Listen Less to Gossip, Read More Biographies | 5Y View

Why read biographies? Reading a biography is like watching someone else's life unfold — perhaps without a tightly woven plot, without flights of wild imagination, without a climax or even a resolution. But it is precisely because it's real that it carries such power.

Today's newsletter is a biography reading list. Some are autobiographies, others are biographies written by others. A few titles are not without controversy, but that doesn't stop them from being good books. Charlie Munger once said: "Biography is a way that makes it easier for people to connect the life and personality of the founder of an idea with the idea itself." I hope you too can find inspiration here.

Also, we invite you to recommend a biography you've read in the comments section at the end. We'll select a few readers to receive a commemorative gift from 5Y Capital.

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This article is republished from the WeChat account "Imaginist" (理想国imaginist)

01.

Going to School (Expanded Edition)

Oral history by He Zhaowu

Going to School is the personal oral history of the renowned scholar He Zhaowu. Born in 1921, Mr. He attended primary and secondary school in Beiping, studied at the undergraduate and graduate levels at the Southwest Associated University, and later taught at Tsinghua University. The book covers his educational journey before 1949, with the seven years at the Southwest Associated University forming its core. Drawing on his scholarly foundation in the history of philosophy and intellectual history, with the modest and forthright demeanor of a true academic, and through the recollections and sentiments of a firsthand witness to history, he tells of a generation's youth and ideals, knowledge and refinement during extraordinary times — especially amid the flames of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.

02. Yi Yun Hui Yi (Memoirs of Shen Yi Yun)

By Shen Yi Yun

This book is one in a series of oral historical biographies produced by Columbia University's "Chinese Oral History Project," compiled and organized with the assistance of Tang Degang. Shen Yi Yun was the wife of Huang Fu, a prominent political figure in the early Republican period, and witnessed the tumultuous politics of modern Chinese history firsthand. This memoir serves as primary source material for studying the politics of that era.

03.

My Century

By Dong Zhujun

This book chronicles the life of a centenarian: the daughter of a rickshaw puller, forced into singing for a living, who met revolutionary figures and escaped her predicament to become a warlord's wife. Unable to endure the feudal family and patriarchal control, she broke free once again. Through countless hardships and obstacles, she founded the Shanghai Jinjiang Hotel and served seven consecutive terms as a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

04.

Random Memories of Mountain Life

By Gao Songfen and Xu Jiazhen

This is a living history book, recording a century of Chinese social transformation from the late Qing dynasty to the beginning of Reform and Opening Up, centered on a Jiangnan family. Gao Songfen, with her particular era and experiences, wrote this history that has become a textbook for Hangzhou and even for China during that specific period. The book also offers a unique perspective for understanding and observing that era and that city. As times change, prosperity fades, and things remain while people change — reading late into the night by lamplight, one closes the book with deep admiration. Such prose can only emerge from the stillness that comes after a life fully lived. Days flow like water; the elderly see through her with their state of mind, clear as can be.

05.

Qiu Yuan

By Yang Benfen

An octogenarian grandmother tells the story of herself and her mother. Yang Benfen, the author of Qiu Yuan, was a retired employee of the Tonggu County Automobile Transportation Company. In 2020, at exactly 80 years old, she published her debut work. The book "tells the story of an ordinary Chinese woman's life, of how a family struggled to survive like floating wood on water, of the births and deaths of rural folk in the heartland of central-southern China. The story is like a single drop of water that will eventually flow into the long river of human history."

06.

The River of No Return (Ju Liu He)

By Qi Bangyuan

The author completed The River of No Return over four years of writing well past the age of eighty. The book depicts an era not yet distant, telling the story of two generations from the Ju Liu River on the mainland to the Yakou Sea in Taiwan — witnessing the great transformations spanning a century and stretching across both sides of the strait. It is both a family memory of modern Chinese suffering and a chronicle of Chinese literature's journey into the Western world.

07.

