Yi-Chang Yin

Yin

Yi-Chang Yin

12/3/1923 - 9/24/2023

Renaissance Man, Lifelong Scholar



Yi-Chang (Richard) Yin of Kensington, MD, passed away peacefully at home on September 24, 2023. He was almost 100 years old.



People always wanted to know his secret to aging well. (In the picture, he is 99.) Perhaps his activities reveal the answer.



He stayed mentally engaged. In retirement, he enjoyed learning new things, reading widely about topics as disparate as Chinese classics, physics, chemistry, biology, the universe, and the origins of life. He also took classes in Chinese literature, philosophy, and poetry. Along the way, he memorized 300 Tang Dynasty poems. With the help of MSNBC, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, he stayed on top of the latest twists and turns in U.S. politics.



He loved teaching. As a retiree, he gave a talk at a local Chinese community center on how to easily memorize the Thousand Character Classic, (Qian Zi Wen), a Chinese poem that has been used as a primer to teach Chinese children how to read and write since the 6th century.



He also stayed physically active. Up until his last year, he swam 700 meters a few times a week. While swimming laps at the county pool, he recited poetry in his mind with each word corresponding to a stroke. And he took long walks in Kensington, sometimes bringing bread to feed the fish darting in a creek.



Richard enjoyed connecting with people. Some new friends he met in the hot tub at the county pool. Others he greeted at weekday lunches at Holiday Park Senior Center in Wheaton, MD, where he relished their humanity. In his last years, he often noted: "Every day is a celebration."



The son of Yin Tong and Wu Hui, Yi-Chang was born in China on December 3, 1923. His father headed a railroad, negotiated with Japan, and later served as a cabinet-level official in the Provisional Government of the Republic of China, a puppet government of Japan. Meanwhile, his mother managed a large household, including eight children and her husband's two other wives.y



In China, Richard lived in Qingdao, Beijing, and Shanghai. He graduated from Fu Ren (Catholic) University.



When he came to America in 1947, he planned to study one or two years and go back to help rebuild China. "Giving up one's nationality is a big decision," he later said.



But political turmoil made it hard to return. In the 1950s from afar, he heard about Mao's anti-landlord and anti-capitalist policies. With the One Hundred Flowers Movement (1956â€"1957), the Chinese Communist Party set a trap to flush out rightists by inviting citizens to share their opinions of the party. Then the Anti-Rightist Campaign, which persecuted intellectuals who had aired their criticism or had Western connections, convinced Richard it would not be safe to return.



He became a U.S. citizen in 1964. And after China and the US normalized relations in 1979, Richard became a vital link in chain migration that brought family members to America to study.



Among his non-academic jobs in the US, he served as a calligrapher for the United Nations Secretariat and fed punch cards into room-size computers for United Airlines.



He earned an M.A. at University of Denver and a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University.



After serving as research fellow in Chinese Economic Studies at Harvard's East Asian Research Center, he taught at Wabash College and the University of Southern California. In 1967, Richard landed a professorship at George Washington University, where he taught at the Institute for Sino-Soviet Studies until his retirement in 1994.



Richard and his wife, Helen, also a Ph.D. in economics, were firm believers in the importance of education. At Columbia University, the Yi-Chang Yin and Wan-Hung Chang Yin Scholarship Fund was established to help foreign-born students near the top of their class. At GWU, they created The Chang-Yin Graduate Scholarship. They also funded rural libraries in China.



In Richard's late 80s and early 90s, he served as his wife's main caregiver, expanding his cooking repertoire.



Richard's wife predeceased him. He is survived by his children, Robert (Valerie), Samuel, John (Teresa), and Sandra; many nephews and nieces including two nephews from China, George and Allan; a brother in China and another in the US; and four grandchildren, Richard, Rodger, Brian, and Wesley.



Donations in memory of Yi-Chang (Richard) Yin may be made to JSSA Hospice, 6123 Montrose Road, Rockville, MD 20852, or online at www.jssa.org/donatenow (In the gift designation section, choose Hospice Services from the drop-down menu).



No funeral service is planned.