Yeh Sheng-t'ao (1894-), a writer of stories and an essayist noted for his high literary standards. He was a founding member of the VVen-hsüeh yen-chiu hui (Literary Research Society), which for the period of 1921-28 dictated through its influential Hsiao-shuo yüeh-pao [short story magazine] the major trends of modern Chinese literature. Yeh was also notable as an advocate of educational reform, and as an editor. In the People's Republic of China he became a high cultural official, his most important post being that of vice minister of education. Born in Soochow to a rent collector, Yeh Sheng-t'ao was originally called Yeh Shao-chün, a name which he continued to use publicly until the end of the Second World War. When Yeh was six, his father sent him to an oldfashioned primary school. Six years later, Yeh entered the Western-style Soochow Middle School, where he majored in Western languages and had for a classmate and friend Ku Chiehkang (q.v.), later famous as a historian. Yeh was graduated from this school in 1911, the year of the republican revolution. Financial difficulties prevented further formal study, and Yeh, much against his will, turned to primaryschool teaching as a profession. First in Shanghai and subsequently in Soochow, Yeh taught for ten years in various schools, and these ten years were crucial for his subsequent development as a writer. He acquired a deep sympathy for the plight of young children caught up and sometimes broken in the tyrannical and insensitive school system of the time as well as for the impoverished intellectuals like himself who staffed the schools and who slowly gave up their youthful ambitions as family cares and school routine increasingly came to constitute the substance of their daily lives. Yeh, however, had no intention of abandoning his own ambition to be a writer, and during his years as a teacher, he determined to use his talents in defense of the weak. Ku Chieh-kang gave him unflagging encouragement. As early as 1914, Yeh published a story called "Poverty," written in classical Chinese, which described a young boy's filial piety in the face of extreme hardship.
Although Yeh had discovered his theme, it was several years before he found an appropriate means of expressing it. In 1917 Ch'en Tu-hsiu and Hu Shih (qq.v.) sounded the battle cry of what was to become a literary revolution by publicly demanding emancipation from classical literary values and styles of thought through the use of pai-hua [the vernacular] for literary purposes and the realistic depiction of contemporary society. In May 1919 there began the even more momentous May Fourth Movement. Caught up in this atmosphere of reformist zeal, Yeh began writing exclusively in pai-hua. At first he wrote only essays, mostly for the progressive Peking journal Hsin-ch'ao [new tides], but he soon began to contribute stories as well. In November 1920 Yeh joined with Chou Tso-jen, Mao Tun (Shen Yen-ping), Cheng Chen-to, Hsü Ti-shan (qq.v.), Wang T'ung-ch'ao and several others to form the Wen-hsüeh yen-chiu hui (Literary Research Society) with the threefold mission of introducing European and American literature to the Chinese public, evaluating traditional Chinese literature in the light of the standards of modern literary criticism, and creating a modern pai-hua literature responsive to China's revolutionary needs. In January 1921 the society obtained control of Hsiao-shuo yüeh-pao [short story magazine], in which Yeh was to publish some of his most notable stories.
During the years from 1921 to 1937 Yeh produced six collections of short stories — Ko-mo [misunderstanding], of 1922; Huo-tsai [conflagration], of 1923; Hsien-hsia [under the line], of 1925; Ch'eng-chung [in the city], of 1926; Wei-yen chi [sans ennui], of 1928; and Ssu-san chi [at forty-three], of 1936. In addition, in 1927 he published Tao-ts'ao-jen [the scarecrow], a collection of children's stories, and in 1930 he completed a novel, Ni Huan-chih [schoolmaster Xi Huan-chih]. Focusing on the passing scene in China of the 1930's, Yeh wrote as a critical realist, feeling compelled, in his own words, "to give 'a critical onceover' to those aspects of society which I found unsatisfactory or displeasing." Yeh often chose the schoolroom as the setting for stories and educational reform as the theme, as, for example, in the story called "I erh" [adopted son], where the cruel suppression of a young student's natural talent for painting is poignantly depicted. In other stories he satirized current thought and practice, gently attacked traditional values, or took a stand against social evils. His "Ku-tu" [solitude] ranks with the "K'ung I-chi" of Lu Hsün (Chou Shu-jen, q.v.) as a probing psychological study of the "marginal man" in traditional society. His "To shou-le san-wutou" [richer by three or five pecks] is one of his few stories about peasants and one of the few in the literature which captures in a few pages the helpless plight of the Chinese