed, with scholars there.
12.
Yang Lien-sheng began to suffer bouts of serious depression in the 1950s, and even attempted suicide.
13.
Yang Lien-sheng died at his home in Arlington, Massachusetts, in his sleep on November 16,1990.