The veteran scholar says teaching foreigners Chinese poetry isn't just a livelihood but also a method of cultural exchange.

"The essence of poems can't be translated, and the nuances of ancient poems can only be sensed in the mother tongue. So I came back," she adds.

Back in her early days in North America, Yeh used to insist on teaching her English-speaking students in Chinese at Michigan State University and Harvard.

When she continued her teaching career in Canada, UBC wanted Yeh to teach in English so as to attract a larger number of students.

Yeh used to write her notes in pinyin below the lines of a Chinese poem and then translate them in English, a way she learned from the late British Sinologist and translator David Hawkes.

With time, her class of "Chinese literature in translation" grew from 16 to nearly 70 students.

"I not only told the students what the poems meant but also about the poets' lives and the dynasties of ancient China. The lectures interested them," she says.

Alongside the joyful and touching moments, poems also help her fight grief.

Yeh's elder daughter and her daughter's husband were killed in a car crash in 1976, while her younger daughter has struggled with cancer more recently.

Yeh, however, has kept her spirits up by reading and writing poems.

"All the beautiful, amazing things about Chinese poetry should be passed on to the new generation."