Ye Xin

Ye Xin (born Ye Chengxi on 16 October 1949) is a Chinese writer who has written profusely about "sent-down youths" (also known as "educated youths"), drawing from his own experience. A Shanghai native, Ye Xin "volunteered" to receive his "rustication" in remote Guizhou in 1969, where he spent 2 decades of his life. He has written over 20 novels, but is best known for writing the teleplay of mega-hit series Sinful Debt, based on his 1992 novel Educated Youth.

Ye has been vice-chairman of China Writers Association since 1997, and president of Shanghai University College of Liberal Arts from 1997 to 2014.

Life Ye Chengxi was born in Shanghai. Since his parents owned land before the Chinese Communist Revolution, the family was classified a member of the "Five Black Categories" and raided during the Cultural Revolution. Ye graduated from high school in 1966, and was "sent down" to work in Chongming Island (a rural island under the jurisdiction of Shanghai) in 1968 as part of the Down to the Countryside Movement. A year later, Ye and his younger sister arrived in Xiuwen County, Guizhou (2000 km away from Shanghai), where he noticed "life was worse than [he] imagined."

Ye had been writing since elementary school, but in middle school he was once scolded by a teacher who happened upon his private diary and discovered "seeds of bourgeois thought". Free from such fear in the backwoods of Guizhou, Ye resumed his writing. He had to write in bed since there was no table, and rely on the paper his former classmate mailed him from Shanghai as it was otherwise also unavailable. In 1970, he joined hundreds of thousands of people to build the Hunan–Guizhou Railway, spending 2 years of "really tough" work on the railroad, often working without enough to eat. Thereafter he returned to his previous village and began teaching in an elementary school. His new position allowed for ample time to write.