page_title: Chin Yang Lee
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Chin Yang Lee / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Eight Li brothers of Xiangtan in Beijing, celebrating their parents' 60th birthdays. From left to right (youngest to oldest): Li Jinyang (C.Y. Lee), Jinguang, Jinming, Jinjiong, Jinshu, Jinyao, Jinhui, Jinxi 中文: 黎氏八骏在父母亲60岁生日时在北京合影。从左至右：黎锦扬、黎锦光、黎锦明、黎锦炯、黎锦纾、黎锦耀、黎锦辉、黎锦熙
context_page_description: Chin Yang Lee or C. Y. Lee was a Chinese American author best known for his 1957 novel The Flower Drum Song, which inspired the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Flower Drum Song and the eponymous 1961 film which was nominated for five Academy Awards.
context_section_description: Chin Yang Lee (Li Jinyang) was born in 1915 into a scholarly family in Xiangtan, Hunan, China, the youngest of the eight Li brothers who all achieved national or international fame. His eldest brother, Li Jinxi, was the "father of the Chinese phonetic alphabet" and teacher of Mao Zedong. The second oldest, Li Jinhui, was a pioneering musician considered the "father of Chinese popular music".
  He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from National Southwestern Associated University in 1942. After working as a secretary for a maharajah at the China–Burma border, Lee emigrated to the United States in 1943, during the Second Sino-Japanese War. After briefly attending Columbia University, Lee earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in playwriting from Yale University in 1947. Lee was a journalist living in and working for two San Francisco Chinatown newspapers, Chinese World and Young China at the time, in the early 1950s, when he was writing Flower Drum Song, expanding it from a short story to a novel.
caption: The eight Li brothers in Beijing, 1930. C.Y. Lee (left) was the youngest.
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