The children spoke Mandarin in their home, and attended Chinese Sunday school. The couple moved to Brisbane so Ruilin could earn his doctorate in mining explosives. Yang's mother is an obstetrician-gynaecologist. Ruilin's parents were illiterate, but he read books for hours by candlelight and eventually got into university-a rarity so soon after the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), which effectively shut down universities. His father, Ruilin, was raised in a rural part of the Inner Mongolia region of mainland China, growing up in a straw and mud hut. Yang was born in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, to a family that had emigrated from China in the 1980s.
