Chin Yang (C.Y.) Lee, born in Hunan, China, received a B.A. degree from Southwest Associated University, Kunming, China, and an M.F.A. with a major in playwriting from Yale University (1947).

Before his American education, Lee worked during World War II as Secretary to the Sawba of Mangshih, a small principality on the China-Burma border. The experience resulted in a series of articles published in the New Yorker magazine and, later, a book entitled The Sawba and His Secretary (British edition: A Corner of Heaven). A television series based on the book was made and aired in Taiwan.

Lee wrote his first novel, The Flower Drum Song, in San Francisco while he was city editor of a Chinese language newspaper in Chinatown. The book was a New York Times best-seller; as Flower Drum Song it subsequently became a Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway musical and a Universal film.
--excerpted from The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization

Lee died at his daughter's home in Los Angeles in November 2018.