Returning from a Hundred Battles to Recognize This Self: The Memoirs of Zeng Zhi

By Zeng Zhi

This autobiography portrays the extraordinary life of the revolutionary Zeng Zhi. It is a highly readable book that offers strong enlightenment on life and wisdom. Drawing from personal experience, the author had firsthand contact with many important figures of the time and provides firsthand material on many major events. The book vividly depicts the bloody struggles between life and death, the tests of survival, the truth and cruelty of life during extraordinary times — and how one woman shouldered burdens unimaginable to us today, living a remarkable life.

08.

Biography of Li Hongzhang

By Liang Qichao

Biography of Li Hongzhang is the most famous of Liang Qichao's biographical works. Rather than following the traditional Chinese biographical model of "recording events without commentary," Liang "completely adopted the Western biographical form, narrating Li Hongzhang's life while adding judgments." While recounting Li Hongzhang's career, the book offers objective and fair assessments of his talent, achievements, failures, and historical position. This refreshing approach opened new ground for biographical writing and established a model for the genre.

09.

Yuan Shikai's Reign: Collected Works of Tang Degang, Volume One

By Tang Degang

Yuan Shikai's Reign covers the chaotic years from the Wuchang Uprising to Yuan Shikai's death, as China lurched from an imperial system toward an era of "popular governance." How did Yuan cultivate rivals to strengthen his own position while coveting the presidency? What historical enigmas lay behind the assassination of Song Jiaoren? How did domestic and foreign policy shift unpredictably during Yuan's rule? What were the true relationships between the "Six Gentlemen" of the Peace Planning Society and Yuan's government? And what were the political ideals of Professor Frank Goodnow, who should not be forgotten? With his characteristic scholarly integrity, Tang refuses to follow the prevailing winds or parrot conventional wisdom, insisting on conclusions drawn from evidence and claims backed by sources.

10.

A Life Too Hard to Face: A Biography of Lu Xun

By Wang Xiaoming

A deeply influential intellectual biography of Lu Xun, representing an important attempt by the intellectual community of the 1980s and 1990s to break through Enlightenment discourse and return to "Lu Xun himself" — reinterpreting him through the lens of individual psychological structures and existential dilemmas.

Based on Lu Xun's life journey and intellectual development, with his three efforts to resist his own "ghostly air" and "despair" as the central axis, the author portrays Lu Xun's skeptical, contradictory temperament with penetrating depth. Both author and reader, through emotional and psychological resonance, will feel the immense spiritual anguish and intellectual tragedy of Lu Xun as a human being.

11.

The Last Twenty Years of Chen Yinke (Revised Edition)

By Lu Jiandong

This is a biography of Chen Yinke's later life (1949–1969). Mr. Chen's learning spanned Chinese and Western traditions, with mastery of both literature and history, and his scholarly research attained the highest realms. He devoted his life to learning, seeking no fame or prominence, and was deeply respected by scholars at home and abroad. Drawing on extensive archival documents and firsthand interviews, this book describes in detail the hardships of Chen's final two decades, revealing many historical facts previously unknown to the public.

12.

If Not Me, Then Who: Hu Shi (Part One)

By Jiang Yongzhen

Hu Shi was the most prolific, influential, and autobiographically well-documented celebrity in modern Chinese history, yet also the most scrutinized, spied upon, and discussed — and the most misunderstood. If Not Me, Then Who: Hu Shi aims to reinterpret Hu Shi's thought and completely rewrite his life. With detailed materials and rigorous textual research, it clarifies many major misunderstandings about Hu Shi. By comparing different versions, it explains the truth behind the widely circulated stories in Forty Autobiographical Accounts; it reshapes the intellectual state of Hu Shi during his Shanghai period.

13.

