Wen Yuan-ning

WEN Yuan-ning (1900-1984) : educated at the University of Cambridge with B.A. Hons. and LLB, was a well-known professor of English language and literature at Peking University in the 1920s, became editor of the T'ien Hsia Monthly,^[1][2] an English language periodical on Chinese culture published first in Shanghai and then in Hong Kong until 1941 with the fall of Hong Kong to Japanese occupation; during the war years was a member of the Chinese National Legislative Assembly (Li-fa Yuan); and was appointed Ambassador to Greece in 1948 by the Republic of China and served in that role until his recall in 1968 and return and retirement in Taipei where he died.

Wen Yuan-ning was the author of the book "Imperfect Understanding" (Kelly and Walsh,Shanghai, 1935). It is a collection of vignettes of prominent Western-educated Chinese intellectuals of pre-war Republican China.^[3]

Wen Yuan-ning was born in Bangka off Sumatra, formerly of the Dutch East Indies and now Indonesia, of an immigrant Chinese Hakka family with the Hakka family name of OON, instead of WEN. He grew up in Bangka and Singapore and went on to study in England where he registered at Cambridge under the Hakka name of Oon Guan-neng. After his return to China post World War I, he took the mandarin name of Wen Yuan-ning.

References