Caoying Study

Cao Ying Study is located in Building 3, No. 178, Urumqi South Road, with a construction area of ​​about 270 square meters. After renovation, it was rebuilt into Cao Ying Study to commemorate Cao Ying, a Russian literature translator who worked tirelessly throughout his life, and to show Cao Ying's immortal journey in literary translation and revolutionary work. Cao Ying Study will be built into a salon for ideological exchange and a base for academic research, showing the hard-working creation of people's literature and translated literature to the public. Cao Ying (1923-2015), formerly known as Sheng Junfeng, was a Russian literature translator born in 1923 in a prominent family in Zhenhai, Zhejiang. In 1941, Cao Ying began to embark on the road of Russian translation. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he translated a large number of Soviet and Russian literary works for the people of the new era. He was the first Chinese translator to fully translate Sholokhov's works. Over the past sixty years, he translated Sholokhov's "Don Stories", "New Land" and "The Fate of a Man", all of Leo Tolstoy's novels including three novels "War and Peace", "Resurrection" and "Anna Karenina", the autobiographical novel "Childhood, Adolescence and Youth", Lermontov's "A Hero of Our Time" and works by Kataev, Nikolayeva and others, which have had a great social response among Chinese readers. It is worth mentioning that he translated the "Complete Works of Tolstoy's Novels" at the age of 54 and it took him 21 years to complete, totaling 12 volumes and 4 million words. Among them, "Anna Karenina", "Resurrection" and "War and Peace" have become classics that people are eager to read. He completed the translation of "Complete Works of Tolstoy's Novels" by himself, a feat that is unique in the world and has won many of the highest awards in the translation industry at home and abroad. Russian sinologist Li Fuqing said: "The only person in the world who can translate all of Tolstoy's novels may be Cao Ying." Mr. Cao Ying translated more than 4 million words of Tolstoy's complete works and millions of words of other Russian literary works by himself, and also won many of the highest awards in the translation community at home and abroad. In 1987, he won the Soviet Union's highest literary award - the "Gorky Literature Award", in 1997 he won the "Lu Xun Literary Translation Rainbow Award" issued by the China Writers Association, in 1999 he won the "Friendship Medal" and certificate issued by the Russian-Chinese Friendship Association, in 2002 he was awarded the honorary title of "China's State-owned Senior Translator" by the China Translators Association, in 2006 he was awarded the title of "Russian Honorary Writer" and the "Gorky Medal". In 2010, he won the "China Translation Culture Lifetime Achievement Award", and in 2011 he won the "Shanghai Artist Lifetime Honor Award". "Instead of leaving a tombstone, it is better to build a study." After nearly a year of renovation, Mr. Cao Ying's last wish was finally realized in early March 2019. The restoration of Cao Ying's study fully respects the opinions of his family, and the study where he actually lived in his former residence on Yueyang Road was moved to the exhibition hall on the first floor of Building 3, No. 178, Urumqi South Road. On the desk where Cao Ying spent his life writing millions of words of translation manuscripts, pens, magnifying glasses, paperweights, dictionaries and other objects are still neatly placed, as if the voice and appearance of this great translator are still there and have never left. According to the wishes of Cao Ying's family, in the glass display cabinet in Cao Ying's study, various Russian literary books such as poems, essays, novels, and scripts translated by Cao Ying at various stages of his life are displayed. The earliest book was published in 1953, and the latest book was published in 2017, including the 22-volume, 10 million-word "Complete Works of Cao Ying's Translations". The entire wall of books is very impactful, showing Mr. Cao Ying's long translation career and outstanding literary achievements. In the future, Cao Ying Study will focus on showing Cao Ying's immortal journey in literary translation and revolutionary work, and build the study into a salon for the exchange of ideas and a base for academic research, showing the public the arduous creative process of people's literature and translated literature and the Shanghai literary and artistic spirit represented by Cao Ying.