The Asian Studies community is saddened to announce the death of our former colleague, Professor Emerita Florence Chia-ying Yeh on November 24, at the age of 100.
Professor Yeh taught for twenty years in the department of Asian Studies, 1969-1989, and even after her retirement and move to Nankai University in China, she returned frequently to the Asian Library and Asian Centre. Her legacy at UBC can hardly be overstated, as her former students, and their students, continue the work of studying and celebrating classical Chinese poetry and literature in her honour, at events that draw participants from all over the university and the local community.
Professor Yeh is remembered by her students as a charismatic teacher possessing an astonishing storehouse of classical poetry, effortlessly reciting poems and plucking allusions and scholarly quotations from memory. The depth of her scholarly knowledge was breathtaking, and nurtured a generation of younger scholars whose academic careers have enriched Chinese Studies across North America and Asia. The Department of Asian Studies, and UBC as a whole, is proud to have been for two decades the academic home of such an internationally influential and esteemed figure. As a mark of the university’s respect, the flags outside the Irving K. Barber Library will be lowered to half-mast on November 30, 2024.
Her students, colleagues, and admirers also remember Professor Yeh for her genius at poetic composition and the many books of poetry she published in her long and amazingly productive lifetime. In 2014, UBC was privileged to host an event commemorating Professor Yeh’s 90th birthday, at which her extraordinary life, scholarship, and creativity were celebrated, and the department is planning an event in spring of 2025 to commemorate her life and work.
Professor Florence Chia-ying Yeh celebrating 90th birthday at Asian Centre (2014)