Lin Yutang: A Biography — The Path to China's Cultural Rebirth

By Qian Suoqiao

Born in 1895 in a mountain village in Zhangzhou, Fujian, Lin Yutang left his homeland at age ten and spent his entire life wandering far and wide. In China, he studied language, founded periodicals, and opened a new "humor" style for the literary world of his time; abroad, he commented on current affairs and introduced the East, interpreting My Country and My People with unique insight. This biography, with its far-reaching narrative, traverses mountains of texts and seas of history, following the trajectory of his thought, tracing his life journey, seeking to rediscover not just Lin Yutang the literary figure, but to restore the multiple identities of Lin Yutang as critic, philosopher, and thinker.

14.

Biography of Zhou Zuoren

By Qian Liqun

Zhou Zuoren is a controversial figure. He was one of the influential representatives of the May Fourth New Culture Movement, contributing notably to the essay form and to translation; yet he degenerated into a collaborator during the course of history, while also making contributions to protecting Peking University's property and shielding underground workers of the Kuomintang. In Biography of Zhou Zuoren we see three Zhou Zuorens: the "puppet official" "Supervisor Zhou," the "dream seeker" abbot of Kuchuan Hermitage, and the "martyr for country and people" that Zhou himself constructed. The author maintains a cautious attitude throughout, objectively recording the subject's life and faithfully reflecting that period of history.

15.

The Later Half of Shen Congwen's Life: 1948–1988

By Zhang Xinying

Shen Congwen, born in 1902, died in 1988. This biography focuses particularly on presenting the long, unbroken spiritual activity of Shen Congwen's later life. Amid the violent transformations of the era, this continuous, dense, and complex personal spiritual activity clearly witnesses the full struggle of a weak individual, the formidable courage and faith manifested by an ordinary life in a fragile form, and the deep and solemn love of a "sentimental" intellectual for the long river of history and culture — just as he loved the river of his hometown, once tirelessly writing the stories of that river; in his later life, enduring humiliation and hardship, he tirelessly wrote the stories of the long river of history and culture.

16.

Waters Flow, Clouds Remain: The Autobiography of Ying Ruocheng

By Ying Ruocheng and Claire Conceison, translated by Zhang Fang

This is an autobiography written in Ying Ruocheng's later years. A beloved actor, theater director, translator, and statesman, he recounts with humor amid hardship and optimism amid difficulty, narrating his extraordinary family, childhood, and education, as well as his career in theater and film and his work in cultural diplomacy. The book reviews the many legends of Ying Ruocheng's life, allowing us to appreciate the life wisdom of a witty, erudite, modest artist of aristocratic lineage.

17.

In Search of Home (Expanded Edition)

By Gao Ertai

In Search of Home is a spiritual history of a generation of intellectuals, an artistic book about suffering. The collected pieces are non-fictional prose in the broad sense — not limited to narration, lyricism, or commentary; not confined to essays, diaries, or letters. What matters is the connection to the earth. Within these pages lie the weight, simplicity, fragrance, and bitterness of soil; the softness of water; and also the drought and parched thirst.

18.

Interviews with Zeng Yanxiu

By Zeng Yanxiu

This is an oral history. Zeng Yanxiu recounts his experiences over more than half a century, of tremendous historical value. Beyond personal experience, he offers rational background analysis and unique perspectives on important issues — a substantial, thought-provoking work.

19.

Seizing the Pass: The Memoirs of Wang Dingjun, Volume Three of Four

By Wang Dingjun

The third volume of Wang Dingjun's "Memoirs in Four Parts," recording the author's 6,700-kilometer odyssey during the Civil War. Serving in the Nationalist army, he experienced the Liaoshen and Pingjin campaigns; in 1949, he was captured by the People's Liberation Army in Tianjin, underwent re-education in a POW camp, wore a PLA uniform, and walked the entire Jiaozhou-Jinan railway to Qingdao and then to Shanghai, eventually making his way to Taiwan... Along the way, contrasts, crises, and conflicts each extended and tangled with one another, rolling forward with heart-stopping intensity. The author distills and sublimates four years of anger, grief, and regret into a memoir that transcends personal grievances and resentments. "Seizing the pass, winding my way out — that is a splendid life."

