Yao Feng

Yao also served as a diplomat for the Chinese government and later as a deputy director of the , an organ of the Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture within the Government of Macao Special Administrative Region.

Biography

Early life and education Yao was born in Beijing in 1958; his parents were factory workers. As a primary school student during the Cultural Revolution, Yao was a Little Red Guard. he was selected as one of five or six students to study Spanish at Beijing Foreign Studies University, the first batch of students to be able to do so. He later recalled the first sentence he learnt to say was '¡Viva el presidente Mao! ' ['Long live Chairman Mao!']. Yao's first poem in Spanish was entitled 'I Met Marilyn Monroe in China'. At the age of 18, he was sent away to perform agricultural labour with his classmates as part of the Down to the Countryside Movement. He has referenced Jiang Wen's coming-of-age film In the Heat of the Sun (1994) as particularly accurate to his experience during this period. Around this time, Yao began writing limericks.

In 1992, Yao began a two year contract teaching at the University of Macau, receiving a master's degree in Portugeuse literature during this time. He went on to attain his doctorate in comparative literature from Fudan University in Shanghai. His thesis dealt with the representation of China in Portugeuse poetry.

In 2012, he later served as deputy director of the , resigning the position in 2014. The following year, Yao was a writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa, as part of the institutions International Writing Program. In 2016, Yao was appointed Director of Portugeuse at the University of Macau, the first Chinese academic to be so named. As a critic of Portugeuse literature, Yao has written on Pessoa, Fernão Mendes Pinto, Luís de Camões, Eça de Queirós and Camilo Pessanha. In 2024, he left the University of Macau, being named a professor emeritus.

Other activities Yao has been described by artist Lin Jiangquan as a 'polymath', being an artist, photographer and curator besides his work as an academic and poet. Around 1999, he also had a small role in the television series Smoke Dragon playing a Chinese neurologist who falls in love with a Portuguese girl in Macau. China's oldest prize for poetry.

2006: Yao was appointed to the Military Order of Saint James of the Sword, with the rank of Officer, by Aníbal Cavaco Silva, President of Portugal. 2013: Yao was awarded the 2nd Cross-Strait Poet Laureate Prize. Additionally, Yao has been awarded the Changyao Poetry Award and the Macau Literary Award.