Zhou Yang

Also known as Born Zhou Yunyi · Zi Qiying

Zhou Yang, born Zhou Yunyi and styled Qiying, came from Yiyang, Hunan, and was born in 1907. A literary theorist and translator, he rendered Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Chernyshevsky's Life and Aesthetics into Chinese. Arriving in Yan'an in autumn 1937, he became head of the Lu Xun Academy of Arts. When the legend of the white-haired immortal woman reached the academy in 1944, he proposed making it into a full-length new national opera, chaired the planning meeting and set its theme; written by He Jingzhi and Ding Yi with music by Ma Ke and others, The White-Haired Girl premiered in 1945. His writings were collected in five volumes. He died in Beijing in 1989.