Yesterday Ms. Yang Jiang, a famous writer and translator, the wife of Qing Zhongshu just celebrated her 101st birthday.

Commented by her husband as “the best wife and most talented woman”, Ms. Yang deserves more than her husband’s praises. Her past 101 years’ life was both remarkably unusual as she accompanied one of the most genius Chinese writers of the 20th century until the end of his life and witnessed all the ups and downs of Chinese nation in 20th century; and simply ordinary as she only served as a wife, a mother, a school teacher in most of her life.

At the age of 24, she followed her newly-married husband to study abroad in London at the expense her own M.A in Qinghua University. In the following 65 years, she took charge of all the house chores, offering the best living conditions she could to her husband with all her heart and soul, hiding her own talents and ambitions in her husband’s shadow without any complaints. She is greatly used to the title “Mrs. Qian” in that it would connect her to her beloved husband and reminds her those happy moments they spent together.

Modest and low-profile as she is, she could never hide her great talents entirely. From 1940s, her playwriting received tremendous praises from critics and great welcome from audience; whereas, her literary composition during that period was only to earn extra money to support her family as her husband was totally focused on his masterpiece City Besieged. Later on, Yang wrote several novels and prose which all won her considerable applauding. Meanwhile, she also displays great gift in translating. Majoring in  English literature in college  and living abroad in London for several years laid solid foundation for her engagement in translating English classics into Chinese language and she devoted herself more than that. Her version of Don Quichotte (from the original Spanish into Chinese) is regarded as the best we ever have.

She has extraordinary strong will. The bereavement over the consecutive death of her most beloved two--her daughter and her husband did not devastate her mentally. The pains and grief she suffered are beyond imagination as her husband and her daughter once meant the whole world to her. After their passing away, Yang abandons herself into literary writing. At the age of 92, she published the book The Three of Us depicting her long and deep missing to her lost family, which moves many readers and four years later, another prose collection Approaching Life Destination of her was released, receiving comments like “ those words reveal a pure and beautiful hear of new-born baby”.