Yang Zhen Ning
Prof Yang Zhen Ning 杨振宁 (1922-2025) was a Chinese theoretical physicist who received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1948. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957. Prof Yang remained in the US and returned to China only in 1971 when he was personally received by Premier Zhou Enlai and honoured with a meeting with Mao Zedong himself.
There, he helped with the rebuilding of the Chinese academia destroyed by the Cultural Revolution. In 1999, at the age of 77, Prof Yang retired from Brook University in the US and returned to Beijing as an honorary director of Tsinghua University. Not being physicists, most of us only heard about Prof Yang when he remarried student Weng Fan 翁帆 (1976-?) in 2005.
When Singaporean veteran entertainer Marcus Chin’s affair with a much younger woman came to light and the public vilified him, he made the hilariously inappropriate comparison with Prof Yang Zhen Ning. Mr Chin was still married at that material time and Prof Yang was a widower back then.
When news broke that Prof Yang Zhen Ning had passed away on 18 October 2025 at the age of 103, Chinese social media was abuzz with “small talk”. Disregarding his contributions to the world of physics, netizens seemed to be more interested in how he managed to satisfy a woman 54 years his junior. Yang was first married to Madam Du Zhi Li (1927-2003) in 1950. They had two sons and a daughter. Mrs Yang passed away in 2003.
Even less well known than his role as a scientist, was the late Prof Yang Zhen Ning’s role as an influential “politician”. Prof Yang might have been a physicist and educated in America, but for some time after his return to China in 1971, he gave many lecture series at the University of Hong Kong and at Stony Brook, promoting socialist values. Nixon’s highly publicised visit to China led many ignorant Westerners to “discover” an impressive ancient civilisation that rivalled their obsession with Indian culture of the hippy movement.
After spending a month as a VIP in China, he lectured in the University of Hong Kong where he extolled the virtues of a classless society where there were no beggars on the streets. He even told the audience that America had much to learn from China. Yang believed China’s great social experiment was just beginning to show results and urged those seeing America as a role model to “set aside prejudice and view China’s progress objectively.”
Yang said all this with access to uncensored news, knowing very well that many lives were lost during the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution. All this came with the reward of being crowned as a national treasure. Some Hongkongers felt so proud of him that they started identifying as Chinese nationals.
It was way before the age of influencers. Back then, nerdy speakers like Yang Zhen Ning had great credibility and his speeches had a profound impact on the minds of young Chinese people. Even romance novelist Yi Shu fabricated a character in his image. Overnight, Chinese students in universities all over the free world began to embrace Marxism and the rule of the CCP. His speeches gave many Chinese people a new confidence in a system of government that had caused untold suffering to tens of millions of Chinese people.
Soon after, Nobel laureate physicist Tsung-Dao Lee (1926-2024) and biologist Niu Manjiang (1912-2007) also packed their bags and hurried off to Beijing, hoping to be accorded with the same status as Yang Zhen Ning. Even Zhao Haosheng（1920—2012）, a Chinese literature professor at Yale, jumped onboard the same bandwagon. They were the first batch of “turtles” 海归 (龟) and national treasure wannabes.
Less than a decade later, Deng Xiao Ping would come to power, dismantling Mao’s social experiment and copying Western capitalism with great success. For a while, Chinese people realised that China could only progress if communism took a backseat, but that did not tarnish Prof Yang’s image. Did he really believe what he said back in the 1970s? Was he pandering to the leaders of the day, seeing that he could attain godlike status in China but not in America where there were too many like him? After all, he was approaching his 50s and thinking of retirement.
Yang Zhen Ning would spend the rest of his days in comfort that we mere mortals will never know. Idolised in the 1970s, mocked after his second marriage, but why should he be bothered? Even as communism has started to regain its foothold and Chinese society is no longer as free and tolerant as it was during Deng Xiao Ping’s time, Yang Zhen Ning didn’t need to say or do anything.
There is no doubt that Prof Yang was a very intelligent and talented man. A Nobel Prize notwithstanding, he was no trailblazing rebel. He played along with the system and reaped huge personal benefits. As for whether his conscience is clear, we will never know. Even if we regard the ancient definition of 才子 to be absurd, I would hesitate to call him one as conformity with personal benefits should not be an attribute of a 才子。
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