Education
He went to Harbin as a teenager to study English, and while there was deeply influenced by Western literature. Later he entered the Harbin University of Law and Political Science, and at the same time studied classical Chinese literature and wrote poetry in the traditional style. This interlude in Harbin was interrupted in 1931 with the Japanese takeover of Manchuria. Like many other intellectuals, Yang, then about 18 fled to Shanghai. Again like many of the intelligentsia, he went from Shanghai to Yenan after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in mid-1937. After this time, according to the Communist account, he ‘‘began his creative efforts,” his first work being The Spur of the Pamirs' a novel about the resistance to the Japanese. One of his short stories of this period, “Purge by Fire,” with a setting in his native Shantung, appeared in an anthology of Chinese short stories published in the United States in 1947.
Career
In the fall of 1939 Yang joined the Eighth Route Army, serving in Shansi and Hopeh as a cultural worker and propagandist. In 1943 at the age of 30, he was sent back to Yenan, where he spent the next three years studying at the Central Party School, the very important institute devoted to training higher Party cadres. During the civil war of the late 1940's, Yang was a war correspondent and continued writing novels and short stories based on his personal experiences. He was in Peking after the fall of the city to the Communists in 1949, and in July of that year attended the All-China Congress of Literary and Art Workers. During the life of the congress he served on two ad hoc bodies, he headed the News Section and was a member of a “Novel Committee” (apparently a committee to suggest work to novelists attending the congress). Out of this huge and important congress grew the All-China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, plus a number of affiliated organizations created immediately after the congress closed. One of these was the All-China Association of Literary Workers, to which Yang was elected as an alternate member of the Executive Committee. Four years later, when another congress was held, the name was changed to the Union of Chinese Writers (October 1953) and Yang was elevated to full membership on the Executive Committee.
Yang spent the 1949-50 period working on a novel describing the exploits of the PLA Railway Engineering Corps. Then, immediately after the entry of the “Chinese People’s Volunteers” into the Korean War (October 1950), he went to North Korea, serving there as a cultural and propaganda worker, as well as continuing his work as a novelist. He apparently spent most of the war in Korea, and out of this experience came what is probably his most famous novel, A Thousand Miles of Lovely Land. Yang was back in Peking by mid-1953, and in late July, identified as a “popular writer,” he left for Bucharest to attend the Communist-dominated Fourth World Youth Festival of Youth and Students (August-September).
Since his return from Korea to China in 1953, Yang has devoted almost all his time to the promotion of Chinese ties with the Afro- Asian world. One of the first major efforts of the Chinese in this field began in 1955 when the Chinese were leading participants in the “Asian Countries Conference” held in New Delhi in April 1955 just prior to the more famous Afro-Asian (Bandung) Conference in Indonesia. Among other things, the conference decided to set up permanent “liaison machinery” and urged each of the 17 attending nations to form national committees. In February 1956 the Chinese established the Asian Solidarity Committee of China. Although Yang served on the preparatory committee for this new organization, he was not named to the permanent Committee. However, in retrospect, it is clear that he was operating behind the scenes. In December 1957-January 1958, the first Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference was held in Cairo, and one of the decisions taken was to establish a Permanent Secretariat there. In April 1958, Yang was designated as the first Chinese delegate to the Secretariat and for the next year or so spent most of his time in Cairo. He was succeeded by Chu Tzu-ch by September 1959. In the meantime, the Asian Solidarity Committee of China, reflecting the rapid emergence of African nations, was renamed the Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee of China in May 1958 and two months later was reorganized and expanded. Yang was added to the committee and was also named as one of the deputy secretaries- general, positions he retains.
In addition to the positions already described above, Yang is known to hold at least another seven; predictably, all are in the field of fostering closer relations with foreign countries. When the China Peace Committee was reorganized in July 1958, he was added to the National Conference. In February 1958, at the time of the formation of the China-United Arab Republic Friendship Association, he was named to the Council of this organization. He became a Standing Committee member of both the China-Latin America Friendship Association and the China- Africa People’s Friendship Association from the dates of their formation (March 1960 and April 1960, respectively) and was also named to the Council of the China-Japan Friendship Association when it was formed in October 1963. In November 1964, he was identified as a vice-president of the Peking chapter of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association. From 1959 he has served in the CPPCC, holding membership on the Third National Committee (April 1959-December 1964) and on the Fourth National Committee, which first met in December 1964-January 1965, he has served in the CPPCC as a representative of “organizations for peaceful and friendly relations witii foreign countries.”
Politics
In the meantime, Yang was also becoming deeply involved in another facet of Afro-Asian cooperation: liaison with other writers in Africa and Asia. This was first given organizational expression in July 1956 when he went to New Delhi for the preparatory meetings for the first Asian Writers’ Conference. In December of that year the then minister of Culture, Shen Yenping (Mao Tun), led a Chinese delegation to the first Asian Writers’ Conference in New Delhi, accompanied by Yang, who served as secretary-general of the group (often, in Chinese delegations, the key man). Yang did not return with the delegation to Peking but remained briefly in India and then in late January 1957 accompanied an Indian writer on a good-will mission to Egypt. The next Writers1 Conference was held in Tashkent, the USSR, in October 1958, renamed from “Asian” to “Afro-Asian Writers’ Conference.”
Yang attended the meeting, traveling from Cairo where he was then stationed. One of the decisions taken at this large-scale meeting was to establish a Permanent Bureau of Afro-Asian Writers in Colombo, Ceylon. In pursuance of this decision, the Chinese formed (April 1959) a China Committee for Liaison with the Permanent Bureau, naming Yang to the really effective post: the secretary- generalship, another post he continues to hold. Since assuming this position, he has taken five trips directly in connection with the bureau. He attended a January 1961 meeting of the bureau in Colombo, an “emergency meeting” of the organization in Tokyo in March-April 1961, and the second Afro-Asian Writers1 Conference (AAWC) in Cairo in February 1962. In July 1963 he led a writers’ delegation to meetings of the Permanent Bureau and to the Executive Committee of the AAWC in Indonesia, and in April 1964 he was reported in Ghana as a member of a Permanent Bureau delegation touring Africa. (The group subsequently toured Brazzaville, the Congo, Zanzibar, Tanganyika, and the United Arab Republic, but it is not known if Yang remained with the delegation.) This work in international liaison among writers derives from his role within the Union of Chinese Writers. Among the various sub-committees of the union is the Foreign Literature Committee, of which Yang was a vice-chairman from February 1955 and chairman by September 1960.
