Background
Yang was born in a wealthy and highly educated family, in Changsha, Hunan, in February 1923, with her ancestral home in Suzhou, Jiangsu, the daughter of Yuan Changying (袁昌英), a translator, scholar and author who was graduated from University of Edinburgh and University of Paris, and Yang Duanliu (杨端六), a economist who was graduated from Hunan Normal College, Hongwen Academy (宏文学院), Tokyo Zhengze English College (东京正则英语学校).
Career
Yang is a Chinese translator. Yang is most notable for being one of the main translators into Chinese of the works of the English novelists Charlotte Bronte and Emily Brontë. Yang started to publish works in 1943.
After graduating from the Department of Foreign Language, Wuhan University, she attended the Department of English Language and Literature, University of Michigan, earning a Master of Arts in 1948.
When she returned to China, she taught at the Department of Foreign Language, Wuhan University, and soon she was transferred from Wuhan to Beijing where she was appointed an editor of the People"s Literature Publishing House and Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.