Yeh Yeh-chin

Yeh Yeh-chin (Chinese: 葉叶琹, 8 July 1911 – 12 October 2015), also known as Helen Lee,[1] was a Chinese politician. She was among the first group of women elected to the Legislative Yuan in 1948.

Yeh Yeh-chin
Member of the Legislative Yuan
In office 1948–1990
Constituency	Hubei
Personal details
Born	8 July 1911
Died	12 October 2015 (aged 104) Vancouver, Canada

Biography

Yeh was born in 1911, a native of Longkou in Jiayu County in Hubei province. She attended Tianjin Nankai Girls' Middle School, after which she completed a two-year preparatory course for Nankai University.[2] However, she was invited to attend Tsinghua University by its president Luo Jialun as one of the first eleven female students admitted to the university.[2] After graduating from the Department of Politics, she continued as a graduate student until her father asked her to return south in 1933.[2] Leaving university, she moved to Nanjing, where she worked for the Department of Examination and Examination.[2] She married Lee Li-bai, an army general.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War Yeh fled to Sichuan with her sister.[2] She became an English translator for the air force in their joint operations with American and British forces, being given the rank of civilian major.[2] At the end of the war, she resigned and flew to Wuhan, finding her parents still alive.[2] Deciding to stay in Wuhan, she joined the Women's Work Committee as director-general.[2] Encouraged by her friends and family, Yeh was a Kuomintang candidate in Hubei in the 1948 elections for the Legislative Yuan and was elected to parliament.[3] She relocated to Taiwan during the Chinese Civil War, where she became president of the Taipei branch of the Zonta International.[3] She also served as director of the National Alliance of Taiwan Women's Associations and became a professor at National Chengchi University.

In September 1990 Yeh resigned from the Legislative Yuan and moved to Vancouver in Canada with her children. In 2006 she donated C$1m to Tsinghua University Education Foundation to support the its School of Public Administration.[2] She died in Vancouver in 2015.[1]

References

1. Mrs. Helen Lee 李葉叶琴女士告別儀式 Dignity Memorial
2. 葉叶琴百岁自述 Tsinghua University
3. 葉叶琹 Legislative Yuan