Y. C. James Yen

Y. C. James Yen (, October 16, 1890/1893 – January 17, 1990 ), known to his many English speaking friends as "Jimmy," was a Chinese educator and organizer known for his work in mass literacy and rural reconstruction, first in China, then in many countries.

After working with Chinese laborers in France during World War I, in the 1920s Yen first organized the Chinese National Association of the Mass Education Movement to bring literacy to the Chinese masses, then turned to the villages of China to organize Rural Reconstruction, most famously at Ding Xian, (or, in the spelling of the time, Ting Hsien), a county in Hebei, from 1926-1937. He was instrumental in founding the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction in 1948, which then moved to Taiwan. In 1952, Dr. Yen organized the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement and in 1960, he established the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction. He returned to China in the 1980s but died in New York in 1990 and was buried with his wife Alice in Silang, Cavite, Philippines at the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction.

Yen was described as a "trans-Pacific liberal," with an "explicitly liberal and democratic allegiance," who appropriated American ideas and techniques for patriotic Chinese uses.

Biography Born to a scholarly but not wealthy family in Bazhong, Sichuan, in 1890. He is said to have reported that he was born in 1893, three years younger than his actual age, because of his short stature. At the age of 13, Yen was sent to West China Diocesan College , Langzhong (Paoning) run by the China Inland Mission, and received baptism the next year. In 1906, he was transferred to an American Methodist Episcopal Mission school in Chengdu (Chengtu) at the college principal William Henry Aldis's suggestion, there he became friends with James R. Stewart, a young missionary from British Hong Kong and son of Robert Stewart. With Stewart's help, he enrolled at St. Paul's College, Hong Kong in 1913. Yen adopted the name James in memory of James R. Stewart after he died in 1916 in France during the First World War. In 1985 the Chinese government finally welcomed Yen back to China and acknowledged his immense contribution to Mass Education and Rural Reconstruction. He died in New York City in Jan 1990.

Legacy In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the New Rural Reconstruction Movement took up Yen's name and legacy to address the problems of the countryside created by the success of the globalized economy. In July 2003, grassroots activists founded the James Yen Institute for Rural Reconstruction in Dingzhou, the site of the MEM's activities before the war.

Yen's charismatic speaking style and forceful personality made him attractive to many groups in China as well as many foreign friends. The China-raised American author Pearl S. Buck published a short book of interviews with Yen, Tell The People; Talks With James Yen About the Mass Education Movement (New York: John Day, 1945).

John Hersey, whose father was a missionary in China who worked with Yen in the 1920s, wrote a novel The Call (New York: Knopf, 1984), which includes an only slightly fictionalized portrait of Yen under the name "Johnny Wu."

Works

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