Mavis Yen was born of a Chinese father and Australian mother. Her father had arrived in Perth, Western Australia, in 1890 and married Yen's mother in 1910. In 1925 her parents took the family to Shanghai, China, where Yen's mother died in 1926. With her father and his new wife and family, Yen moved around China and Hong Kong. She spent time in Sydney, New South Wales, in 1935 and 1938. In 1939 Yen returned to Hong Kong and to China in 1941 but was repatriated through India to Australia in 1944. She returned to China in 1946 and was cut off from her family, who had settled in Sydney, for the next thirty five years. She worked as a journalist and taught English. During the Cultural Revolution she was imprisoned for six months and then sent to a farm for two years. In 1981 Yen and her daughter arrived in Australia, her husband Jeffrey Yen (d. 2004), whom she had married in 1950, remained in China. In Australia Yen settled in Canberra and completed a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in professional writing, in 1984 and a Graduate Diploma in Applied Economics in 1986. Yen taped reminiscences of many older Australians of Chinese descent and wrote an (unpublished) history of Chinese immigration to Australia during the 19th century. Yen spent her last years in Sydney.
Source: Harriet Veitch and Richard Horsburgh, 'Teacher and Writer Between Two Worlds', The Sydney Morning Herald 18-19 October, 2008: 34
