Y. C. James Yen

Life & Legacy

Y. C. James Yen (traditional Chinese: 晏陽初; simplified Chinese: 晏阳初; pinyin: Yàn Yángchū; Wade–Giles: Yen Yang-chʽu, October 16, 1890/1893 – January 17, 1990), known to his many English speaking friends as "Jimmy," was a Chinese educator and organizer known for his work in mass literacy and rural reconstruction, first in China, then in many countries.
After working with Chinese laborers in France during World War I, in the 1920s Yen first organized the Chinese National Association of the Mass Education Movement to bring literacy to the Chinese masses, then turned to the villages of China to organize Rural Reconstruction, most famously at Ding Xian, (or, in the spelling of the time, Ting Hsien), a county in Hebei, from 1926-1937. He was instrumental in founding the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction in 1948, which then moved to Taiwan. In 1952, Dr. Yen organized the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement and in 1960, he established the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction. He returned to China in the 1980s but died in New York in 1990 and was buried with his wife Alice in Silang, Cavite, Philippines at the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction.
Yen was described as a "trans-Pacific liberal," with an "explicitly liberal and democratic allegiance," who appropriated American ideas and techniques for patriotic Chinese uses.