Lin Yutang’s House – Taipei

Lin Yutang is one of my favourite Chinese writers and inventors. Largely this is because he has been overlooked in recent years both in the PRC, for political reasons, and overseas for all sorts of reasons. However, he was extremely influential in many ways from his writing style to his work on an English-Chinese dictionary as well as inventing a Chinese typewriter and translating many classical Chinese texts into English. A native of Fujian and a graduate of St. John’s University in Shanghai, he later studied at Harvard and then visited France and Germany (where he also studied at the University of Leipzig. Later he taught English Lit at Peking University. His 1939 novel Moment in Peking is his best, I think, and still regularly filmed for TV.

Lin ended up living in a nice house near Yangmingshan in Taipei, which is now a museum which includes his old rooms kept pretty much as they were along with calligraphy done by Chiang Kai-shek and pictures drawn by Madame Chiang too. Also there are examples of his Chinese typewriter, his handwriting in both English and Chinese and many other momentoes of his life including much of his personal library in multiple languages. Finally he was buried there overlooking Yangmingshan. Below are some photographs of the outside of the property, the view and Lin’s grave.