[3] To her surprise, Ba Jin wrote back, and they continued exchanging letters for over fifty years, bonding over a shared love of literature.

[2] In 1937, she graduated from high school and was accepted to Nankai University, but her life changed with the capture of northern China including Tianjin by Japanese forces, at the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

[3] Following the arrest of Shao Gunxiang, the editor-in-chief of a magazine she had contributed to pseudonymously,[11] Yang feared reprisal for the anti-Japanese sentiments in her poetry,[2] and fled Japanese-occupied Tianjin on 7 July 1938, one year after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident.

[2] On the advice of writer Shen Congwen, who was teaching at the university, Yang changed her major to English instead, and decided to focus on literary translation in the foreign languages department.

[2][3] Active in campus life, Yang joined the literary society with poets such as Mu Dan, as well as her future husband, Zhao Ruihong;[11][12] participated in the Yunnan branch of the Anti-enemy Literature and Art Association;[13] and contributed poetry to the magazine Songs of War (战歌)[14] and Ta Kung Pao.

[13] Yang Yi had first discovered Wuthering Heights as a middle school student in Tianjin, when she went to the cinema to watch a Hollywood film adaptation of the novel.

[14] Ba Jin was supportive of her ambition to retranslate Wuthering Heights, and encouraged her to take her time in translating with great care to convey the true meaning of the original work.

[4] There was new interest in the novel in China, due in part to Karl Marx's praise for Brontë's critique of the bourgeoisie and capitalist society, and Yang Yi's translation was well received among readers.

[10] Twenty-five years after it was first published, Yang Yi revised her 1955 translation, adapting some of the language in light of the more "diverse" readership in contemporary China,[4] and familiarised herself with issues such as typefaces and layout to provide input as the book was prepared for publication.

[4] Hunan Publishing House worked with Yang Yi to release an abridged edition of Wuthering Heights as part of a set of world literature classics.

[4] In subsequent years, Yilin released hardcover, paperback, and abridged editions of Yang Yi's translation, and had considerable success with sales, with 26 further printings over a ten-year period.

[3] In addition, she translated the English versions of works from the Soviet Union,[13] including Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy's The Russian Character (俄罗斯性格) and a novel called The Never-Setting Sun (永远不会落的太阳),[14] both of which were reprinted many times in large volumes in China.

[10][17] In 1972, Yang Yi was "released" and resumed working at Nanjing Normal University, teaching "general reading" before being transferred to the United Nations document translation group.

[10] After returning from East Germany, Yang Yi became a special editor at the journal Yuhua literature monthly, and began writing poetry for children.

"[3] Once she retired from teaching, Yang Yi spent more time on writing shorter pieces such as essays and novellas,[3] noted for their wit and satire.

[13] In 1986, her article "Dreaming of Xiaoshan", in which she remembers her college classmate and friend who married Ba Jin, received a readers' choice award from People's Literature Magazine.

[18] Most of the poems are translated from English, and include modern classics such as "Loveliest of Trees" by A. E. Housman, "The Hollow Men" by T. S. Eliot, and "Solomon and the Witch" by W. B.

[18] The 2022 edition includes a poem which had been cut from the original due to its length – "The Prisoner of Chillon" by Lord Byron – translated by Yang Yi.