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Lucy Chao or Zhao Luorui (simplified Chinese: 赵萝蕤; traditional Chinese: 趙蘿蕤; pinyin: Zhào Luóruí; Wade–Giles: Chao Lo-jui; May 9, 1912 – January 1, 1998) was a Chinese poet and translator.
Lucy Chao | |||||||||
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趙蘿蕤 | |||||||||
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| Born | May 9, 1912 | ||||||||
| Died | January 1, 1998 (aged 85) | ||||||||
| Nationality | Chinese | ||||||||
| Other names | Zhao Luorui | ||||||||
| Alma mater | University of Chicago | ||||||||
| Known for | Poetry and translations | ||||||||
| Spouse | Chen Mengjia | ||||||||
| Father | T. C. Chao | ||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 趙蘿蕤 | ||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 赵萝蕤 | ||||||||
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Chao was born on May 9, 1912, in Xinshi, Deqing County, Zhejiang, China.[1]
She married Chen Mengjia, an anthropologist and expert on oracle bones, in 1932.[2] In 1944 Chao and Chen were awarded a joint fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation to study at the University of Chicago in the United States.[3] Chao earned her PhD from the institution in 1948, for a dissertation on Henry James.[4][5] Afterward, she returned to China to teach English and North American literature at Yenching University, Beijing.[2]
Chao's husband Chen opposed the government's proposal to simplify Chinese writing in the 1950s and was labeled a Rightist and an enemy of the Communist Party. He was sent to a labor camp in 1957.[6] After he returned, he was banned from publishing research and committed suicide after denunciation and persecution during the Cultural Revolution.[7]
After Chen's death, Chao developed schizophrenia. In spite of this, she created the first complete Chinese translation of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, which was published in 1991.[8] That same year, she was awarded the University of Chicago's "Professional Achievement Award".[4]
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Chao translated T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land (1937), Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha and eventually saw a mass publication of her translation of the whole of Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1991). She was a co-editor of the first Chinese-language History of European Literature (1979).
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