Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open for research use.

Preferred Citation:

MSS 16323, Collection of W. W. Yen materials, Albert & Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia

Provenance

Materials are on deposit from the Yen family, 2016.

Biographical Note

Yen Hui-Ch'ing, (Name in English: Yen, Wei Ching Williams or W.W. Yen) was born on 2 April 1877 and passed away on 24 May 1950. He was a Chinese writer, politician, and diplomat from Shanghai.

A graduate of the University of Virginia, he taught the English language at St. John's University, Shanghai in a short time after coming back from the United States and then went to Beijing to start his political career. It was in the US he became a Freemason.

He served as premier five times and simultaneously as acting president on his last premiership in 1926. Wu Peifu handpicked him for the acting presidency to pave the way for Cao Kun's restoration but he was unable to take office due to Zhang Zuolin's objection. When Yan finally took his post, he immediately resigned and appointed navy minister Du Xigui as his successor.

He was also China's first ambassador to the Soviet Union and he was a delegate in the League of Nations. During World War II, he translated and compiled Stories of Old China in Hong Kong while under Japanese house-arrest in 1942. He took his first plane trip in 1949 to Moscow in hopes of resolving the Chinese Civil War.

Source: "Yan Huiqing." Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_Huiqing. Accessed 12 July 2017.

Scope and Content Note:

This collection consists of three published books and one notebook. The Moral philosophy notebook and Standard Masonic Monitor have been digitized by the library.

Subjects and Indexing Terms

• Autobiography (genre)
• Notebooks
• University of Virginia--Students--Social life and customs.
• diaries