Gia-Fu Feng

Gia-Fu Feng (Chinese: 馮家福; 1919–1985) was prominent as both an English translator (with his wife, Jane English) of Taoist classics and a Taoist teacher in the United States, associated with Alan Watts, Jack Kerouac, The Beats and Abraham Maslow.

He was born in Shanghai in 1919 into a fairly wealthy family of some influence. His father was a prominent banker, one of the founders of the Bank of China; his mother died when he was 16. He was educated privately in his own home in the classics of the Chinese tradition and in private boarding schools. He was for several months tutored by the wife of the British Consul-General. His family members were Buddhist. For the springtime holiday, they traveled to the ancestral tombs in Yuyao, in Chekiang Province, for the spring festivals. During the Japanese invasion, Gia-Fu went to Kunming in Free China to complete his bachelor's degree at Southwest Associated University in the liberal arts. Gia-Fu once commented that he had become a millionaire three times in his life, giving his money away each time. The first time was when he worked for the bank in Kunming.

After he returned to Shanghai in 1946, he left again in 1947, to go to the U.S. for a master's degree in international finance at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. After the communists took over China and the Korean War began, U.S. policy kept many Chinese students from returning home. Then, when Chinese Communist Party policies made life for the Feng family less certain, his father advised him to stay in the U.S. During the Cultural Revolution, some members of his family were persecuted.

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