Yuan Changying

Yuan Changying (Chinese:袁昌英; 11 October 1894 – 28 April 1973) was a Chinese writer. She was the first Chinese woman to graduate from the University of Edinburgh and the first Chinese woman to be a Master's student in Britain. Her father remarried and had a son and another daughter. After graduating from University of Edinburgh in 1921, Yuan returned to China with Yang. Later on, Yuan gave birth to their son Yang Hongyuan (杨弘远). Her master's thesis was about William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. While at Wuhan University, she worked and befriended Su Xuelin and Ling Shuhua and the three of them were known together as the "Three Female Talents of Luojia Mountain,"

In 1930, she published Southeast Flies the Peacock, which was a collection of Chinese plays in the "spoken drama" style instead of in an opera style.

In 1931, she accused Hong Shen of plagiarism in her article "Zhuang shi huangdi he Zhao yanwang." Hong Shen would deny these accusations. The Yuan Changying Prize recognizes outstanding ‘gender observations’ written by undergraduate students in Edinburgh's "Understanding Gender in the Contemporary World" class.