Yan Wenjing, known as China's "fairy tale grandfather", died in Beijing at age of 90 Wednesday morning.
Born in Wuhan City in central China's Hubei Province, Yan entered the military and political college against Japanese aggression in a revolutionary base in Yan'an in 1938 and joined the Communist Party of China (CPC) the same year. After graduation, he became a literature professor.
Yan was fond of reading and started to compose stories in his childhood. When he began writing fairy tales, the war against Japanese aggression broke out. "I believed everything would get better and that unexpected miracles would be accomplished, so I thought of fairy tales and decided to record my imagination, affection and hatred in them," he recalled in his late years.
In Yan'an, he wrote nine fairy tales and fables in a row, which later were collected into his first fairy tale book "Nan Nan and Beard Uncle". Yan went on to create a series of popular fairy tales favored by child readerships.
To this day, many middle-aged parents still remember and are familiar with Yan's stories, including "Tang Xiaoxi," about a naughty boy featured in "Next Time Boarding Harbor", who always put off his lessons until the "next time". The story has been translated into several languages such as English, Russian, Japanese, Czech and Korean.
Yan also wrote prose, novels and news reports.
(Xinhua News Agency July 21, 2005)
