Ye Lang

Ye Lang, born in Quzhou, Zhejiang, in 1938, is a Chinese aesthetician and a senior professor of philosophy and social sciences at Peking University, where he also serves as honorary dean of the School of Arts. He graduated from the Department of Philosophy at Peking University in 1960. His writings span aesthetic theory, the history of Chinese aesthetics and literary appreciation, including Chinese Fiction Aesthetics, An Outline of the History of Chinese Aesthetics, Beauty Lies in Images and Bamboo in the Heart, and he edited the Library of Chinese Aesthetics Through the Ages and The Modern Aesthetic System. His works in this collection include textbooks such as Principles of Aesthetics and lecture volumes such as Ye Lang's Lectures on Aesthetics. He is known for turning abstruse aesthetic questions into clear, engaging prose, often drawing on Dream of the Red Chamber and Peking University's humanistic tradition to discuss a "world of feeling" and the poetic life, combining scholarly substance with readability and exerting a lasting influence on aesthetic education and popular cultural reading.