Sang Ye was born as Shen Dajun. During the Cultural Revolution his school was closed and his parents were sent to the countryside for re-education. In 1971 he commenced employment as an apprentice at an electrical engineering plant and remained there for several years. By 1980 he was working as a journalist and in 1983 he collaborated on a major literary project with novelist Zhang Xinxin. Together they toured China, conducting interviews with hundreds of people and recording an oral history of the major events of the century. Their work was published in China as Beijingren (1986) and published in the West the following year as Chinese Lives. (Sang's fascination with travel and oral history has influenced much of his later work in Australia.)
In 1987 Sang Ye visited Australia at the invitation of the Australia-China Council and the Literature Board of the Australia Council. While in Australia he met Sue Trevaskes, whom he later married. They returned to China in 1988, and Sang Ye collected documentation of the Cultural Revolution, most of which is now held in the National Library of Australia. On 7 June 1989, following the Tiananmen Square massacre, Sang Ye and Trevaskes fled China with the assistance of Australian novelist Nicholas Jose (q.v.). Sang and his family settled in Queensland. Excerpts from his work Chinese Time have appeared in Meanjin and Heat.
