It all began with a dream. A young woman saw a white tiger leap into her lap. It was both auspicious and unlucky—her son, the fortune-teller said, would grow up with no brothers, and his father's health would be endangered by his birth. That son, however, would have a distinguished career, after going through many misfortunes and dangers.
The dream was prophetic. The child was his mother's only male child and his father died of illness when the boy was only five. He grew up during the wartime and period of political turmoil in China, passing through many troubles, and he has had a very distinguished career. He is Yang Xianyi, renowned scholar, translator and interpreter of Chinese and Western literature.
This delightful memoir of Yang Xianyi gives a candid and entertaining account of himself as a lighthearted and mischievous young man who immersed himself in the learning of European culture, ancient and modern, when he studied at Oxford in the 1930s. But it is also the illuminating self-portrait of a deeply patriotic intellectual living in a China under the throes of change, giving rare insight into the survival of a courageous, witty and principled individual during the harsh century of Chinese liberation.

他的人生故事充满传奇性，读来像是一本流浪汉小说(Picaresque Romance)。他出身豪富之家，尽管从小穿上只有王子才有资格穿的丝质黄马褂，但由于他勤奋好学、博览群书，他不但没有成为对社会无益的纨绔子弟，反倒是极大地丰富了知识，增长了智慧。他十九岁时留学英国，在牛津大学默顿学院研修古希腊、罗马文学。他关心祖国的命运，与志同道合的朋友们一起办报纸，宣传抗日，并努力争取英国朋友对中围人民抵抗日本侵略的正义事业的同情和支持。他与同时在牛津大学学习的格蕾迪丝(她是在牛津攻读中国文学荣誉学位的第一人)相爱。1940年，两人一起回到遍地烽火、满目疮痍的中国，从此结成生死不渝的终身良缘。尽管他学识渊博，尤其对中外文化关系史有独到的见解，但是，热情、真挚、勇敢的性格决定他不可能成为一位关在书斋、皓首穷经的纯学者。正如他晚年在自勉诗所说的：“每见是非当表态，偶遭得失莫关心。百年恩怨须臾尽，做个堂堂正正人。”他怀抱火热的爱国情怀，是非分明，看到不合理的、丑恶的社会现象就要说话，就要抗议。
他便是杨宪益先生，本书将带你重温先生的那段精彩人生。