Yang Jiang was born in Beijing, China on July 17, 1911. She studied political science at Soochow University and later enrolled at Tsinghua University in Beijing. After marrying Qian Zhongshu in 1935, they moved to England and then Paris. They moved back to China in 1938. In the 1940s, Yang Jiang found success as a playwright in wartime Shanghai with a series of witty comedies. After the Communists took power in 1949, the couple moved to Beijing, where she taught and worked on translation projects.
During the Cultural Revolution, she and her husband were sent to the countryside in Henan Province and consigned to reform through labor. They remained in Henan for several years. Her memoir about these years, Six Chapters from My Life "Downunder," was published in 1981. Her other works include Baptism and We Three. She translated Don Quixote and Plato's Phaedo. She died on May 25, 2016 at the age of 104.
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