On August 22, 1895, Lin Yutang was born in Banzai Town, Pinghe County, Zhangzhou Prefecture, Fujian Province. His father, Lin Zhicheng, was a Protestant pastor and had nine children.
In 1912, Lin Yutang studied English at St. John’s University in Shanghai and received a bachelor’s degree in 1916. After graduation, he taught in the English Department of National Tsinghua University. In 1919, he went to Harvard University to study literature and received a master’s degree in comparative literature in 1921. He then went to the YMCA in France. In the same year, he went to Germany to study linguistics, first at the University of Jena, and later at the University of Leipzig, where he studied under Kong Haogu and received his doctorate degree from the university in 1923 with his doctoral thesis “Ancient Chinese Phonetics (Altchinesische Lautlehre)”. In 1920, he married Ms. Liao Cuifeng, who was born into a wealthy Christian family. The two were together throughout their lives.
He returned to China in 1923 and became a professor and head of the English Department at Peking University. After 1924, he became one of the main contributors to Yusi. In 1926, he became the Dean of Academic Affairs at Beijing Women’s Normal University. In the same year, he went to National Xiamen University to serve as the Dean of the School of Arts. In 1927, he went to Wuhan to serve as secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China. In the following years, he founded several literary magazines, advocating essays that were “self-centered and leisurely in style”, which had a profound impact on the subsequent literary world. In May 1924, the English word “humor” was translated into “幽默”. Some people say that this is the first appearance of the Chinese word “幽默”. In fact, this is not the case. This is just the first time that humor in English was translated into “幽默” in Chinese.
In the 1930s, the “Kaiming English Reader” compiled by Lin Yutang, together with the “Junior and Senior High School Geography” compiled by Zhang Qiyun and the “Junior and Senior High School Physics” textbooks compiled by Dai Yungui, became the common textbooks in schools across the country. After 1935, he wrote works in English in the United States, including My Country and My People (1935), Moment in Peking (1939), and The Storm of Life (1941). “My Country and My People” introduces and translates China’s traditional thoughts, philosophy, culture and art, and narrates the development of Chinese society and the character and spirit of the Chinese nation. It is an important work for contemporary Europeans and Americans to understand Chinese culture. Many of his works have been translated into other languages and are popular in various countries. “The Art of Living” is the work with the most translations and the widest sales among all his works. In 1944, he went to Chongqing to give lectures. In 1947, Lin Yutang was appointed Director of Fine Arts and Literature of UNESCO; later he went to Paris to write the novel “Chinatown Family”.
In 1948 he returned to the United States to pursue writing. In 1954, when Nanyang University was being established in Singapore, he was hired as the first president. However, due to funding and other issues, he had disagreements with the Nanyang University Board of Directors. He resigned before the university opened and took the compensation from Mr. Tan Lark Sye and returned to the United States. This incident also led to criticism that Lin Yutang’s integrity was lost in his later years.
In view of the fact that Chinese character search technology was not well developed at that time, the academic community was generally dissatisfied with the radical search method of the Kangxi Dictionary, so he devoted all his resources to the study of Chinese character search methods, and went through the “Chinese character index system”, “Chinese character number index method”, The “Guoyin Xinyun Chinese Typewriter”, “Last-stroke Chinese Typewriter”, “Upper-lower Shape Chinese Typewriter”, etc., finally led to the invention of the “Mingkuai Chinese Typewriter” in 1947. This typewriter was 9 inches tall and It is 14 inches wide and 18 inches deep, and can store 7,000 characters (about 5,000 of which are commonly used Chinese characters). It was awarded a U.S. patent in 1952 and took six and a half years to develop. The “Upper and Lower Shape Index Method” was later used in the “Contemporary Lin Yutang Chinese-English Dictionary” and was authorized to Shentong Computer as the input method for its Chinese computers. Shentong Computer called it the “Simple Input Method.”
Because Lin Yutang went bankrupt due to developing the typewriter, he asked Pearl Buck for a loan but was rejected. The unharmonious cooperation between Lin Yutang and Pearl S. Buck is a story for the past. At that time, American publishers generally took about 10% of the royalties; but Pearl S. Buck took 50% for representing Lin Yutang’s books, and the copyright did not belong to Lin Yutang yet. When Lin Yutang and Pearl S. Buck were in court, Pearl S. Buck called Lin Yutang’s second daughter, Lin Taiyi, and asked, “Is your father crazy?” In the end, the two became strangers.
He settled in Taiwan in 1966, and his essays on the past and present were later collected in Volumes 1 and 2 of “Talk About Everything” (1967). In 1967, he was appointed as research professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In 1972 and 1973, he was recommended by the International PEN as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and in 1975 he was elected Vice President of the International PEN. After thoroughly exploring Chinese and Western philosophical thoughts, he converted to Christianity in his later years. His philosophical exploration process is recorded in the book “Journey of Faith”. He once wrote a couplet: “With two feet on Eastern and Western cultures, one heart is devoted to commenting on the universe.” .
On January 19, 1971, the eldest daughter Lin Rusi, who worked at the National Palace Museum in Taipei, committed suicide due to long-term depression. After this major mental blow, her health deteriorated. Later, she and her wife moved to Hong Kong to live with her third daughter Lin Xiangru. At that time, the second daughter Lin Taiyi and her husband My son-in-law is also in Hong Kong and only returns to my Taipei apartment when he has something to do.
Tomb of Mr. Lin Yutang
He died in Hong Kong on March 26, 1976, and his body was moved to Taipei in April of the same year and buried in the back garden of Lin Yutang’s former residence on Yangde Avenue in Yangmingshan, Taipei.
Lin Yutang had three daughters: the eldest daughter Lin Rusi, a writer; the second daughter Lin Taiyi; and the third daughter Lin Xiangru, a chemistry professor. In 1989, Lin Taiyi recorded his father’s life and published “Lin Yutang Biography”.
In 2015, his essay “On Fun” was listed as a vernacular reading passage in Paper 1 of the Chinese Subject of the 2015 Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination.