Yu Pingbo

Yu Pingbo (Chinese:俞平伯)whose former name was Yu Mingheng, was born in Deqing, Zhejiang on January 8, 1900. He was a modern poet, essayist and scholar. He graduated from Peking University with a liberal arts degree in 1919.

In 1922, Yu, Zhu Ziqing (Chinese:朱自清) and Ye Shengtao (Chinese:叶圣陶) founded Poetry, the first poetry publication since May 4, 1919. His major poems were Winter's Night, Xi Huan, and essays Za Baner, Gu Huai Meng Yu and Yan Zhi Cao, among others. Then, in 1923, Yu published Debating A Dream of Red Mansions (later redistributing it under the title Researching A Dream of Red Mansions) which was representative of a new school of redology. He became a professor at Peking University and the researcher at the Literary Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1952.

On October 15, 1990, at 90 years of age, Yu died of illness in Beijing.