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Ye Shengtao

Ye Shengtao
Traditional Chinese葉聖陶
Simplified Chinese叶圣陶
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinYè Shèngtáo
Wade–GilesYeh Sheng-t'ao

Ye Shengtao (28 October 1894 – 16 February 1988) also known as Ye Shaojun, was a Chinese writer, journalist, educator, publisher and politician. He was a founder of the Association for Literary Studies (文學研究會), the first literature association during the May Fourth Movement in China. He served as the Vice-Minister of Culture of the People's Republic of China.

Throughout his life, he was dedicated to publishing and language education. He subscribed to the philosophy that "Literature is for Life" (文學為人生).

Educational and journalistic ideologies

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Literature is for life (文學為人生)

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Ye was passionate in reflecting the real life in his works:

In retrospect, I seem never to have written about anything of which I had only vague or hazy knowledge. In other words, I cannot write anything by merely imagining it, though I do not banish the element of fancy. I lived in cities, towns and villages, and I wrote what I had observed there. As a teacher, I knew something about life in educational circles and I wrote about that. In a rather elementary and superficial way I watched the gradual development of the Chinese Revolution and I wrote about that too.

— Hsia, C.T., A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, op. cit., p.59.

Contribution to literature

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Ye discovered that many people in the New China were selfish, apathetic, hypocritical and conservative. People gave up their values in exchange for a stable life. Ye's works shared a sense of irony. He expressed his discontent in a bid to arouse the awareness of the public towards these social weaknesses. Ye was not only writing stories, but also reporting the fallacies in society. His writings were not only for leisure but feeding the rest by knowing and reflecting the reality, "...the basic requirement for writing fiction is a pair of penetrating and observant[clarification needed] eyes and my eyes are not penetrating enough...Of course, it is not necessary to train one's eyes just for the sake of writing but trained eyes do, in reality, nourish life." (Ye Shengtao, 'Guoqu Suitan', op. cit., p. 46.)

Children's literature: A mind training for the young

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Ye's first academic essay was about children's literature, called Children's Concept (兒童之觀念), criticizing how feudalism affected children's lives in China.

In fact, Ye was the first writer who created fairy tales in the 1920s. His writing The Scarecrow (Dào cǎo rén 《稻草人》) was published in 1923. This children's reading was very popular among numerous youngsters. Another 'fairy tale was "A Stone Figure of an Ancient Hero". (Gǔdāi yīngxióng de shíxiàng 《古代英雄的石像》) This story was about a stone which had been sculpted into a hero statue. The message behind this easy-to-read story was to ridicule the authorities who were arrogant and insensitive to his people.

Works

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Literature

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Journalism

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Ye Shengtao Memorial Hall

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Ye Shengtao Memorial Park in Luzhi town

Ye Shengtao Memorial Hall is located at the former site of The 5th High School where Ye Shengtao taught from 1917 to 1922. It is located beside the Baosheng Temple in Luzhi township, Wuzhong district of Suzhou city.

Further reading

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Portrait

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