20.

Forty Years on Stage: The Memoirs of Mei Lanfang

By Mei Lanfang

The complete work is divided into three volumes, in conversational form, with Mei recounting old family stories, his apprenticeship, stage performances, and creative work — reading it feels like sitting around a stove on a winter night, chatting leisurely. Chronologically, the first two volumes focus on Mei's early training, his emergence as a young performer, and his artistic creative practice from 1913 to 1917, with detailed accounts of his experiments in modern-dress Peking opera such as The Waves of Sin, Deng Xiagu, and A Wisp of Hemp. The third volume covers his performances of The Double Meeting and his creation and staging of The Heavenly Maiden Scattering Flowers, The Maiden Slaying the Serpent, and Farewell My Concubine from 1917 to 1923, as well as his artistic activities during his collaborations with Yu Shuyan, his partnership with Yang Xia Lou, and the Chenghua Society period. The book also discusses Mei's innovations in vocalization and performance, additions to the accompanying instruments, reforms to stage settings, and his observations from studying the performances of senior and contemporary masters.

21.

Memoirs from the Jade Bracelet Studio

By Bao Tianxiao

Memoirs from the Jade Bracelet Studio is the late-life recollection of Bao Tianxiao, a renowned modern writer and master of the "Mandarin Duck and Butterfly" school of fiction. After joining the Eastern Times in early 1906, he remained active in literary and journalistic circles throughout his life, authoring works such as A Lasting Fragrance, Dream of the Spring River, and Shanghai Annals, and translating Sinsei the Wanderer and Joan Haste, all of which were widely popular in their day. He completed this memoir after moving to Hong Kong.

Bao Tianxiao lived through an era of dramatic social transformation and upheaval. As both writer and journalist, he had extensive contacts and rich experiences, with deep observation and understanding of political, social, and popular conditions. When he wrote this memoir in his nineties, his memory remained remarkably sharp. His depictions of Suzhou's customs and figures from the early Republican period are especially vivid and affecting, creating an almost tangible sense of immediacy. He preserved extraordinarily valuable material for the social and cultural history and local customs of the era.

22.

The Oral Autobiography of Zhang Kaiyuan

By Zhang Kaiyuan

As a renowned contemporary Chinese historian and educator, Zhang Kaiyuan lived through momentous changes and witnessed the full range of human experience. His rich experiences not only fill gaps in official histories but also provide anecdotes and insights for those interested in the history of the Republican period onward. Based on Professor Zhang's oral accounts, this book preserves historical authenticity as much as possible, presenting vivid historical details from modern Chinese academic history, educational history, and Sino-foreign cultural exchange history — narrated with such natural ease that readers inadvertently experience the dramatic transformations of nearly a century.

23.

A Young Man Named Chen Kaige

By Chen Kaige

What kind of life did he lead before becoming a famous film director? Chen Kaige writes in his own hand, confronting his youth directly. He dares to face himself, courageously examines his own actions, and acknowledges mistakes he once made. His recollections and reflections are rich in self-examination and critical spirit, with considerable intellectual depth and historical vividness. His personal perspective on the life, thought, and artistic accumulation before fame can enlighten many.

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Giveaway

Biography reading lists, with their different types and angles, will naturally present different things. Today's list is more of a mixed bag — consider it merely an introduction. We welcome you to recommend a biography you've read in the comments section. We'll select 5 readers to receive a 5Y Capital commemorative T-shirt.

Note: The deadline for this activity is 18:00 on June 5, 2021. Please reply with your shipping information within 24 hours of receiving notification; failure to respond in time will be considered forfeiture.

5Y Capital (formerly Morningside Venture Capital) currently manages approximately five billion USD across USD and RMB dual-currency funds. We believe that if the person others see as crazy starts to be believed in, the world becomes a better place.

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