Pao Chen "Mabel" Huang

Pao Chen "Mabel" Huang, who taught Cantonese and worked in Sterling Library at Yale, died at her home on October 3, 2020, at the age of 101. She was born on July 17, 1919 in Jiangmen, China, the daughter of Chan Wing Wei, a magistrate and railroad executive, and Cheng Yuet Ying. She graduated from Sun Yat-sen University in 1940 with a degree in Economics. In 1947, she married Po Fei "Parker" Huang, a poet, journalist and scholar, and came to the United States, arriving first in San Francisco and then moving to New Haven. At Yale, she offered the first course in Cantonese ever offered by the university. She also collaborated with her husband in compiling the first modern Cantonese-English dictionary. In her work as a librarian, she helped to catalogue Yale's East Asian Collection. She was also a fellow of Timothy Dwight College. After retiring in 1984, she and Po Fei moved to Pasadena, where they continued to be active in Chinese community activities. An energetic, engaging and practical woman, she was, in addition to being a superb teacher and cataloguer, a talented cook, a gifted storyteller, and a strong leadership model for young women. She is survived by her sons Alan, a computer scientist, and Ben, a writer.