Yuan Gao

Background

Yuan Gao was born on April 2, 1952, in Yizheng, Jiangsu, China. He is the son of Shangui and Jinrong (Fu) Gao.

Education

Gao received his education at Tianjin Institute of Engineering, graduating from it with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 1975. He then obtained his master's degree in journalism from Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1981. Three years later, Gao graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a Master of Jurisprudence degree and in 1987 he received his Master of Business Administration degree from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Career

Gao Yuan was firstly an engineer in a foundry workshop, specializing in engine body casting, before he entered the world of journalism as a feature writer for the English-language China Daily in Beijing, China, and later for Asia Cable in Oregon as a legal and political correspondent.

In 1982, as a Stanford University graduate student settled in the U.S. with an American wife, and while earning his master’s degree in business and then in journalism, he began to write a detailed account of what has come to be known as the Ten Years of Calamity. That is, the Chinese Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, that was promoted by Chairman Mao’s call to enlist schoolchildren as Red Guards. Yuan called the book Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution.

Yuan currently works as a freelance writer, living with his family in Stanford, California.

Achievements

• Gao Yuan, who writes mostly under the pseudonym Hai Lan, is best known as the author of the autobiographical work Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution. His other works include Lure the Tiger Out of the Mountains: The Thirty-Six Stratagems of Ancient China and Freedom From Passions in Augustine (Religions and Discourse). He is also a contributor to periodicals, including the Baltimore Sun, San Jose Mercury, and the San Francisco Examiner.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution

    (Born Red is an artistically wrought personal account, wri...)

    1987
  • Freedom From Passions in Augustine (Religions and Discourse)

    (This book presents the first systematic study of Augustin...)

    2017
  • Don't Be Poor-quality Hard Worker: 11 Key Words to Have a High-quality Life (Chinese Edition)

    (As the age of Internet is setting the social pace faster ...)

    2017
  • Lure the tiger out of the mountains: The thirty-six stratagems of ancient China 1991

Interests

• Table tennis, tennis, hiking, photography, calligraphy

Connections

Gao married Judy Potumbaum on December 24, 1980. The couple has 2 children: Nathaniel Taihang and Gabriel Tianjiao.

Father:

Shangui Gao

Mother:

Jinrong (Fu) Gao

Wife:

Judy Potumbaum

Son:

Nathaniel Taihang Gao

Daughter:

Gabriel Tianjiao Gao