* Hsin-Nung Yao; Playwright and Film Scholar Left China

Hsin-Nung Yao, 86, a Chinese scholar and playwright who was only 31 when he became deputy chairman of the film script department of Shanghai’s Star Motion Pictures, China’s largest film company. Yao traveled to the Soviet Union in 1938 to represent China at a theater festival and was prevented from returning because of the Japanese invasion. He finally returned in 1940. Yao’s 1941 play, “Sorrows of the Forbidden City,” depicted the power struggle between the Manchu dowager empress and the Emperor Kuang-hsu over his willingness to accept republican ideas. Mao Tse-tung in 1967 condemned a 1950 movie version of the play and those associated with it as treasonous. After leaving China again in 1947, Yao taught at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of Hawaii, the University of the Pacific and San Francisco State University. He retired in 1977. In San Francisco on Dec. 18.