peasantry, to whom even a bumper crop meant no improvement of their lot. "Ch'iu" [autumn] exhibited another facet of Yeh's talent, his capacity to understand and portray female psychology. Often, however, Yeh pointed his pen at less obvious social blemishes and depicted the elements of futility and despair in the grey lives of the dwellers in provincial cities and of petty intellectuals. A typical Yeh hero is the impoverished middle school or college graduate who is dissatisfied with his own capacity for action. A full-length portrait of such a type was offered in Yeh's novel, Ni Huan-chih; and in a subsequent short story, "Ying-wen chiaoshou" [the professor of English], this essence was further distilled. The "professor of English" is a Harvard-trained student who has worked hard in the cause of the revolution and who suffers a nervous breakdown as a result of the 1927 massacre of the Communists. When the narrator in the story encounters him, he has taken a job teaching freshman English in a backwater college, and he now devotes most of his time to Buddhist ritual and to preaching pacificism. This narrator's judgment is harsh, but Yeh's gently ironic and sympathetic treatment of the professor suggests that, like him, Yeh had doubts about the possibility of meaningful action. Like the professor, too, Yeh was a devotee of Buddhism, which he had studied under the guidance of the eminent monk Hung-i (Li Shu-t'ung, q.v.), in the company of the distinguished artist Feng Tzu-k'ai (q.v.). As a technician, Yeh was capable of ingenious plot construction, but he excelled at the plotless "mood piece." These moods were generally ones of loneliness, anxiety, and fear. His writing had its optimistic side, too, and certain of his stories describe with simple charm the everyday life of ordinary families. Such scenes are probably reflections of his own family life, which was contented and peaceful. Displaying a constant devotion to the perfecting of his craft, Yeh during his years of greatest activity set high standards for the further development of the modern Chinese short story.
Throughout this period, Yeh made secondary careers of teaching and editing. Between 1921 and 1923 he lectured on Chinese literature at a number of middle schools and colleges in Woosung, Hangchow, and Peking. In 1923 he moved to Shanghai, where he remained until 1937. In addition to writing and teaching at Shanghai, he served on the editorial staff of the Commercial Press, edited the Fu-nü tsa-chih [women's magazine] and the Chung-hsueh-sheng [middle school student], and edited a series of secondary school textbooks on literature and rhetoric.
In 1936 Yeh joined a newly formed anti- Japanese literary group which also included Lu Hsün, Kuo Mo-jo, and Mao Tun. When the Sino-Japanese war began in 1937, Yeh moved to Szechwan, where he was employed as an editor at the K'ai-ming Book Company. In 1941 Yeh became professor of Chinese at Wuhan University, then located in Loshan, Szechwan. There, in an atmosphere charged with political conflict, he maintained a position of detachment, identifying himself with neither the Nationalist nor the Communist cause. A soft-spoken man with a heavy Soochow accent, Yeh seems to have been respected by both sides for his scholarship, his abilities, and his modest and unassuming manner. A volume of miscellaneous writings Hsi-ch'uan-chi [western Szechwan], published in 1945, commemorated his wartime experiences. Much of the book was devoted to essays, in which Yeh discussed a variety of topics, including education, literary criticism, and the war situation, but the book also contained several patriotic short stories. Both the essays and stories, however, were laced with sharp criticisms of the National Government.
At war's end, Yeh returned to Shanghai, where he continued to work for the K'ai-ming Book Company. When the North China People's Government was formally established in August 1948, Yeh was named director of the education committee bureau for examining and editing textbooks. After the People's Republic of China was established, he received a number of similar appointments, including membership on the executive committee of the Union of Chinese Writers in 1953, and appointment in 1954 and 1959 as a delegate from Kiangsu to the National People's Congress. In October 1954 he became vice minister of education in the Central People's Government. He was a delegate to the Asian Writers' Congress in 1956 and joined a Scientific Planning Committee group studying classical texts. After 1949 Yeh wrote little fiction. With Communist accession to power, his role became one of confirming and supporting the cultural policies of the new regime. Collections of Yeh's works continued to appear after 1949. In 1951 he published Yeh Sheng-t'ao hsuan-chi [an anthology of Yeh Sheng-t'ao], and in 1958 there appeared y^A Sheng-Vao wen-chi [collected essays of Yeh Sheng-t'ao].
Yeh Sheng-t'ao married Hu Mo-lin in 1916. They had three children.
