| Yi Zhongtian 易中天 | |
| Birth Date: | 8 February 1947[1] |
| Birth Place: | Changsha, Hunan Province, Republic of China |
| Occupation: | Historian |
| Language: | Mandarin Chinese |
| Nationality: | Chinese |
| Alma Mater: | Wuhan University (BA & MA) |
| Subjects: | Literature, art, aesthetics, psychology, anthropology, history |
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Yi Zhongtian (born 8 February 1947) is a Chinese historian. He is also a professor and Ph.D. supervisor at the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Xiamen University's School of Humanities.
Yi's grandfather, Yi Silin (易思麟; 1885–1983), graduated from the Hunan Law School (湖南法政学堂; now part of Hunan University) and served as the acting county magistrate of Dao County, Hunan Province. He became a self-taught physician after leaving office. Yi's uncle, Yi Rengai (易仁荄; 1908–1990), graduated from Tsinghua University's Department of History in 1935. Yi's father, Yi Tingyuan (易庭源; 1919–2011), was an accountant.
Yi spent his childhood in his birthplace, Changsha, Hunan Province, before moving to Wuhan, Hubei province at the age of six. He attended Yuemachang Primary School (Chinese: 阅马场小学) and No. 1 Middle School attached to Central China Normal University (Chinese: 华中师范大学第一附属中学).
Between 1965 and 1975, Yi went to Xinjiang to join the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. From 1975 to 1978, he taught at a middle school for the children of employees at a steel production firm in Urumqi, Xinjiang.
Yi studied ancient Chinese literature in Wuhan University under the tutelage of Hu Guorui (Chinese: 胡国瑞) and graduated in 1978 with a BA. In 1981, after obtaining a MA degree from Wuhan University, he became a lecturer at his alma mater. He is currently a professor and PhD supervisor in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Xiamen University's School of Humanities.
Yi's academic interests include literature, art, aesthetics, psychology, anthropology and history. His published works focus on popularising academic subjects. This has caused some controversy, but has also led to the popularity of his works.
In 2005, Yi appeared on CCTV-10's Lecture Room programme. His series of lectures on personalities of the Han dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period were successful, but there was also criticism about the academic quality of his lectures. Due to the popularity of his lectures, in 2006 CCTV-10 made a contract with him to produce a series of 52 lectures on the history of the Three Kingdoms period. In 2008, he started a series of 36 lectures about the Hundred Schools of Thought on Lecture Room.
In 2013, Yi wrote Yi Zhongtian Zhonghua Shi (易中天中华史; Yi Zhongtian's History of China). A year later, he wrote San Guo Ji (三国纪; Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms) to dispel myths about the historical figures Cao Cao, Liu Bei, Sun Quan and Zhuge Liang.