Empson's Students

Jin Di was a scholar of foreign studies and a translator best known for the first quality translation of James Joyce's Ulysses into Chinese. A graduate of National Southwestern Associated University, he also taught at various universities including Peking University.

Zha Liangzheng, whose pen name is Mu Dan, was a celebrated Chinese poet and co-founder of the 'Nine Leaves School' in the late 1940s. A graduate of National Southwestern Associated University and the University of Chicago, where he obtained his bachelor's and master's degrees respectively, Zha was deeply affected by W. H. Auden, W. B. Yeats and T.S. Elliot. He was a distant relative of Louis Cha, the wuxia novelist.

Zheng Min is a Chinese scholar and poet. Having studied philosophy at National Southwestern Associated University and published modernist poetry in the early 1940s, she went on to obtain her master's degree in literature from Brown University. She was a member of the 'Nine Leaves' School of poetry.

Born in Malaysia, Du Yunxie was a Chinese modernist poet and member of the 'Nine Leaves' school. Du graduated from National Southwestern Associated University in 1945 and worked at Xinhua News Agency in 1951 while writing poetry.

Yuan Kejia was a member of the 'Nine Leaves' school and a translator. A graduate of National Southwestern Associated University in 1946, he taught at Peking University between 1946 and 1950, during which time he translated elements of the Selected Poetry of Mao Zedong into English.

C. Y. Lee (pinyin: Li Jinyang) was a Chinese-American author whose signature work, the novel Flower Drum Song(1957), was subsequently adapted by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein for the celebrated Broadway musical of the same name. Lee earned his bachelor's degree at National Southwestern Associated University in 1942 before emigrating to the United States in 1943 and gaining his master's degree in Fine Arts at Yale University in 1947. Lee was among the first English novelists after the Second World War to write about Chinese culture and identity in the English language.

Prof. James J. Y. Liu was a Chinese-American academic trained in Chinese literature and comparative poetics. A graduate of Peking Fu Jen Catholic University (now Beijing Normal University) and the University of Bristol, Prof. Liu taught at various universities including Stanford University. His influential scholarly works include The Art of Chinese Poetry (1962) and Chinese Theories of Literature (1975).

Wang Zuoliang (1916-1995), a graduate of the Department of Foreign Studies at The National Southwest Associated University, was a celebrated educator, scholar, poet and translator. After having studied at Oxford University for two years, he returned to China where he held a number of distinguished academic positions, including as Chair of the English Department, Vice President of Beijing Foreign Studies University, and Director of the university's Institute of Foreign Literature.

Irie Yukio was a professor in the Department of Letters at Tokyo University of Education (the present University of Tsukuba) upon the completion of his master's degree in English Literature at Tokyo Bunrika University. His literary translations included Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle 2: On Heroes and Hero-Worship, Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle 4: To My Wife and Friends, and Selected Works of Emerson 2: On Spirits.

Narita Shigehisa held a doctorate in Literature, was a scholar of English literature, and held an honorary professorship at Tokyo University of Education. Graduating in 1932 from the Department of Japanese Literature, Tokyo Bunrika University, he taught as a professor at various universities, including Tokyo Bunrika University and Tokyo University of Education.

Ogawa Kazuo was a scholar of English literature and an ex-member of the NHK. He graduated from the Department of English at Tokyo Imperial University in 1935. His translation and scholarly annotations of Byron's Don Juan won him the distinguished Yomiuri Prize for Literature (Scholarship and Translation category) in 1993.