Yang Wenhui

While he was young he accompanied his father to live in Beijing, but the Taiping rebellion forced them to flee to the lower Yangtze delta.

Although he studied the Confucian classics as a child, in 1862 he became interested in Buddhism after reading a copy of the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana (大乘起信論 dàchéng qǐxìn lùn).

In 1894 he worked with the British missionary Timothy Richard (李提摩太) to translate Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana into English.

[1][2] Yang established the Jetavana Hermitage (祗洹精舍 zhīhuan jīngshè) in 1908 for teaching Buddhism on the site of his publishing house and wrote the textbooks himself.

Yang Wenhui had many students over his lifetime, including several well-known figures such as Zhang Taiyan, Tan Sitong, and Taixu.