Yú Píngbó (January 8, 1900 – October 15, 1990), former name Yú Mínghéng (俞銘衡) and courtesy name Píngbó (平伯), was an essayist, poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

, Redologist

Redology

Redology is the study of the novel Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the Four Classics of China. There are many researchers in this field, most can be divided into four general groups. The first group is the commentators, such as Zhou Chun, Xu Fengyi, Chen Yupi, and others. The second group is...

, and critic

Critic

A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...

.

Yú Píngbó's ancestry can be traced to Déqīng, Zhèjiāng

Zhejiang

Zhejiang is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. The word Zhejiang was the old name of the Qiantang River, which passes through Hangzhou, the provincial capital...

. His pet name as a child was Sēngbǎo (僧寶). He was a descendant of Yú Yuè, a renowned scholar during the late Qīng period, and as such Yú Píngbó was trained in the Chinese classics from an early age. In 1915, he qualified by examination for a preparatory course at Peking University

Peking University

Peking University , colloquially known in Chinese as Beida , is a major research university located in Beijing, China, and a member of the C9 League. It is the first established modern national university of China. It was founded as Imperial University of Peking in 1898 as a replacement of the...

. In 1917, he married Xŭ Băoxùn (許寶馴), a gifted female scholar from Hángzhōu

Hangzhou

Hangzhou , formerly transliterated as Hangchow, is the capital and largest city of Zhejiang Province in Eastern China. Governed as a sub-provincial city, and as of 2010, its entire administrative division or prefecture had a registered population of 8.7 million people...

, and then commenced composing melodies for Kūnqŭ

Kunqu

Kunqu , also known as Kunju , Kun opera or Kunqu Opera, is one of the oldest extant forms of Chinese opera. It evolved from the Kunshan melody, and dominated Chinese theatre from the 16th to the 18th centuries. The style originated in the Wu cultural area...

 operas. Meanwhile, he temporarily immersed himself in the New Culture Movement

New Culture Movement

The New Culture Movement of the mid 1910s and 1920s sprang from the disillusionment with traditional Chinese culture following the failure of the Chinese Republic, founded in 1912 to address China’s problems. Scholars like Chen Duxiu, Cai Yuanpei, Li Dazhao, Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, and Hu Shi, had...

, and in 1918 his first New Culture period poem Spring Waters (春水 Chūnshuĭ) was published alongside Lŭ Xùn

Lu Xun

Lu Xun or Lu Hsün , was the pen name of Zhou Shuren , one of the major Chinese writers of the 20th century. Considered by many to be the leading figure of modern Chinese literature, he wrote in baihua as well as classical Chinese...

's Diary of a Madman

A Madman's Diary

"A Madman's Diary" was written in 1918 by Lu Xun, commonly considered one of the greatest writers in 20th-century Chinese literature. This short story is considered to be one of the first and most influential modern works written in vernacular Chinese...

 in La Jeunesse, becoming one of the pioneering compositions to be written in contemporary Chinese vernacular. That same year, he established with fellow classmates Fù Sīnián

Fu Sinian

Fù Sīnián , was a famous Chinese educator and linguist, and one of the leaders of the May Fourth Movement in 1919. He studied experimental psychology at University College, London from 1920-23. He was also one of the creators of the Academia Sinica, and was named director of the Institute of...

, Luó Jiālún

Luo Jialun

Luo Jialun was a Chinese educator, historian and political activist. He was one of the leaders of the May Fourth Movement in 1919.-Biography:...

 and others the New Wave Society. He then went on to publish such compositions as the poem Winter's Night (冬夜 Dōngyè). Yú Píngbó graduated from Peking University in December, 1919.

In 1923, Yú Píngbó published Debating Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓夢辨 Hónglóumèng Biàn), giving evidence for his claim that only the first eighty chapters of the original Dream of the Red Chamber

Dream of the Red Chamber

Dream of the Red Chamber , composed by Cao Xueqin, is one of China's Four Great Classical Novels. It was composed in the middle of the 18th century during the Qing Dynasty. It is considered to be a masterpiece of Chinese vernacular literature and is generally acknowledged to be a pinnacle of...

had been authored by Cáo Xŭeqín

Cao Xueqin

Cao Xueqin was a Qing Dynasty Chinese writer, best known as the author of Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature...

, the later forty chapters being penned by Gāo È. He thereby came to be known, along with Hú Shì, for establishing a new field in redological studies. In 1925 he took up post as a lecturer at Yenching University

Yenching University

Yenching University was a university in Beijing, China. It integrated three Christian colleges in the city in 1919. Yenching is an alternative name of Beijing - derived from its status as capital of Yan state, one of the seven Warring States from 5th century BC to 3rd century BC.The university...

. In 1928 he went to Tsinghua University

Tsinghua University

Tsinghua University , colloquially known in Chinese as Qinghua, is a university in Beijing, China. The school is one of the nine universities of the C9 League. It was established in 1911 under the name "Tsinghua Xuetang" or "Tsinghua College" and was renamed the "Tsinghua School" one year later...

. In 1935, he founded the Tsinghua Valley Music Society (清華谷音社 Qinghuá Gŭyīnshè) at Qinghuayuan

Qinghuayuan

Qinghuayuan may refer to:* Tsinghua University* Qinghuayuan railway station...

 (清華園, "Tsinghua Gardens") to popularise his Kūnqŭ compositions. In 1946, he transferred to Peking University for the post of professor. In 1935, he entered the Classical Literature Research Unit (古典文學研究室 Gŭdiăn Wénxué Yánjiūshì) at the Literary Research Institute (文學研究所 Wénxué Yánjiūsuŏ) of the Chinese Academy of Science, there revising his old publication Discussing Dream of the Red Chamber and redistributing it under the title Researching Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓夢研究 Hónglóumèng Yánjiū), in 1954, Máo Zédōng

Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...

 personally launched a nation-wide campaign criticising this work along with Hú Shì's Reactionary Thought (反動思想 Făndòng Sīxiăng), a major incident of the time. During the Cultural Revolution

Cultural Revolution

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution , was a socio-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976...

, Yú Píngbó was persecuted further, going to one the so-called 'cadre schools' in Xī

Xi County

Xi County may refer to two counties in the People's Republic of China:*Xi County, Henan , of Xinyang, Henan*Xi County, Shanxi , of Linfen, Shanxi...

, Hénán

Henan

Henan , is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the central part of the country. Its one-character abbreviation is "豫" , named after Yuzhou , a Han Dynasty state that included parts of Henan...

for manual labour. On 15 October 1990, at ninety years of age, he died at the Běijīng Sānlĭ Hénán Shāgōu Yùsuŏ (北京三里河南沙溝寓所).