Born in Chongqing in southern Sichuan province, Yang Tche Chen (1902-1968) is the second son from a wealthy noble family that later moved to Chengdu, 400 kilometres from his hometown.
Yang Tche Chen was part of Diligent Work-Frugal Study Movement during the first half of the twentieth century, which corresponded to the moment when the Chinese Republican government was in search of its political and industrial orientations. Within this context, a fair number of Chinese students were sent to Europe and America to study in order to create highly educated civil servants for the future Chinese Nation.
Between 1917 and 1918, the city of Chengdu announced students’ recruitments for work/study training programs in France. In the spring of 1919, Yang Tche Chen, Chen Yi and his brother Xi Meng graduated from the Preparatory School for France. Along with thirty other students, they received a 400yuan scholarship and left Chengdu on June 1. They embarked on a long-awaited journey that will take them from Shanghai to Marseille in the south of France.
Once in France, Yang Tche Chen settled in the Paris urban region, and worked on a variety of domains. Throughout his life, he experienced the severe economic depression of 1929, the first paid holidays, the Second World War, the unprecedented growth of the « The Glorious Thirty », the first man in space and the recognition of Mainland China by France in the mid-1960. He died at the very beginning of his retirement in 1968, without returning to China.
More information: sites.google.com/site/lestribulationsdeyang
