About the Author

Although Chiang Yee, born in Jiujiang, China in 1903, was trained as a chemist in Nanking, and served as governor of four districts under the Chinese Nationalist regime, he came to discover that painting, rather than politics and chemistry, was his true interest. In 1933 he left China for England and began writing and illustrating books on Chinese painting, calligraphy, poetry, and family life. He was also absorbing and analyzing his new surroundings, and during a holiday in England's lake district he wrote and illustrated The Silent Traveller in Lakeland, the first of his dozen Silent Traveller books. Mr. Chiang lived in England until 1955, when he moved to the United States. For two decades he was a lecturer, and eventually Emeritus Professor of Chinese, at Columbia University, except for a period in 1958-1959 when he was Emerson Fellow in Poetry at Harvard University. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1966. Chiang Yee died in China in 1977 and is buried on the slopes of Lu-Shan above his hometown.