Ye Jiaying gives a speech at a gathering. [people.com. cn]

Ye Jiaying, a famous scholar of classical literature, has dedicated herself to lecturing college students from Nankai University in north China's Tianjin municipality and other higher educational institutions since she returned to China from Canada in 1979.

Ye, 94, comes from a well-known family with a literary reputation in Beijing. By 15, she could write outstanding poems and even saw them published in the journal History of Chinese Literature.
She graduated from Beijing Furen University (now Beijing Normal University) with the highest score for her year in 1945.
Her mother died of a tumor when she was student. Ye became a mother herself in August 1949 and then followed her husband to settle down in southeast China's Taiwan Province.
However, their life in Taiwan was never easy. Her husband was thrown into jail by then-Kuomintang government, while Ye and her daughter were detained for a while on groundless charges.
After their release, Ye and her daughter were forced to live under the roof of her husband's relatives because they lost their house in the political turmoil. She worked hard to support the family by teaching traditional Chinese literature and poetry at National Taiwan University and other places.
Several years later, Ye and her family moved to Canada and she found a job at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1969.
Ye had to brush up her linguistic skills and often worked till late at night since she was expected to teach her Canadian students in English.
Then another blow came to Ye in 1976 when her daughter and son-in-law both lost their lives in a traffic accident.
Ye later recalled that she often wrote down her memories and how she missed the Chinese mainland and her late family members in a number of poems during her overseas life.
Only until 1974 did Ye go back to Beijing. She wrote an emotional poem to convey her excitement and happiness when the plane eventually landed in the capital city.
Therefore, Ye often said to her students that she was even envious of them because of the current peaceful era. She continued, "It is difficult for young people to understand why I would burst into tears when I came back because there is no chance for them to experience the ups and downs that have happened to me in the past several decades.”
Ye gave up her tenured faculty member in Canada and worked as a teacher at the Department of Chinese Literature in Nankai University in 1979.
Since then, Ye has been engaged in lecturing college students about her unique understanding and profound knowledge of Chinese literature and poetry at several domestic universities, and received high acclaim from them in the process.
"I have been tasked with the mission to pass down classical Chinese poetry to the younger generation since they are so beautiful and valuable,” Ye often explained, speaking about why she has kept on holding lectures well into her 90s.
She even donated all her collections of books and paintings along with personal savings to Nankai University in 2016.
Up till now, Ye is a member of the Royal Society of Canada, a researcher at the Central Research Institute of Culture and History, and head of the Research Center of Classical Chinese Literature at the School of Literature in Nankai University.

Ye Jiaying (L) recites one of her poems at a gathering. [people.com. cn]