Yu-chien Kuan or Guan Yuqian (; 18 February 1931 – 22 November 2018) was a Chinese-born German sinologist, writer and translator. The son of a high-ranking Chinese Communist Party official, he was denounced as a "rightist" and persecuted during the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Cultural Revolution. This drove him to escape from China using a Japanese passport stolen from his workplace. He landed in Egypt and spent a year and half in prison for illegal entry, before being admitted to West Germany in 1969 as a political refugee.
In Germany, he earned a Ph.D. from the University of Hamburg, became a sinology professor at the university and served as an advisor to politicians including Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. He published 26 books, including ten co-authored with his wife, Petra Häring-Kuan. He also collaborated with Wolfgang Kubin to translate the works of Lu Xun into German.
Early life
Kuan was born on 18 February 1931, in Guangzhou (Canton), Guangdong, Republic of China. His father, Guan Xibin (), who later changed his name to Guan Yiwen (), studied in France and graduated from Yale University in the United States. His mother, Yan Zhongyun (), was a devout Christian. He was the youngest of three children, with a sister and a brother.
Soon after Kuan's birth, his mother brought the children to live in Beiping (now Beijing). When the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, the family fled Beiping and became refugees, eventually settling in the Shanghai French Concession. Kuan grew up in Shanghai with his mother, while his father joined the Communist Party of China and fought in the anti-Japanese resistance. Kuan studied at St. Francis Xavier's College, a Catholic school. After the end of World War II, he ran errands for American soldiers stationed in Shanghai and perfected the English he learned at school through his interactions with them.
People's Republic of China
When the Communists won the Civil War and established the People's Republic of China in 1949, Kuan's father was appointed to a high position in the East China Military Region and served as an interpreter for Marshal Chen Yi, who became Mayor of Shanghai. Kuan also learned for the first time that his older sister had been an underground Communist Party member.
In 1949, Kuan enrolled at the Beijing Foreign Language School (now Beijing Foreign Studies University), majoring in Russian, which was in high demand because of Communist China's close relations with the Soviet Union. After graduating in 1953, he worked as an interpreter for Soviet technical specialists in China.
Kuan's westernized education and outlook were often at odds with the new communist ethos of China. While the revolutionaries took pride in wearing plain clothes or even rags, he preferred to be well dressed and was criticized as a bourgeois. In the fleeting liberal milieu of the Hundred Flowers Campaign in 1956, a politically naive Kuan wrote big-character posters criticizing the Communist Party, which became evidence against him in the subsequent Anti-Rightist Campaign, during which he was denounced as a "rightist" in 1958.
After his denunciation, Kuan was banished to Qinghai province on the Tibetan Plateau. Initially working as a photojournalist in the provincial capital Xining, in 1959 he was sent to Riyueshan People's Commune to perform hard labour. He nearly starved to death during the Great Famine, before his father, by then a high-ranking official in the State Council, arranged to transfer him back to Beijing in 1962. He then worked at the Chinese People's World Peace Committee, an official organ in charge of managing foreign visitors.
Escape from China
When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, Kuan, like many other "rightists", was again targeted for persecution. With his marriage already strained for personal reasons, his wife Meizhen (), with whom he had a son, publicly denounced him. In February 1968, he was told to attend an upcoming struggle session against him. Convinced that he was to be tortured, he considered committing suicide before deciding to make a daring escape from China. As his work involved registering foreign visitors, Kuan had access to foreign passports. One of them belonged to the Japanese national Saionji Kazuteru (), who somewhat resembled Kuan. He took the passport, which contained an Egyptian visa, purchased a plane ticket to Cairo via Karachi, Pakistan, and fled China using Saionji's identity.