The Brave In The Current

Lien-sheng Yang(1914—1990)is a famous sinologist,historian and literature in the latter half of 20th century.He graduated from the Department of Economics of Tsinghua University,while he showed special preference to literature and history specially.At the invitation of Charles Sidney Gardne in 1940,he went to study in the United States.After graduating,he stayed at Harvard University and started his 33-year teaching career.He dedicated his whole life to the study of Sinology,and made an outstanding contributions to the cultural communication between China and America.He was praised as "the oversea medium of Chinese culture" by Ying-shih Yu.Lien-sheng Yang’s research involves many fields,such as literature,linguistics.history and so on.As a Chinese-American scholar,he has been working to change mistakes of Sinology,to introduce the positive and beneficial parts of Chinese historical research into the western academic circle and to combine them with the social science methods in Sinology research,which injected a new strength into the development of American Sinology.In addition,Lien-sheng Yang,a self-professed watchdog of sinologist,has always reviewed the Chinese cultural discourses of European and American academics with a rigorous academic attitude.He has written dozens of book reviews,which not only embody his knowledge of the history and literature,but also show his cross-domain concepts of history and economy.This kind of book review can be described as an example of academic writing.Besides the research of Sinology,Lien-sheng Yang trained scholars such as Ying-shih Yu,Du Weiming,and Zhao Rulan by many kinds of ways.He added a new element of Chinese traditional culture into American sinology with his profound knowledge of Chinese.It can be said that Lien-sheng Yang is an academic bridge who spreads the culture horizontally to other scholars and then vertically pass on to the next generation.